Academia offers many models for engagement, with the teacher-scholar model being one of the most prominent among philosophers. Prioritizing student development over academic research, the teacher-scholar guides students in the development of philosophical skills that help them to deconstruct received worldviews; to construct selves, relations, and value systems; and to better understand our complex world. For many of us, our scholarship complements our teaching.
As a trans philosopher producing philosophy that is aligned with the Trans Philosophy Project to be “accountable to and illuminative of trans lives and communities,” I aim to teach philosophy in a similar spirit. Philosophizing on the page and philosophizing in the classroom are two modes of the same practice; both are accountable to and illuminative of marginalized lives and communities.
One question in particular drives my practice as a trans teacher-scholar: How does one live authentically as a trans person in a deeply trans-antagonistic society? This question arises not just from personal experience but also from public debates on trans rights. Jules Wong captures well the contemporary situation in the United States:
“As states move to restrict or ban access to gender-affirming care, a moral panic about trans people envelops the public sphere, and youth and adults find themselves in an urgent and potentially life-threatening situation. … Accompanying these restrictions are attempts to legislate trans people out of existence and threats to remove trans and gender non-conforming people from social life. Living in this interregnum is proving to be an intimidating and exhausting task.”
Living as trans is certainly intimidating and exhausting when our rights are one of the most popular political footballs in the culture wars. But trans existence was difficult before 2015 for reasons that go beyond political rhetoric.
Talia Mae Bettcher describes trans existence in a trans-antagonistic world as “living in the WTF,” where trans experiences are disorienting at best and violently fatal at worst. Bettcher identifies hermeneutical injustice as a defining facet of trans experience and calls for a trans philosophy of illumination. The violent rage hiding behind a trans panic defense in court is the product of a broader system designed to pathologize, criminalize, and otherwise erase transness from the social world. When one exists in this collective epistemic lacuna, it is not just that one might not want to come to terms with one’s transness for fear of hostility; in many ways, one simply cannot make sense of it. The hermeneutical resources are not available.
Due to the lack of conceptual resources for self-understanding and therefore authentic self-determination, life in the WTF is fraught with familiar philosophical questions, such as how embodiment does or does not shape lived experience. For a trans child beginning to experience gender dysphoria, the cisgender authorities in their life (e.g., parents, physicians, teachers, school counselors, etc.) will most likely miscategorize the child’s sense of incongruence between their inner sense of self and their physical embodiment as poor self-image, anxiety, depression, or simply “being a difficult child.” In many of these cases, the child may lose touch with their inner experiences entirely as it becomes “safer” and “less distressing” to simply dissociate from their body. But life in the WTF also raises deeply disturbing questions, as Bettcher asks: Why do people want to kill us?
Critically engaged public philosophy can address these questions in a variety of ways. With regard to self-understanding, Perry Zurn and Matthew Ferguson note that unearthing and publicizing trans oral histories combats hermeneutical injustices to trans people. Such stories begin to fill epistemic gaps in collective knowledge, producing a sense of shared identity and community. With regard to public and political discourse, Jules Wong’s work framing trans rights as trans needs better articulates what is at stake in this series of debates. And, with regard to a philosophically informed trans existence, Brooklyn Leo’s development of trans world-traveling and trans cocooning are useful reparative practices for BIPOC trans and gender non-conforming persons.
Academic philosophical scholarship can enable authentic trans existence. But there is a wrinkle here for teacher-scholars who attempt to integrate philosophical practices on the page and in the classroom, and I believe the solution requires reaching beyond the teacher-scholar model. The wrinkle is that contemporary trans experience is not just “intimidating, exhausting, disorienting, and violent”; it is also complexly traumatic.
Complex trauma is “the exposure to multiple, chronic or recurrent traumatic experiences” as well as “the wide-ranging and long-term impact of these experiences.” Growing up in an abusive, neglectful, or otherwise dysfunctional household is a common source of complex trauma, as is living in an abusive partnership as an adult or living as a racial minority in a racist society. Recently, trans scholars and mental health practitioners have demonstrated that being trans in a trans-antagonistic society is also complexly traumatic. Relentless perceived threats to one’s well-being and the feeling of powerlessness in the face of persistent traumatic stress typically lead to a variety of survival adaptations, such as deeply held distorted beliefs meant to help the individual cope with the extreme distress. Many of these adaptations ultimately corrupt one’s sense of self, one’s ability to form healthy relationships, and one’s ability to accurately perceive the world around one.
But how should this understanding of complex trauma influence our teaching practices as philosophers? As a teacher-scholar, I aim to provide students with a philosophical toolkit to think critically about their own lived experiences and worldviews and to encourage them to live an examined life. This seems on the surface to be a wonderful antidote to distorted belief structures, but in fact, the insidious effects of complex trauma directly disrupt the pedagogical goals of a teacher-scholar. Take, for instance, the manifestation of maladaptive schemas and self-deception in the classroom. Even if one can cut through denial to identify and question the negative belief systems borne of complex trauma, it is not as simple as cutting and pasting a new belief or belief system in its place. These beliefs arose in response to traumatic stressors, which means they are rooted in one’s body. To challenge these schemas directly or indirectly—which the philosophical skills listed above are primed to do—often produces powerful nervous system responses and emotional dysregulation. While the most trauma-informed philosophy classroom might make space for these responses, working with them directly is outside the role of a teacher-scholar, and for good reason: trauma-informed pedagogy is not professional trauma treatment.
The problem that complex trauma presents to the teacher-scholar model of trans philosophy is this: If (a) complex trauma obstructs the illuminative pedagogical project, (b) trans students (as well as many cisgender students) bring complex trauma with them into the classroom, and (c) complex trauma cannot and should not be treated in a classroom setting, then a teacher-scholar model of trans philosophical practice alone cannot provide the tools for illuminating life in the WTF to those who need it most.
And yet, in the appropriate therapeutic setting, the very philosophical skills I aim to cultivate in students—to deconstruct received worldviews, to construct selves, relations, and value systems anew, and to live more wisely and more fully—are at the core of most trauma therapies. This is not to say that some people need to work through their complex trauma before they can do philosophy, nor that academic philosophy is an effective tool for healing from complex trauma. Rather, I propose that working through complex trauma is itself a kind of philosophical praxis. Put another way, rather than “armchair philosophizing in an ivory tower,” this is philosophizing from an armchair alongside a therapy couch: the therapist-scholar model of trans philosophy.
There is a saying in trauma therapy that trauma happens in relation and so, too, must healing. It is only with the observations of a trained external observer with intimate knowledge of one’s life story and thought processes that protective self-deception can be gently disarmed and that these maladaptive schemas can be identified. Moreover, it is only with a deep sense of trust and emotional safety that one can begin to address these schemas and the experiences from which they arose. Neither of these feats are accomplished in a large group setting, within a 16-week semester, or even intermittently throughout a 4-year degree. This kind of therapeutic relationship takes a long time to develop and is extremely intensive, but it is necessary to address the insidious cognitive distortions produced by complex trauma, which must be addressed for most trans philosophical practice.
The trans philosopher utilizing the therapist-scholar model understands their primary modes of philosophical practice to occur during clinical hours and on the page. Clinical work might be a part-time alternative work assignment built into a full-time faculty contract, or it might be full-time clinical work with or without a teaching component. The defining aspect of this model is that the lifeblood of the trans philosopher’s practice flows primarily through clinical psychotherapy work and philosophical scholarship. And this model works alongside and in conjunction with teacher-scholar, research scholar, and activist-scholar models to produce the desired philosophical community and discourse that is accountable to, and illuminative of, trans experiences and communities. Moreover, complex trauma is not unique to the trans community. It occurs in marked and unmarked social groups alike, so it is incumbent upon philosophy as a discipline to incorporate and develop this professional model as one means to address complex trauma in the examined life.
For me, as a philosopher surveying the state of the post-pandemic college classroom and as a trans person bearing witness to the crushing effects on my students and my community at large of extreme and pervasive anti-trans rhetoric and harassment, writing and teaching are not enough. And as I complete my first semester of a graduate program in trauma counseling from a social justice perspective, I am overcome with hope as I realize just how powerful the synergy is between these two professional paths and how energizing a therapist-scholar identity feels for this trans philosopher.
Imogen M. Sullivan
Imogen M. Sullivan (she/her) is an assistant professor of philosophy at Arcadia University outside Philadelphia. Her research examines trans and queer experience as contemporary philosophical practice, and she is currently working on a series of articles that develop trans philosophical resources from a dialogue between the classical Daoist text, Zhuangzi, and contemporary Latina feminist philosophy. This year she also began her MA in Counseling coursework, where she is concentrating in evidence-based trauma treatment and recovery from a social justice perspective. More information can be found on her professional website, www.imsullivan.com.
