Social Justice Usage
Source: Worthen, Meredith G. F. “Hetero-cis–normativity and the Gendering of Transphobia.” International Journal of Trangenderism 17(1), 2006: 31–57, p. 31.
A persistent finding in past research reifies a “gendered” cisnormative bias whereby heterosexual men (compared to heterosexual women) have been found to be overwhelmingly less supportive of transgender individuals in quantitative studies conducted in the United States and in Canada, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland, Singapore, Sweden, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. I suggest that this finding reflects a synergistic relationship between “transphobia” and “homophobia” or, put another way, an overarching presence of hetero-cis–normativity whereby it is “normal” to be both heterosexual and cisgender and it is not normal (and therefore acceptable to be prejudiced toward) nonheterosexual and noncisgender individuals.
New Discourses Commentary
“Cisnormativity” refers to the idea that it is both normal and normative for a person’s gender identity and biological sex to accord with one another (to be “cisgender”), i.e., male men and female women. Within the gender and queer Theories of Critical Social Justice (see also, gender studies), seeing it as normal for men to identify as male and for women to identify as female is considered a form of oppression that harms and erases people whose sex and gender identities don’t match. These include most notably transgender identities but also other gender non-conforming identities including non-binary, agender, bigender, trigender, and (rarely) xenogender. It is the fact that it is considered normal—thus expected as a part of “normal behavior,” i.e., normativity—that is deemed oppressive by the relevant Theories (see also, hegemony).
Like all of the ideas within Theory that rail against normativity, especially in queer Theory and gender studies (but see also, crip Theory), there is an important double meaning going on in the words “normal” and “normative.” These words can refer to that which is common when taken in a descriptive sense or can refer to that which is expected or considered right when taken in a prescriptive sense (e.g., “be normal”). Having one’s gender match one’s sex is obviously normal in the descriptive sense—it is the case and always will be the case for an overwhelming proportion of human beings. Theory insists that the mere fact of this implies also that there is a social expectation to “be normal” that prevents the acceptance of gender identities outside of that norm and that this expectation carries with it oppression of people who do not feel like that norm works for them (see also, socialization, gender performativity, and violence of categorization). Cisnormativity is the social expectation, thus systemic oppression, that excludes transgender and other gender non-conforming identities, resulting in their marginalization, minoritization, oppression, and exclusion. Much of this analysis follows from the postmodern philosophy of Michel Foucault, particularly in his critical genealogies of the clinic (madness) and homosexuality.
The most important thing to understand about cisnormativity, like all of the allegedly oppressive -normativities targeted by Theory, is that it is believed to be a systemic power dynamic. That is, Theory holds that something being normative (again, recognize the double meaning in play here) creates a system of oppression that is both almost impossible to overcome and a necessary site of radical activism, particularly in these cases involving subversion (see also, politics of parody), though the usual disrupting and dismantling are also encouraged, pessimistically. That is, normativities are not expected to be able to be overthrown, but they can be subverted, which will lead people either to misunderstand norms as absurd (thus abandon them) or to reverse their valence (see also, Derridean, phallogocentrism, deconstruction, and poststructuralism). Even the act of naming “cisnormativity” as an “oppressive power dynamic” achieves some of this goal by forcing people to believe that there is something to question—and to see as inherently political—in the idea that for most people sex and gender are going to match (see also, personal is political).
See also, normativity, heteronormativity, ablenormativity, thinormativity, and humanormativity.
Related Terms
Ablenormativity; Agender; Bigender; Cisgender; Crip Theory; Critical; Deconstruction; Derridean; Dismantle; Disrupt; Erasure; Exclusion; Foucauldian; Gender; Gender identity; Gender non-conforming; Gender performativity; Gender studies; Genealogy; Harm; Hegemony; Heteronormativity; Humanormativity; Identity; Man; Marginalization; Minoritize; Non-binary; Norm; Normal; Normativity; Oppression; Personal is political, the; Phallogocentrism; Politics of parody; Postmodern; Poststructuralism; Power (systemic); Queer; Queer Theory; Radical; Reality; Sex; Social Justice; Socialization; Subversion; Theory; Thinormativity; Transgender; Trigender; Violence of categorization; Woman; Xenogender
Revision date: 12/8/20
5 comments
The epigraph speaks of reification, and then proceeds to reify a slew of concepts that have been conjured out of nothing and don’t relate to reality at all. I must say, though, that some of the comments go a long way toward speaking these ideas into existence by pretending they exist, and are normal.
@ Edwin
Given the deontological nature of Kant, his was a far greater adherence to materialism than some interpret him with. But as you infer, Kants gets implicated in gender fluidity politics via noumena these day even when structural essentialism is the direct understanding. Our friends in elite places lay a demon false paradox, and your post showing this interesting in aiming to pinpoint such source of confusion. Valid by a default when speaking of logic that doesn’t work unless aided by a post truth environment. Marx cattle not capitulating to an ontological meaning in that respect, no true consent just brutal psychology. If so a false dichotomy. You say :
”He (Kant) proposes that in spite of its direct unknowability, phenomena may result from noumena”
I too find it interesting with respect to specifically how and why Kant wanted to know the meaning of psychological phenomena compared with say the objective idealists. Ultimately did not care what could / could not be shown as ‘fact’ from transcendental idealism. He felt that the general psyche was strengthened & invigorated without regard for what might be revealed ”das Ding an sich”. Hence resultant phenomenon in the human making such inquiry could be unrelated ‘to the thing itself’ whilst objective idealists determine it. He did struggle to explain this as anyone would & its there that Schopenhauer could put Kant in disarray. The result has been similar concerning any noumena and its critics. Today we seem to have nothing but political interference in philosophy & that chaos is not the same as bone fide critique, much of which as Kants whole point.
I found the paradoxical matter you speak of hard to see initially. Reading on its like you are saying the gender dictators use nounmenalism combined with its concurrent condemnation among certain public intellectuals. But you stated this :
”However, if they are wrong and there is a noumena that lies at the basis of phenomena, “what works” will always default back toward compliance with the limits of noumenal reality ”
Noumenal reality ? If that isn’t to being an oxymoron totalitarianism here ( and clearly isn’t ) then surely it indicates a desire somewhat likes Kants own in the avoidance false dichotomy. For noumena in false positions is what totalitarian states tend to design in de-coupled logics I.E this binary fluid causation maker which converts sense into nonsense. In that way ‘Right’ is no longer compared to ‘Wrong’ within their immaterial psychology where as Kant did. So in effect no fact can exist like this & this totalitarian de-coupling process becomes post truth algorithm machine.
Police states can then enforce whatever they like the way it pleases them. Meaningless law idea correlates seem to correspond negatively to behaving at random. In fact there is no mistake at all & their technique is simply primitive / brutish though most officers won’t understand what makes these algorithms tick. But no actual randomness since these systems organise all proletariat to ‘wrong’ no matter what. From this POV & standpoint an approximation of the control going on around such matters as Gender and the conditioned learning of communism / fascism. The State simply sees to it that only its officials and perhaps occasionally its crypto fascist agents can do this. It becomes a crime for any proletarian to re-couple the logic and use resultant truth era sense or commit dissident activity just by using truth era values. Its shockingly inhumane but is an primal algorithm when early humans worked to stripped out sensory data. And for instance Foucault was inspired by outlook, and was not ‘wrong’ purely concerning the predicament. We know nature at its most basic teaches hunter gathering early in society. These facts suited Foucault style structuralism argument supporting a sexual natural selection. In any civilised world it self invalidates by its own primitive rules because its base not homophobic. Homosexual or hetero dogs that freely have sex & then fight has resulted in rationale linked to dating shows such as ‘naked attraction’. People happily allowing social engineering to reduce them to the status of an animal. A kind of sears catalogue of flesh, yet they’ll go away and hate on consensual fully clothed comedy like Benny Hill.
Structural Essentialism .
For instance Lacan booted up what is still the current mode of post structuralism by starting a new school in his day. Immediately hoodwinking his pupils with ‘a return to freud’ which cunningly restated freud conveniently. ARTF was actually an anti freud propaganda book that taught his students to avoid freud ( therefore not to have an argument against post structuralism ). From there Lacan had the luxury lecturing on post the structuralism noumena he wanted. And imho matters are not much different today when students are being ‘scuttled’ and university is being murdered. Theres an agenda to discredit anything that enables metacognition. In that sense like with Kant, freud / jung et al could be discussed regardless of the value of noumena. Doing so is phenomenal in the sense that no matter what the facts are / are not the process increases I.Q. & memory as the general definition of metacognition, and which was the standard university mindset.
You say this :
”However, if they are wrong and there is a noumena that lies at the basis of phenomena, “what works” will always default back toward compliance with the limits of noumenal reality. When the energy of this effort is expended, approximately what we have seen as normal will be seen as normal and abnormal will be treated with discrimination, either positive or negative”
That resounds with my own senses of proportion. I take it you use the term ‘noumenal reality’ to denote the basic consequences of taking a metacognitive route barring metaphysics ? It could be true to say that every time meta & physics combine it is a paradox. Theres nothing meta and physics going on in ‘fact’ given metaphysics is uniquely psychic guess concerning environmental matters. Metaphysics can be done responsibly & was by Kant, but is rarely used legitimately today. One has to be cautious today given persons said to be genius like richard dawkins & a.c grayling inform us they’ve remote viewed the universe using metaphysics and ‘GOD’ wasn’t there. During 20 years of anti god metaphysics religious matters are 1000 times worse too. And a distinction in class would show Kant shall never have dream’t of saying something so crass.
There is a paradox in the Revolution’s argument. the ‘normal” (cisgender) identity sees itself as “normal” and thereby other manifestations as “abnormal” and since it is so overwhelmingly large as a percentage of the society, that causes other manifestations of sexual preference to feel that they are not seen as equally normal. But that’s just a sematic formula used to cast this as anything other than true.
Restated, as the overwhelming majority and the majority supported by theories on the relationship of sexual attraction with reproduction and species survival, the heterosexuals have objective grounds for seeing themselves as normal and therefore seeing other manifestations as abnormal.
The paradox is that if this wasn’t true, if heterosexuality was not the vast majority and the apparent result of the natural development of individuals as parts of the species, it would also not cause people that deviated from that norm to see themselves as perceived as abnormal.
If the issue is framed in this sort of language, or the new-speak version, it can be framed as a problem. But without that linguistic framing it is seen as reality or the truth and therefore not an effective way of identifying the real problem.
The real problem is that any minority will be seen by themselves and others as an abnormality because they are. That is reality.
As a social issue, the problem lies not in minorities being perceived as variations from the norm, it is when they are treated differently than the norm. If they were not other than the norm, they could not be perceived as other than the nom and could not feel discriminated against.
A “problem” is created when discrimination is presumed to be a problem. In reality it may or may not be depending on whether it actually effects a performance of an activity or creation of an object. If it negatively affects this, discrimination against the individual or category of individuals is justified. If it positively affects this, discrimination in favor of the individual or category is justified.
Discrimination is a virtue, so long as it is done for good, (traditionally we ask for objectively demonstratable), reason. It is an error to assume that discrimination is not a virtue. The “Theory” is attempting to recategorize categories of deviation from the norm as inappropriate for discrimination by indiscriminately stigmatizing both appropriate and inappropriate discrimination.
I’m not familiar with Foucault and doubt I’ll make that effort. But I can easily track this approach back through Kant and his noumena and phenomena. He proposes that in spite of its direct unknowability, phenomena may result from noumena. A line of thinking descended from this through Positivism that rejected the value of attempting to determine noumena through formulas like “only that which can be independently verified can be considered known.” this evolved into “perception is reality and if perception is changed, reality is changed.’ After 100 years that forms the basis for a lot of the ontology underpinning the branches of thinking from which this “Theory” are derived.
Acceptors of the idea of a noumena at the basis of phenomena paralleled “traditional” thinking which had long proposed that there was an invisible foundation creating the material world we perceive.
There is merit in the logic behind their approach. This relabeling is based on a Vichtenstein-like proposition that language determines perception. Change the language and you change the perception. Change the perception and you change the reality. And this is all supported by Kant’s limit on knowability.
However, if they are wrong and there is a noumena that lies at the basis of phenomena, “what works” will always default back toward compliance with the limits of noumenal reality. When the energy of this effort is expended, approximately what we have seen as normal will be seen as normal and abnormal will be treated with discrimination, either positive or negative.
If cisgender people are not the norm, I would expect the number of children people have to plummet.
Isn’t t his enormously against the interests of educators?
Do educators desire the complete destruction of their institutions?
if gender is a social construct, then transgenderism is a social construct.
bam.