Facts are not rights, rights are not facts
Now it’s Ian McEwan’s turn. Pink News reports that he has Said Things.
Award-winning author Ian McEwan has waded into a debate on trans rights, claiming that he can’t seen anyone with a penis as other than a man.
McEwan, 67, is the latest to offer his opinion on the rights of trans people, mentioning an ongoing controversy surrounding people like Germaine Greer, who denies that trans women can truly be women.
Wait.
Rights are one thing, and perceived facts are another. There can be spillage along the border, but all the same – there is a difference.
McEwan’s saying he can’t seen anyone with a penis as other than a man isn’t part of a “debate on trans rights.” It’s not a right to be seen as something in particular. I don’t have a right to be seen as Japanese or tall or Shakespeare. Germaine Greer isn’t giving her opinion on the rights of trans people when she denies that trans women can truly be women.
It’s entirely possible to see trans people as trans people and think they should have all the rights everyone else has, be safe, be free from discrimination and abuse, and so on. None of that is or should be dependent on mystical beliefs about “gender.”
The right to identify as one chooses – this is the right I was accused of violating when I referred to transwomen as male. I agree that trans people should be free to identify any way they choose! But they are not entitled to force me to accept or respect the truth of their self-identification or any other follow-ons from it. What people are really saying when they say this is that a person deserves the right to certain OTHER material benefits and restrictions or nonrestrictions based solely on identity. That’s bullshit. That would never fly with race.
Up to a certain number of times this blurring between facts and rights is annoying and needs correction. But when people stubbornly refuse to let it go it starts to look like intentional bullying to me. Liberals are terrified of hearing, “You said that wrong thing, you’re denying human rights!” Bullies know this and they use it.
Yup, you must all validate my self-identity or you’re murdering me!
And we haven’t had a proper discussion about it. It’s just been treated as a mandate, and a shibboleth to boot. You have to obey the mandate and say the shibboleth correctly, or you’re an evil horrific to-be-shunned person. You’re subject to being accused of “wading into” debates about “rights” when you did no such thing.
In that case, boot the shibboleth. It was made to boot. And boots are needed to wade. Or else you’re in deep whatever. (The deep whatever of MY opinion, mind!)
I suppose it’s because the main right that the vocal, media-connected, internet-heavy arm of the transgender rights movement really care about *is* precisely the right to be considered by others as they see themselves. All the stuff about healthcare & birth certificates is the bread & butter of the boring old transsexual “Harry Benjamin” types, whom they despise almost as much as they despise radical feminists.
As you say, it’s not a right that exists today, which is why, however silly it might seem to us, they’re engaged in a deadly serious struggle for ownership of basic liberal concepts. It’s just that the strategy they’ve adopted (cannily, it seems to me) is to approach the issue via claiming that right has always existed & they are unfairly denied it, rather than presenting a new basic human right for the consideration of the liberal left.
Excellent point.
I haven’t followed this topic very closely, but has anybody pointed out that any new right to insist that others believe your narrative about your identity will inevitably conflict with the rather more well-established right to freedom of thought and conscience? I’m in the UK and. if equality legislation is amended to make (purely self-declared) gender identity a protected characteristic, I suspect we’ll see a spate of litigation on the extent to which you’re allowed to express your belief that a person with a clear trouser-bulge is not a woman, at least in terms of whether or not you grant them access to services designed for natal women.
Yes, various people have pointed that out. It needs lots of pointing out.
That issue is basically why I left Freethought Blogs last summer – because it had become horribly clear that I wasn’t allowed to say some things and was all but mandated to say other things, as a matter of dogma as opposed to reasoned argument or compelling evidence. I wasn’t allowed to question or explore, I wasn’t allowed to learn, I was simply expected to mouth particular slogans. So much for freedom of thought and conscience.
I thought somebody must have pointed it out.
I’d be surprised if verbally expressing doubts about gender identity will ever result in legal sanction, but I’ve seen the ostracism and vilification meted out to ‘heretics’ and been disgusted by it. Not to mention the willingness of the ‘inquisitors’ to misrepresent or downright lie about those who don’t mouth the right platitudes unquestioningly.
I may be a recent poster but I’m a veteran lurker at your blog, both here and over at FtB. For a long time, my feeling about FtB was “I generally agree with you on the substantive points but dear lord your tactics are vile”. After the way you were treated last year, I could no longer bring myself to follow the network. I see the uber-pure have decamped to form their own…
I should perhaps clarify that my feelings about FtB were mostly directed at the commentariat. Specifically, the Horde.