The reality of pluralism in trans-inclusive worlds of sense: challenging anti-gender claims to “reality” and “common sense”

Description

A conference paper delivered at CAPPE's 19th annual conference on "Global 'anti-gender' politics".

Abstract:

This paper will: Seek to theorise the realism of diverse, trans-inclusive languages; Challenge trans-exclusionary and “gender critical” arguments that trans-inclusive language and/or gender undermine reality; Challenge biological essentialist claims to defend “fact” or “common sense”. I will build on Talia Mae Bettcher’s multiple meaning account of language, which holds that terms can have dominant and resistant meanings, in worlds that overlap and contest. This offers several benefits: (i) Its pluralism aligns with experiences of multiplicitous worldhood, while mitigating the risk of hegemonically universalising language meaningful in one world; (ii) Its realism holds that multiplicitous meanings correspond to “facts” in specific worlds, accounting for what PJ DiPietro calls the “social yet matter-altering” force of oppression and resistance; (iii) It exceeds constructionism in accounting for the construction of trans people as constructions; (iv) It exceeds semantic contextualism in recognizing how, in trans-specific worlds, trans people are instances of their gender in all possible worlds. However, Bettcher ultimately argues that trans women do not count as women in all contexts. This is rooted in the correspondence within Bettcher’s realism, whereby language corresponds to facts “within specific contexts” shaped by histories of oppression and resistance. This cannot rule out what Dan Zeman calls the “semantic rights” of “transphobes” to use a term’s dominant meaning, which sits alongside resistant meanings in meanings shaped by diverging histories. To strengthen the correspondence in Bettcher’s realism, I will appropriate Left Heideggerian thought’s phenomenological realism, ontological pluralism, and what Mark Wrathall calls “non-representational” correspondence. This can hold that trans-inclusive languages correspond to the Being of trans folk, challenging trans-exclusionary language. It can further challenge trans-exclusionary language for narrowing the possible modes by which we unconceal beings and ourselves. I will conclude by arguing that Bettcher and María Lugones’ attention to the historicity, relationality and resistance of multiplicitous worlds helps to overcome Heideggerian fatalism.

Period	11 Sept 2025
Held at	Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics
Degree of Recognition	International