All ya gotta do is shut up and listen
Another patronizing “here’s how you be perfect like me” thread from some authenticated woke genius, a thread full of glib claims that fall apart if you breathe on them and smug instructions on how high to jump when we’re told to jump.
Hello cis friends, here is a reminder that it's okay to feel confused about trans rights. It's something very much outside of our experience and therefore hard to imagine.
Do you know what our role is when we feel confused like this? It's to shut the hell up and listen.
— Fiona Longmuir // Looking for Emily is out now! (@fionalongmuir) December 22, 2018
Bad beginning, taking “cis” as 1) a meaningful and useful descriptive and 2) an obviously privileged and dominant group that needs to check itself. I don’t recognize “not thinking I’m the sex I’m not” as a form of privilege, any more than I recognize “not thinking I’m a bird” as a form of privilege. The word “cis” is pretty much designed to make people feel guilty and defensive simply for not having a bizarre delusion. Granted, it’s convenient not to have a bizarre delusion, but convenience isn’t exactly the same thing as privilege.
And then also being told to shut up and listen right at the outset…no, I don’t think so.
It is okay not to understand at first. It is okay to have questions, as long as we are considerate of when and how we ask those questions.
We turn our confusion into curiosity. Google is our friend. Shutting the hell up and listening is our friend.
— Fiona Longmuir // Looking for Emily is out now! (@fionalongmuir) December 22, 2018
We’re “cis” whether we agree we are or not, we’re confused, we have to shut up and listen…listen, apparently, to this dogmatic and unpersuasive twerp who is herself “cis” but feels entitled to tell us to shut up because we’re…not cis in the correct perfected way she is? I guess? I can’t say I feel inclined to do either.
After much shutting the hell up and listening, we realise it's not confusing or complicated at all.
Do we believe that trans people know themselves ✅
Do we believe that trans people are worthy of our love and respect ✅
Do trans people owe it to us to justify their existence ❌— Fiona Longmuir // Looking for Emily is out now! (@fionalongmuir) December 22, 2018
Ah, finally, a semi-substantive claim, or trio of claims. But such stupid claims…
First: do we believe that trans people know themselves? What, all of them? Of course not. How could we believe such a wild claim. People mostly don’t know themselves all that well, because there are all kinds of cognitive flaws and self-protecting motives to block and distort self-knowledge, so no, there’s no reason at all to “believe” that all members of a particular group know themselves.
Do we believe that trans people are worthy of our love and respect? What, all of them? Again? Who is calling whom “confused” here? Fiona Longmuir seems to be confusing human rights with universal love; they’re not the same at all. We don’t have to love or respect people to respect their rights. Human rights are not supposed to be contingent on our favorable emotions that way; they’re supposed to be independent of personal feelings, a birthright as opposed to an earned right. The question should be “Do we believe that trans people are worthy of human rights?” to which the answer would be of course. Demanding universal love is insanely greedy; it’s fatuous of Longmuir to be that greedy on behalf of others.
Do trans people owe it to us to justify their existence? Wrong question yet again. The issue is not existence, nor is it justification of existence.
(You may notice that the principles for understanding trans rights are the same as for understanding all other rights, i.e. everyone deserves to live happily and fully as their most authentic self, regardless of how different their experience is from our own.)
— Fiona Longmuir // Looking for Emily is out now! (@fionalongmuir) December 22, 2018
Yet another hyperbolic, absurd, unreasonable claim. “Everyone deserves to live happily and fully as their most authentic self” – oh really? What about people who decide their most authentic selves are rapists? What about white people who decide their most authentic selves are Native Americans? What about people who decide their most authentic selves are engineers when they know nothing about engineering and failed math in school every year?
Anyway, thanks for the schooling.
What happens if, after shutting up and listening, you still don’t agree with someone’s claims?
I think in that case you have to shut up and listen some more.
By all means, let’s listen to what people have to say for themselves, but we don’t have to accept it as the truth. You can actually learn something from hearing white nationalists talk about themselves, but you don’t have to believe it when they say “we don’t hate non-whites, we just have WHITE PRIDE.”
And we certainly don’t have to accept the members of a group as the binding authority on what rights that group should or shouldn’t have. I’m sure that most, if not all, of the gay-marriage-hating Christians are utterly sincere in wanting the “right” to refuse to issue marriage licenses, and in believing that this is a fundamental part of their identity — but I don’t have to accept their “right” to defy the law.
Let Trump be his most authentic self
… Sure thing, sounds just like human rights.
How can people like Fiona NOT SEE how fatuous they are?
Lordy. Ophelia, were I queen of everybody, I’d make them all read this post. Thank you.
Shutting up and listening is a good – no, vital – first response. What follows next is thinking, as opposed to slavish parroting of what you’ve just listened to. It has been apparent for some time that the transactivists are only interested in the latter.
Holms – that’s the key. It’s not the listening they want, it’s the obedience.
Lady M, just decide that “queen of everybody” is your authentic self and lo, the thing is done!
If I’d have known it was that easy when I was 9, everyone would have to accept me as a rock singer today. And pointing out that I am unable to sing, play an instrument, or dance would be genuine violence, so they’d have to accept me in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. Right?
But asking questions is questioning their identities and denying their existence, therefore questions are both transphobic and acts of violence. Possibly genocidal, too.
FTFY
Awrighty, people. You heard Ophelia and Fiona. I don’t owe it to anybody to justify my existence as queen of everybody.
There’s gonna be some changes I tell you what.
“Genocidal Questions.” Great name for a band!
@10 –
Don’t forget “colonizing” – have to throw that one in there.
Cressida, I swear to the Queen of Everybody that I have not the slightest interest in colonizing or being colonized by anybody, transwoman or not.
The very thought makes my eyes water :-o
What if my authentic self is a TERF?
“Cis” is just STFU all the way down.
It totally amazes me, this constant nagging to accept people at their own valuation and self-description. One of the things you learn as a child is that people tell lies about themselves, bullshit about themselves, think they can do things that they can’t. Sorting out who is to be trusted in their self-description and who cannot is a theme of a 1000 novels.
“He thinks he’s Christmas and he’s not even Guy Fawkes” was a saying of my youth when I was 10 or so.
And these are from people who no doubt pore through their opponents’ twitter accounts to see if they ever ever said one improper thing ad damn them for it.
Oooh I LIKE that saying.
“You think you’re hot snot, but you’re just cold boogers.”
— boy in my school, circa age 10
Maybe less erudite, but equally idiomatic.
When you were a kid, don’t you remember saying, “Did Uncle Brian really do all those things, Dad?”
“Well not all of them,” with a laugh.
@Dave Ricks – what country is that saying from?
Haaaaaaaaaa that’s also glorious.
KB it’s the US.
You are a bunch of entitled shits. As someone who lived the time when gay people didn’t exist, were “unnatural” and should just shut up and not preach or flaunt our “lifestyle” in front of “normal” people, you can all go to hell. What you are doing to differently gendered people is exactly the crap I grew up with as a gay man. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
@23:
are words not used in the original post or any of the comments so far, so, not sure what you mean by “exactly the crap.”
Did anyone see this?
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/01/05/deep-disappointment/
PZ has no logic at all anymore. He is just ideology all the way down.
Geez, PZ, you’re awfully behind the times. We’ve been talking about this stuff over here for a pretty long time.
bcw, as a straight man who spoke up for and marched in favour of the decriminalisation of gay sex and later to allow gay marriage in my country, I would happily see trans people afforded equal access to basic human rights and a gaurantee against discrimination in matters such as housing, jobs, health care etc etc. it’s both interesting and disturbing that I see many trans rights activists both here and overseas actively seeking to remove basic rights from lesbians and women in general, despite women being the single largest group or systematically discriminated against people in our population. I will l not support that. I think your post is just so much hot air frankly.
Ah – #25 explains the sudden abrupt appearance of #23, by someone who had never commented here before.
I’m sorry, is there some initiation ritual I missed? Have I failed to learn the secret handshake that shows who has learned the special double secret meaning of words so that a tiny fraction of the population (gender different people) can somehow oppress everyone in your exclusive club by asking that their feelings about themselves be respected? You have people here equating trans/intersexual people asking for respect with the self-justification of rapists and others trivializing trans/intersexuality as some kind whim.
Part of my objection to the tweets by Fiona Longmuir was that she is not asking, she is ordering.
And there is no special meaning. I made a distinction between respecting people’s rights, and respecting categories like “their feelings about themselves.” No, I don’t think it’s possible to make any sweeping rule mandating respect for people’s “feelings about themselves,” not least because that could mean anything. Do we have to respect Trump’s “feelings about himself” that he’s a stable genius who knows more about everything than anyone else? Of course not.
It’s a bad idea to try to expand human rights to infinity and beyond, because you’ll find yourself enabling behaviors and campaigns that will have bad implications for your rights.
You could try actually thinking about it, but I realize it’s much more fun to just shout opprobrium.
I see that we’ve attracted a self-righteous narcissist.
Well it’s a popular subject with them, for obvious reasons.
If people like bcw cared about intersex people, they wouldn’t conflate transgenderism with intersex conditions that way.
And if trans ideologues cared about intersex people, they’d stop appropriating terms like “gender assigned at birth,” which actually mean something if you’re talking about the medical abuse of people with DSDs.
But they don’t. The existence of intersex people is used as a prop meant to dazzle the biologically naive (ooh, sexual differentiation is complex and biological processes sometimes go awry! Whodathunkit? Guess womanhood is just a matter of self-declaration after all!) After being trotted out as some sort of ridiculous “Checkmate, feminists!”–they get ignored again till the next time they’re rhetorically needed.
But people like bcw don’t give a sideways shit, of course.
I’m over not being permitted to discuss the role socialisation plays in people’s adult conduct if they’re trans. The suggestion having been socialised male for the entirety of their childhood and some of their adulthood and having spent that whole time being perceived as male would bestow male privilege during that time and likely permanently shape their personality and how they conduct themselves is deemed transphobic though.
I agree with Ophelia on the logic, but I think the way it’s presented by her and others is often harsh.
If a trans person read this, any chance that they’d see it’s OK that people don’t agree with what they feel they are would vanish once they read they were like people who believe they’re birds or their desire to be their authentic self might be comparable to a rapist’s.
Bcw came in with guns blazing, but he’s not necessarily a PZ stooge. Maybe he really is a gay person who finds all this horribly familiar.
What is the goal here? I thought it was to have people treat each other fairly. Trans women believing they’re 100% women obviously causes conflicts in areas like women-only spaces and sports, and women should not have to yield ground. But the goal is fairness and safety for women, not to demean trans people, right?
If it really is a “bizarre delusion” (verbiage that isn’t going to win any minds), look how committed they are to it. It’s pretty serious stuff when you’re having your genitals surgically altered. I would think that would inspire sympathy. Do you really think men are choosing to live as women as a way to antagonize women? I see that idea floated here occasionally, but seriously, that’s really hard to believe. Men find all sorts of way to torment women without having to resort to that.
Oh, gee, thanks, Skeletor, I really want to start this whole conversation from the very beginning, as if I’d never heard a word of it before. “It’s pretty serious stuff when you’re having your genitals surgically altered.” Oooooh I never thought of that, thank you so much for pointing it out!