John McWhorter and Mark Goldblatt – I Feel, Therefore I Am
John McWhorter and Mark Goldblatt – I Feel, Therefore I Am
Appears in this episode
Editor’s Note: YouTube took down the video of the above conversation, claiming that it violates their community standards. We’ve requested a review, and we hope that they’ll reverse the decision. In the meantime, the audio remains in place and you can still listen to the conversation.
I pride myself on tackling big ideas and difficult topics here on The Glenn Show. But there is one hot-button issue that I haven’t devoted much attention to: the transgender debate. On this week’s episode, John and I speak with author and professor of religion at the Fashion Institute of Technology Mark Goldblatt about his views on wokeism, subjectivism, and, yes, the trans issue. John is usually reticent to discuss anything having to do with trans issues, given his understandable wish to avoid cancelation. But in this episode, he delves into the topic in earnest.
We start the conversation off by discussing Mark’s latest book, I Feel, Therefore I Am: The Triumph of Woke Subjectivism, and how he defines “woke.” Mark’s critique of wokeness turns on the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity, and wokeism’s subordination of the latter to the former. This gets us into some heady epistemological terrain, and Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault accusations against Brett Kavanaugh become a kind of test case for how Mark views subjectivism in the public sphere. From there, we move onto the transgender issue. Mark is careful to emphasize that he believes we need to respect the rights and dignity of trans people. But he also thinks that trans people’s beliefs about their gender—which Mark classifies as a mental illness—do not obligate him or anybody else to accept their views. And let’s not forget that transgender rights are a political issue, and not just a personal one!
I’ve wanted to broach the trans issue in a calm, rational way here for some time now. And Mark’s clear-headed approach to the subject facilitates, I think, an excellent first foray.
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Featured Content from City Journal
Christopher Nadon: The college where I teach, like so many others around the country, seems to want students to be informers instead of free thinkers.
0:00 Mark’s recent book, I Feel, Therefore I Am: The Triumph of Woke Subjectivism
10:55 Wokeism’s roots in postmodern thought
15:05 The “mysticism” of woke thinking
17:44 Learning from Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations
26:29 John breaks his silence on transgender issues
35:13 The political consequences of subjectivism
41:46 Why Mark thinks transgender people are mentally disordered
50:07 What does the T have to do with the LGB?
58:09 Mark: Transgender people deserve respect
1:02:39 Distinguishing between strategy and reality
Recorded April 23, 2023
Links and Readings
Mark’s book, I Feel Therefore I Am: The Triumph of Woke Subjectivism
Matt Yglesias’s Vox essay, “The Great Awokening”
A clip from Glenn’s recent appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher
John McWhorter and Mark Goldblatt – I Feel, Therefore I Am
As you may have noticed, YouTube has taken down this video, claiming that it contains hate speech. We appealed the decision, but to no avail. So we reuploaded the video directly to Substack. You can see it here, along with a statement from Glenn: https://glennloury.substack.com/p/i-feel-therefore-i-am-repost
With due respect (I'm a big fan of Professor McWhorter), I don't think he's been paying attention to this issue very closely. He says some version of "every idiot knows that sex is a binary, and only biological women can get pregnant, etc." two or three times. I don't think that's true. For one, the evidence is in hindsight...they pulled this conversation from youtube. For another, look to Colin Wright, who was banned from paypal (and etsy, of all places) for making it his mission to argue that sex is a binary. They literally tried to destroy his ability to provide for himself by kicking him off of what is supposed to be a dispassionate payment-processing program. Check out his substack post, where he references reputable books and journal entries, written by real scientists, who are making the claim that sex (not "gender") is a spectrum.
From Colin Wright:
The view that sex is a spectrum is no longer confined to university humanities departments and hermetic internet communities. It has now made considerable inroads into mainstream culture, thanks in part to a highly sympathetic media environment. Even prestigious scientific journals such as Nature have given space to authors who argue that “the idea of two sexes is simplistic” and that “biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that.” Another Nature editorial insisted that attempts to classify an individual’s sex using any combination of anatomy and genetics “has no basis in science.” A recent book, The Spectrum of Sex: The Science of Male, Female, and Intersex, argues this position from cover to cover. Its publisher, a Canadian academic press, gushes that “this transformative guide completely breaks down our current understanding of biological sex.”
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/sex-is-not-a-spectrum