Random thoughts on identity and insiderism.

英文网站（包括了维基百科）的搬运都不是很严谨。在看Hypatia的transracialism controversy时，Wikipedia, along with numerous others, cites "epistemological insiderism" as an idea from Rogers Brubaker's new book "Trans : Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities". Interested by the idea, I searched the book and found no such term. I google searched the term again and realized that "epistemological insiderism" is a term, though proposed by Brubaker, from a NYTimes opinion piece written by Brubaker. It just happens that the book is mentioned at the very end of the piece serving as a promotion of the author's new book.

Let us set that common Internet mistranscription aside, the term "epistemological insiderism" is nevertheless intriguing. It "is the belief that identity qualifies or disqualifies one from writing with legitimacy and authority about a particular topic." Similar to the idea of identity representation in the political realm, epistemological insiderism seems to have flourished in the feminist and racial philosophical realm, and is much influential as a form of mundane knowledge.

It is not uncommon nor unnatural for one to be interested in and investigating the specifics of one's sexual (or gender), racial, cultural or religious backgrounds (the very latter is closely studied by J. F. Engelhardt in 2016). In fact, the sense of belonging -and the relating emotions- of one's background have served as the inspirations of many of the greatest thoughts in our history. What is absurd (i.e. that of not justified by "academic eccentricities"), however, is to claim that before studying in a field, one has to have lived some related experience. It is not only impractical to impose so upon the scholars, it is also unreasonable and anti-intellectual, in that despite the differences of sex, of genders, of races, of cultures and of religions, we, as human beings, possess some commonalities, that we love peace and more importantly, good food and cat videos.

When Paul the Apostle accepted gentiles into the Church, it only made Christianity proliferate. Why are we, especially the minorities, reject a different voice just because some hearts might bleed? Epistemological insiderism is merely a minority version of whitesupremacy, to exclude other groups of people, when there is no evidence that outsiders are not able enough to produce quality research. We have to stop this trend before the subfields of philosophy turn into echo chambers of what might be similar to two dozen white supremacists marching in D.C..