In early May, my team explored the following claim with students: "Trans women should be able to compete in women’s sports.” After about 25 minutes of discussion, one student asked, “What’s the goal of this?”
“I deserve to be respected.” Said the woman who mere minutes earlier called anyone who disagrees with her a “transphobic piece of shit” and Boghossian an “ass”.
I love how she stated that since you are only in the top ten you really don’t qualify as an expert. Lol, today’s college students are so rude and complete idiots. She is only a student, not a graduate and yet an authority on transgender, phobias and anything else that fits the narrative. Oh yeah and she obviously is a sports genius.
There is little value in talking to closed minds. The lack of genuine reason, conviviality, and curiosity does not bode well for the future of this nation. ..... I hope you have pepper spray when it's needed. The open hostility can reach barbaric levels. You get a 10 for self-mastery in "the theatre of the absurd".
It does seem pointless, does it not? The thing is that when you speak up, you're allowing more people who agree with you to speak up. You may not change a closed mind, but you will discover who among us agree, and we can then strengthen our arguments and become more persuasive.
Being charitable and patient is essential in dealing with a closed mind, since dogmatic thinking feels so alien to rational discourse. Anger and verbal venom are defensive psychological reactions; psychological armor intended to shut down threatening dialogue and prevent further psychic injury to an already damaged psyche.
Some of us are slower than others, and some of us need an externally-imposed significant revelation to unlock the mind. More than 50 years ago my college roommate had blackballed the only black applicant to the fraternity. We spent a year talking, going to black church services and doing other scandalous things. The next year he sponsored the young man to join the fraternity.
This is much more difficult in the days of omnipresent social media, whose effects are more to drive us into isolation than to unite us.
So if I understand the argument, either we have completely 100% level playing field down to how webbed your feet and hands are (and presumably your innate or natural talent) or it’s a free for all because no one is completely equal so why bother. Seems a little too black and white for especially when enough is know about difference between men and women to have justified different divisions in the first place. Unless those divisions of men and women’s sports were created to oppress the trans population.
In the last 2/3 years so many insults have been devoid of meaning, such is the case with bigot and transphobic. They carry very little weight anymore and are probably more indicative of a person that dared to ask questions than someone who seems to intentionally discriminate.
Great video, I'm glad you lasted 39 minutes before being shut down. I have a question about parrhesia. When I google it to understand it better, I run into articles written by Foucault arguing for this. I'm wondering... Is it parrhesia to hold the line on an argument and use pejoratives, or does parrhesia ask for a more courageous and evidence based and persuasive argument? It confounds me to see his name attached to this concept as I listen to Critical Theory students holding forth in these thought exercises. Some of them have, but the majority have not.
So according to the definition offered of transphobia,to not be transphobic we must not hinder anything a trans individual is want to do. If this is to continue to play out will there be similar identified people on the opposite political spectrum that say want to be able to open carry firearms (as a example on the right) into previously banned spaces and you can’t object without being bigoted?
You are not being fair, Peter, when you conclude that "The idea of examining beliefs seemed utterly foreign to her." Or rather, the situation you'd put the participants in does not warrant your conclusion. She may be open to examining her beliefs in a different environment. Your game is not a socratic dialog of peers, but a public adversarial debate (albeit moderated). Naturally some activists would find it pointless - their goals in public are to deliver the message, possibly to convince some, failing that to draw clear lines and form alliances accordingly for further action.
What your little game has demonstrated is that the lines had been drawn even before you started your game but you'd known that I'm sure. So she is right in asking: "What’s the goal of this?" Because people who feel that trans issues are life and death do not care about philosophical decorum of pseudo neutrality - there is no center line, you are either with them or you are an enemy.
Your game is fun to watch, but if your goal is to change minds (or maybe cultivate self-examining minds), it's utterly useless. Debate has its limits as a tool of philosophical investigation.
The goal of the game is to cultivate self-examination. This may not have happened in the moment for all the participants, but I do believe having an experience of being questioned about your own reasoning will ultimately have an effect. You plant seeds; if conditions are favorable, they grow. The seeds planted in this epistemological game won't grow into a particular opinion (hopefully), but tools for thinking. In my humble opinion, this is valuable for participants and viewers, now or later.
I don't deny that the stated goal by the inventor of the game is to cultivate self-examination. Wether the effect of self-examination is achieved in the case under discussion when random participants are pitted against each other in a public square on an extremely controversial topic is questionable. Peter can just as well plant seeds of total rejection of the game as utterly pointless. As far as I know he has no proof that the game unequivocally leads to the outcome he proclaims, nor does he explicitly specify any limiting conditions under which the game is effective in achieving the stated goal.
“I deserve to be respected.” Said the woman who mere minutes earlier called anyone who disagrees with her a “transphobic piece of shit” and Boghossian an “ass”.
I love how she stated that since you are only in the top ten you really don’t qualify as an expert. Lol, today’s college students are so rude and complete idiots. She is only a student, not a graduate and yet an authority on transgender, phobias and anything else that fits the narrative. Oh yeah and she obviously is a sports genius.
There is little value in talking to closed minds. The lack of genuine reason, conviviality, and curiosity does not bode well for the future of this nation. ..... I hope you have pepper spray when it's needed. The open hostility can reach barbaric levels. You get a 10 for self-mastery in "the theatre of the absurd".
It does seem pointless, does it not? The thing is that when you speak up, you're allowing more people who agree with you to speak up. You may not change a closed mind, but you will discover who among us agree, and we can then strengthen our arguments and become more persuasive.
Hypothesis:
Being charitable and patient is essential in dealing with a closed mind, since dogmatic thinking feels so alien to rational discourse. Anger and verbal venom are defensive psychological reactions; psychological armor intended to shut down threatening dialogue and prevent further psychic injury to an already damaged psyche.
Thank you.
That’s a great point.
Some of us are slower than others, and some of us need an externally-imposed significant revelation to unlock the mind. More than 50 years ago my college roommate had blackballed the only black applicant to the fraternity. We spent a year talking, going to black church services and doing other scandalous things. The next year he sponsored the young man to join the fraternity.
This is much more difficult in the days of omnipresent social media, whose effects are more to drive us into isolation than to unite us.
This is how it works. Great story.
Thank you.
So if I understand the argument, either we have completely 100% level playing field down to how webbed your feet and hands are (and presumably your innate or natural talent) or it’s a free for all because no one is completely equal so why bother. Seems a little too black and white for especially when enough is know about difference between men and women to have justified different divisions in the first place. Unless those divisions of men and women’s sports were created to oppress the trans population.
In the last 2/3 years so many insults have been devoid of meaning, such is the case with bigot and transphobic. They carry very little weight anymore and are probably more indicative of a person that dared to ask questions than someone who seems to intentionally discriminate.
Why is this woman mansplaining so much?
She’s shittesting the world.
😂
Great video, I'm glad you lasted 39 minutes before being shut down. I have a question about parrhesia. When I google it to understand it better, I run into articles written by Foucault arguing for this. I'm wondering... Is it parrhesia to hold the line on an argument and use pejoratives, or does parrhesia ask for a more courageous and evidence based and persuasive argument? It confounds me to see his name attached to this concept as I listen to Critical Theory students holding forth in these thought exercises. Some of them have, but the majority have not.
So according to the definition offered of transphobia,to not be transphobic we must not hinder anything a trans individual is want to do. If this is to continue to play out will there be similar identified people on the opposite political spectrum that say want to be able to open carry firearms (as a example on the right) into previously banned spaces and you can’t object without being bigoted?
You are not being fair, Peter, when you conclude that "The idea of examining beliefs seemed utterly foreign to her." Or rather, the situation you'd put the participants in does not warrant your conclusion. She may be open to examining her beliefs in a different environment. Your game is not a socratic dialog of peers, but a public adversarial debate (albeit moderated). Naturally some activists would find it pointless - their goals in public are to deliver the message, possibly to convince some, failing that to draw clear lines and form alliances accordingly for further action.
What your little game has demonstrated is that the lines had been drawn even before you started your game but you'd known that I'm sure. So she is right in asking: "What’s the goal of this?" Because people who feel that trans issues are life and death do not care about philosophical decorum of pseudo neutrality - there is no center line, you are either with them or you are an enemy.
Your game is fun to watch, but if your goal is to change minds (or maybe cultivate self-examining minds), it's utterly useless. Debate has its limits as a tool of philosophical investigation.
The goal of the game is to cultivate self-examination. This may not have happened in the moment for all the participants, but I do believe having an experience of being questioned about your own reasoning will ultimately have an effect. You plant seeds; if conditions are favorable, they grow. The seeds planted in this epistemological game won't grow into a particular opinion (hopefully), but tools for thinking. In my humble opinion, this is valuable for participants and viewers, now or later.
I don't deny that the stated goal by the inventor of the game is to cultivate self-examination. Wether the effect of self-examination is achieved in the case under discussion when random participants are pitted against each other in a public square on an extremely controversial topic is questionable. Peter can just as well plant seeds of total rejection of the game as utterly pointless. As far as I know he has no proof that the game unequivocally leads to the outcome he proclaims, nor does he explicitly specify any limiting conditions under which the game is effective in achieving the stated goal.
Looks like University of Oregon. Why not name it?