On Trans Dignity, Deadnaming, and Misgendering: What Queer Theory Rhetorics Might Teach Us About Sensitivity, Pedagogy, and Rhetoricity MICHAEL J. FARIS | [email protected] | @SISYPHEANTASK QUEER THEORY & SUBJECTIVITIES

 “a homogenous theorization of transgender” (Hines 2006, 49)  “a queer trope” (Prosser 1998, 5)  “obscures the often-precarious realities for trans and -nonconforming people (especially people of color)” (Chaudhry 2019, 47)  “In valuing trans phenomena largely when they subvert gender norms, queer studies has historically sorted, cited, and disciplined some portions of trans into itself while rejecting others as retrograde or conformist (crossdressing, genderqueer, and are welcome; transsexuality is not)” (Keegan 2018, 8)

Michael J. Faris | [email protected] | @sisypheantask FALL 2018 PUBLIC DEBATE ABOUT QUEERS, TRANSGENDER STUDENTS, DEADNAMING, AND MISGENDERING

1) August: Chris Reed’s August “Axiomatic” defending “the unruly GLQ cultures once again at risk of pathologization and prohibition” by arguing for the academic freedom to deadname and misgender students. 2) October: Grace Lavery’s LA Review of Books blog post responding to Reed, arguing that deadnaming and misgendering is harassment. 3) December: Reed and Chris Castiglia’s LA Review of Books blog post responding to Lavery.

Michael J. Faris | [email protected] | @sisypheantask REED’S AXIOMS

4. A stable may be like an iPhone X: a lot of people tell you you need to get one—but probably you don’t. Put another way, you might be OK just the way you are. (1) 11. The only ethical conclusion to the statement that begins “My pronouns are” may be “I and me.” Second and third person pronouns are other people’s utterances. Language is a social form, and demands for authority over other people’s speech should be carefully—and ethically—negotiated in relation to everyone’s investments in identity. (2)

Michael J. Faris | [email protected] | @sisypheantask REED’S AXIOMS, CONT.

20. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. Appellations and assault require different ethical registers. If we accept the phrase “rhetorical violence,” and then shorten it to “violence,” we’re going to need another word for “violence.” (3) 23. Whose interests does the term “deadnaming” serve? Pronouncing death sentences may fulfill fantasies of authority, but describing parts of anyone’s history and experience as “dead” inhibits efforts toward self-acceptance and integration. (3)

Michael J. Faris | [email protected] | @sisypheantask GRACE LAVERY

“deadnaming and misgendering are not acceptable scholarly practices, and they are not covered by the principles of academic freedom.” “modes of abuse, designed to humiliate and hurt trans people” CHRIS REED & CHRIS CASTIGLIA’S RESPONSE

 Academic and public debates are “reduced to exercises in language-policing in which attitudes of outraged victimhood are used to coerce certain forms of speech and to justify aggressive forms of censorship.”  “presents an uncanny mirror image of rightwing politics with its exaggerated outrage, divisive us-and-them rhetorics, and attacks staged as self-defense.”  “supplant and even censor gay, lesbian, and queer forms of activism and culture.” QUEER THEORY AS A “WILL TO TRUTH” queer theory as a “will to truth” that privileges theoretical knowledge over lived experiences and frames queer and trans youth as ungrateful to and even attacking their queer elders— serving as a rhetoric of resentment in which queer theorists become the victims of trans and queer youth activists, who are overly sensitive, recalcitrant in their identity politics, and ultimately regressive in their gender and sexuality politics. CONCLUSIONS/IMPLICATIONS

1. Purposefully deadnaming and misgendering students constitutes harassment: it violates their sense of self and is intentionally harmful. 2. Queer theoretical work needs more empirical work and more work that attends to contingency and the particularity of lives. 3. We need an understanding that sensitivity and vulnerability are what makes pedagogy (and rhetoric) possible. “‘sensitivity’ marks a fundamental rhetorical exposedness, a vulnerability to being affected in language that impairs the self- containment of the rhetorical subject” (Gerdes 2019, 2).