Gender-Biased Wisdom

Jack of All Trades

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" may have its truth, but why does this proverb assume Jack's gender identity is male, namely, a "boy," when we can see for ourselves in the playing card above that this Jack is clearly into gender-bending, what with the pencil-thin mustache and the long, blond curls?

Elinor Burkett, a Wronged Woman, Says Transgender Individuals Not Born in the Wrong Body

Image by Julie Doucet

NYT

In "What Makes a Woman?" (NYT, June 6, 2015), Ms. Elinor Burkett lets Bruce - I mean Caitlyn - Jenner have a piece of her mind when Ms. Jenner claims that her own "brain is much more female than it is male" even though Jenner was born with a male body. Ms. Burkett responds:

I have fought for many of my 68 years against efforts to put women - our brains, our hearts, our bodies, even our moods - into tidy boxes, to reduce us to hoary stereotypes. Suddenly, I find that many of the people I think of as being on my side - people who proudly call themselves progressive and fervently support the human need for self-determination - are buying into the notion that minor differences in male and female brains lead to major forks in the road and that some sort of gendered destiny is encoded in us.

That's the kind of nonsense that was used to repress women for centuries. But the desire to support people like Ms. Jenner and their journey toward their truest selves has strangely and unwittingly brought it back.

People who haven't lived their whole lives as women, whether Ms. Jenner or . . . [others], shouldn't get to define us. That's something men have been doing for much too long. And as much as I recognize and endorse the right of men to throw off the mantle of maleness, they cannot stake their claim to dignity as transgender people by trampling on mine as a woman . . .

The "I was born in the wrong body" rhetoric favored by . . . trans people doesn't work . . . and is . . . offensive, reducing us to our collective breasts and vaginas . . .

Bruce Jenner [said] . . . that what he looked forward to most in his transition was the chance to wear nail polish, not for a furtive, fugitive instant, but until it chips off. I want that for Bruce, now Caitlyn, too. But I also want her to remember: Nail polish does not a woman make.

I think Ms. Burkett meant to say that "Nail polish does not make a woman." Get that syntax right, Burkett! Aren't women supposed to be better at language than men? Oops, that was sexist of me. But I reckon my slip means Ms. Burkett is right after all - there are no male or female brains since a woman can mangle syntax (though her "hoary stereotype" wordplay shows off her semantic talent).

Anyway, you can't be born in the wrong body, says Ms. Burkett, no matter what you trans folks think or feel about it. Speaking of thinking and feeling, trans people are writing fiction about their experience of being in the wrong body, or so I infer from reading Alexandra Alter's article "Transgender Children's Books Fill a Void and Break a Taboo" (NYT, June 6, 2015).

Oh, just in case of misunderstanding, my remark about Ms. Burkett's syntax was a joke . . . though I do wonder why she felt the need to wax 'poetic' and invert the sentence structure. And yes, I know she wasn't making a 'hoary' pun, either.

Gender Identity Crisis: No Exit Until Now . . .

Trevon Milliard
Reno Gazette-Journal

My brother Shan - professor of counseling at Niagara University - recently sent me an article of interest by Trevon Milliard, "Strangers unite over their transgender children" (USA Today Network, Reno Gazette-Journal, March 20, 2015), and the article begins thus:

When Jessi Arroyo was four years old, her mother taught her to pray.

"Pray to God and he will listen," said her mother, Elvira Diaz. "Ask for whatever you want."

"Mom, I want to pray to God and wake up in the morning with a penis," her daughter said.

Diaz dug up her basic anatomy drawings for children and re-explained the differences. "This is you. You can't be a boy. You're a girl."

"You don't know anything," her daughter said. "I'm a boy."

Diaz didn't know what to do. She'd never heard of this.

"I didn't tell anybody," Diaz said.

Well . . . she did, eventually. Told somebody, I mean, or we wouldn't be reading these words.

I find fascinating, though also troubling, the fact that one's body, more often than might be expected, fails to fit one's inner identity. Of course, I don't personally experience that divergence, but I can imagine - through empathy - how a transgender individual might feel, namely, trapped within the confines of what others consider that individual's corporeal identity, the transgender person suffering claustrophobic angst at being unable to escape, ever.

Except through suicide, thereby ridding oneself of one's flawed body . . . until now, that is, with plastic surgeons as postmodern heroes . . .

Jakub Grygiel on the EU and European Identity

Jakub Grygiel

Johns Hopkins University

Jakub Grygiel, a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University and a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, has written a recent article for the Foreign Policy Research Institute on the Europen Union: "One Market, One Currency, One People? The Faulty Logic of Europe" (January 2012). I'll just quote a cut-and-paste summary and offer a brief, opaque commentary since I have little time this morning:

[N]o matter how much time and money European leaders put into this effort [of forging a common European identity], the outcome does not look promising . . . . The reason is that its causality is faulty . . . . The project of a united Europe is based on the belief that economic unity (itself poorly defined) will lead to political unity. The pooling of the economic aspects of state sovereignty . . . was meant to constrain and mitigate the nationalistic behavior of individual governments, thereby limiting the possibility of another war. Moreover, in the longer run, the expectation was that a growing economic integration, culminating in the establishment of a common currency, would create a common European identity . . . . Such a line of causation demanded a technocratic approach. Missing the underlying national unity, the establishment of a common market and a common currency had to be pursued by a supra-national elite with a very tenuous electoral accountability. Absent a demos, the technocrats had to take over the decision-making process. The hope, based on the assumption that a common economy creates a unified people, was that at a certain point a European demos would arise allowing the functioning of a European democracy. But until then, technocracy would have to suffice . . . . The "democratic deficit" of EU institutions is, therefore, a direct outcome of the faith in the transformative powers of economic structures. The economic, material conditions had to be first set up, then managed by the EU elites sheltered from electoral wishes (notice the EU's reluctance to allow, and fear of, referenda), and the effect would be the blurring of national differences and ultimately the birth of a European nation. One market, one currency, and -- sooner or later -- one people . . . . There was no need to figure out what Europe, as a cultural entity, really was because the new economic reality would have made a new nation. Hence, the EU technocrats strongly opposed any reference to a common religious background, Christianity, and ignored the three founding cities of Europe: Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. In their stead, an anemic paean to universal values, reason, and tolerance was much preferred, and the less defined these terms the better. In a way, there were meant to be empty vessels, so anyone could fill them with any substance they desired because they were simply temporary placeholders for the unity that would have sprung from the material conditions created by a common market. One Europe under one currency . . . . [But] Europeans will not be created by the euro and a common market, and what we have right now is a set of EU institutions with no Europeans. But to recognize this leads to the question of what Europe is, a question that neither Merkel nor Sarkozy nor Barroso are willing to ponder because they seem to have little memory of the Christian roots of Europe. Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome are seen as contemporary sources of security and fiscal problems, not as symbols of a great civilizational and religious inheritance that truly unites Europe.

I think that Grygiel is largely right about the limitations intrinsic to employing economic unification toward driving cultural unity. But the European elite would respond that they have not neglected a larger identity, for they do appeal to "universal values, reason, and tolerance." Grygiel calls these three rather "anemic" compared to Europe's Christian roots. I don't think that anemia is the real issue, however. The problem with these three Enlightenment values is that in a postmodern Europe, they are redefined and even contradict each other, for the radical multiculturalism implicitly adopted undercuts appeal to any universal value except for the universal value of tolerance, itself self-contradictory, and reason is distrusted as an authoritarian arbiter of differences that would seek to impose its metanarrative upon the various cultural groups of Europe's multicultural reality.

That's what needs to be discussed.

Gerard Delanty on Rémi Brague

Gerard Delanty

(Image from University of Sussex)

Yesterday, I linked to Gerard Delanty's article on European identity, "Conceptions of Europe: A Review of Recent Trends" (European Journal of Social Theory, 6(4) 2003), which reviews nine books presenting views of Europe. The article dates from 2003, which is not so long ago, but given the enormous changes since then, especially Europe's ongoing economic crisis and its surging immigration, the debate over European identity has probably moved on. Delanty's article remains valuable, however, especially for it succinct presentation of various views, including the summary of Rémi Brague's understanding of European identity, so I'll post it here for readers' convenience:

Europe as a Philosophical Idea

Works on Europe as a strictly philosophical idea are rare. A few notable exceptions in recent times are Derrida (1992), Gadamer (1992), Kristeva (2000) and Patočka (2001). The English translation of Rémi Brague's La voie romaine is a major contribution to the constitution of Europe as an object of philosophical reflection. Originally published in 1992 in response to the Maastricht Treaty, this subtle book can be easily misunderstood. This is an essay about the philosophical essence of Europe and it is Brague's argument that this is to be found not in the content of European traditions but in their form: the uniquely European is to be found in the nature of the transmission of culture rather than in any specific cultural content. Europe is based on a particular cultural form that transforms that which it takes over but does not have a culture of its own. The essence of Europe is its capacity to transform culture. For Brague, Europe cannot be defined by geography, by politics or by a disembodied Platonic idea. It is not a place or a particular political order. Europe is a variable notion and defined as a particular kind of cultural belonging, which Brague associates with Rome. 'Europe is not only Greek, nor only Hebrew, nor even Greco-Hebraic. It is decidedly Roman' (p. 26). This may sound extraordinary, but Rome for Brague denotes something more European than Greek, Judaic or Islamic modes of belonging because Rome is not European at all in its fundamental nature -- 'this culture is not Latin, or European, but foreign' (p. 92).

For Brague, Europe has always defined itself through otherness, a condition that he associates with Rome. 'The Romans have done little more than transmit', he argues (p. 32). Roman culture was based on innovation, commencement, a search for the new. To say that we are Romans is the contrary of identifying ourselves with a great ancestor; it is to recognize that fundamentally we have invented nothing, but simply that we learned how to transmit the cultures of others. Thus what distinguishes Europe is its mode of relating to itself, which is one of distance: 'The distance that separates us from the ancient Greeks is not in principle, less than that which separates us from other modern cultures' (p. 142). Europe constantly has to confront a consciousness of having borrowed everything from sources that can never be regained. Brague associates with Rome a form of cultural translation in which something new is always created in the act of interpretation. In contrast, in Islam, the original content is retained to a greater extent whereas in Europe the origin is always foreign. The ancient world can only be known in its traces. This leads Brague to his thesis that at the heart of the European consciousness is the phenomenon of 'secondarity': Europeanness is based on the act of cultural creation in which all cultural content is never a copy of an origin. This capacity for self-transformation leads to the interesting insight that Europe does not belong to the Europeans, who do not exist as such. 'Europe is a culture' and cannot be inherited but only created (p.149) is the conclusion Brague reaches.

This is a decidedly deconstructive reading of European culture as already decentred, 'eccentric' and containing alterity within it. Moreover, it reflects a processual and transformative conception of Europe -- echoing Renan, 'Europe is a continual plebiscite' (p. 5) -- since the political implication, not fully developed by the author, is that Europe is never tied to its origin but can and must constantly recreate itself. To be sure, Brague seeks to tie the idea of secondarity to some notions in Catholic theology, obscuring some of his fascinating ideas and it is indeed arguable that the condition of cultural secondarity needs to be related exclusively to Rome. In more conventional approaches this is often associated with the idea of modernity, as in the work of Blumenberg, who has clearly influenced Brague. But the central thesis that European culture needs to be defined in terms of its form rather than identified with a particular cultural content solves some of the problems of essentialism. It also gives a different twist to the idea of the uniqueness of Europe, since what is claimed is that this consists of the capacity for secondarity. But there is a philosophical slight [sic. sleight] of hand in the seductive argument that '"Eurocentrism" is a misnomer' on the grounds that 'no culture was never so little centred [sic. centered] on itself and so interested in the others as Europe' (pp. 133–4). Notwithstanding this problem which is not adequately addressed, this book offers one of the most important philosophical theorizations of the meaning of Europe. (Gerard Delanty, "Conceptions of Europe: A Review of Recent Trends," European Journal of Social Theory, 6(4) 2003, pages 485-486)

This is a rather good summary of Brague's views, but I think that Delanty exaggerates the degree to which European identity is to be found in its form rather than its content. To be European is not just to be characterized in its form of "secondarity" as a transmitter of foreign cultural contents that transform and are transformed. Europe has a more particular cultural debt to Greek and Jewish culture. I think that Delanty also misstates Brague's point about Islam concerning the manner in which foreign cultures are taken over: "in Islam, the original content is retained to a greater extent whereas in Europe the origin is always foreign." Brague's point about translation in the Islamic world is not that Muslims were more accurate in their translations of foreign materials into Arabic, but that they stuck with those original translations, holding that the Arabic language had perfected the meaning and that there was no reason to return to the foreign sources since the translations were superior. Europeans, by contrast, always sought more accurate translations because they knew that the superior text was to be found in the original. Once they had the originals, of course, they were free to transform these through reinterpretation -- the transformative part of transmission -- but the originals were never considered to be superceded.

I recommend that interested readers go directly to Brague.

Europe's Barbarous 'Other'?

Timothy Garton Ash

(Image from Homepage)

I'm teaching a history course in the Division of International Studies this semester on cultural diversity and the politics of European integration . . . or something like that. I can't quite recall the title that I came up with (which is why I've left the words uncapitalized here). Despite my flawed memory, the course is working out fairly well, I think. This week, we're reading on European identity, and we discussed an article yesterday by Timothy Garton Ash, "Europe's true stories" (Prospect Magazine, February 2007, Nr. 131), in which he attempts to identify six strands being woven together to form the fabric of a new European identity: "The strands are freedom, peace, law, prosperity, diversity and solidarity." By these six, if I might summarize, he means liberal democracy, conflict resolution by negotiation, legal protection of human rights, market economy generating wealth, moderate European multiculturalism, and social welfare. There's more to say in characterizing these, but Ash does it better than I can, so go to his article, linked to above (or if that requires registration, go here).

Ash doesn't just focus on the positive, however, for he proposes something negative as well, an 'other' that must be resisted and against which Europe must define itself, but not in the way that this has been done before:

Nor should our sense of European togetherness be achieved by the negative stereotyping of an enemy or "other" (in the jargon of identity studies), as Britishness, for example, was constructed in the 18th and 19th centuries by contrast with a stereotyped France. After the collapse of the Soviet communist "east," against which western Europe defined itself from the late 1940s until 1989, some politicians and intellectuals now attempt to find Europe's "other" in either the US or Islam. These attempts are foolish and self-defeating. They divide Europeans rather than uniting them. Both the negative stereotyping of others and the mythmaking about our own collective past are typical of what I call Euronationalism -- an attempt to replicate nationalist methods of building political identity at the European level.

In this proposal, Europe's only defining "other" is its own previous self: more specifically, the unhappy, self-destructive, at times downright barbaric chapters in the history of European civilisation. With the wars of the Yugoslav succession and the attempted genocide in Kosovo, that unhappy history stretches into the very last year of the last century. This is no distant past. Historical knowledge and consciousness play a vital role here, but it must be honest history, showing all the wrinkles, and not mythistoire.

This is an interesting concept, an 'other' against whom one defines one's identity can be one's own barbarous past. The idea reminds me, in a sense, of Rémi Brague's remark that the good 'Roman' -- by which, he means the good European -- must remain aware of a barbarism within himself that must be subdued (Brague, Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization, South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, 2002, page 39). The difference, though, is that Brague doesn't call this barbarism in oneself an "other." For Brague, the "other" would be the extrinsic, Greek and Jewish cultures that Europe has borrowed for its own eccentric identity, an "other" thus to be identified with rather than against. I'd be curious what Ash makes of Brague, but I don't suppose he'll post any comment here to clarify his views.

Brague, by the way, also discusses Islam in his book. I don't believe that he calls it an "other," but he does see it as a rival civilization and clearly prefers the West. My class will be discussing Brague's views tomorrow, along with eight other conceptions of European identity, borrowed from Gerard Delanty's discussion in "Conceptions of Europe: A Review of Recent Trends" (European Journal of Social Theory, 6(4), 2003, 471-488), a hard article for freshmen, but I have the students preparing in groups, so the discussion will probably turn out okay.