The Nonlinear Library LW - Book Review: What Even Is Gender? by Joey Marcellino
Sep 3, 2024
20:35
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Book Review: What Even Is Gender?, published by Joey Marcellino on September 3, 2024 on LessWrong.
I submitted this review to the 2024 ACX book review contest, but it didn't make the cut, so I'm putting it here instead for posterity.
Conspiracy theories are fun because of how they make everything fit together, and scratch the unbearable itch some of us get when there are little details of a narrative that just don't make sense. The problem is they tend to have a few issues, like requiring one to posit expansive perfectly coordinated infosecurity, demanding inaccessible or running contrary to existing evidence, and generally making you look weird for believing them.
We can get our connecting-the-dots high while avoiding social stigma and epistemic demerits by instead foraging in the verdant jungle of "new conceptual frameworks for intractable debates." Arguments about gender tend to devolve, not just for lack of a shared conceptual framework, but because the dominant frameworks used by both defenders and critics of gender ideology are various shades of incoherent.
To the rescue are R. A. Briggs and B. R.
George, two philosophers of gender promising a new approach to thinking about gender identity and categorization with their book What Even Is Gender? I appreciate that I'm probably atypical in that my first thought when confronting a difficult conceptual problem is "I wonder what mainstream analytic philosophy has to say about this?", but What Even Is Gender? is that rare thing: a philosophical work for a popular audience that is rigorous without sacrificing clarity (and that's clarity by
normal-human-conversation standards, not analytic philosophy standards).
Let's see what they have to say.
Why I Picked This Book
BG are writing for two primary audiences in What Even Is Gender? First are people trying to make sense of their own experience of gender, especially those who feel the existing conceptual toolbox is limited, or doesn't exactly match up with their circumstances. The second, in their words, are:
"people who, while broadly sympathetic (or at least open) to the goals of trans inclusion and trans liberation, harbor some unease regarding the conceptual tensions, apparent contradictions, and metaphysical vagaries of the dominant rhetoric of trans politics.
This sort of reader might feel the pull of some of the foundational concerns that they see raised in "gender critical" arguments, but is also trying to take their trans friends' anxious reactions seriously, and is loath to accept the political agenda that accompanies such arguments."
People with a non-standard experience of gender are known to be overrepresented among readers of this blog, and I suspect people in BG's second kind of audience are as well, extrapolating from my sample size of one. This book thus seemed like a good fit.
BG contrast their conception of gender with what they call the "received narrative": the standard set of ideas about gender and identity that one hears in progressive spaces e.g. college campuses. Reviewing WEIG on this blog provides another interesting point of contrast in The Categories Were Made for Man. BG make similar moves as Scott but extend the analysis further, and provide an alternative account of gender categories that avoids some of the weaknesses of Scott's.
Where we're coming from
So what exactly is this received narrative, and what's wrong with it?
BG give the following sketch:
"1 People have a more-or-less stable inner trait called "gender identity".
2 One's "gender identity" is what disposes one to think of oneself as a "woman" or as a "man" (or, perhaps, as both or as neither).
3 One's "gender identity" is what disposes one to favor or avoid stereotypically feminine or masculine behaviors (or otherwise gendered behaviors).
4 It is possible for there to be a mismatc...
I submitted this review to the 2024 ACX book review contest, but it didn't make the cut, so I'm putting it here instead for posterity.
Conspiracy theories are fun because of how they make everything fit together, and scratch the unbearable itch some of us get when there are little details of a narrative that just don't make sense. The problem is they tend to have a few issues, like requiring one to posit expansive perfectly coordinated infosecurity, demanding inaccessible or running contrary to existing evidence, and generally making you look weird for believing them.
We can get our connecting-the-dots high while avoiding social stigma and epistemic demerits by instead foraging in the verdant jungle of "new conceptual frameworks for intractable debates." Arguments about gender tend to devolve, not just for lack of a shared conceptual framework, but because the dominant frameworks used by both defenders and critics of gender ideology are various shades of incoherent.
To the rescue are R. A. Briggs and B. R.
George, two philosophers of gender promising a new approach to thinking about gender identity and categorization with their book What Even Is Gender? I appreciate that I'm probably atypical in that my first thought when confronting a difficult conceptual problem is "I wonder what mainstream analytic philosophy has to say about this?", but What Even Is Gender? is that rare thing: a philosophical work for a popular audience that is rigorous without sacrificing clarity (and that's clarity by
normal-human-conversation standards, not analytic philosophy standards).
Let's see what they have to say.
Why I Picked This Book
BG are writing for two primary audiences in What Even Is Gender? First are people trying to make sense of their own experience of gender, especially those who feel the existing conceptual toolbox is limited, or doesn't exactly match up with their circumstances. The second, in their words, are:
"people who, while broadly sympathetic (or at least open) to the goals of trans inclusion and trans liberation, harbor some unease regarding the conceptual tensions, apparent contradictions, and metaphysical vagaries of the dominant rhetoric of trans politics.
This sort of reader might feel the pull of some of the foundational concerns that they see raised in "gender critical" arguments, but is also trying to take their trans friends' anxious reactions seriously, and is loath to accept the political agenda that accompanies such arguments."
People with a non-standard experience of gender are known to be overrepresented among readers of this blog, and I suspect people in BG's second kind of audience are as well, extrapolating from my sample size of one. This book thus seemed like a good fit.
BG contrast their conception of gender with what they call the "received narrative": the standard set of ideas about gender and identity that one hears in progressive spaces e.g. college campuses. Reviewing WEIG on this blog provides another interesting point of contrast in The Categories Were Made for Man. BG make similar moves as Scott but extend the analysis further, and provide an alternative account of gender categories that avoids some of the weaknesses of Scott's.
Where we're coming from
So what exactly is this received narrative, and what's wrong with it?
BG give the following sketch:
"1 People have a more-or-less stable inner trait called "gender identity".
2 One's "gender identity" is what disposes one to think of oneself as a "woman" or as a "man" (or, perhaps, as both or as neither).
3 One's "gender identity" is what disposes one to favor or avoid stereotypically feminine or masculine behaviors (or otherwise gendered behaviors).
4 It is possible for there to be a mismatc...