Dr. Rowan Bell graduated from ETSU in 2014, with a double major in philosophy and psychology. He completed his graduate work in philosophy last year at Syracuse University and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Missouri. In the Fall, Dr. Bell will begin as an Assistant Professor at the University of Guelph, which is just outside Toronto, Canada.
When not doing philosophy, Dr. Bell enjoys a variety of physical activities, including running, biking, weightlifting, yoga, and bouldering (rock-climbing on short routes without ropes). A keen cook, Dr. Bell also partakes in various fiber arts (e.g. knitting and embroidery), loves sci-fi and fantasy in all forms, as well as good whisk(e)y. All his papers, he admits, are co-authored by a beautiful and spoiled cat named Zoya.
An expert in feminist and trans philosophy, Dr. Bell was on the ETSU campus in October, talking about sweaty concepts. We had so much to ask him, however, that a follow-up interview felt almost compulsory. Fortunately, Dr. Bell was kind enough to provide us with the following fascinating insights into their work, their hopes, and some of the issues surrounding rights and transgenderism that are currently drawing such enormous public attention.
Let’s start where we often start: how did you first become interested in philosophy?
I think the roots of my interest in philosophy start pretty early in my childhood. My dad had a little background in philosophy and theology. I think he found it fun to give me and my siblings thought puzzles or ask us Socratic-style questions about our ideas, even when we were very small. We didn’t have a TV or a lot of children’s books, so I spent a lot of time reading from texts that were way too advanced for me and trying to figure them out. I think I was being trained as a philosopher before I knew what that meant. However, my family was very religious, and there were some questions you just didn’t ask. When I did start asking those questions, I wasn’t really sure where to go for answers.
The first philosophy class I ever took was Philosophy as Conversation, with Tudico. That was a challenging class in many ways, but I loved it. He took us seriously as moral agents and expected us to be able to give good reasons for everything we believed—even, or especially, the kinds of things people usually take for granted. I realized then that I didn’t know how to articulate or argue for my views. Sometimes I didn’t even know why I had them. In order to do well in that class, I had to actually think better.
Taking a philosophy major at ETSU was one of the best choices I ever made. The material I read and conversations I had have shaped the course of my life in so many wonderful ways. I took a class with Dr. MacAvoy where I encountered feminist and anti-racist philosophers like Franz Fanon, Marilyn Frye, and Iris Marion Young for the first time. They wrote about concepts like oppression and objectification. They took these confusing things that I had been struggling to understand or articulate, and named and explained them. It was like I’d been groping around in confusing hostile darkness, and someone finally turned on a light. Now I teach that same material, and sometimes I see my students have the same experience. It’s incredibly rewarding.
I wasn’t planning to pursue philosophy as a career, but after graduating from college, I found that I really missed it. There’s nothing quite like it. I applied to graduate school, and, through a combination of hard work, great support from friends and mentors, and really truly incredible luck, I’ve been able to find good work in this field. But even if that wasn’t true, I would still be glad that I studied it. Philosophy is equal parts challenging and rewarding. To do it well, you have to learn to change the way you approach ideas; but if you can achieve that, it can make you better at being a person.
We’re certainly pleased that your experience of philosophy at ETSU was so rewarding. Can you tell us a little bit about what you argued for in your dissertation?
My dissertation was about the normative structure of gender norms. The big-picture goal was to understand how gender norms give us reasons to act. People often have a strong sense that they should follow a particular gender norm or set of norms, even if they don’t want to; this sense can act as a reason for them to act. Feminist philosophers often explain this, and other features of gender norms, by talking about gender categories (e.g. man, woman, boy, girl). For example, someone who is raised to be a girl and woman will be trained to follow feminine norms. It makes sense, then, that she would develop a habitual response to that, and start feeling like she should follow feminine norms.
However, that’s not always how it works. Sometimes people feel like they should be following gender norms that don’t match their assigned category. In particular, I’m interested in the way gender norms affect trans and gender-nonconforming people, who often feel like they should follow some set of gender norms even contrary to all apparent social expectations. For example, I often quote trans author Julia Serano, who, when she was a child, felt like it was “wrong” for her to go in the boys’ bathroom—even though she, and everyone else around her, assumed she was a boy at the time. Serano and some other theorists have assumed this means that there’s something innate or “natural” about our responses to gender norms, but I don’t think this is the right explanation. Gender is socially constructed, and so however gender norms exert normative force over us, it has to happen at the social level.
So how do these socially constructed gender norms have normative power over us in ways that aren’t predicted by gender categories? My answer is that gender norms aren’t dependent on gender categories in that way. Rather, I argue that gender norms attach to individual features, or traits. Physical, psychological, or behavioral features are often gender-coded, e.g. as “masculine” or “feminine.” In a world with strict gender-policing, we expect people to display only masculine or only feminine features; that is, we expect their gendered traits to “match” one another. But of course that’s not always how it works. Some people who have, say, masculine-coded physical features might have other kinds of traits that are feminine-coded, and vice versa. I use this to explain how people can have gendered reasons to act based on the traits they might have or want to have, rather than just the gender category that’s assigned to them.
This project is fairly narrow, as dissertation projects tend to be. I’m looking forward to exploring some of these themes in my broader work. In general, people who write about the metaphysics of gender care a lot about gender categories: what they are, how they work, how people do (or don’t) fit into them, and so forth. I’m not sure how useful this is. Gender categories matter, but I think gender is much bigger and more complicated than gender categories. It’s a broad, multifaceted system of different social elements; some of it is about how individual people are categorized, but it also affects the way we classify and evaluate different kinds of behaviors, activities, careers, organizations, social groups and societies, the natural world, etc. Talking about gender categories focuses on classifying individuals, which gets us bogged down in theoretical puzzles about “who counts as what,” and makes it difficult to talk about the way gender permeates society and affects behavior in other ways. I think we need to move beyond an analysis that starts from questions like “What makes someone a woman or a man?” and instead asks questions like “What do we do with gender? How does gender shape the world?”
Questions about transgender rights, particularly in sports, are receiving a lot of attention these days, but so are questions about the meaning of familiar words, like ‘sex’, ‘gender’, ‘male’, and ‘woman’. What do you think are some of the most common misconceptions and confusions people have about these issues?
Perhaps the most frustrating misconception surrounding these issues is the idea that trans people and the rights we are asking for are somehow new and outlandish—that we appeared suddenly and without warning and began insisting that stable, simple sex and gender terms and practices be radically altered to accommodate our bizarre demands. This is just false. First, trans people are anything but new. As far back as there are records of human gender practices, there are records of trans people existing and thriving. Many societies have had social roles and spaces for us. In fact, if anything is “new” or unusual about modern treatment of trans people, it is the violent transphobia that tries to erase us from public life.
Second, let’s consider the belief that trans people are radically changing these familiar words in unprecedented ways. This suggests that, without the presence of trans people, these terms have simple, stable, uncontroversial meanings. That’s a façade. The meanings of words like ‘sex,’ ‘gender’, ‘male,’ ‘woman’, and so on are complex, shifting, and contested. For example, sometimes terms like “man/woman” or “male/female” are used simply to describe someone’s body or behavior (e.g. “Men are usually taller than women”), while at other times they are used normatively, to say what someone’s body or behavior should be like, or to police it to make sure that it works the way it should (e.g. “Man up!” or “Real men own guns”). Those normative standards are in no way simple or stable. Similarly, “biological sex” is a lot more complex than people assume. This term is used to refer to a variety of different features: chromosomes, hormones, genitals, reproductive capacity, secondary sex characteristics (e.g. breasts or body hair), and so on. But it’s not clear which of these features, or which combination of them, is relevant at any given time—that seems to shift based on context. Moreover, these features often don’t match up in the way we might expect. For example, a surprisingly high number of people have something other than XX or XY chromosomes—likely higher than has been measured, because many people who have such variation don’t even know it (that is, they appear cisgender and “normal”). There are complex “sex” cases in sports that demonstrate this well. Consider the case of Caster Semenya, a cisgender woman runner who was disqualified from competing in the Olympics because her body naturally produces higher levels of testosterone than other cis women. (Notice that no one disqualifies Michael Phelps from swimming because his body naturally produces less lactic acid.) And, as many feminist theorists have noted, intersex infants are regularly surgically altered at birth so their bodies align better with what we think of as “male” or “female.” When we put this all together, it starts to look like “biological sex” is normative and socially constructed, rather than a description of a natural kind.
Even setting that aside, however, these terms do not have just one meaning. Most people are familiar with the thought that gender is socially constructed, meaning that the categories as we understand them depend on social practices. If we take that thought seriously, it means that these terms and categories look extremely different across different times, places, and cultural attitudes. What “woman” means in a college classroom in 21st century Johnson City looks very different from what it meant 200 years ago, or across the world, or sometimes even across town. And the meanings of these terms are often under negotiation; they shift and change. Under a history of colonialism, for example, terms like “man” and “woman” have often referred differently to people depending on their race, with white people typically counting as the paradigm cases of men and women, and non-white people often dehumanized as “other,” or classified only according to sex and not gender (e.g. “male” and “female” but not “man” and “woman”). This is has been challenged, and (hopefully) these terms have shifted to become better. If sex and gender are socially constructed, that means we can evaluate the terms and categories, and the underlying social practices, for how beneficial or harmful they are.
Given that the meanings of gender terms change depending on the social practices that are happening in a particular community, it’s also very important to understand that trans people have communities and social practices of our own, where sex and gender terms meaningfully describe us just as much as they describe cisgender people. Trans-positive meanings of terms like “man” and “woman” aren’t new, or made-up (any more than any meanings of these words are new or made-up). This is what these words already mean in many LGBTQ cultures. When I say “man” to my queer friends, not only do they understand that I mean “man” to unambiguously mean both cis and trans men, that understanding and that meaning are based in a long and rich history of language use in queer communities. These meanings are not new. We’re not trying to change the meanings of terms by fiat. What we are doing, however, is arguing that some ways of defining sex and gender terms are better than others. We are challenging definitions of “woman” that work to harm and exclude, not only trans people, but anyone who doesn’t fit into normative gender and sex classifications.
In short, I think the most common misconceptions and confusions arise out of a problem with the way these issues are framed. If we treat trans people as a new contingent that is trying to change and complicate the stable and uncomplicated lives of cis people by forcing new meanings of ordinary words, then our demands seem surprising, even unreasonable. But if we accept the historical fact that trans people have always existed and are just trying to survive a transphobic world, and acknowledge that sex and gender were never stable or uncomplicated in the first place, then trans people’s requests for space in the world don’t seem that strange. I think that, before we can have a real conversation about, say, trans inclusion in gender-divided sports, we need to fix some of the basic historical and conceptual misunderstandings surrounding trans existence, not to mention gender itself.
I’ve heard some argue that expanding the rights of those who identify as transgender, gender fluid, or non-conforming, risks impinging on the rights of those who don’t identify in any of those ways. Is there anything compelling about these arguments? Is there some basic confusion that underlies such arguments?
To be honest, I find these arguments baffling. Rights aren’t typically a finite resource. Often the opposite is true: expanding rights for one group actually helps everyone else, while curtailing such rights are bad for rights generally. For example, granting trans people access to gender-affirming health care seems to be a win for bodily autonomy, while denying us bodily autonomy has disturbing consequences. (Here is a concrete case of the latter: A law was recently passed in Ohio entitled the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” which includes a “verification process” whereby female high school or college athletes who are suspected of being transgender may be subject to genital inspection. (I trust I don’t have to explain why this is a disaster for women’s rights.) Similarly, as trans, gender-nonconforming, and queer people fight for the right to be able to be who we are without being fired, disowned, assaulted, or murdered, we advocate for everyone’s freedom, not just our own. Gender norms are unforgiving and harmful, even if you’re cisgender and gender-conforming. Everyone benefits from the relaxation of these norms and the creation of a more open and inclusive world.
There are of course cases where different rights conflict, and undoubtedly these cases are philosophically interesting. But I’m just not convinced that’s what’s happening here. I confess that I have a hard time figuring out which rights, exactly, are supposedly under threat. Is it the right to move through the world without questioning gender norms? The right to not have to be confused, or learn how to interact with someone different from you? The right to know what strangers’ bodies look like?
I may sound a little sarcastic. However, even supposing some such rights can be identified, and supposing they conflict with the rights that transgender and gender-nonconforming people are asking for, I’m admittedly less than sympathetic. Given that trans and gender-nonconforming people face extremely high rates of discrimination and violence in almost all areas of life—that we are far more likely to to be fired, to be homeless, to be rejected by our families and friends, to be physically or sexually assaulted, to commit suicide, and to be murdered, than cisgender or gender-conforming people—it seems that an increase in our rights should be a priority, even if that did entail a tradeoff.
However, I’ve yet to see a compelling argument that such a tradeoff is necessary. My best guess is, that when people express the worry that expanding the rights of trans or gender-nonconforming people will impinge on the rights of cis or gender-conforming people, they are talking about something like women’s bathrooms or other women-only social spaces and goods. The thought seems to be that allowing trans and gender-nonconforming people this kind of access challenges on women’s hard-won rights to have things of their own. On closer inspection, however, this view is unconvincing. First, it begs a pretty big question. It suggests that there are some non-women who are attempting to infiltrate women’s spaces, and thus assumes, without argument, that the trans people attempting to access women’s spaces are not women. Second, and relatedly, it seems to rest on nebulous and empirically unsubstantiated worries about predatory men invading women’s spaces in order to harm them. But, despite many attempts to locate it, there is a consistent lack of evidence that this is a real problem. It’s simply not the case that there are devious men lurking around in dresses, waiting to ambush cis women in the ladies’ room. Thus, this whole picture looks a little disingenuous. Third, as I see it, the arguments in favor of women’s spaces actually support the inclusion of trans people. The reason to have women’s spaces is to create solidarity among those who are oppressed on the basis of gender. Trans and gender-nonconforming people are oppressed on the basis of gender. Thus, we should be on the same team; we are all fighting the same problems. (Put differently: The trans women I know are just as afraid of men and just as in need of women’s spaces as the cis women I know. Who do you think is more in danger in a gender-specific bathroom?)
There are, of course, good questions about which spaces ought to be for whom, and whose concerns ought to be centered in a particular space. These questions deserve attention and do not always have easy answers. However, the existence of these questions does not in itself justify the broad claim that affording basic rights to trans and gender-nonconforming people threatens the rights of anyone else.
What’s especially telling about this kind of argument, however, is how closely it mimics other historical responses to movements which attempt to earn rights for some group. For example, men have sometimes responded to feminist activism by insisting that their rights are being taken away. Think, for example, of men’s movements that insist feminism is taking away the rights of men. Similarly, in the 1950’s and 60’s, white Americans attempting to resist the racial integration of public schools insisted that their children had a right to an all-white education. (Notice also the parallels here concerning appeals to fear and the protection of the vulnerable. In particular, anti-racist scholars have argued that white women’s fear of Black men is regularly invoked as a justification for discriminatory behavior and violence. This looks unsettlingly similar to claims that trans women put cis women in danger.) What’s happening in these cases isn’t really a conflict of rights. Rather, an oppressed group is advocating for rights which had previously been denied them, and this unsettles the group which had been benefiting from an unquestioned supremacy. I repeat my earlier question: exactly which rights are supposedly under threat? And, if they are indeed under threat, how do they measure up against trans people’s right to participate in public life and stay alive?
More generally: My sense is that most of these public conversations are shot through with misinformation and fear. This is true in part because of how little they actually engage with trans people as people, rather than as objects of study. There’s so much noise about trans people in the world right now, and so much of it focuses on us from the outside. We get treated as anomalies, as theoretical puzzle-pieces, or as threats. There’s that old disability rights slogan: “nothing about us without us.” If someone is really interested in understanding trans issues, I encourage them to learn about us from our own perspectives and in our own words.
That is excellent advice and I’m sure that is such interactions were more commonplace then they would have a profound affect on public discourse. More generally, however, do you think philosophy has an important role to play in shaping a more equitable and fair society?
Absolutely! In my view, thinking philosophically about inequality and injustice is often the first step to fighting them. The world is a deeply unequal and unjust place, but sometimes it’s easy to accept that as “just the way things are.” Philosophy encourages us to investigate why things are the way they are. It encourages us to question even the things we take for granted. I think that attitude and the methods it generates can give us important tools for making the world better. Philosophy is about developing the skills to unpack, connect, and build ideas; and ideas are powerful. We can absolutely use them to make the world better.
Recently, I’ve been exploring the idea that philosophy has distinctive power to illuminate—to shed light on a world that is confusing and hostile, specifically to people who are marginalized and oppressed. One of my favorite philosophers, Talia Bettcher, writes about how she uses philosophy to solve the difficult conceptual challenges that face her as a trans woman. For example, philosophy helps her understand what the concept of “woman” is, and why it makes people want to assault or murder her just for existing. There are a lot of concepts that have this kind of power in the world; not just gender concepts, but concepts related to race, class, ability and disability, and so on. Recent work in epistemology has argued that the way we understand knowledge, and the kinds of concepts that are widely available to understand the world, make the experiences of oppressed people harder to understand, so that it’s harder for us to resist our own oppression. Philosophy can help here. It can help us gain perspective, and build concepts that shed light on how oppression works so that we can fight back.
If you’re interested in any of these things, it’s a really exciting time to be a philosopher. Historically, academic philosophy hasn’t always paid much attention to issues of power and oppression. Recently, more people are starting to think and write about them. As a result, there is a lot of really cool scholarship being done. I feel very lucky to have some small part in it.
Dr. Bell, thank you very much for your time, your expertise, and your advocacy. We wish you success with future endeavors and we hope you’ll visit us again soon!