You can't smash patriarchy with transphobia

You should totally check out Bornstein's book Gender Outlaw. It's awesome. 

I spent a lot of time thinking about radical feminist transphobia whilst writing my undergrad dissertation (on whether trans theoretical and radical feminist ideologies are fundamentally at odds). When writing it, I treated the conflict as feminist history that had really been put to bed by writers like Sandy Stone, Patrick Califia and Kate Bornstein (above). It's strange and upsetting, but then perhaps not so surprising, to see that feminist transphobia is alive and well outside of the ivory tower.

You will be pleased to find that this article is marginally less wanky than my dissertation: http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2011/09/radical_feminism_transphobia. 

What values should govern, what’s the use of higher education, and when can we start liking Nick Clegg again?

Originally published at Labour Uncut: http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2011/04/13/what-values-should-govern-what’s-the-use-of-higher-education-and-when-can-we-start-liking-nick-clegg-again

From Urban Dictionary: 'To Clegg is to betray everything you once stood for in a dash of opportunism and stupidity.'








The Liberal Democrat spin machine has gone into overdrive during the last week. Nick Clegg’s sympathetically candid interview in the New Statesman seems almost like the beginning of a public rehabilitation. The message seems to be that we’ve torn him down, and now, in time honoured media tradition, it’s time to build him back up again. Even the Telegraph’s take on the interview, beneath with the ostensibly mocking headline, “I cry to music and even my sons ask why everybody hates me”, inspires a quick flicker of – what is it – guilt?

The question arises, are we justified in continuing to hate everything Nick Clegg represents, or have we turned into massive playground bullies, continuing to flush our victim’s head down the toilet?

Almost a year into coalition government, it is still worth holding onto the memory of those Liberal Democrat manifesto pledges, embodied by Nick Clegg, that led to a barrage of student protests, vociferous journalistic bile, effigies on bonfires, and his own set of entries in Urban Dictionary. Nobody who can understand that £27,000 is a ludicrous amount of money for three years of lectures and library access will forget the tuition fees betrayal in a hurry.

On the other hand, the commodification of higher education wasn’t cooked up solely by this government. The infamous, idiotic Browne report, leading to the decision to officially mandate university courses solely according to the market-governing value, economic “use”, was commissioned by Labour. It was Peter Mandelson’s hand on the helm when the initial push came for the reconceptualising of degrees as useful business contracts meted out to student-customers paying through their tightly clenched teeth for the privilege. “Listen, professor, I’m paying for this degree: now explain to me how this ‘Beauvoir and existentialism’ essay will be directly relevant to changing demands of the job market (none of this ‘transferable skills’ bullshit), or I’m buying a different course”.

Most damagingly, it was under Labour that the higher education department was moved into the business department, foreshadowing this government’s “reforms”. Accusing the Tories and Lib Dems of acting “ideologically” is one of Labour’s better catch-phrases of the moment. As Dominic Lawson points out in the Independent, most people believe that acting according to ideology is a bad thing. But Lawson is wrong to argue that Labour’s assertion: “the Tory cuts are ideological”, is an accusation simply of Thatcherism, or one borne out of jealousy. Rather, it is the quite fair charge that the Thatcher-esque policies of the Tory-Lib Dem government are being enacted dogmatically, that they are not supported by the available evidence.

That is why it is important that we continue to fight for higher education to be seen as good for other reasons than economic utility. Without graduates in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, we will not know what it is to speak of other values than use; we will not know anything of the philosophy behind politics, nor of politics itself. We will not know why it is important that we should know these things. Without an understanding of these ideas, the ascendant ideology of economic utility will go unchallenged.

We have already seen a concentrated assault on the idea that as far as governing values go, if you can’t easily quantify it, you should get rid of it. If use is the only value we admit of, we will not know that it is just one black and white, up and down, right and wrong field of thought – in a politics that should rightfully admit of grey.

Tempting though it is to hate Nick Clegg’s guts until the end of time, the reality is that he probably isn’t the arch-villain we would like to think he is (that sentence was very difficult to type). He did deliberately canvass the student vote on a policy that he never intended to keep, but he probably isn’t completely evil. Like Darth Vader, there might be some good left deep inside him, in spite of the fact that he would condone building a massive Death Star with which to destroy higher education, the welfare state, the public sector, our rich artistic culture, and everything else that is valuable.

Yet, somewhere, there must be some good in him, after all, he does cry alone in his room while listening to music, and what Radiohead fan doesn’t understand that?

In propria persona: a guide to philosophical excellence, qua the Cambridge philosophy tripos

Devoid of any remaining critical capacity to create some sort of opinion piece, I've been thinking rather of what the last three years ostensibly undergoing a philosophy degree has taught me. I thought I'd share some key moves, some baton deploy*, some shapes, if you like, to whack out when faced, as you inexorably will be one day, with the need to write some words on something philosophical. I speak particularly with reference to what I have learnt from the Cambridge Philosophy Tripos.

A GUIDE TO PHILOSOPHICAL EXCELLENCE:
Its so easy. There's one step you can follow, one fail safe key rule that if you use from the beginning to the end of a degree, will result in lifelong happiness. Are you ready? Here it is: Get up early in the morning. Go to the library. Spend at least eight hours there working (i.e. not staring into space/browsing the internet). Come home, get an early night. Repeat.

On the other hand, that's a bit like hard work, and if, like me, you would rather sit in your room eating and watching D.Housewives than doing hard work, below are ten alternative steps to excellence:

They just published a particularly successful paper on Kant, probably following the below guide.

1. Throw in some latin. 'Wollheim seems to be positing something SUI GENERIS' sounds much more impressive than it would if you hadn't said 'sui generis'. It doesn't really matter if the latin is accurate, nobody speaks it anymore.

2. Repeat the same irrelevant point over and over again without expanding on it. Good in exams.

3. Make a spurious distinction. Drive a contrived theoretical wedge between what clearly could easily be one concept and another aspect of the same concept. Stating that one concept is two concepts is almost like making an argument that one concept is two concepts.

4. Talk about all the different ways you might respond to a particular argument. Don't commit to any of them. This is what is technically known as treating them mean to keep them keen (the arguments, not the examiners. But also maybe the examiners).

5. Write obscene and/or misleading remarks in textbooks - that will distract other people trying to read the same thing after you, and you'll get a better mark than them.

6. Spend loads and loads of time making up funny songs about philosophers. This is a much better way to engage with the text than reading it.

7. Be dismissive. So Wittgenstein was able to tell his own PhD examiners that they would never understand his work because he was a massive genius? Big deal. I can refute him in one sentence. Like this, 'Wittgenstein has clearly not thought this point through.' Next paragraph.

8. Give only the reasons 'this is intuitive' or 'this is plausible', and no further explanation in favour of any conclusion. Examiners don't like to be spoiled.

9. Allow each of your essays to rest on an unexplained assumption, like that the radical feminist perspective on things could logically be the only correct one. Allow this perspective to permeate everything you say, without ever justifying it. For example, 'surrogate pregnancy is clearly derogatory and bad'. End of argument, next paragraph.

10. When in doubt, come across as slightly bigoted - 'Multiculturalism gives too much power to ethnic minorities, liberals should use interventionalist policies to stop all and any minority cultural practices'. End of argument, next paragraph.

Hope this helps!


*Due credit for 'baton deploy' is given to its creator, Josh Ebsworth