Some time ago the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia published an article by Rebecca Tuvel in which she argued that, given the argumentation involved, if one can be transgendered, likewise can one be transracial, and if one can’t be transracial then neither can one be transgendered. It’s either both or neither. As to which it is, Tuvel doesn’t say. And neither will I in what I take to be the parallel argument that follows:
Let’s not quibble about whether trans women are or are not women. Let’s just say that junkless people are uncomfortable sharing a change room with junked people. Back in the day – by which I mean not too long before my own day – white lunch counter customers were uncomfortable with a black person taking a stool next to them. If the discomfort argument no longer trumps the civil rights argument vis a vis the rights of black people, why should unjunked people’s discomfort trump the civil rights of trans people? Is it a both-or-neither? If so, which is it, a both or a neither? And if not, how do we break the argument from analogy?
Why is this such a problem? Because female ‘modesty’ and discomfort with the racially ‘other’ are equally cultural artefacts, though the former is less so than the latter. That is, virtually all cultures respect ablutionary privacy, whereas racial apartheid is the product of a material dialectic, and so more easily amenable to revision. More specifically, there’s no longer a call for whites-only water fountains, whereas the insistence on the junked/unjunked divide remains at full throttle. But, counters the junked lobby, that just begs the question.
Moreover, “No junked people allowed!” is just as hurtful to junked people as “Whites only!” was to blacks. So we can’t appeal to the standard harms argument we’d otherwise want to take from Mill. So what to do?
As I’ve argued ad nauseam vis a vis countless other issues, I don’t think there’s a principled way out here. It’s not about arguments. It’s about the political market. In America the lunch counter got desegregated, though for how long remains to be seen. But on both sides of the 49th, graduation ceremony apartheid is already being reintroduced. In some American states the junked are winning the change room battle. In others the unjunked can breathe easy, at least for now.
Most of my students – I know because I’ve asked – want to maintain the existing change room apartheid. Mind you, had I asked them back in the 1920’s, most of them would have wanted to maintain lunch counter apartheid. So I’m not sure what we can conclude from any of these informal surveys of mine.
Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy
Paulosophical Vimplications 
This reminded me of a YouTube video on The Overton Window which I will share here:
“The Overton Window is a model of policy change which describes when big ideas that are inside the Overton Window are ideas that are politically safe the public is ready to accept them but ideas that are outside the Overton Window are ideas that might be too radical for the public to accept. Any politician who supports ideas that are outside the Overton Window today risks finding himself getting defeated in the next election. Anything that changes the public’s perception of an idea can shift the Overton Window. Things like think tanks, the media, entertainment, “the crisis”, or historical events — anything that gets the idea out in the open so that it can be discussed and debated has the potential to shift the window. The Overton Window doesn’t always move in just one direction for a public policy. On alcohol, for example, the Overton Window moved toward less freedom when Prohibition was enacted — the consumption of alcohol was made illegal because the public was fed up with the social problems caused by a very high alcohol consumption. Back in those days when people saw the effects of Prohibition, however, they decided that the law that they thought they wanted… they weren’t too happy with and so the Overton Window shifted back and prohibition was repealed. So the pro prohibition forces overshot the Overton Window. Policies where the window is shifted toward more freedom would be women’s suffrage. Clearly that’s an area of the more freedom today than it was a hundred years ago and in an even shorter period of time many of [US] citizens rights regarding firearms have shifted in the direction of more freedom. There’s a common misperception about the Overton Window and that is that politicians themselves move the Overton Window. That’s backwards. What politicians are good at is detecting where the Overton Window is and reacting to it at any point in time. The Overton Window cannot tell you if a policy is good or bad. What the Overton Window does is tell you what policies are on the verge of possibility — ideas that are near the edge of the Overton Window but just outside of it maybe tomorrow’s policy reality. ”
I think the Overton Window position on “change room apartheid” isn’t as strong as you think. The Lethbridge YMCA already has a very large all-gender change room (granted because of privacy stalls it just moves the apartheid to a small changing stalls instead of the locker room as a whole), but I think the point stands that the appetite for mixed gender change rooms isn’t as binary as your informal survey indicates.
Nudist and naturist groups have long been aware that the fear of genitals is just a bogeyman. Non-sexual nudity is no more dangerous than sitting at the lunch counter with someone whose skin colour is a shade darker than your own.
Even without an informal survey of my own, I think the Overton Window on this issue is shifting. Of course, it’ll be quite some time until the privacy booths are removed, however as more people talk about it, perhaps as you are, it’ll get more people questioning why we eschew one apartheid but not the other.
P.S. Perhaps your own bias against genitals affected the outcome of your survey. Genitals are not junk — there is no need to disparage some of the most fun parts of our bodies because of religious dogma — whether or not you think that’s why you’re doing it. When we stop dehumanizing genitals we can reduce the fear of seeing them in non-sexual contexts.
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One man’s junk is another’s treasure.
What makes you think calling genitals ‘junk’ is:
a) disparaging, and
b) religious dogma?
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Freedom..do what you want….but consequences of inappropriate behavior to my daughters spouse or granddaughters may lead to castration…life is full of choices..
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“junk
/jŭngk/
noun
Discarded material, such as glass, rags, paper, or metal, some of which may be reused in some form.
Articles that are worn-out or fit to be discarded.
Cheap or shoddy material.”
It just seems like the nickname of “junk” arose from religious nutters bent on disparaging human sexuality under the guise of being cute.
I don’t call things I value “junk”, and when many others do, it denigrates the cultural attitude.
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