Here's a little change of pace — a three-week-old news story from New Jersey that I ran across randomly. Okay, so the subject matter is a little off-topic for our class, but I think there's an interesting connection — bear with me here. The story concerns a 71-year-old substitute teacher who quit his job, underwent gender reassignment surgery (what we used to call having a "sex-change operation"), became a woman, and successfully reapplied for the teaching job. Perhaps not surprisingly there was a certain amount of controversy surrounding the school board's decision to hire her back. I've quoted a bit of the controversy below.
The brilliant anthropologist Mary Douglas (biographical sketch here) in her profound Natural Symbols — truly a work of genius — plots out various forms of familial and social authority on a two-axis grid. The two opposite poles of the x-axis are labeled "positional family control" on the left and "personal family control" on the right. Roughly, "positional" refers to the type of family where the justification for parental authority is status based: "eat your spinach because I said so, and I'm the mommy"; while "personal" refers to the type of family that stresses individual autonomy and thus enforces authority by appeals to rational thought: "eat your spinach because it is good for you and you want to grow up big and strong, don't you?" The bottom pole of the y-axis is labeled "elaborated speech codes" and the top pole is labeled "restricted speech code" — the former reflecting an emphasis on the careful, precise, honest and authentic use of language as a means of interacting with society, the latter reflecting a more formal, conventional and formulaic view of speech and its power. (For more on Douglas — who has been a committed, conservative Catholic all her life — and her significance, see this article from Commonweal, a Catholic periodical.)
It seems to me you can actually identify the pro and con positions in this debate with the different "quadrants" of this grid: the con position is somewhere in quadrant A (don't give me complicated explanations; this woman is a freak and doesn't belong in a respectable institution like a school) and the pro is somewhere in quadrant D (who cares what she does with her private life, her own body, or her sexuality; the important thing is that she does her job well and can handle the kids with skill). Similarly, you can think of arguments about religious pluralism or religious diversity as tending to fall into similar categories. Off the top of my head I can't think of a good example, but I know I've seen them before and I'll post one when I think of something...
Teacher to Return After Having Sex ChangeWhat interests me about this is the fact that the pro and con arguments basically break down into two simple categories. On the con side, there's what amounts to the view that people are either men or women, and that someone who violates these categories is problematic, disruptive, disturbing, or even dangerous. Hence Ms. McBeth, the former Mr. McBeth, needs to be kept away from children who will be confused as to what category to see her in and cannot handle such anomalies. (It seems to me that the parents rather than the children are the ones who obviously have a problem, but that's a whole other question.) The rejoinder is that this is an erroneous categorization and that what really matters is that Ms. McBeth is a good teacher. In other words, as I see it, here's the conflict: you can think of the individual as filling a particular spot in a grid of various fixed statuses (in this example, gender), or you can see him or her as playing a particular (and often unique) social role (in this case, a teacher). In the first case, the person is judged according to whether or not he or she "fits" into an appropriate role. Transsexuals violate categories and are thus anomalous and bad. In the second case, fixed categories are irrelevant, and what matters is the distinctive skill, personal capabilities, or creativity that the individual brings to the situation.
EAGLESWOOD TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) - To students at Eagleswood Elementary School, she used to be Mr. McBeth. Now, after undergoing a sex change, 71-year-old Lily McBeth is ready to return to teaching as Miss McBeth.
[...]
Young children will be confused by the conflicting appearance of McBeth, who has a deep voice and masculine features but otherwise looks like a woman, other parents said.
"I will not allow you to put my kids in a petri dish and hope it all turns out fine," said Mark Schnepp, who had taken out an ad in a local newspaper urging parents to turn out for the meeting.
Several people spoke in support of McBeth, including three transgender people, two former students of McBeth's and a handful of others, saying that the fact that she is a good teacher was more important than whether she appears as a man or a woman in class.
);)
The brilliant anthropologist Mary Douglas (biographical sketch here) in her profound Natural Symbols — truly a work of genius — plots out various forms of familial and social authority on a two-axis grid. The two opposite poles of the x-axis are labeled "positional family control" on the left and "personal family control" on the right. Roughly, "positional" refers to the type of family where the justification for parental authority is status based: "eat your spinach because I said so, and I'm the mommy"; while "personal" refers to the type of family that stresses individual autonomy and thus enforces authority by appeals to rational thought: "eat your spinach because it is good for you and you want to grow up big and strong, don't you?" The bottom pole of the y-axis is labeled "elaborated speech codes" and the top pole is labeled "restricted speech code" — the former reflecting an emphasis on the careful, precise, honest and authentic use of language as a means of interacting with society, the latter reflecting a more formal, conventional and formulaic view of speech and its power. (For more on Douglas — who has been a committed, conservative Catholic all her life — and her significance, see this article from Commonweal, a Catholic periodical.)It seems to me you can actually identify the pro and con positions in this debate with the different "quadrants" of this grid: the con position is somewhere in quadrant A (don't give me complicated explanations; this woman is a freak and doesn't belong in a respectable institution like a school) and the pro is somewhere in quadrant D (who cares what she does with her private life, her own body, or her sexuality; the important thing is that she does her job well and can handle the kids with skill). Similarly, you can think of arguments about religious pluralism or religious diversity as tending to fall into similar categories. Off the top of my head I can't think of a good example, but I know I've seen them before and I'll post one when I think of something...
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