Guest post: Back to the Argument from Damage
Originally a comment by Sastra on Verification.
when a trans person says they are male or female, that is what they are and that is how we should treat them. It is damaging to them to say otherwise.’
If the second statement is removed, would that change the truth of the first statement? In other words, is “a transwoman is female and a transman is male” dependent on “ trans people are damaged when other people say otherwise?”
If so, then the damaged trans people would be conclusive evidence of their sex, in the same way the fact that people believing in God is conclusive evidence that God does, in fact, exist. Or, a closer argument: because religious people need their belief in God to buttress their morality and provide comfort and meaning, then 1.) atheists should keep their views to themselves and 2.) God exists.
If a TRA thinks those Arguments for the Existence of God are crap, then they’re going to have to separate the presumed neediness and fragility of trans people from the question of what sex those transpeople are. They’re going to have to make a scientific case for something which did not come out of scientific investigation, but emerged from the social justice concern over protecting vulnerable people — with the science then playing catch-up to the moral mandate.
It doesn’t work. And they know it doesn’t work because they keep going back to the Argument from Damage.
When I read that tweet I visualized a hyperventilating Bill Donohue of the Catholic League on Fox hyperventilating about a cracker in a wastebin, or Islamists demanding death for some atheist “hurting religious feelings.” When somone claims that “transphobes are hateful,” this is what they are doing.
Argument from Damage, lol. Even then, an appeal to consequences has to have actual consequences to appeal to. Quite the display of illogic, eh? :D
On the one hand, at least it’s a linear argument of the type A causes B, and B is bad, therefore A is also bad, at least in that situation of association with B. On a good day, cause and effect will just be noted, and the whole shebang just allowed to fizzle out. But on a bad day, a small amount of transphobia can conceivably cause a feedback and reaction that winds it up into a full-on cyclone. A transman and would-be woman out of rage and frustration could finish up kicking the cat, or could take to smashing shop windows.
In that manner, a hitherto insignificant Austrian by the name of A. Hitler is said to have picked up a dose of syphilis from a Jewish prostitute, and in the course of the treatment then available, lost a significant percentage of his marbles and also one testicle; resulting in the Holocaust.
But I remain unsure of what the moral of this tale might be.
The insidious thing about an argument from damage, appeal to consequences, emotional blackmail, or whatever you want to call it, is that it works on two levels simultaneously. The truth-functional aspect is bolstered by a moral guilt trip, undermining even normally rational people’s faculties. Any attempt to think critically about the descriptive claim is met with immediate resistance from the “victim’s” own ethical intuitions.
If anyone knows how to bypass that priming, I’d love to hear it, as there are some people whom I’d like to cure of this mind virus.
It “causes them damage” if anyone questions the self-assertion of “I am a woman/man.”
What damage? Some day, I would really like someone to explain, in detail, exactly what this “damage” consists of.
What damage?
I’m sure their lawyers will explain that to you in chorus; for a fee, of course.
Lawyers generally trade in facts and, you know, evidence.