Guest post: Indicative of how we got here
Originally a comment by Der Durchwanderer on You don’t get to.
The idea of Schrödinger’s Rapist is a funny old one, at least in its implications for logical consistency. The premises are undoubtedly true, as far as it goes — other things equal, asking a vulnerable person to treat the unknown as benign is asking for them to become a victim of some kind of predator. That is likely the very reason fear evolved in animals in the first place, possibly even in single-celled organisms, for an organism that feels no fear is an organism that will be eaten before its fearful brethren.
One of the things I find interesting about some of those who initially championed the concept of Schrödinger’s Rapist, such as Reverend Myers, is how they condemned Sam Harris’ (yes, yes, Sam Harris, boo, hiss; let’s take the eye-rolling on either side at the mere mention or reaction to the mention of his name as read and move on) musings over profiling during airport security screenings as rank bigotry. I recall the two phenomena occurring relatively closely in time, and though I didn’t really connect the issues then, it occurs to me now that one might refer to unattached young men as Schrödinger’s Terrorist, and profiling after the Harris method as a way of collapsing that uncertainty without pretending that it doesn’t exist.
Though I do not wish to drag us back to 2011 and recapitulate that particular argument, it is indicative, I believe, of how we got here. Reverend Myers and Brother Dillahnunty would likely still give a full-throated defence of Schrödinger’s Rapist as an instructional concept, even as they scaffold the entire concept of gender with gobbledygook and moral pieties that allow them to dismiss the entire conceptual framework which led to the articulation of Schrödinger’s Rapist in the first place. This articulation, in fact, contains within it a fundamental pillar of gender critical thought; it is not a wonder that the priests and the laymen of the trans church have done away with it in all but name.
It is quite likely that Rebecca Watson would make similar noises; she might well throw out a bunch of rapid-fire nonsense out about how it only applies to cis men, and how cis men would never invade a woman’s space under the guise of being a trans woman, and how trans women are supposedly always and everywhere the victims of the worst kinds of violence and bigotry imaginable.
And, in the end, they will have all talked themselves into the abolition of sex-segregated spaces while still claiming to uphold the notion of Schrödinger’s Rapist, all the while.
Some sophisticated theology, that.
and how cis men would never invade a woman’s space under the guise of being a trans woman
::cough:: Wi Spa ::cough::
At this stage, there seems to be a lot more men claiming to be women in order to invade sex-segregated spaces than there are men claiming to be women because they genuinely believe they are women trapped in the bodies of men. Probably orders of magnitude more.
I see two important distinctions between the rapist and terrorist cases.
First is the base rate – if non-terrorists(-of-a-certain-appearance) outnumber actual terrorists by a million-to-one, treating all men-of-a-certain-appearance as potential terrorists simply doesn’t work: terrorist organisations will simply recruit people who can slip through, with endless opportunities to find weak-points in a system overwhelmed with false positives (this is what Sam Harris declines to understand).
Second is that in the case of Schroedinger’s Rapist, the possible-victim observes and updates continually, relaxing (or not) depending on S.R.’s behaviour. Starting from a default stranger-danger stance and backing off (or not) doesn’t constitute a violation of somebody’s righ….. oh. Oh crap.
Reverend Myers is a member of the court; he’ll explain it to you.
This feels a step too far, to me. Online, I can definitely see how you could come to this conclusion–the overly vocal transwomen who drown out everyone else can have that effect. But I’ve known too many ‘real-world’ transmen and transwomen to accept the idea that they are the aberration, and the braying jackasses of the online environment are the ‘norm’.
So, Freemage, all the men you know who claim to be women still use the gents when they need to pee? None of them has ever referred to the cross-sex hormones they take as ‘HRT’? They use the men’s changing rooms in clothes shops, swimming pools, spas and the like? They don’t object when you use male pronouns to refer to them?
By the way, if you use female pronouns to refer to the men you know who are claiming to be women, you are gaslighting; and thus crossing boundaries and are part of the problem. This is how we got to where we are (short version). Start by referring to these men by female pronouns, because it’s only polite. Next, allow them into women’s spaces, regardless of any objections by women, because they are, essentially, women; after all, why else would we refer to them by female pronouns? Anyway, who are these TERFS who would reject a vulnerable minority of women? Next, start changing all the language used by and for women, so as not to exclude the men. And then, because you’re now so deep into the hole you might as well keep digging, accept the complete oxymoron of a ‘female penis’ and the counter-factual claim that men can be ‘biologically female’.