Your obligation to understand and address inequality
This guy. THIS GUY.
How belatedly he remembers to mention men. His tribe is white, Generation X, heterosexual, privileged MEN. Women aren’t part of that tribe. He’s astonishingly bad at remembering that, or perhaps at ever noticing it in the first place.
By which he means trans people, and emphatically not women.
Women always last. Women always an afterthought, because trans people always get first mention.
Why? Is it because it gives men like Jolyon Maugham an excuse to lecture and rebuke women? Is there no more to it than that?
How much interest does he have in challenging how he conceives of himself? I can see none.
“Rowling denies their existential reality” — Another strawman from the ranks of the illiterati who doesn’t know the first thing about what JKR has written or said on the subject. I wish these creeps would learn how to read and make the effort to understand what they read, and not just echo the rantings of the trans cult dogmateers.
(Sorry you rambled too, idiot.)
I find “denying their existential reality” to be the most fascinating of balderdash. The Reverse Descartes would be a remarkable psychic achievement: I think therefore you’re not.
“Denying their existential reality” means “disagreeing with their self-assessment”. But denying someone’s existential reality sounds ever so much worse somehow, doesn’t it?
I decided to look up the phrase “existential reality” and the most likely version of the definition is “ pertaining to what exists, and is thus known by experience rather than reason; empirical as opposed to theoretical.”
In other words, if I experience the state of being an otter (or a psychic, a child of God, or the mindset of someone of the opposite sex) then you can’t say I didn’t. My internal evidence is completely veridical and logically undeniable. Parsing out a distinction between feeling what I imagine the state to be and feeling what it really is hurts my feelings.
As an atheist, I don’t like the Accomodationist argument that if saying there’s no God attacks the self-perception of the devout, then I ought not to say it. Nor do I care for the Apologetic which asserted that “experiencing God” was a slam dunk argument against atheism.
It seems to me that Maugham’s popular position is a combination of both. First, that first person experience is unassailable; second, the Little People Argument — which assumes that those who disagree are incapable of handling or even caring about the truth, so small and weak are they. They don’t work for establishing the existence of God, they don’t work for establishing transgender ideology.
And of course that is one of the claims the goddy set uses to defends its beliefs. The word “ineffable” does a lot of heavy lifting in this context.
It’s a claim and a belief that brings me out in a rash. Experience IS NOT INFALLIBLE. [jumps up and down a few times]
We can’t always even remember accurately what we said yesterday, how can our inNer expeRience be reliable? It can’t. Can’t can’t can’t.
Well they don’t exist wholly within the confines of their own skin, they have to share with other things that exist, like oxygen molecules and peaches. Their existential reality is necessarily part of existence in general. How people interpret what really exists is a whole other ballgame. Nowhere did I see JKR denying trans people exist, nor did she deny that *they believe* that they are actually the gender (or sex) that they say they are. She doesn’t say they are lying, she says she sees things differently (as many of us do) and has every right to, for multiple reasons. More importantly, she didn’t in any way say that they should be denied any basic human rights. It’s pretty obvious if anyone cares to take the time to understand her position. Belief is a funny thing though, it’s not always grounded in ‘existential reality’ is it.
Yes, disagreeing with their self-assessment, not “validating ” it, is the same as extermination.
One is not allowed to see things differently. You are only allowed to see what you are supposed to be seeing, what has been approved. Disagreement is genocide.
Denying the demands for validation and affirmation is like denying oxygen. Women are to comply, to make space, to “be nice.” To question this is to oppress. If Rowling’s position is not agreement, acquiescence, and submission, then her position is wrong, dangerous and not worthy of being understood. Until she kisses the clownfish ( or the barimundi), she is a witch to be shunned.
Did I get that right?
If Trans Women were really women (and Trans Men were really men) and they believed this with absolute certainty, then why the hell would they need “validation?” They would simply smile tolerantly and get on with life. They’d be able to consider the reasons others don’t grasp it and work with them. The whole routine where they scream and crumble to the ground like soccer players in front of a referee doesn’t really instill confidence in their confidence, existential reality or not.
To paraphrase something that Henry Ford probably didn’t say, you can have any opinion you want as long as it’s the right one.
Modern philosophy:
I assert, therefore I am
You ask for proof, therefore you suck
PS Sastra: your comments are always thoughtful and you should be President.
It’s the Tinker Bell syndrome. You don’t want Tinks to die, do you? So come on, boys and girls, say it with me as loudly as you can: “I do believe, I DO believe, I DO BELIEVE.
Laughing a lot at “The whole routine where they scream and crumble to the ground like soccer players in front of a referee…”
How can this be corrected? Hmm…
Think of the children. Think especially of the autistic children, whose therapists are so terrified of the trans lobby that they will do nothing to help children when they become convinced their dysphoria involves their sex. Instead, they’ll just shunt the kids over to the greased medical chute of gender identity clinics and wash their hands of them.
This is an existential threat to children: they may be mutilated, castrated, even killed by the unnecessary medical procedures performed at gender clinics. Continuing to propagate, to children, the delusion that men can become women and women can become men, in order to support the sexual fantasies of adults, is unconscionable and exploitative. We must remember the most vulnerable among us, who deserve better.
I don’t believe that being a man or a woman (or a cactus or a dolphin) is a matter of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, knowledge, attitudes, or perspectives.
It doesn’t matter what you think, how you feel, who you know yourself to be. None of those things—while important to your sense of yourself, your personality, your identity—is relevant when it comes to your being a man or a woman.
I still don’t get how that is a hateful belief. (I don’t even see how it’s an interesting belief.) I don’t see how it denies anyone’s existence or leads to their harm. I don’t want to do either of those things, and I don’t think I’m doing them by believing or saying out loud that being a woman or a man isn’t a function of what we believe (or even know!) about ourselves.
If you are male, and you feel “like a woman” (whatever that means to you), that’s fine. You can be a man who feels that way. If you are female, and you believe that you are a man (whatever that means to you), that’s fine. You can be a woman who believes that.
It’s not unreasonable to request that people call you by your preferred name. (I think it’s less reasonable to request that people refer to you in certain ways when you’re not present.)
Are there accommodations that we should make for people with these sincere beliefs or feelings? Sure, why not. Do people with these sincere beliefs or feelings face certain difficulties or prejudices as a result of having them? I’m sure they do.
NB @7 [plugs ears] LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA!!!
Did I get it right too? ;)
Also this hypocritical blurb. “Speak carefully and thoughtfully”. (But also intelligently? Like JKR does?) “Listen to those who do”.(Like you listened to JKR before you denounced her?) “Remember where power lies”. (With the mob? The wealthy? Social media trolls? Politics? Where exactly?)
For a second there, just a second, I hoped he was building to an apology for how much of a shit he has been toward womenkind. But, no.
B @14:
What happens to a cactus that belives it is a dolphin, if I accept and validate that belief? And throw it in the ocean? How long will it have claims to being anything?
I think your analysis is spot on.
I’m actually coming around to the literal view that denying the idea of any “biological” spectrum and railing against gender ideology is an existential threat to transwomen, or more specifically their existence as trans-anything.
Erase the constraints of gender and they are in fact trans-nothing, they’re just men with somewhat odd ways (if that).
That’s what they really mean, deep down, and it enrages them.
Sastra, I just reread your comment. Are you suggesting I might not really be an otter? Are you denying my existential reality? Are you invalidating me? Are you trying to MURDER me?
I am going to go lie on a rock in the sun and cry.
ikn,do that thing where you lie on your back in the water and crack open shells on your belly with a rock using your eerily human-like hands. I never get tired of that.
The extremely unctuous Jolyon – he sounds like someone out of a novel by Dickens: Pecksniff perhaps.
I’ve watched them doing that, in the actual ocean. It’s pretty damn cool. Also cool just to watch them lounging on waves as if on a bed.
@iknklst:
My comment only pertains to you if you claim to be otter than what you are.
@latsot:
She doesn’t owe you shell-cracking — not all otters conform to stereotypes! Trans otters are valid if they lie on their backs and crack open nothing but a book. Educate yourself!
Speaking of otters and the transmigration of souls, I recommend Saki’s short story ‘Laura’. It’s very funny, and it’s readily available on the internet.
Thank you, Tim; it is very funny indeed.
Sastra – good. Cracking open a book while lying on my back. I can do that. In fact, I can even read the book. I am a literate otter.
The Literate Otter. Good name for a bookstore. Or a bar or pub.
I would, but iknklast has all the (soggy) books.
I’d just like to express appreciation for Sastra’s always excellent comments, and for B apparently reading my mind and expressing my thoughts so concisely.
Very refreshing following Maugham’s pretentious pseudo-profundity.