Trans Identity with Talia Mae Bettcher

Overthink

Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D.

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 549 Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How should we make sense of the Trump administration’s assault on Trans rights? In episode 125 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk to philosopher Talia Mae Bettcher about her new book Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy, where she discusses everything from “genderphoria” to her notion of “reality enforcement” (a mechanism of transphobic oppression). In the interview, Dr. Bettcher expresses concerns about certain received views about trans identity, such as the “the wrong body” and “beyond the binary” views, which don’t capture the complexity of trans experiences. How can we move toward a more inclusive culture when it comes to trans identity? And, do we need to reject fundamental philosophical notions such as “person,” “self,” and “subject” in order to understand trans phoria? In the bonus, Ellie and David dive deeper into the idea of the interpersonal object and question whether or not the notion of the self is too far plagued by philosophical baggage and needs to be discarded.

Works Discussed:

Talia Mae Bettcher, Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy

Talia Mae Bettcher, “Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion”

Jennifer Finney Boylan, “I’m a Transgender Woman. This Is Not the Metamorphosis I Was Expecting”

Dean Spade, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law

Perry Zurn, Andrea J. Pitts, Talia Mae Bettcher and PJ DiPietro, Trans Philosophy

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Overthink.
0:15.6	The podcast where two professors relate philosophy to everyday life and current issues.
0:20.9	I am Dr. David Peena-Uzman.
0:22.8	And I'm Dr. Ellie Anderson.
0:25.7	David, as soon as Trump took office this January, trans rights have been under attack in a way
0:32.0	that we have not seen in this century.
0:35.2	Now, this isn't to say that there hasn't been longstanding oppression of
0:38.5	trans people, but certainly the explicit and vitriolic nature of a lot of these attacks
0:44.9	have been building up for some time and have really culminated in now the president using his
0:50.4	bully pulpit to attack basic rights for trans people nationwide.
0:56.0	And it's scary that Trump has wielded the office of the executive branch to do so,
1:02.5	really leaning into the power of the executive order to try to push an anti-trans agenda.
1:09.7	If we think about some of the executive orders that have gone into effect since taking office,
1:15.3	what we see is a concerted attempt to make trans lives unlivable.
1:21.4	Consider some of these orders.
1:24.3	From January 20th, 2025, defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological
1:31.4	truth to the federal government.
1:33.4	David, can we just stop on that title for a second?
1:36.6	Defending women from gender ideology and extremism.
1:40.1	I mean, the way that a narrative of supposedly protecting non-trans women from trans people is leveraged is just so revolting to me.
1:50.0	Yeah, and the notion of restoring biological truth through the federal government, as if the federal government through its current recognition of sexual diversity somehow clouded in illusion or delusion
2:02.9	or hallucination and lies.
	...

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