Over 40 years ago, in Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality, Iris Marion Young gave us a foundational understanding of how essentialist pseudoscience impacted experiences of embodied sexism. Young’s sophisticated argument introduced not only how we could use phenomenology to understand gendered conditioning but also gave us alternative ways of thinking about what it means to be “woman,” what it means to live in a sexist society, and how intentionality and objectivity constrain gendered bodies.
According to Young, while gender is experienced on a spectrum, it is conditioned by the expectations and interpellations of others, particularly via gender expression. She points out the inherent logical incompatibility of the gender/sex essentialist binary by critically examining Strauss’s explanations of gendered throwing difference. He argues for a biological cause, but says that it is not due to anatomical features, instead calling for a biological understanding of the feminine. Young argues that the reason women and girls throw differently from boys and men has nothing to do with biological essentialism. Instead, it results from the femininity enforced through patriarchal sexism, producing bodies that are made into things to be “looked at and acted upon.”
“Being looked at and acted upon” feels like an apt way to describe the current state of affairs for LGBTQ+ persons in my home state, Arkansas. The 94th General Assembly was called into session on Monday, January 9, 2023. Since that day, five bills have been advanced targeting LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly youth and trans folks. Unfortunately, despite being presented as safeguards of privacy, free speech, and fair education, each bill is grounded on a fundamental misunderstanding of the lived reality of LGBTQ+ Arkansans.
At a recent hearing, Arkansas State Senator Matt McKee asked an expert pharmacist, Dr. Gwendolyn Herzig, who was testifying against SB 199, about her genitals. Dr. Herzig was scrutinized, not on the basis of her expertise, but on the basis of the appearance of her gender expression and the strictures of the sexist society interpellating her identity. This question encapsulates the institutional and intentional harm of the lawmaking agenda in this legislative session, while exposing how “looking at and acting upon” is at the core of many misogynistic and transphobic policies. The question laid bare the sometimes unspoken but persistent layers of oppression impacting LGBTQ+ persons nationwide.
Though Dr. Herzig’s embodiment does not essentially impact her capacity to testify to the harms of preventing LGBTQ+ youth from accessing gender-affirming care, phenomenologically, her experience may heighten her expertise. Despite Senator McKee’s grotesque and flippant questions, the experiential dimension of her expertise expands her capacity to produce meaningful knowledge about the issues at hand and understand the interdependency of ethical decision-making. In response to her experiences at the hearing, Dr. Herzig told NBC: “I really just hope it just shows people that there’s people like me who want to stand up and that there are people who want to make sure there are access to resources.”
Talia Mae Bettcher and Veronica Ivy argue that testimonial authority afforded to trans people is both a moral duty and an epistemic privilege. Following their arguments, I believe that we should reevaluate Dr. Herzig’s testimony as epistemically necessary for combatting the anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ bills currently being processed in the state of Arkansas.
In her 2014 article, Bettcher explains that trans women, in particular, are often subjected to a dual form of violence (importantly, intersectionally, this is often compounded by other forms of identity like class, race, employment, etc., but let us set those aside for the moment). This violence is an asymmetrical “reality enforcement,” where—as a result of being a woman—the right to privacy is already infringed upon through the social construct of sexual access, and where—as trans person—the right to privacy is deemed immoral, even hazardous, due to socially and institutionally oppressive perceptions of concealment/deception. In the case of Dr. Herzig, her privacy was deemed less morally relevant than gaining access to a perceived hidden “fact” about, to employ Bettcher’s terminology, her “moral genitalia.” However, flipping the script on this oppressive, essentialist, and theoretically bankrupt view, we can see that Dr. Herzig’s expert testimony and refusal to entertain irrelevant questions is part of her, as Baldino puts it, “non-reductive self-creation.” Dr. Herzig’s response that she deserved respect due to her education and expertise, and the explicit questioning of her rights in the face of legislative authorities misusing their power to oppress and demean her, reflect active resistance to the enforcement of restrictive gender norms and the moralizing of trans oppression.
Following feminist standpoint epistemology, it is evident that the only way to counter the legislative misinformation grounding the Arkansan bills is to uphold the epistemic privilege of individuals whose phenomenological experience affords unique insight into the ramifications of such legislation. In reflecting on her own “trans*formative process,” Ivy explains that she did not have adequate insight into the experiences of sexism pre-transition. Dr. Herzig’s testimony reflects epistemically privileged insight into the impacts of anti-trans legislation due to her intersectional identity as a doctor of pharmacy, as trans, and as a woman. She clearly understood the qualities of this expertise as she introduced herself in the context of all of these identities.
The model of expert testimony that Dr. Herzig provided in the face of oppressive and harmful legislation in Arkansas demonstrates potential resistance to being, turning back to Young, “looked at and acted upon,” even while acknowledging that such resistance is embedded within oppressive institutions that actively replicate sexism, misogyny, transphobia, and heterosexism. While those of us in the LGBTQ+ community in Arkansas have to contend with legislative violence, those of us who are philosophers have an ethical obligation to articulate the value and power of resistance in the rich knowledge produced by individuals like Dr. Herzig.
The Current Events Series of Public Philosophy of the APA Blog aims to share philosophical insights about current topics of today. If you would like to contribute to this series, email rbgibson@utmb.edu or sabrinamisirhiralall@apaonline.org.
Taine Duncan
Taine Duncan is the Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion and Director of Gender Studies at the University of Central Arkansas. She was recently awarded an APA Diversity and Inclusiveness grant for The Lavender Library: Institutionalizing Access to Queer Theory, Courses and Speakers at a Regional Comprehensive University in the South.
