Patriarchy Brain

I’m turning 34 today, which at least in my life is the moment when seemingly everyone around me has young children, is pregnant, or both. That in itself is great—I love other people’s children. Yet, I can’t help but feel anger and disgust in the face of the patronizing treatment to which my childbearing and childrearing female friends are being subjected. In many cases, my friends have internalized their own abuse and perpetuate it by uttering the following self-deprecating remarks like mantras:

“I have baby brain syndrome.”

“Oh, it’s my pregnancy brain again.”

“That’s just my momnesia.”

“This is the power of my mommy brain!”

If you’re unfamiliar with the manifold offensive ways these (popular/pseudo-) scientific terms are being used, just take a look at this, this, this, and this Google Image search.

I thought I had to write a paper on the history of these ideas to help my friends understand that these stereotype-laden insults are not objective truths but contingent historical constructs crafted to keep them down. To my surprise and amazement, I came across the following mind-blowing selection of existing scholarship. Continue reading

Why Do Cis-Feminists Discriminate Against Trans*-Women?

A colleague of mine just shared with me a defensive manifesto of “gender-critical philosophers,” which I find extremely transphobic. When I read things like this, I’m not sure if I’m more angry, sad, shocked, or just embarrassed by my own naïveté (why can’t we just be respectful and get along?!).

These feminists (!) claim that “no trans woman is an adult human female, no trans woman is correctly categorised as a woman,” but they “don’t accept that [their] views are ‘transphobic’.” Instead, they claim that their “views are motivated, as most views in political philosophy are, by a belief in the existence of a certain combination of values and facts.”

What is it that makes members of a minority lash out against similarly or even more marginalized individuals within the same group? Continue reading

When a Dissertation Becomes a Book Project

The dissertation is done and has thereby been magically transformed into a book project. To celebrate the past few years of work, here’s the dissertation abstract:


Sinister Intersectionality
A Left-Handed History of Neuro-Centrisms, 1865–2017

Tabea Cornel
Advisors: M. Susan Lindee, John Tresch

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Meet Me for 4S 2017 in Boston and Hear Me Talk about Intersectionalities

The second conference I signed up for this year is 4S in Boston, August 30 through September 2. I organized what should be an excellent panel on: “Working with/against the Politics of Benevolent Neuroscience.”

Giulia Anichini, Marisa Brandt, Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Oliver Rollins, and myself will give talks. Check out the panel abstract:

Continue reading

“I’m Not a Bigot, It’s Just Science”

You might have already heard of Grace Pokela’s pointed facebook post that dismantles the “science” of transphobia. But just in case you haven’t—and chances are you haven’t, because I myself only learned about it through my brother—you should totally check it out.

It’s important to remind ourselves that “science” can be used quite easily to essentialize socio-economic injustice and culturally specific stereotypes. But it’s not only the misrepresentation of scientific “facts” that is the problem (e.g., denying that there’s more than XX and XY). Sometimes it is the bare attempt of scientifically classifying individuals that is already problematic. Typing humans secures the basis for discrimination, regardless of how fine-grained the categories are. Continue reading