The Problem of Not Speaking for Others: Contributory Epistemic Injustice in Kate Manne's, 'Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny' (2017)

125 7 The problem of not speaking for others: contributory epistemic injustice in Kate Manne’s, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (2017) Stephanie Deig1 7.1 Introduction In her hugely popular book, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (2017), Kate Manne states that as a cis gender woman she did not have the requisite authority grounded in lived experience to credibly speak to the “nature” of trans persons’ experiences of misogyny in her analysis (Manne 2017, 25). Manne emphasizes that this became particularly evident to her in light of the controversy regarding the publication of an article, ‘In Defense of Transracialism’ (Tuvel 2017) in the feminist philosophy journal, Hypatia. As a result, in her book outlining an ameliorative2, intersectional conceptual analysis of misogyny as a moralistic system “that polices and enforces” norms and demands that constitute, reproduce, and uphold sexism in service of maintaining an oppressive cis-hetero patriarchal social order, she brackets the experiences of misogyny of trans persons from those of cis women and girls (Manne 2017, 20.). Drawing on Alcoff’s text, ‘The Problem of Speaking for Others’, (1991), I categorize Manne’s bracketing as a case of unjustified “retreat”. Following Alcoff, I argue that Manne’s retreat rests on a faulty ontological conception of knowers and the assumption “that one can retreat into one’s discrete location and make claims entirely and singularly based on that location that do not range over others” (Alcoff 1991, 20). I contend that such a position does not account for the embeddedness and relationality of speakers in discursive practices of collective knowledge production. I then discuss how this faulty ontological assumption and conception result in Manne’s overestimation of 1 The author is incredibly thankful for the meaningful contributions of Karen Poertzgen, MA, PhD Candidate in Philosophy, University of Bern, who co-authored the first draft of this paper. 2 An ameliorative conceptual analysis (Haslanger 2000) produces a “target concept” i.e., one “that we should be using, given our purposes and goals in that inquiry” (Diaz-Leon 2020). Manne’s analysis is guided by the target or political goal to make visible, understand, and problematize the machinations of gender-based oppression. 126 the salience of one’s lived experiences from their social location to what one is in a position to know, which I argue impacts her evaluation of her political and epistemic responsibilities. In the next sections of the paper, I outline why Manne’s retreat should be critically engaged with by pointing to it as an example of an epistemic practice that contributes to ongoing patterns of epistemic exclusion and epistemic exploitation, exemplified by the Hypatia Controversy of 2017, in which the experiences of trans persons are excluded from conceptual, systemic accounts or theories that “stick to the bodies” of trans persons. Furthermore, such practices maintain structures of epistemic oppression3 and marginalize trans persons and their experiences within the discipline of philosophy by rendering their experiences conceptually non-coherent, non-knowable nor actionable within political struggles for the end of gendered oppression. Theoretical non coherence thus creates and perpetuates epistemic, psychic, and material exclusions and violence (Berenstain 2016; Bettcher 2019; Butler 2004; Dotson 2011b; 2012a; 2012b). I argue that Manne’s retreat perpetuates what Kristie Dotson refers to as contributory injustice, which is an injustice that “is caused by an epistemic agent’s situated ignorance, in the form of willful hermeneutical ignorance, in maintaining and utilizing structurally prejudiced hermeneutical resources that result in epistemic harm to the epistemic agency of a knower” (2012a,31). I contend that Manne utilizes structurally prejudicial hermeneutical resources by centring the experiences of cis gender women and girls as the subjects of feminist intervention to the exclusion of trans persons. This in turn constructs their experiences as unreconcilably other, which is epistemically exploitative. Furthermore, it hinders their “ability to contribute to shared epistemic resources” (Dotson 2012a, 32). Finally, as Manne’s account aims to articulate a conception of misogyny that makes visible the mechanisms of gender-based oppression, this creates limits to its political and liberatory potential for trans persons (Berenstain 2019). I therefore conclude by making a few remarks on how Manne could have striven to better live up to her epistemic and political responsibilities and incorporated these experiences by means of the practices of “world traveling” (Lugones 1987) and “epistemic gathering” (Pohlhaus 2017). 3 Kristie Dotson coined the term, “epistemic oppression” to capture the systemic or structural “epistemic exclusions afforded positions and communities that produce deficiencies in social knowledge” (2012a, 24). 127 7.2 The Hypatia controversy of 2017 In May of 2017, Hypatia, a feminist philosophical journal—one of the first of its kind to achieve mainstream recognition within the professional academic world of philosophy—published an article entitled, ‘In Defense of Transracialism’ written by Rebecca Tuvel (2017), who was at the time an assistant professor of philosophy at Rhodes College University. The critical response to Tuvel’s article was swift and immense4. A group of scholars wrote an open letter, arguing for its retraction, which was cosigned by over 800 scholars—including many luminaries in the field (Anderson et. al 2017). The open letter critiques Tuvel’s attempt to analogously compare the experience of identifying as a transgender person to that of a transracial person, in order to demonstrate the logical similarities about identity-based arguments that justify these “nonnormative identities” and argues that the letter did harm “to the communities who might expect better from Hypatia”. Furthermore, it stated that the publication of such an article was representative of a “failure in the review process, and one that painfully reflects a lack of engagement beyond white and cisgender privilege” (Open Letter to Hypatia 2017). In an interview given to the New York Times, Talia Mae Bettcher, a scholar in the field of trans philosophy, situates and problematizes Tuvel’s article succinctly as part of “a long tradition of researchers treating transgender people as objects of inquiry without adequately taking into account what they say about themselves” (Schuessler 2017). 7.3 Regrets in Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (2017) Flash forward to a year later, Kate Manne’s seminal work, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny was published. This book has gone on to be an international success and an incredibly influential contribution in feminist liberal analytic theory. In the introduction, under a subsection entitled, Regrets, she writes: 4 The publication of Tuvel’s article and the subsequent response ranging from think pieces in the New York Times and other publications to a special issue on the article, served, as Sally Haslanger later remarked in a blog post on Daily Nous, as a “spark that lit a fire that has been a long time coming” (Haslanger 2017). The fire, in particular, to which Haslanger is referring, is the reckoning that philosophy as a discipline has yet to engage in concerning how its disciplinary and epistemic practices have historically marginalized and excluded the experiences and contributions of BiPoC, disabled, and trans philosophers and continues to do so to this day. Furthermore, the subfields in philosophy that critically question these exclusions are marginalized within the profession (Allen et. al 2008; Dotson 2011a; 2012b). 128 Perhaps the biggest omission (although there are many) in this book is a discussion of transmisogyny. This is a deeply important, indeed urgent, issue, given that trans women—trans women of color in particular—are an extremely vulnerable population in the United States, among many other parts of the world, today. Welcome increases in visibility have sadly, yet all too predictably, led to backlash. Trans men are also highly vulnerable. Given the prevalence of transphobic and transmisogynistic violence, harassment, and both individual and structural forms of discrimination, I regret not being able to speak to its nature. That being said, it seemed evident to me I didn’t have the requisite authority to do so. Recent controversies in philosophy at the time of writing (May 2017) have highlighted the need for lived experience to speak on these matters. (Manne 2017, 24–25) Manne then provides a few lines of resources in the field of trans philosophy for those interested in exploring the question of transmisogyny5 (Bettcher 2019). A few paragraphs later, quoting Alcoff’s, The Problem of Speaking for Others (1991), Manne argues that her decision to not speak to the experiences of trans persons, is justifiable because in doing so she is “moving over” and creating space for trans persons to speak for themselves (Manne 2017, 26). In the next section, I outline the central claims of Alcoff’s text and discuss how they undermine this argument. 7.4 The salience of social location in, The Problem of Speaking for Others (1991) In this text, Alcoff sets forth an incredibly nuanced argument about the salience of social location to one’s responsibility, credibility, and authority to speak for oppressed persons. The central claim is that one’s social location is a salient factor to consider when evaluating if one should speak on behalf of others, but it is one salient factor among many and not sufficient to determining that one should not. As such, she argues that to claim that one should generally, on the basis of one’s social location, “retreat from all 5 Trans philosophy takes seriously the validity of trans identities and centers the lived experiences of trans persons as a point of departure for what, Talia Mae Bettcher refers to as, “ground-bound” philosophical theorizing, i.e., theorizing that begins with questions that arise prior to philosophical inquiry e.g., metaphysical questions about social kinds, and constructively contributes to the illumination of complex experiences of being a trans person experiencing the world as a subject constantly in deep contradiction – yet oriented towards constant exploration of and with norms, epistemic frameworks, and subjective experiences (Bettcher 2019). 129 practices of speaking for and assert that one can only know one’s own narrow individual experience and one’s ‘own truth’ and can never make claims beyond this” (Alcoff 1991, 17), is not justifiable. Alcoff argues such a retreat relies on a faulty ontological assumption that contains at its core a conception of knowers as atomized and independent individuals who, while situated in a social context, are nonetheless somehow able to step back from it, objectively, neutrally observe it, and thus formulate knowledge claims know about it. It assumes that one can retreat into one’s discrete location and make claims entirely and singularly based on that location that do not range over others, that one can disentangle oneself from the implicating networks between one’s discursive practices and others’ locations, situations, and practices. (Alcoff 1991, 20) In light of this, Alcoff examines a few different cases and determines that retreat can be justified by evaluating, not just one, but a range of factors including: 1) the motivation one has to speak for others, 2) if one has engaged in collective reflection on one’s social location and its relevance to the discursive context in which one’s speech occurs, 3) the awareness of one’s responsibilities and accountability to others when speaking for them, as well as, 4) …the probable or actual effects of the words on the discursive and material context. One cannot simply look at the location of the speaker or her credentials to speak, nor can one look merely at the propositional content of the speech; one must also look at where the speech goes and what it does there. (Alcoff 1991, 23) Alcoff reminds us that the “probable or actual effects” of speech are shaped by oppressive conditions and structures that make some knowers and their speech less visible and politically effective than others. Therefore, some dominantly situated knowers, because of their social location will be more politically effective in speaking and thus have a responsibility to speak for others while some could perpetuate “discursive imperialism”. Accordingly, Alcoff contends that the justifiability of retreat should rather be determined through careful analysis of if the effects of one’s speech are counterproductive to the responsibilities one has to speak as well as the goal of speaking for i.e., to “enable the empowerment of oppressed peoples” (Alcoff 1991, 29). She concludes that in such cases it is important to “to move over”. Let us return to Manne, who has concluded that the “probable or actual effects” of her speaking for trans persons would be harmful. I argue that it is largely due to her adoption of the faulty ontological assumption pointed to by Alcoff, which has resulted in her overestimating the salience of her lived 130 experiences from her social location, to determining her ability to know and thus credibly and authoritatively theorize about trans persons experiences of misogyny. As such, I argue her decision to bracket the experiences of trans persons in her analysis is not a justified form of retreat i.e., a way of moving over. In the next section, I shed some light on the implications of Manne’s overestimation of the salience of her lived experiences from her social location by means of a return to feminist standpoint theory’s understanding of the relationality and embeddedness of knowers. 7.5 Feminist standpoint theory and lived experience Introduced by Nancy Hartsock in 1983, feminist standpoint theory draws on the insight originating in Marxist theorizing, that a “standpoint is an achieved collective identity or consciousness” (Bowell 2011). Hartsock argues that a feminist standpoint can be understood as a consciousness of socially constructed subjectivities constituted through lived experiences of gendered oppression, which are shared and made knowable in light of collective political struggle. Central to her conception is that a consciousness of one’s social positionality is achieved i.e., it is an ever changing, relational project that one engages in, constituted by material, socio-political, and historical relations. Hartsock argues that feminist standpoint theories serve as “counterhegemonic” epistemic frameworks necessary to understanding knowledge production under conditions of oppression and formulating transformative political change (Harding 2004; Hartsock 1983). Although one cannot coherently speak of one feminist standpoint theory, but rather a plurality of feminist standpoint theories, which have emerged in relation to different political, social, and scientific epistemological inquires and struggles6, they all rest on the following claims: knowledge and the production of knowledge is always perspectival and socially situated (Alcoff & Potter 1993; Hartsock 2004; Toole 2019). As a result, most feminist standpoint theories have adopted some version of what Briana Toole refers to as “socially situated knowledge thesis” which argues that “some nonepistemic features related to an agent’s social identity make a difference to what an epistemic agent is in a position to know (Toole 2019, 598). 6 The branch of feminist epistemology has been constituted through debates and discussion concerning feminist standpoint theory and its application within ethical and political theorizing, feminist philosophy of science, as well as psychological and educational theory, as an epistemic framework or as an approach to formulating feminist ways of knowing about the world in opposition to dominant epistemological frameworks (Longino 1999). 131 In Regrets, Manne invokes a version of the socially situated knowledge thesis in which the difference one’s social identity makes is that it positions one (socially locates them) to have lived experiences of oppression and thus to be able to access knowledge of and certain conceptual and/or hermeneutical resources about them. As such, she contends that differently situated persons, who do not have those lived experiences cannot access nor come to understand the conceptual resources generated by differently situated persons whose experiences they do not share in order to credibly understand nor authoritatively speak to their “nature” or meaning and thus the production of knowledge about them. This reproduces the faulty ontological assumption pointed to by Alcoff namely that the knowledge claims of individuals are discrete and separate from one another. As a result, Manne overestimates the salience of an individual’s experiences from their social location to determining access to conceptual resources generated by differently situated persons. This does not account for the relationality and embeddedness of knowers to other knowers and their discursive context, which makes the production of collective knowledge and thus a credible and authoritative standpoint more than the sum of its individual parts. A further implication of her overestimation of the salience of the social location to the knower is the way in which it underlies her interpretation of how the knowledge of oppressed knowers should be privileged in theory. One of the most contestatory debates within and around feminist standpoint theory concerns the implications of the socially situated knowledge thesis regarding the privileging of knowledge produced from certain standpoints over others as the basis for theorizing. It has been argued, particularly in the Marxist tradition, that if knowledge is perspectival and socially situated, then certain knowers must, by virtue of their social location/positionality, have better access to knowledge of experiences and hermeneutical resources originating from that social position that can be used to formulate the basis for shared political struggles. Hartsock’s, Marxist-feminist strain of standpoint epistemology, argues that one’s social identity and social location make a constitutive, material difference to their lived experience of oppression. As a result oppressed knowers are better positioned to know about how these forms of oppression operate and thus they can access collectively constituted conceptual resources originating from that social position that can be used as the basis for articulating shared political struggles. Accordingly, she has argued that liberatory and emancipatory theorizing concerned with understanding and making visible forms and operations of oppression, should emphasize the methodological as well as epistemic-political import of privi- 132 leging or centring the lived experiences of marginalized or oppressed knowers in their accounts (Hartsock 2004; Hekman 2004). Due to her assumption of a faulty ontological conception of knowers and thus their standpoints as discrete and separate, Manne arrives at a different, and I argue incorrect, interpretation of the implications of the socially situated knowledge thesis for privileging the epistemic inputs of oppressed knowers than those who adopt a relational, embedded ontology7. Namely, because oppressed knowers are positioned to know about oppression on the basis of their lived experiences as individuals in ways that more privileged knowers are not, only oppressed knowers should be understood to be authoritative, credible knowers. If one accepts this, then theorists themselves must have lived experience of the forms of oppression being theorized about to be credible or authoritative in their theorizing8. It is this interpretation that we see reproduced in Manne’s statement above, concerning how she did not have the necessary lived experience to authoritatively incorporate the experiences of misogyny of trans persons into her account. Finally, this causes Manne to further overestimate the salience of her lived experiences from her social location in determining her political responsibility to speak as she gives more consideration to her power to do epistemic harm and injustice by incorporating trans persons accounts of misogyny into her account without being able to credibly or authoritatively speak to the nature of these experiences than she does to her power in this discursive context to make visible and address the misogyny that is experienced by trans persons and as well what was exemplified in the Hypatia Controversy as the historic, systemic ongoing exclusion that trans persons experience as subjects in philosophical inquiry. 7.6 Contributory injustice and epistemic oppression Manne’s retreat should be critically engaged with not only because it is a good example through which one can examine further implications of the faulty ontological conception Alcoff points to in interpretations of feminist 7 All forms of oppression are not equally contingent upon one’s social location, nor do all oppressed persons have access to or contribute to conceptual resources that can be used to make sense of their lived experiences as oppressive. Furthermore, one does not need to directly experience oppression to come to know or understand how it is relevant to the organization of political and social life, because achieving a collective or shared consciousness requires, by design, a plurality of multivalent standpoints (Bar-On 1993). 8 As such, it could also be argued that Manne’s justification also rests on her assignment of a “prejudicial credibility excess” that overestimates oppressed persons credibility to speak to oppression merely on the basis of their social identity (Davis 2016). 133 standpoint theory, but also because it is an example of how retreat, even when well-intentioned, is as a form of what Dotson referencing Pohlhaus (2012a,32) refers to as “willful hermeneutical ignorance” that perpetuates contributory injustice and reinforce epistemic exclusions and epistemic exploitation, which uphold epistemic oppression (Berenstain 2016; 2019). Willful hermeneutical ignorance is the result of being situated so that one knows what one should know about (e.g., in the case of Manne pointing to the urgence of the uptake of theory about trans persons experiences of misogyny), but yet refuses to do the more difficult work to acquire hermeneutic frameworks and epistemic resources9 to be able to engage substantively with the epistemic inputs of differently situated knowers. In being willfully ignorant, one thus relies on hermeneutical resources that have marginalized these inputs to make sense of them as hermeneutic frameworks (Pohlhaus 2012). As Nora Bernstein points out, “It is not that the necessary hermeneutical resources have yet to be conceived but that they have not been acknowledged or taken up by dominant groups” (2016, 584–585). Dotson adds, “those who experience contributory injustice find that they can readily articulate their experiences. However, those articulations generally fail to gain appropriate uptake according to the biased hermeneutical resources utilized by the perceiver” (2012a, 32). And so, it is in Manne’s case, as there is not a hermeneutical gap regarding experiences of trans misogyny so that Manne would be required to imagine or speak for the nature of these experiences in order be able to address or include trans misogyny in her account. Rather, these hermeneutical resources exist, are accessible, and available to her. As a result of her retreat, Manne utilizes structurally prejudicial hermeneutical resources by centring the experiences of cis gender women and girls as the subjects of feminist intervention to the exclusion of trans persons. This contributes to epistemic injustice by, “maintaining and utilizing structurally 9 Epistemic resources help us make sense of and thus know the world around us. 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