The literature on the ethics of presenting as queer has been largely confined to a commonly acknowledged phenomenon called "passing," or fully concealing one's membership to a marginalized group. Often employed as a survival strategy, many are sympathetic to the idea that one should be able to pass if need be. With that said, many philosophers argue that it is inextricably tied to oppression in the sense that acts of passing are acts complicit with one's own oppression. Because of the usually drastic alteration to one's appearance or behavior passing encompasses, along with its connection to oppression, a larger problem has gone unnoticed: covering. Covering differs from passing as one's membership to a marginalized community is now background knowledge in any social interaction where one may cover. Covering, then, depicts the intentional editing of one's behavior to modify the way in which their marginalized status is communicated to an audience. It is because one has announced their status as a community member that this concept often surfaces without controversy.
This, at first, is intuitive. Why should someone be able to permissibly hide the entirety of their identity if partial concealment is impermissible? In the end, the very reason that covering is often excluded from the ethical discourse – that one has already announced their status as a marginalized community member – is actually a reason for my claim, that covering is wrong but passing is not, rather than one against it. I begin my argument with a negative claim: there is no duty not to cover. After explaining why this is the case, I argue for my second, positive claim: there is a duty to refrain from covering. If successful, my argument should show that a duty not to pass, or to be out, is too demanding. This will offer a better starting point for a relocation of some duty, which I argue should be on covering. If it is placed on covering, then demandingness concerns are circumvented and the goal of a duty to be out is more tangible. / Master of Arts / The acts of passing and covering are socially constructed. To research them further, I spent a significant amount of time understanding others' experiences of passing and covering. This involved finding articles where one intentionally engaged in either act, as well as their commentary on how they believe others perceived these actions. Upon gaining more understanding on these aspects of passing and covering, I also spent time researching the social constructs that make these acts as important as they are. Specifically, it seems that queer people are often thought to represent the queer community, whether they want to or not, just because of how others view us. In light of this, it seemed especially important to understand why this is the case. This is where my research on standpoint epistemology entered the argument. Lastly, the goal of this project was not simply to understand these acts but to use that understanding in an attempt to alter the way the queer community is viewed. Because of this, I also researched how societal perceptions may change, specifically in reference to queer people. Here, I was able to find that those who do not accept the queer community are often unaccepting due to their lack of familiarity with the community, rather than because there was a logical issue that. In other words, it does not seem that rational persuasion is especially helpful in changing opinions on the queer community. This seems to provide good reason to begin to analyze the way the queer community is perceived by others.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/99909 |
| Date | 04 September 2020 |
| Creators | Rogers, Donald Wayne, III |
| Contributors | Philosophy, MacKenzie, Jordan, Lind, Douglas, Kovaka, Karen |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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