At the APA Central this past year, Stephanie Kapusta and Saray Ayala-Lopez presented at a session entitle “Trans*feminism.” After the session was over, I asked Stephanie about her work and the content of the session.
I understand you were part of the panel on transfeminism. How did it go?
I thought it went very well. What Saray and I had to say was well-received and we got a lot of constructive feedback.
Why did you participate in this session?
Trans* issues are coming to the fore not only in the general society at large, but within analytic philosophy. Particularly in the social ontology of gender, it is important to take trans* perspectives into account. That is one of the reasons I gladly accepted the invitation to participate in the panel. But another reason was that the APA is a great place to network meet and catch up with colleagues, particularly with those working in your area or related areas. When I saw that Esa Díaz-León was chairing and that Saray Ayala-López was giving a paper, I was all the keener to participate.
What did you think were the most important, intriguing, or compelling aspects of the papers presented?
To my mind, one of most compelling implications of Saray’s paper (abstract) is that there must be a way of integrating non-binary genders more centrally into our philosophical thinking. Many standard philosophies of gender in the analytic tradition take binary gender identities as a starting-point, seeking to explain these first, and then treating genders outside the binary as special or hard cases, sometimes in footnotes or in the ‘objections’ section to their articles. This has often happened in the past – and continues to happen – regarding transwomen or transmen.
As for my paper, “Counting the Costs of Argument” (abstract), it emerges from my own experience of how norms we use to assess philosophical argumentation and practice collide with moral and political norms. Similar collisions between ‘commonly accepted’ epistemic norms have recently been thematized by the burgeoning literature on epistemic injustice and on ignorance. Knowing and ignorance are not neutrally situated within our society. The same is true, I argue, for argumentation. I attempt to formulate what one might call a “Benefits and Burdens Principle”: Assuming that philosophy is an academic collaborative venture for mutual benefit, all those who contribute to that benefit should be fairly burdened. I take the benefits of philosophical argumentation to include epistemic benefits, such as better argumentation, and more soundly supported beliefs, as well as moral benefits, such as professional respect and esteem. Focussing on trans women in particular, I argue that several philosophical accounts of gender social kinds exclude or marginalize trans women. This results in greater cognitive costs – relative to their cisgender colleagues – for trans women who engage in the related philosophical debates. There is the danger of various forms of anxiety around one’s identity claims, as well as an implicit threat of testimonial injustice depending on the type of claims concerning how women are conceived within the theory. There may also be implicit mis-gendering in the course of this debate that may prove micro-aggressive. Finally, all of these burdens may lead to a diminishing of self-respect and perhaps even professional respect.
What sorts of discussions took place in the session?
There were several important interventions that I think will certainly benefit my thinking on the topic. An interesting discussion developed, for example, regarding the balance between long-term and short-term benefits for the participants of philosophical argumentation. After all, the professional benefits I listed in my paper – excellence in argumentation, social contribution of our work, friendship and collegiality, and professional status – are, somewhat simply put, local benefits. However, one might argue that longer-term benefits to the profession might justify individual, shorter-term burdens a trans* person bears in specific argumentational contexts.
Another interesting discussion centred on the way gender can be theoretically modelled within philosophy. In particular, when we philosophically model women and men, we first need some pre-understanding of who these people are; we often already have an idea in our heads of who or what the ‘paradigms’ for our model are. It is in the choice of paradigms – and in the choice of standards we might employ to qualify paradigms of men and women – that cisgender prejudices and biases may be at work.
A brief discussion also took place around the idea of whether from the point of view of transfeminist philosophy, the starting-point in many discussions in philosophy of gender is misconceived to start with. After all, why should we think that there is some coherent philosophical account of the ontology of cis (i.e. non trans) women? One of the problems in feminist philosophy has been the commonality problem; trying to find the common factor that unifies women. The emphasis in the past has been on cis-women. Perhaps one might just as well begin one’s philosophy from the point of view of trans women as well as the linguistic practices and recognition procedures of trans* communities.
What are some areas for further research on this topic?
I would like to look at some commonly accepted norms of argumentation, such as the discursive obligation we have to answer standard or well-known objections, rules regarding how so-called burdens of proof shift, and who is obliged to answer challenges to claims within argumentation. There has already been some work on this, but I am curious to see in more detail how these and other specific discursive norms interact with moral and political norms, once some of the participants are members of marginalized groups, and the philosophical debate centres on matters of central interest to their lives.
What advice do you have for scholars presenting at APA conferences?
It was my third time presenting at an APA conference. Besides the obvious things like preparing your talk well, as well as any slides or handouts you have, I would advise an attitude of eagerness to engage in critical discussion. As I alluded to earlier, it is also very rewarding to be open to meeting new people in the profession.
What are you working on at the moment?
Besides my interests in the discursive norms of argumentation, and how they are encroached upon by norms of social justice, I have several questions that I am interested in in the social ontology of gender. Perhaps among the most crucial in the latter area is developing a fully trans-inclusive account of gender, taking into account many aspects that not only my reading, but also my encounters at conferences have brought to my intention. I tend not to be much in agreement with recent mooting that the recognition of trans* gender identification is above all an ethical recognition, rather than the acknowledgement of a factual claim. Many trans* women, for example, claim that they are women. As a trans*feminist, I think it is important to make sense of these claims metaphysically. Only then, can one fully validate those claims, and the people who make them. This is a challenging task, no doubt. Some sort of radically new approach within analytic social ontology of gender may be required. But I regard it as a pressing issue.
Stephanie Kapusta is an Assistant Professor in the philosophy department at Dalhousie University. Her specialization is in feminist philosophy, and social and political philosophy, with an emphasis on trans* studies. She has published, among other pieces, articles on misgendering in Hypatia (Misgendering and its Moral Contestability) and on the indeterminacy of sex predicates in Topoi (Sex Predicate Indeterminacy).
