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Truth. Hello,

1:08

and welcome to Philosophy for Our Times, bringing

1:10

you the world's leading thinkers on today's

1:12

biggest ideas. My name's Dan, and

1:14

I'm joined today by the lovely Margarita.

1:16

Hello. Today, we've got

1:18

the Transgender Mind Body Problem, an interview

1:21

featuring Professor of Philosophy at the Open

1:23

University Sophie Grace Chapel. This

1:25

took place in 2023 at the How the Light

1:27

Gets in Festival in London, the Philosophy Festival produced

1:30

by the team here at the II. So,

1:32

Dan, tell us a bit about this interview. Well,

1:35

here, Sophie Grace questions whether gender has

1:38

an essentialist element, the potential virtues of

1:40

living free of binaries, and how this

1:42

all intersects with classical ideas of gender,

1:45

feminism, and the subject of experience. Amazing.

1:48

Now remember, if you enjoyed today's episode,

1:50

don't forget to leave a review, subscribe

1:52

on your platform of choice, and visit

1:54

II.tv for hundreds more podcasts, videos, and

1:57

articles from the world's leading thinkers. time

2:00

to welcome Sophie Grace Jafal to Philosophy for

2:02

Our Times. We hope you enjoy this. It's

2:05

wonderful to be here, thank you very much. So

2:07

you worked on ethics, you worked on ancient

2:09

philosophy for much of your career. People

2:12

often wonder, is there progress in philosophy in terms

2:14

of the answers we give to questions. But

2:17

what would you say about the questions

2:19

themselves? Is there any

2:21

progress in terms of the questions that ethics asks,

2:24

or are we asking the same questions that placement

2:26

Aristotle did? I think we are always asking the

2:28

same questions, but that doesn't mean there isn't progress.

2:31

There are different ways in which you might

2:33

distinguish progress. There's political progress, which of

2:35

course matters enormously, because where there's political

2:37

progress, then people get to live lives

2:39

that they're happy with, and lives where

2:42

they can use their talents, and lives

2:44

where they can be fulfilled. So political

2:46

progress is one thing that ethical progress

2:49

can lead to. There's also a sense in

2:51

which the progress in

2:53

ethics is progress in self-understanding.

2:56

And that of course is a problem that we all

2:58

face. And we start on

3:00

the journey of self-understanding, or not, early

3:03

on in our own lives, and to

3:06

make progress for us, I think is

3:08

for us to come to a better

3:10

appreciation of what's important, what really matters,

3:12

what's worth pursuing, and what isn't so

3:14

much. And that kind of

3:16

progress is, well, tragically, it's reversed all

3:18

the time, because each of us has one life to

3:20

live and we all have one life to live. So

3:22

I think one of the reasons why people

3:25

worry that there's no progress in ethics

3:27

is precisely because of the simple fact

3:29

of human mortality. And I think it's

3:31

also undeniable that there is

3:33

a kind of progress which consists in

3:37

us learning, me learning, to understand things

3:39

better and to be a better person.

3:42

And that is also transmissible. You can teach

3:44

that. I'm aware

3:46

that you're working on this issue of

3:48

gender. And I was wondering,

3:50

are questions around the nature and philosophy

3:52

of gender new questions, questions that the

3:55

ancients perhaps weren't even aware of? Or

3:58

do you think it's a variation of a question that that

4:00

we were already asking thousands of years ago. I

4:02

think it's the latter. I

4:04

think gender is a very interesting one

4:06

because there has been so much change

4:09

in the way society configures itself about

4:11

gender and there's enormous change happening right

4:13

now in that area. And

4:16

it is also a good example of the

4:18

distinction I was just talking about between political

4:20

progress, outer progress, social

4:22

progress, and personal,

4:25

spiritual progress

4:27

in one's own understanding. So each of us

4:29

has a journey to make in life from

4:32

being perhaps someone

4:34

who lives in a fairly small world, has quite

4:36

constrained horizons, and has a very simple sense of

4:38

what's good and bad and is perhaps in the

4:40

words of the U2 song someone for whom when

4:43

I was three I thought the world revolved around

4:45

me, I was wrong. Maybe

4:47

we do all start out with that kind

4:49

of primitive selfishness and learn to overcome it.

4:52

But of course, the two

4:54

kinds of progress that we can have,

4:57

the political progress towards a better understanding

4:59

of how women,

5:01

men, and others should relate to each

5:04

other. That and the

5:06

kind of personal progress that I'm talking about interact because

5:09

there are discoveries that people need to

5:11

make in their own lives about how

5:13

to treat each other. And because children,

5:15

unfortunately, they're not born

5:17

with the prejudice of their parents, they're

5:19

born with a fairly innocent eye on

5:21

the world, but also with a certain

5:23

kind of selfishness, self-centeredness. When

5:26

they get older, they pick up prejudices from

5:28

their parents and their parents indoctrinate

5:30

them in a way of seeing things. And you come

5:33

to think, for example, that

5:35

it's okay to take

5:37

the lead in everything because you're a boy, and

5:39

it's okay to take a back seat and just

5:41

do what you're told because you're a girl. And

5:44

that kind of indoctrination is the very opposite of progress.

5:47

So are questions around gender

5:50

identity a variation of the Socratic

5:52

question or imperative know thyself? Yes,

5:55

absolutely. I think that's a good way of putting it.

5:58

You come to understand if you're or transgender

6:00

as I am, you come to understand that

6:03

there's a certain kind of mismatch in you

6:05

between the way you are physically and

6:08

the way you are in some

6:10

senses socially too, and

6:12

the way that you feel comfortable, the way

6:14

that you want to be, the way that

6:16

you feel truly represents who you are. And

6:19

I mean, one can get enormously worked up

6:21

about this and make it make

6:24

out that it's the most important thing in the world.

6:26

Of course it isn't. Of course

6:28

it's not. For example, the climate crisis is

6:30

much more important. But for

6:33

the person who's struggling with their

6:35

own self-understanding, with their own identity,

6:37

it can become all consuming. And

6:39

it's very interesting. I mean, just from my own experience,

6:41

I know that once I got

6:44

this sorted out, once I

6:46

began to live in the

6:48

gender presentation that I'm happier in, once

6:50

I began to think of

6:52

myself in that way and live in that way, things

6:56

just became enormously easier. And the whole problem

6:58

kind of receded. It receded into the background.

7:00

Having sorted that out, I was able to

7:02

move on and get on with other things.

7:04

And that, I think, is one of the

7:06

best reasons I have had for

7:08

transitioning. Namely, it enabled me to stop thinking about

7:10

it, to stop worrying about it, and to get

7:13

past it and get on with life.

7:16

So one of the things you touched

7:18

upon there is this idea that one

7:20

becomes conscious of the fact that perhaps

7:22

their gender role in

7:24

terms of their social expression or in

7:26

terms of their embodiment doesn't quite fit

7:28

their self-understanding. This

7:31

touches on this sort of philosophical issue

7:33

about the mind and body relationship. And

7:35

it's something that again goes all the

7:37

way back to Plato. So

7:39

is this a sort of

7:41

privileging of the

7:43

mind and one's own kind

7:45

of mental self-conception over

7:48

the body and seeing the body as a sort

7:50

of prison to go again back to Plato? How

7:52

do you understand the way that? Well,

7:54

when it comes to the kind of

7:56

dualism that you get in Descartes between

7:58

mind and or the kind

8:00

of the rather different kind of dualism that you get in

8:03

Plato between Suke and

8:05

Soma. A lot of the time

8:07

I find myself unsure what people really

8:10

mean by this distinction because there seems to be

8:12

lots of cases where it's

8:15

not at all clear that we have a neat

8:17

distinction between the mind and the body. For example,

8:19

our dispositions are innate tendencies to do

8:21

things. Are they physical or they mental? I'm not

8:24

sure I know the answer. If I have a

8:26

tendency to get

8:28

angry, for example, when confronted with

8:30

pictures of Donald Trump, there's

8:32

certainly a mental element to that, but there's a physical

8:34

element to it too. In

8:37

the philosophy of mind, I think I'm

8:39

more like what Aristotle calls a hylomorphist.

8:41

I'm someone who thinks that the bodily

8:43

and the mental are two aspects of

8:45

the same reality and they're not easily

8:47

separated from each other at all. There

8:50

are paradigm cases of things that look

8:52

purely mental and that look purely physical,

8:54

but I'm a bit skeptical about the

8:56

idea of a clean disjunction between the two

8:59

categories. When it comes to the

9:01

way that transgender people

9:03

understand themselves, I'm not

9:07

quite sure what to say. I think

9:09

the urge to come to

9:11

live in the gender in which you were not born

9:13

and in some cases to

9:16

modify yourself physically so that you

9:19

become someone who is just as if they

9:22

had been born in that gender in pretty

9:24

well all ways apart from things that you'd

9:26

have to dig deep very scientifically to

9:29

guess at, such as chromosomes, you become

9:31

someone who is in the gender that you were

9:33

not born in. Now

9:36

the desire to do that, is that a desire

9:38

for the mind to dominate the body? Is

9:41

it just a mental thing? Well, no, plainly it

9:43

isn't, because if it was just a mental

9:45

thing, then people would not

9:47

feel any need to change their

9:49

bodies. And certainly from my own

9:51

experience, it seems to come from

9:53

the wish to present as

9:56

Female, the wish to be female, It seems to come

9:58

from a very deep place. I'm

10:00

from the kind, a place where the dispositions

10:03

come from and that's a place where it

10:05

seems to me that listen to meet destruction

10:07

to be made between the mind and body.

10:09

So. I would very much resist the

10:12

idea that this is just about minds. Or.

10:15

Just about feelings come to that. To

10:17

stay on the mine for little bit

10:19

though he said in an article that

10:21

you wrote for The Incident online ideas

10:24

you argue that consciousness is itself gendered.

10:26

So the way we perceive the world

10:28

are subjectivity as shapes by our gender

10:30

by whether whereas male or female. Sell.

10:33

Some people might say well, they never

10:35

really think about their gender as they

10:37

navigate the world or gender doesn't really

10:39

and trend or consciousness. You yourself said

10:41

thus, transitioning into the gender you felt

10:43

more comfortable with, allowed to stop thinking

10:45

about. Yeah, so. What? Would you

10:47

say some people say well I mean on my consciousness

10:49

doesn't seem to be gendered. Well. I'm

10:52

I think I'd say a lot of

10:54

the time. neither does mine are lots

10:56

of the time I am I I

10:58

don't think about it doesn't matter, I'm

11:00

doing philosophy on on reading some pasture

11:02

plates or or I'm scratching my head

11:04

about the problems, equality and and politics

11:06

or something like that. And it is

11:08

simply doesn't matter. Whether I'm

11:10

male or female for those purposes, But.

11:14

It's a bit like something that liechtenstein says

11:16

about be the question of the meaning of

11:19

life. It's a question that unhappy people ask.

11:21

It's a question that shows a certain kind

11:23

of discomfort with the situation. Is you doing

11:25

well? As things are going well, you don't

11:27

feel the need to ask what what's the

11:30

meaning of life because it's right there in

11:32

front of you. It's there and everything you

11:34

doing your content. You don't have the sense

11:36

that there's some meaning that you're missing out

11:39

on you, just get on with things on.

11:41

So I think. When people

11:43

say I don't have any sense

11:45

of my own gender, I.

11:47

Think often what they mean is since that

11:49

they're free of the kind of ways in

11:52

which gender can be a prison Because when

11:54

I say that I'm. We.

11:56

Are. Our consciousness is gendered.

11:59

On. Saying something. I think is politically

12:01

very loaded and not always in

12:03

good ways. I think

12:05

our consciousness is both gendered and sexed. We get

12:07

a sense of who we are from the kind

12:10

of bodies that we have. And when you look

12:12

more widely in the kingdom of nature, it should

12:14

be obvious the kind of bodies we have radically

12:16

affect the kind of experience that we have. Thomas

12:19

Nagel's famous essay, What is it like to be

12:21

a bat? exemplifies that. If you are a bat,

12:23

then your awareness of the world is quite different

12:25

from how it is if you're a human because

12:28

of differences in your body. If you're a mantis

12:30

shrimp, a creature I write about in my book

12:33

epiphanies, mantis shrimps have, by

12:36

some measure, I think it's like three

12:38

or four times more powerful and accurate

12:40

vision than we do. And they

12:42

use that accurate vision to be the most devastatingly

12:45

good hunters under the sea.

12:47

So a mantis shrimp's life is conditioned by

12:49

their perceptual abilities and by the shape of

12:52

their body. And so are humans.

12:54

Now you might think that because the

12:56

differences between a male human body and

12:58

a female human body are relatively small

13:01

compared with those between us and mantis

13:03

shrimp, you might think that it's

13:05

not surprising that actually, there's less of a

13:07

sense of difference between male consciousness and female

13:09

conscious. I think that's true. So

13:11

that's all the physical side of the

13:14

ways in which our consciousness is sexed.

13:16

It's also gendered by the fact that

13:18

we stand in a history within which

13:21

men have been dominant and violence has been

13:24

the way of exerting that dominance. And

13:27

unfortunately, tragically, in

13:29

many other countries, and indeed in Britain itself,

13:31

that's still how things go on. It's

13:34

still violence, which is the currency of

13:37

oppression, either actually ex amplified funds

13:39

or implied funds. So is consciousness

13:42

gendered? Yes, it is. And that's the

13:44

thing which can

13:46

often be quite politically disturbing, uncomfortable,

13:48

and indeed, at times just plain

13:51

evil. Are there ways

13:53

for gender to be positively inflected? Can

13:55

it be something that's a good thing

13:57

to have? Yes, I think so. I

14:00

think it's something that it's a role that you

14:02

can live in. It's a role that you can

14:04

be created with and I think most men and

14:07

women for example in the way they play with

14:09

fashions do do this and People

14:11

play with gender presentations deliberately in

14:14

ways which I think can be constructive and good

14:16

So does that mean that in the case of

14:18

being transgender? One's consciousness

14:20

is going to be quite different from a

14:23

cisgendered man or a cisgendered woman Because

14:26

perhaps there is a way in

14:28

which one's consciousness is sex and

14:30

yeah away one's consciousness is Gender.

14:33

So can you say a little bit more about how? Yeah

14:36

being transgender shapes subjectivity in a way

14:38

that might be unique. Right? Yes Um,

14:41

I think that it does

14:43

shape our subjectivity In

14:45

all sorts of ways, but one thing I'd want

14:47

to say about transgender people is that we're enormously

14:49

various There are there are trans men there are

14:51

trans women. There are people who are non-binary There

14:54

are people who are uh all sorts

14:57

of different variations in the famous alphabet

14:59

that some conservatives Complain about so much.

15:01

They seem to find it very difficult.

15:03

There are lots of types of people

15:05

They I mean they don't mind there being lots

15:07

of types of cars Or lots of types

15:09

of houses that you can live in but that there

15:11

should be lots of types of people seems to give

15:13

them great Events. Anyway, I can know the point i'm

15:16

getting towards is that I can only speak for myself

15:18

For myself, I would say that i've been

15:21

aware all along that um

15:23

Do you use a perceptual metaphor different bits

15:26

of the landscape were lit up for me?

15:28

From other people and I just had this different

15:31

way of looking at the world from other people

15:33

and my attention would immediately go To

15:35

things that other people wouldn't even notice And

15:37

I would I would want things

15:39

that other people weren't remotely interested in and

15:42

um In

15:44

those kinds of ways I became aware very early

15:46

on that I was not like other

15:48

people that I was differently wired And

15:51

I think the transgender people what it typically is

15:53

is a certain kind of awareness

15:56

of how We

15:58

can use our difference to

16:00

shape a space in the world for ourselves, if

16:02

we're allowed to, and if we get lucky, and

16:05

if we don't have it beaten out of us, which

16:08

is not going to be quite the shape that

16:12

either cis men or cis

16:14

women inhabit. That's

16:16

how it is for some trans people.

16:18

We're finding a different space for ourselves.

16:20

For other trans people, they're what's sometimes

16:22

called submarines. They just want

16:24

to go right into the identity

16:26

of a cis man or a cis woman. They

16:29

want to identify with that. There are trans people

16:31

who say, I mean, there are transphobes who say,

16:34

how dare you call me cis? I'm not a cis

16:36

woman, I'm just a woman. There are also trans people

16:38

who say, how dare you call me a trans woman?

16:40

I'm not a trans woman, I'm just a woman. Some

16:43

people just want to vanish from the landscape entirely. So

16:45

eventually what I'm getting to is this thought that

16:47

there's a great deal of diversity there within

16:49

trans people. And we're a rainbow. Just

16:52

trans people are a rainbow. Never

16:54

mind the alphabet of identities that

16:56

the Conservatives complain about. Yeah, so

16:58

given this spectrum of identities when

17:00

it comes to transgender people, I'd

17:03

like to ask you about John Stuart Mill.

17:05

So he famously says, we cannot know what

17:08

each gender is like in their natural state

17:10

because we've only known gender through this

17:13

distorting lens of societal norms

17:15

and constructs. So this

17:17

question seems to assume that there is an essence, as

17:19

it were, to gender, right? There is something it is

17:21

to be a man and a woman in the natural

17:24

state over and above the

17:26

way that these things are expressed and

17:28

developed in social context. But is that

17:30

really true? Do you think there is

17:33

an essence to male gender and female

17:35

gender outside of social norms and social

17:37

context? In a word, yes. And

17:40

the reason why I think that, well,

17:43

perhaps I'm answering a different question, but I think

17:45

the essence is sex. So I

17:47

think biological sex is real. And

17:49

this is a thing we're routinely accused of

17:51

not thinking. And I think nothing of the

17:53

sort. And it's enormously frustrating to have this

17:55

false accusation constantly made. Insofar

17:57

as there is an essence of what it is to be male or

17:59

female. female, it goes with the biology.

18:02

And only a few people

18:04

deviate from the biological binary,

18:06

which is the way things are in

18:09

the human species, other species are different.

18:11

So insofar as there's an essence, it goes

18:14

with the biology. And that's why it matters,

18:16

I think, that consciousness is a sex, as

18:18

well as gender being sexed. So

18:21

trans people find themselves in an

18:23

uncomfortable position, precisely because they

18:25

have this well, this trans relationship rather

18:27

than the social and other side relationship

18:29

rather than this side relationship to

18:31

the fact of the body, which I

18:34

in no way deny. But I think Mill is

18:36

absolutely right to think that you

18:38

can't find an essence of femininity if

18:40

that means some social

18:42

way of behaving that's divorced from biology.

18:44

No, that certainly doesn't exist. All you

18:46

got is the way the different ways

18:49

in which as it usually is, men

18:51

have oppressed women through society. And that

18:53

starts with Homer. So in some things

18:55

I've written, I start with the amazing

18:57

passage in Homer book one, where

19:00

Chrisas, the

19:02

young woman is being returned by

19:05

Agamemnon. In all this palaver,

19:07

and all this ritual, all this

19:09

sacrificing of bulls, Chrisas herself doesn't

19:12

say a word. Chrisas is returned

19:14

to her father, and

19:16

she is the currency

19:18

in a transaction. She doesn't get to say

19:20

a word. It's a wonderful passage of Homer.

19:22

But what it illustrates is how long and

19:24

how deep the oppression of women

19:26

goes, not just in our society, but in the

19:29

societies which we take as canonical and think about

19:31

how we founded our own society. To

19:34

go back to to Mill for a second,

19:36

I mean, the way I've previously

19:38

read him is saying that we

19:41

it's not really about sex, what he's

19:43

talking about is the expression of gender.

19:45

So we wouldn't know what, how women

19:47

express their gender and how men express their

19:50

gender in a sort of natural state. So

19:52

yeah, I don't know, first,

19:55

first man and first woman sort of situation.

19:58

But Is that accurate? Criticism

20:00

of use that as a regulated by

20:02

deal of sorts of that were when

20:04

we talk about gender in our society

20:06

today will I'm I'm not sure why.

20:08

will move on to find us original

20:10

restate I'm It seems that Mill there

20:12

is engaging in a kind of enlightenment

20:14

projects where you know For example children

20:17

were marooned on desert islands to see

20:19

what language they came out with. because

20:21

the language of they came out with

20:23

a desert island would necessarily. Be. The

20:25

language of the Garden of Eden and that

20:27

somehow privileged the seems to me to be

20:30

the wrong kind of. Scientific

20:32

project. Attempting to understand

20:34

what it is to be human and it

20:37

seems to me we do much better go

20:39

another direction. The mill also points to stores

20:41

when it with is wonderful phrase experiments of

20:43

living. What we should do is

20:45

we should see what works. We should

20:47

try various ways of living out and

20:49

we should see if we can make

20:52

them work as good means good ways

20:54

for human beings to live together on.

20:56

I think that's all in practice for

20:58

people ever actually do. They don't find

21:00

in written mistake because recent snow missionary

21:02

state I'm as just a succession of

21:04

society's going back to. A

21:07

time when emotional Best Buy and none

21:09

of that has any kind of privileged

21:11

status. So. We should look forward. We should

21:13

think about where we can go from here, Not about where

21:15

we come from. To. Combine this some

21:17

sort of pluralism they talking about in

21:19

mail with what you mentioned earlier about

21:21

the long history of oppression of women

21:23

by man. You've described gender.

21:25

ideology is oppressive. Are you mentioned that

21:28

earlier as well For both men and

21:30

women? Yes, so that's a mean in

21:32

the case of women. I guess we

21:34

have this long history where it's very

21:36

direct expression is i is no implicit

21:38

is makes it. Once you see

21:40

the oppression of men as being is it that

21:42

there is that of one ideal of were this

21:45

to be a man and then everything gets judged

21:47

on the base of that would? Why I'm an

21:49

oppressed women on suppressed anything like as much as

21:51

women. but i think that men

21:53

find themselves being put into boxes

21:55

were certain kinds expression off a

21:57

bit and them and i see

22:00

that can be very hard for

22:02

them. So the possibility of relationships,

22:05

of the kind of openness and

22:09

helpfulness to each other that women

22:11

often get in our society, that possibility is

22:13

much harder for men to realise. And

22:15

men, as soon as they try to engage in

22:18

that kind of behaviour, for

22:20

example, putting an arm around someone else's shoulder,

22:22

immediately there's a, ooh, back off, stop it,

22:24

what's a you a poof kind of response.

22:26

And I think that kind of response, which

22:28

is deeply ingrained in men and boys, is

22:31

very oppressive of them. You know, as

22:33

soon as they try becoming expressive, there's a

22:35

roadblock right in front of them. And I

22:37

think that's true, even in our society,

22:40

even today, which is very liberated, I think it's much

22:42

more true in past societies. So that is the kind

22:44

of thing that I would describe as the oppression of

22:46

men. Is it on the same scale of women as

22:50

the oppression of women? Of course not, nowhere near. Given

22:53

the sort of oppressive nature of gender, I

22:55

mean, some feminists have argued for the complete abolition

22:58

of it. Do you think

23:00

that's a possibility? Do you think we

23:02

would ever be able to erase gender

23:04

completely from our lives? I'm overminded about

23:06

it. I take seriously Mills' phrase about

23:08

experiments of living. Let's try it and

23:11

see what happens. And there certainly are

23:13

people who do this experiment of living

23:15

who try living as completely ungendered, who

23:18

use pronouns they, for example, who

23:21

refuse to be caught in what they see

23:23

as the gender binary precisely because it's oppressive.

23:26

I'm very interested in the idea of just

23:28

playing this out and seeing where it goes.

23:30

Play the handout, see what cards you've got.

23:33

At the same time, I also think

23:35

that there are ways for the gender

23:38

stereotypes we have to be played with,

23:40

subverted, used, repurposed, which might

23:42

well be creative and good. And the

23:44

third thing I think is that there's

23:46

such a thing. People talk sometimes

23:49

when they're climbing or doing

23:51

music or doing other kinds of

23:53

art. They talk about being in the flow. And

23:56

when you're in the flow, you're doing it.

24:00

You're doing whatever it is, you're performing at your very

24:02

best, but you're kind of not self-conscious

24:05

about it. You don't have a strong sense

24:07

that you're doing this thing. I think sometimes

24:09

with gender, we're in the flow and

24:12

we're doing what comes naturally and we barely

24:14

notice that we're doing it. And

24:16

I think that's a happy state to be in. And

24:19

to go back to something you talked about

24:21

earlier, you said there are these sort of

24:23

benign versions of gender

24:25

expression, gender ideology. Is that found

24:28

in these experiments, that creative ways

24:30

of using it or

24:32

subversing it? Yes, yes. I think that's right.

24:35

I think these ways of

24:37

using gender can be profoundly, well,

24:40

helpful to the people who engage them.

24:43

I mean, here's one thing that trans people often

24:45

do. They start out with a quite extreme phase

24:48

in which they express themselves. If

24:50

they're trans women, in particularly flamboyant and frilly ways,

24:52

they go a long way down a path

24:55

of trying to look like Julie Andrews

24:57

or Doris Day. And

25:00

as they get more relaxed about being trans,

25:02

they don't feel the need to do that

25:04

anymore. So coming back to personal journeys, I

25:07

think this is something that changes both for

25:09

cis women and for trans women, and also

25:11

for men both cis and trans. As time

25:14

goes on, you feel less need to

25:16

be assertive about these things, to be emphatic

25:18

about them, to take them to extremes that

25:21

others may find a bit

25:23

extreme, a bit strong. So I think

25:25

it changes over time. We said

25:27

that our questions are not that different

25:29

from those of ancient philosophers. Is there

25:32

an ancient Greek philosopher you think would

25:34

be most open to talking about the

25:36

philosophy of gender identity and trans identity?

25:38

Who would be best suited to try

25:40

to treatise on this? I

25:44

think that that's a very difficult question

25:46

to answer. And I'm not quite sure

25:48

what to say. I

25:50

think one character from Greek mythology who's

25:52

very interesting in this respect is Tiresias,

25:55

who as you may know, had a weird

25:57

encounter with a snake, a snake

25:59

being a snake. being a symbol of

26:02

Apollo. And when he picked up the snake,

26:05

he turned into a woman. And when

26:07

he picked it up again, he turned back into a

26:09

man. And so touching the snake seemed to be some

26:12

kind of activity, which bought Tiresias

26:14

to transition from one gender to the other.

26:16

And one of the stories about Tiresias is

26:18

of course that he was asked by the

26:21

goddess Hera, well,

26:24

I want to know whether sex is better for men

26:27

or for women. And so Tiresias

26:29

gets to experience sex from both sides. And

26:31

his report is it's far better for women.

26:34

So this is a strange

26:36

psychosexual myth with all kinds of obvious

26:38

ways in which, for example, touching

26:41

the snake could be reduced to something

26:43

pretty basic and pretty obvious. But

26:46

it's a really interesting myth. So I

26:48

would be interested in the ways in which the

26:50

Greeks play with the idea of gender, and

26:53

the ways in which, for example, there's

26:56

a long poem by the Roman

26:58

poet Stasius about the

27:01

myth that Achilles spent his childhood

27:03

on the island of Skairos because his mother, Thetis,

27:06

saw the Trojan War coming and wanted to

27:08

hide Achilles from it. So she put him

27:11

on Skairos, and he

27:13

lived his youth as a woman, as

27:15

a girl and a woman. I'm interested

27:17

in that sort of myth and what's going on when

27:19

the Greeks tell that kind of myth. So they're

27:22

certainly playing with the idea of gender. But I

27:24

think in both Aristotle and Plato, there's

27:26

perhaps too much misogyny for

27:29

things to be quite where we'd like

27:31

them to be. Well, I

27:33

mean, one of my favorite thinkers about gender in the

27:35

ancient world is Sappho, but we have

27:37

barely any of her works, unfortunately. So

27:40

if you graced, Chapel, thank you very much. Thank

27:43

you for your time. Thanks

27:47

for listening to this week's episode of philosophy

27:50

for our times. If you enjoyed today's episode,

27:52

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