Pedagogy PART 3: A student wonders who should be teaching a course called “Rap, Race, Gender, and Philosophy.” Can a white male professor do the job? If so, how?
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Posted on by July 18, 2018
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Editor’s Note: Part 3 in our pedagogy mini-series comes to us from Elon University student Arianne Payne, an African-American woman who reflects on taking a course on rap, one which touches on racism and black culture, from a white male professor (that professor authored Part 2 in our series, while a stand-alone piece was Part 1). In particular, she discusses her reservations about this course being taught by a white professor, at all.  Ms. Payne is a rising junior at Elon University double majoring in Communication Design and English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Arianne has a passion for art and creativity, which have both been impacted and affected her academic career. As a 2018 recipient of Elon’s Lumen Scholarship, she will begin a two-year creative research project on Native American and African American communities this coming Fall. 

“I met this girl when I was three years old, and what I loved most, she had so much soul”

These are the opening lyrics to Kanye West’s “Homecoming”: a song in tribute to Chicago. They pay homage to fellow Chicagoan rapper, Common, who used similar lyrics in “I used to Love H.E.R”. As problematic as Kanye is, which I won’t get into here, these lyrics welcome me back to Chicago on every flight home from college. On every school break, they roll off my tongue as I reconnect with high school friends and the lights of my glowing city. I don’t know when I fell in love with hip hop, but I know these memories are one of the reasons why.

This image shows a screenshot from Kanye West’s “Homecoming.” A man, with face half-covered, stands in profile in front of the iconic “bean” (AKA Cloud Gate by sculptor Anish Kapoor) located in downtown Chicago at Millennium Park. The sculpture is a gigantic mirror-surfaced fluid object shaped roughly like a kidney bean. It reflects the city skyline and its people, including the observer, from any angle except directly below. From underneath the bean, one sees oneself and the people who are also below it.

Hip hop originated in the Bronx, New York City in the 1970’s in a postindustrial urban landscape. Hip Hop Scholar, Tricia Rose, describes hip hop as an “Afro-diasporic cultural form which attempts to negotiate the experiences of marginalization, brutally truncated opportunity and oppression within the cultural imperatives of African-American history” (Rose, 71). Postindustrial conditions, such as the formation of new international divisions of labor and new migration patterns from developing nations, have contributed to the economic and social restructuring of urban America which can still be seen today. In the 70’s cities experienced the loss of federal funds for social services, the displacement of industrial factories, and the conversion of real estate into luxury housing, leaving working-class residents with a diminishing job market, social services, and affordable housing (Rose, 73). Hip hop emerged as a way for black youth and youth of color to create identity and social status in a structurally changing community. Rappers, DJs, break dancers, and graffiti artists were facets of what is now known as hip hop. Artists in these realms not only elevated black youth identity, but also articulated approaches to art that were found in the African diaspora.

In the 80’s hip hop saw a shift from being community and DJ based to being emcee based, which was a result of commercialization as it moved from the Bronx and spread to Manhattan and other major cities across the country. This changed the consumption of rap music to be largely consumed by white audiences, which we still see today. Although historically and artistically hip hop is a black art form, this shift allowed space for white people to engage with and contribute to the evolution of hip hop.

I saw a first-hand example of the ways that white folk can engage with hip hop as I took a class called Rap, Race, Gender, and Philosophy this semester. Unlike most classes that you check off as a requirement, I was truly excited about this one. I have loved hip hop for as long as I can remember. From watching 106 and Park as a child, to listening to my older sister’s mixed cds, the legitimacy of hip hop was never a question in my life. Hip hop music is on the soundtrack of my life, as well as the soundtracks of many other black youth. Learning about it in an academic setting seemed like an experience that would enhance my understanding of the music.

When I walked into class on the first day, I was initially apprehensive. I had heard amazing things about this course, the material, and the professor, but the professor was a straight white man. I didn’t know if this was going to go great or Dear White People bad.

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IJFAB Blog Contributors Interviewed on Today Show On Love and Family When Disability or Difference are Part of the Picture
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Posted on by July 17, 2018
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Leah Smith is smiling joyously, wearing a maroon top with orange and white accents, and black pants. Joe sits on the right, with glasses and a beard and small smile, wearing a grey polo shirt and khaki pants. Leah and Joe each have a different form of dwarfism.

This screencap from the video of the July 17, 2018 episode of NBC’s Today Show shows Joe Stramondo on the right and Leah Smith on the left.

This morning, NBC’s Today Show featured a short piece on the lives of Leah Smith and Joe Stramondo. What the piece did not mention is their scholarship and advocacy work, focusing instead on their family life.  Both have contributed work, either singly or as co-authors, to IJFAB Blog and to IJFAB, and both are featured in the forthcoming documentary Far From the Tree based on Andrew Solomon’s book of the same name.

You can see their Today Show interview on family and parenting and happiness here, and here is a short clip from the film (this clip focuses on Smith and Stramondo).

Here is some of the work that Joe and Leah have written together for IJFAB Blog:


And here is just some of Joe’s solo work in bioethics and philosophy.

 

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Pedagogy PART 2: When Privileged Teachers Set Out to Teach About Privilege To (mostly) Privileged Students
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Posted on by July 16, 2018
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Editor’s Note: As part of our mini-series on pedagogy–which kicked off with Kate MacKay’s reflection last week on unyielding dogmatism in the classroom–IJFAB Blog features a two-part consideration by a professor and a student on issues arising from classes in which the material is generated primarily by people who have an identity which the professor does not occupy. In their case, the class was on rap and the professor was white with no experience generating rap. We might equally consider classes on feminist theory in which the professor is male, classes on queer theory in which the professor is straight and cisgender, classes on disability where the professor has none and has had none, and so forth. Part 2 of our series posts on July 16, 2018 and features the professor perspective from  Stephen Bloch-Schulman; it refers to Part 3 which will feature the student perspective and be available on July 18, 2018. Bloch-Schulman considers the demographics of his college but also of his classrooms, the problem of teaching about racism in a classroom in which there may only be one person who is a member of a minority group, the problem of the authorship of texts used in most courses being overwhelmingly white straight cisgender male of European descent, and other issues.

I teach at a school that Lisa Heldke would describe as a Persistently White Institution (Heldke 2004) and one that has very little economic diversity, even compared to other PWI’s of its own ilk (New York Times 2017).[1]

Demographic statistics from Elon University’s Admissions webpage. Only 19% of students at Elon are students of color, with 81% being white non-hispanic. Only 6% of Elon students are African-American. In the US, according to the US Census, 12.3% of the US population is African-American, and 61.3% are white non-hispanic. In 2015, 14% of all enrolled college students in the US were African-American and 58% were white. So, Elon is less racially diverse than not only the US general population but also US enrolled college students.

 

I have long described our students as “at risk students”: at risk of having tremendous privilege and using it to make the world worse. I was too, when I went to college at another exclusive PWI. Knowing about Elon, my friend Donna Engelmann, who teaches at Alverno College (a very different type of institution) is constantly reminding me how important critical pedagogy is and how much it is needed at schools like Elon. The students at Elon are very likely, she reminds me, to have jobs and lives that put them in positions of power and it is imperative that they learn how to alleviate, or at least not exacerbate, the injustices that persist in our country and world. With this in mind, and in light of my own privileges as a cis-straight, able-bodied white settler man, I set out to become the kind of teacher Engelmann implies: one who can help privileged students think carefully about their role and responsibility in light of these injustices.

Elon students, however, can be quite reluctant to learn such messages. They are likely to fall into one or two related forms of ignorance. The first is nicely described by Liam Kofi Bright on his blog, The Sooty Empiric, where he coins the “Informal Omega Inconsistency” (named after Carnap), which

is when people agree to a general (existential) claim but will stubbornly deny or remain absurdly sceptical as to every particular instance of it you produce. So, somebody may well agree that there are bad drivers in Pennsylvania—but every time one points to a particular erratic person on the road in the state they will say that no, no, this is not a bad driver, this is someone whose car has suddenly and inexplicably stopped working, or is cursed, or is at least they will not believe it is a bad driver till these possibilities have been ruled out, or… whatever. Just for some reason every instance that might witness the existential claim granted turns out not to be granted as an actual instance, no matter what lengths must be gone to deny as much (Bright 2016).

Interestingly, while this happens, the reverse also happens; many Elon students exhibit what I might call, after Marilyn Frye, the Birdcase Inconsistency: students are willing to admit that “in this particular case there is problem X,” and this same problem appears in case after case, but somehow, all of these cases never add up to the general claim: we live in a community with problem X.

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Pedagogy PART 1: Ideology vs. Philosophy
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Posted on by July 12, 2018
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Editor’s Note: Many IJFAB Blog readers spend a good part of their lives in teaching settings, doing pedagogy as teacher or learner or co-inquirer. Some are clinician educators (nurse educators or physicians working with residents and medical students), others are academic professors and instructors, and still others are students or learners in some other capacity, perhaps even as clinicians pursuing continuing education credits for licensing requirements. Kate MacKay brings us the first in a pedagogy mini-series which will address some issues that IJFAB Blog readers may want to reflect upon. MacKay considers the issue of students who come to classrooms with unyielding dogmatism in their satchels.

This year, in teaching a senior-year depth-study course in political theory, I encountered students I hadn’t encountered before. These were young white men who were longing for the days of the Greco-Roman empire, but also for they heyday of dominant Christianity, and the popular music of Mozart. To be frank, it isn’t clear what these students want the world to be like, or where they sit on the traditional (but rapidly warping) political spectrum. In the course, we read Rawls’ Theory of Justice, and Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference. As a feminist and a philosopher, I’m accustomed to argument – sometimes heated – in classes or academic talks. However, though I’m comfortable with confrontation in philosophical ideas and debate, I was caught off-guard by these students’ ideologies of prejudice and hate, and by their method of communicating with me and other students.

On the content of the students’ views, I think I need say very little. There was nothing new in them – in fact, the ideas they expressed are very, very old (even ancient). On the method of expression, however, there are few things to say. From the perspective of trying to teach these particular students, and to engage in discussions that were helpful for all the students in the class, their style of expression is near the heart of the matter.

These students typically presented their ideas in seminars in a ‘Gish Gallop’.

This image shows Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars films, grinning from beneath his black robes. He says “I feel the Gish Gallop is strong with this one”, just as in the film he planned to turn Luke Skywalker to the dark side of the Force.

The Gish Gallop is an extension of the ‘on the spot’ fallacy, whereby a person presents a long string of loosely-connected claims, some vaguely empirical and some normative, effectively burying their interlocutor with something that sounds like an argument (but isn’t) and cannot be refuted without much time Text reads "The Gish gallop is a debate tactic that uses a rapid-fire approach to flood the opponent with so many lies or flawed arguments that it becomes impossible to counter each one and make a counterpoint. It's named for Duane Gish, a prominent voice within the creationist movement who was notorious for the way he "relied on the confrontation" of debates with evolutionary biologists."and effort because of the nature and amount of the claims made. In the setting of a seminar, where my goal as a teacher was to speak as little as possible, the gallop meant that I, as interlocutor and moderator, had to select one or two of the most egregious claims included in the gallop to respond to or rebut, effectively allowing the other claims to be entered into the stock of public (classroom) knowledge, unchallenged.

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Coming soon: mini-series on ethics/pedagogy of teaching about oppressive social and political features
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Posted on by July 9, 2018
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Hi, folks.

This is just a quick announcement of our upcoming 4-part mini-series. We will be focusing on issues that arise in planning and handling discussions of oppression in the classroom.

Topics will range from the pitfalls of white teachers covering race in classrooms that aren’t exclusively white, to handling hostile and resistant students, to whether the so-called “privilege walk” or checking the contents of one’s own backpack of privilege are ethically acceptable, productive classroom activities.

Watch for it!

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“Are you really trans?”: The Problem with Trans Brain Science
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Posted on by October 14, 2018
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Editor’s Note: Anna K. Swartz works on neuroethics and mental illness. Here, she reflects on the conceptual and ethical pitfalls of attempting to use brain scans to determine whether children who report being trans are “really” trans.

In late May 2018, researchers made international headlines with a pair of new experiments suggesting that the brains of transgender people more closely resemble the brains of the gender they identify with than the gender implied by their sex assigned at birth. The research, led by Dr. Julie Bakker of the University of Liège in Belgium, assessed the neural activation patterns and brain structure of 160 young trans kids with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria (GD)—the discomfort associated with feeling that the parts of one’s body do not fit with their gender identity.

Participants—adolescent and prepubescent children with GD—were exposed to androstadienone, a pheromone thought to evoke gender-specific activity in the hypothalamus of heterosexual, cis-gender women. Each participant’s brain was imaged using MRI, and the team combined this information to get a clearer picture of the neural response to the stimulus.

Researchers found that both adolescent trans girls and boys showed evidence of hypothalamic response, providing support for the idea that trans brains are more similar to the brains of their desired gender identity than the gender associated with their natal sex. According to the researchers, this experiment “supports the hypothesis of a sex-atypical brain differentiation in these individuals.”

These findings, presented recently at the European Society for Endocrinology annual meeting, closely relate to Baaker’s co-authored 2017 publication, “Brain Functional Connectivity Patterns in Children and Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria: Sex Atypical or Not?” In this paper, Bakker and her team examined the brain scans of a small sample of trans people—mostly adolescent and prepubertal children—and classified them as “sex typical,” “sex atypical,” or “GD-specific.” Here, “sex atypical” refers to assigned sex. Trans girls were revealed to have “sex atypical” FC (functional connectivity) patterns if their scans looked like those of cis girls. Similarly, trans boys were identified as “sex atypical” FC if their MR images resembled those of cis boys’ brains. Interestingly, researchers examining FC in the brains of prepubertal children found no differences between any group of children: trans, cis, or binary—all displayed similar FC in all networks.

These studies join a growing body of research pointing to the biological origins of sexual orientation and gender identity. These findings often find favor among many in the queer community. Just as with sexuality, there are a lot of people who would really love to find a biological cause for being trans.

On the one hand, it isn’t difficult to see why such research is embraced as it affirms the humanity of so many who struggle every day for recognition and the freedom to live authentically in an repulsively violent and transphobic world. This research validates the legitimacy of trans identities in same way that biological evidence for sexual orientation speaks to and matches many of our personal experiences of being gay or bisexual or trans in the sense that these things feel like they are a deep, innate, unchangeable aspect of who we are. It’s a belief that meets our social, personal, political, and cultural needs, and a belief that feels true. The latest research finding that gender identity is determined in early childhood only bolsters this sense of legitimacy and naturalness.

This hand-drawn image by the author Anna Swartz shows many different faces with different expressions, some in profile and some face on and some overlapping each other, all in shades of pink and purple with different hair textures and facial features indicating a wide variety of persons.

 

But as Samantha Allen points out, biological arguments linking gender identity to birth aren’t likely to sway someone who is determined to hate you. On its own, this research doesn’t ameliorate hate, violence, or bigotry directed at trans people. Even if brain scans could provide some indication that a child may be transgender, there’s no guarantee that the child’s parents would actually be supportive of that identity. It could well lead to more kids being subjected to harmful conversion therapy that tries to correct their gender or that somehow prevents them from being transgender, even though there’s no scientific basis for doing so. It’s naive to think that any scientific research can produce a more just and safer world for marginalized people to freely while having their humanity respected.

Indeed, there are many good reasons why we should be cautious of any scientific studies directed by researchers who either seek or claim to have found the cause—or worse, cure—for the experience of being trans. Even research designed to affirm the humanity of trans people and support their healthcare access must always be situated in a broader socio-political context. What are the implications of research findings that claim to objectively detect the subjective experience of GD and transness through neuroimaging technology?

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Background and Link Roundup on US policies of family separation and internment
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Posted on by June 29, 2018
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Editor’s Note: This blog entry from the IJFAB Blog Editor provides background on the current US handling of undocumented immigrants crossing at the southern border, on increased detention of immigrants generally including the role of for-profit prison corporations, and on shifts to policy on asylum claims by women fleeing domestic abuse in nations with poor protections for them. This blog entry also provides a link roundup at the end of positions from the United Nations, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Nurses Association, and the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners as well as some links on health and asylum-seeking to escape violence including domestic violence.

A screenshot from a CNN interview with American Academy of Pediatrics President Dr. Colleen Kraft in which she says that the family separation policy amounted to child abuse.

A furor has rightly risen in response to the news that the Trump Administration’s changes to US implementation of immigration law involved increased detention (as opposed to what had previously derogatorily been termed “catch and release”) of persons arriving in the US with children and without documentation. This extended not only to those crossing the border without documentation but also to those applying for asylum immediately upon contact with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) personnel. This policy has been termed “family separation.”  As Motherboard reported, one of the ways that this has been accomplished is a change to ICE’s risk assessment software that simply returns “detain” as the automated recommendation in nearly all cases even for immigrants with little or no criminal history.  Reports indicate that ICE is preparing to build more tent cities to house large numbers of unaccompanied minors and adult detainees indefinitely, above and beyond the ones already in use and the over 115 locations in which undocumented immigrants are detained by ICE. These tent cities are reportedly far worse than the images of them that the Trump Administration has released. In addition, they cost more than keeping kids with adult caregivers with whom they arrived or placing them in permanent structures.

In 2013, an article in International Political Sociology  called “Private Detention and the Immigration Industrial Complex” detailed the role of  private for-profit prison corporations in immigration detention policies, and in preventing substantive immigration reform. In 2017, National Public Radio reported in January, before Trump’s inauguration, on the possible implications of his policies for these corporations, and later that year in November on big profits for these companies as immigration detention increased.  With the radical increase in detentions currently ongoing, the US government is issuing increasing contracts to private entities for temporary and permanent immigration detention facilities, as well as planning to potentially use US military bases as detention facilities, possibly for minors.

The focus of these policy changes has been undocumented immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere in Central America who have been arriving at the southern border, either via established ports of entry or via dangerous desert crossings. While adults arriving with children used to be treated differently from others, now all are treated similarly and children are separated with the adults with whom they arrived, often moved to distant shelters or even placed in long-term foster care. Whether the children will be reunited with family is uncertain. How their cases will be handled once separated from the cases of the adults with whom they arrived is uncertain. In principle, policies against incarcerating children are at the root of this separation, and in principle such policies make sense for child welfare. However, one reason that prior administrations often treated adults arriving with children differently is that incarcerating children is harmful and immoral but so is separating them from known and trusted adult caregivers.

With all the hue and cry from both Republicans and Democrats, as well as the UN, over family separation policies, Trump signed an executive order purporting to stop family separations but making no indication of reuniting families that have already been separated and still using the phrase “indefinite detention.” The increase in enforcement and detention has not changed. The role of private prison corporations has not changed. The damage done will not be undone. And more damage will be done. NPR has a nice explainer on what the executive order does and doesn’t do, as does the DC Fox News affiliate. A U.S. court has recently ordered that separated children be reunited with their caregivers, but it is unclear whether the administration will comply, or even can do so given how haphazard tracking of locations of children and associated caregivers has been.

The executive order did not solve this problem, and the long-term mental and physical health problems mean that as bioethicists we cannot look away. The long-term issues of justice and discrimination mean that as feminists we cannot look away.

Of particular interest to feminist bioethicists should be the shift in policy of no longer granting women asylum for domestic abuse when their nations refuse to protect them, even though the US has done so in the past. You can read more about this in Rafia Zakaria’s article “On Sending Women Home to Die: what denying asylum to victims of domestic abuse means, in real life.” Other forms of gendered violence, such as harassment of LGBT folks and others who do not conform to gender and sexuality norms of their countries of origin, may also no longer qualify if the violence is not an official state policy but rather is tolerated by the state. Sometimes, their case is not clear cut even when the state is the perpetrator, as in the case of Udoka Nweke who presented himself at a port of entry with an asylum claim based on Nigeria’s anti-gay laws.

That should be enough background to get things going. For your bioethical reflection, here are some useful links on health issues related to these new policies.


While the IJFAB Blog Editor initially thought it might be best to respond early on, she is glad to have waited until such a host of rich resources and analysis was available to provide as background and a link roundup.

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Major change coming to new WHO disease classification system for transgender persons, but will it be good?
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Posted on by June 19, 2018
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I have long been concerned with how our nosologies–the way in which we classify diseases, and decide which human conditions count as diseases–exemplify a mix of science and social values. In my work, I’ve touched on this with obesity, and with a range of conditions from ADHD to autism and depression. For decades, being transgender has been diagnosable under the international classification of disease (ICD) and the diagnostic and statistical manual of psychiatry (DSM). Now, a major change is coming to the classification of transgender and I have a sense of restrained optimism about it.

The image shows computer generated cartoons of health care professionals with various graphics indicating medicine such as graphs, charts, stethoscopes, white coats, and scrubs. The text reads "ICD-11: Classifying disease to map the way we live and die"

Screenshot of the World Health Organization’s webpage on ICD-11 which went live today

While the phrasing and exact nomenclature has shifted over various editions of the ICD and DSM, trans has long been classified as a mental health issue. These codes are often used by hospitals, clinics, and health insurers (whether private or nationalized) to determine eligibility for coverage of related procedures. Even small clinics hire people specially trained as medical coders who can assign appropriate ICD codes to maximize the possibility of reimbursement and coverage for services which doctors and patients agree are needed.

This is the upside of the medicalization of trans: with a code, trans patients have a shot at getting their transition treatments covered by insurance. Without medicalization, whereby a human condition comes to be seen as a medical one, humans with unmedicalized human conditions stand a poor chance of getting any assistance from health care for their needs. But how a condition is medicalized is as important as whether it is medicalized. For medicalization can entrench stigma and reinforce power structures as much as it can disrupt them.  Trans status has long been classified as a mental illness. This reinforces existing social attitudes of disgust, giving a scientific stamp to seeing trans as a pathology. Many folks have argued that it reinforced stigma against trans persons. This may be about to change.

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Sports are something we made, and we can remake them: trans athletes, fairness, and barriers in sports
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Posted on by June 2, 2018
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Let me start by echoing Talia Mae Bettcher that transgender women are women and transgender men are men (Bettcher, 2013). The definition of “woman” includes all those individuals who identify as a woman and the definition “man” includes all those individuals who identify as a man.

In addition, ciswomen who have “abnormally” high testosterone levels are women and therefore the testosterone range for women is the one that includes these values. I use only distinct terms in this post to discuss the arguments being made by others. When we start from this perspective then some of the discussions around athletes that have occurred this year (and in the past) have been not only hurtful, but also somewhat nonsensical.

A recent blogpost on BMJ Sports Blogs, discusses whether fairness or inclusivity should be the guiding principle in determining whether transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in the category of gender with which they identify (“Time to dispense with the male/female binary in sport?,” 2018). The writers’ conclusion is that inclusion is important but the demands of fairness cannot be met if transgender women are included with ciswomen in the female category and so it would be better to have new categories. These proposed categories should be based on “a) social parameters including gender identity, and b) physiological parameters including testosterone” in competitive sports. They argue that transgender women have an advantage over and above what an “acceptable” advantage is in competitive sport and that therefore it is unfair. They delineate acceptable advantages based on natural variation using height as an okay genetic advantage, but historic hormone levels as “unacceptable advantage” because height variations between “biological” females and males overlap, but hormone levels do not – as they say “testosterone is not a physiological parameter available to cis-women”(“Time to dispense with the male/female binary in sport?,” 2018).

Another article in the New York Times (Longman, 2018), discusses rules being brought into effect by the International Association of Athletics Federations, known as the I.A.A.F. in November this year. These rules for female track athletes initially mean, women with testosterone levels higher than a selected range could not compete with other women although they could compete in the male races. This despite the fact that the elevated testosterone levels found in women such as Caster Semenya (who I believe identifies as a woman), do not overlap with male testosterone levels and of course male competitors would, one assume, have many advantages not open to Caster Semenya based on those testosterone levels.

If we examine these issues in turn, before speaking to the broader issue at play here, then the first argument put forth by Anderson et al (“Time to dispense with the male/female binary in sport?,” 2018) is that advantages are unfair, when they couldn’t possibly have happened to me. Height variation as a performance enhancer between athletes is seen as okay because tallness is a variation that technically could happen to anyone. Testosterone levels between females and males apparently never overlap, therefore for a transgender woman to compete with ciswomen, she has an advantage that others had no possibility of accessing. This seems quite an odd distinction to make for unfair advantages in sport. The decision by the I.A.A.F. does not seem to meet this criterion as Caster’s testosterone levels are higher than average for females, but lower than those of males. The I.A.A.F seems to make the decision based on study that showed that increased levels of testosterone in females, could provide a 2-4% increase (approximately) in performance (Bermon & Garnier, 2017) (this paper is being contested, see: (“Call for the authors of Bermon and Garnier to share the underlying performance data – BJSM blog – social media’s leading SEM voice,” 2018). Such a performance bump is unfair, in this view.

“Fair” is a complicated, and I would argue almost an arbitrary, concept in sports as it currently stands, insofar as it is constructed – some doping/enhancement distinctions are one example of this arbitrariness (Savulescu & Foddy, n.d.). For Caster Semenya and others like her, why is her physiological variation (and advantage) policed in a way that male athletes are not. There are some genetic anomalies that male athletes have that put them ahead of their peers that are by degree often larger, too (i.e. greater than 2-4%). For example, Michael Phelps has genetic and physiologic variations, outside of the normal range of his peers, and obviously they produce significant advantage to him based on his performances which are remarkable (peak performances in short succession based on physical recovery potential, being one). What is the meaningful difference between his variations and Semenya’s other than that Semenya’s is hormonal and so specifically something we can attach to gender?

Considering, the idea of fairness being defined as an advantage that I could have access to (as a probability) but do not actually have raises serious questions when applied to things outside of genetics and physiology. There appears to be a benefit to having access to wealth, either as an individual athlete or within the country for which the athlete competes. Such wealth provides elite coaches, sports nutritionists, sports psychologists, cutting edge science and equipment, etc. While there are athletes who win despite not having this highest level of development, if we were to be able to do an analysis of medalists and their access to such services (especially for some sports over others), I do not think it would be unreasonable to assume that such support provides a competitive advantage. A competitive advantage of a degree that is as significant as those explained as unacceptable for transgender athletes or those ciswomen who have higher testosterone levels (remember, 2-4%). Could those people who have discipline and natural talent, but come from backgrounds with less resources technically have access to such services, when considered as a probability? I guess so, but what does that really mean in terms of fairness…? If the probability is greater is it fairer, and as the probability diminishes is it less fair?

So a genetic anomaly that means my lactate production is performance enhancing (Phelps) is very rare whereas testosterone level variation in females is less rare (by comparison). Technically then Phelps should be excluded and Caster Semenya, should remain. Is fairness a range (from fair to unfair), rather than a binary? To be reasonable to Anderson et al, in their argument, given the comments regarding overlapping physiological parameters, I believe they envision fairness as a binary rather than the spectrum described above, that is 0% probability is unfair, but have they really considered that 1% would be fair? A 1% chance of having a physiological presentation that conveyed an advantage? What about disadvantages? Do the death threats, trolling, name-calling, booing and the like that transgender athletes face constitute a significant performance disadvantage? I would argue they do.

The problem with all of this is allowing a discussion to continue that really is fundamentally harmful. Sporting bodies and sports perpetuate a gender binary that is hierarchical and inaccurate. In addition, they police female athletes’ bodies in ways they do not police males’ bodies (male bodies are policed regarding doping but not regarding gender). Up until only recently, the I.O.C. was still performing gender verification tests on female athletes (Cavanagh & Sykes, 2006) and their recent rules that affect Caster Semenya amongst others ask them to treat their “condition” in a medical way (which carries risk) when they don’t have a medical issue. While the Anderson et al’s call, echoed by others (“Part 2,” 2018, p. 2), for a testosterone category seem prima facie fairer, the choice of only testosterone seems to be based on a hang up around issues of gender, given the lack of clear understanding of the many variables that produce advantage and their interactions. Transgender athletes specifically (in contrast to women with high testosterone levels) have hormone levels that are within the range defined for females.  There is little scientific evidence to suggest that their historic hormone levels convey an advantage.

A systematic review of guidelines regarding these issues in sport found that very few were evidence-based and that transathletes faced significant barriers to participation (Jones, Arcelus, Bouman, & Haycraft, 2017). That is unacceptable. Sports are something WE MADE for our entertainment and as a means of testing the bounds of our possible human performance. They are not untouchable, separate from our conceptions of society.  When those that govern sports maintain anachronistic conceptions of gender, we as society do not win and we as a society have to push back. We made sports, and we can remake them.

1. Bermon, S., & Garnier, P.-Y. (2017). Serum androgen levels and their relation to performance in track and field: mass spectrometry results from 2127 observations in male and female elite athletes. Br J Sports Med, 51(17), 1309–1314. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2017-097792

2. Bettcher, T. M. (2013). Trans Women and the Meaning of ‘Woman.’

3. Call for the authors of Bermon and Garnier to share the underlying performance data – BJSM blog – social media’s leading SEM voice. (2018, May 10). Retrieved May 21, 2018, from https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2018/05/10/call-for-the-authors-of-bermon-and-garnier-to-share-the-underlying-performance-data/

4. Cavanagh, S. L., & Sykes, H. (2006). Transsexual Bodies at the Olympics: The International Olympic Committee’s Policy on Transsexual Athletes at the 2004 Athens Summer Games. Body & Society, 12(3), 75–102. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X06067157

5. Jones, B. A., Arcelus, J., Bouman, W. P., & Haycraft, E. (2017). Sport and Transgender People: A Systematic Review of the Literature Relating to Sport Participation and Competitive Sport Policies. Sports Medicine, 47(4), 701–716. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-016-0621-y

6. Longman, J. (2018, April 26). Track’s New Gender Rules Could Exclude Some Female Athletes. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/sports/caster-semenya.html

7. Part 2: Health, Hormones and Human Performance take centre stage – BJSM blog – social media’s leading SEM voice. (2018, May 16). Retrieved May 21, 2018, from https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2018/05/16/part-2-health-hormones-and-human-performance-takes-centre-stage/

8. Savulescu, P. J. (n.d.). Le Tour and Failure of Zero Tolerance: Time to Relax Doping Controls, 10.

9. Time to dispense with the male/female binary in sport? Analysis of the cases of Laurel Hubbard and Mack Beggs – BJSM blog – social media’s leading SEM voice. (2018, April 11). Retrieved May 21, 2018, from https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2018/04/11/time-to-dispense-with-the-male-female-binary-in-sport-analysis-of-the-cases-of-laurel-hubbard-and-mack-beggs/

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“I keep telling you… I can’t get in the building”
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Posted on by May 28, 2018
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In this recent article from The Guardian, Frances Ryan (who reports frequently on disability issues) draws attention to the following Kafka-esque situation. Disabled people in the UK whose eligibility for benefits has to be assessed (ie, to check they are disabled enough to be eligible for support) are required to report to assessment centres. In 40% of cases, the centres are not accessible to people with disabilities.

This picture of a quote from the Guardian article reads "A deaf man in Southend-on-Sea told me he was sent to an assessment building where the only entry was through an intercom"

IMAGE SOURCE: The Guardian

Disabled claimants are then promptly sanctioned for non-attendance (have their benefits withdrawn) or else are assessed as fit enough to work (and have their benefits withdrawn). This isn’t a new situation – it’s not that the buildings have suddenly become inaccessible – but the response of officialdom over the last couple of years is increasingly rigid and punitive.

In my experience, nondisabled people find it hard to believe when disabled people claim that things like this happen all the time. (Those of us so inclined can take this as a classic example of testimonial epistemic injustice.) They also find it hard to credit that, as one person interviewed in this report suggests, “This is deliberate…. They know we can’t access the building.”

I’m not sure that individual offices are deliberately chosen to be inaccessible, nor that individual claimants are being targeted. But somewhere along the line, at some higher level, a conscious decision has been taken: that disabled people are a group of citizens who nevertheless can effectively be left by the side of the road, because the present UK government feels confident it get away with doing so. Nothing else can adequately explain the complete lack of response to individual complaints, collective protest, or the growing climate of utter contempt and indifference towards disabled people.

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Outcome of Irish abortion vote: Repeal of the 8th
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Posted on by May 26, 2018
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I appreciated Sorcha’s excellent blog the other day in the lead-up to the Irish vote on whether to repeal the 8th amendment which was added to the Irish constitution 25 years ago. For more background, check it out.  But I just wanted to make a quick post as this issue is also near and dear to me, and I am overjoyed to see that the blunt tool of the 8th amendment to the Irish constitution has been repealed, as reported by the Guardian a few hours ago:

The Irish electorate voted by 1,429,981 votes to 723,632 in favour of abolishing a controversial constitutional amendment that gave equal legal status to the lives of a foetus and the woman carrying it. The result was a two-thirds majority: 66.4% yes to 33.6% no.

All but 1 region/constituency (Donegal) in the Republic of Ireland voted by majority to overturn the 8th. This decision was not the result of just a few very populous regions.

It remains to be seen what will take the place of the 8th. But Irish lawmakers and citizens have 25 years of poor outcomes and moral peril to consider in crafting Ireland’s new status quo on abortion. Let’s hope it is done with care.

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‘No’ means we keep the Status Quo: A ‘yes’ vote is the only morally acceptable result in Ireland’s Abortion Referendum
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Posted on by May 24, 2018
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Editor’s Note: Irish philosopher Sorcha Uí Chonnachtaigh is a long-time member of the Feminist Approaches to Bioethics Network, and writes for IJFAB Blog today on the upcoming urgent vote on whether to keep Ireland’s 8th amendment. As has long been noted, such total bans on abortion (which exist in other nations as well) primarily affect women without the means to travel to neighboring nations which allow abortion. Indeed, between 1980 and 2016, at least 170,216 women and girls traveled from Ireland to get abortions elsewhere. IJFAB blog authors have previously written on abortion in Ireland and on abortion laws in Tasmania, Spain, France, and more. What is the nature of the Irish law up for repeal tomorrow, and what are some reasons for thinking it should be repealed?

This image shows a giant orange heart spray-painted on a cinderblock wall, with colorful background from the previous layer of graffiti. In the heart in giant shiny red bubble letters are the words "REPEAL THE 8th." Around the heart is the phrase "Bodily autonomy for all..."

In 2016, artist Dara Kenny painted this mural on a wall in Arklow, Ireland, in support of the Repeal 8 campaign, which aims to get rid of the Eight Amendment of the Irish constitution and decriminalize abortion. (Dara Kenny/Facebook)

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Tomorrow, 25 May, at 7am, the polling stations in Ireland open for a historic referendum. For the first time since its insertion into the Constitution, the Irish electorate has the opportunity to repeal the 8th Amendment and, subsequently, permit abortion in cases beyond ‘real and substantial’ risk to the life of the pregnant person.
 
What is the 8th Amendment?

The 8th Amendment of the Irish Constitution, passed by referendum in 1983, did something relatively rare – it ascribed a right to life to the ‘unborn’ (human foetus) equal to that of the pregnant person:

 The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.

A constitutional right to life places a significant obligation on the State. Furthermore, the 8th Amendment established a conflict between the rights of the foetus and the pregnant person because a foetal right to life must be vindicated within the body of the pregnant person. Abortion is only, therefore, permissible when a pregnant person’s life is at risk. This means that Ireland has one of the most restrictive abortion regimes in the developed world.

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