Lmao, the Dockkk of Stockkk is out there excusing herself with "listen, I'm not saying all of the individual members of that group are degenerate sexual deviants, that would be transphobic, I'm only saying they're typically degenerate sexual deviants, which is different and fine"
I laugh, cryingly
Anyway, the moral situation is this. The profs signing the Stockkk Defence Force letter are not motivated by transphobia. They're an elite closing ranks to protect their own from the prospect of moral criticism and public denunciation of any of their wrongs, including transphobia
The moral situation is that some people want to leverage the position they occupy in the hierarchies they are members of to create a zone *thoroughly devoid* of moral standards binding for themselves and those like them. Trans rights are just the canary in the mine.
That's what alarms them, that people they do not consider, for any practical purposes, peers, dare to appraise their behaviour critically, and that others make a genuinely *moral* claim on them to behave according to the norms of Reason, not strict social advancement.
I believe, strongly, that the conflict here is, at its base, a conflict between the moral point of view and a sort of boundless, aggressive nihilism that can only perversely masquerade as ethics as long as morality remains theoretical, impotent to make any real practical claims.
Don't believe me? Notice how the conversation is fine as long as it remains theoretical. You can talk about gender all day, and it's fine. Make a moral claim, or state that a moral norm has been violated and --academic freedom! Silencing! Orwell! Defamation per se! LALALA
I can not express the intensity of my feeling of this, except in reporting that it's so intense I have difficulty communicating it linguistically, but I consider these people *so pathetic*. Weak, pathetic, cowards with neither consciousness of feeling nor clarity in thought.
I mean come on. Philosophy prides itself for training people to keep a mind so open it could leak all over the floor. Let's dispassionately consider whether disabled people are worth living or someone should choose to starve rather than "steal" a potato, looking at all sides.
Why can't people dispassionately consider whether these egregious bloggers are transphobic, looking at all sides? Why are they so alarmed and lose their cool about this tiny philosophical proposition? Doesn't this give the game away?
I guess this is what infuriates me. It does give the game away, and it gives away *that* it is a game for them, for people like Singer and Velleman and the other frightened manchildren, and I don't want to play another game, it's not a game from the perspective of people like me.
Otherwise Singer wouldn't see himself in Stock when others criticise her behaviour. He'd not have such difficulty applying his utilitarian standards to her behaviour with the callousness he's known for. But he sees himself in her, it's the critics that are alien to him.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
