The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 39
One of the more peculiar features of the Theory of Critical Social Justice for many people is why it is acceptable under Theory to be trangender but absolutely forbidden to be transracial. The short answer to this question, which is sometimes given (usually after someone steps on the landmine of thinking they can pull off a transracial argument or identity), is that Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory approach the issue of identity differently. This is correct on a superficial level but facile to the way that the overarching Critical Social Justice ideology thinks about power and its interaction with identity. Understood more deeply, both Theories are doing the same thing in different ways. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, James Lindsay goes through all of this heavy Theoretical detail to explain why it is, from within Theory, that you can be transgender but not transracial. He then shifts to explain how and why these Theories likely developed the way that they did by investigating the proximate incentive structures that motivated their developments.
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1 comment
Hi Dr. Lindsay!
I’ve been a huge fan of your work around critical theory since I discovered it a couple of years ago. You do an excellent job explaining it to those of us who would rather have ten root canals without anesthesia than read more Marched, Derrida, or God forbid listening to DiAngelo or Kendi. I truly believe part of their power is that their language is so hideous,and constructed to make the uninitiated feel embarrassed to admit they don’t understand. They lecture on and on a bunch of nonsense and slip truly radical and insane ideas in when everyone else has long since learned, If I admit I’m a racist, sexist, etc., they will leave me alone. Besides, if I shed tears out of sheer boredom and desperation to leave I would be using the oldest power play in the book… The white lady in distress 🙄
I do have a question for you. Do you think that rational, sane,Americans still have a way we can live with these new zealots and live and let live? Or are we too late. I mean the schools of ed only train activists (not surprisingly children are sometimes graduating barely literate with a hatred of learning), doctors and therapists under threat of losing their ability to earn a living if they refuse to perform a double mastectomy on a 13 year old who sometimes is a boy and sometimes a girl. Scientists are terrified of research that may end up upsetting certain dogmas, and the news media openly shills for not only political parties but their new co workers from the CIA, FBI, NSA,DoD etc. This as you know is only the half of it.
Could this outpouring of support from parents over CRT really be the beginning of the end? If not what , if anything could be?
Thanks for the amazing work! At least I feel like I’m sane when I see others also saying WTF!