Guest post: We question all that
Originally a comment by latsot on Another late anti-vaxxer.
Former Silentbob – can I call you “Former”, I feel like we’re friends? – Former:
As Bjarte said, we’re not the ones who changed. We’re still applying skeptical analysis to unlikely truth claims. You’re the one who stopped doing that. We’re still skeptical of radio hosts who say we shouldn’t get vaccinated and anti-mask podcasters in their rocking chairs. We remain dubious when we’re told that a centuries-dead cult leader can be so upset by a cartoon that slaughter is the only moral recourse. We continue to raise a quizzical eyebrow at homoeopathic cures, ancient prophecies and magical underpants. We still think Bigfoot is probably just made up.
And we impose exactly the same scrutiny on the truthclaims of the trans. We find some of those claims lacking. Skeptical enquiry tells us that humans can’t change sex; that there are no man-brains and lady-brains; that the most effective cure for gender dysphoria is puberty. Along the way we learn of the long-term harms of irreversible puberty blockers; the railway rushing confused children toward life-changing surgery and the political manoeuvring to prevent other therapeutic options being presented. We see the conflict between women’s rights and the demands of gender identity extremists; the compromise of women’s safety and dignity in the removal of their spaces and the very language they use to organise and defend their rights; the opportunities opened by decades of their campaigning being swallowed by the inclusion of men. We see similar rights to safety, dignity and autonomy of homosexual men and women being gleefully eroded and rampant homophobia surfacing again in the name of an ideology that folds like a house of cards the moment you so much as glance at it.
And we question all that. We apply our skeptical enquiry. And we can only conclude the obvious. Now you may question our conclusions, but you cannot argue that we’ve changed. We’re doing the same things we’ve always done: examine extraordinary claims and see where the evidence takes us.
But you have changed. You’re the one like Josh, because you’ve abandoned all skeptical principles entirely in this one area alone. You accept truth claims you’d never have accepted from evangelical Christians or muslims or from the mouth of the Loch Ness Monster itself. But you’ve changed even more than that, because all of this special pleading is in the name of ideology. For you, ideology trumps thought, reason, evidence and compassion.
You’d never have stood for that in the old days, Former, and we won’t stand for it now. We don’t have an ideology. We won’t have one. An ideology would blind us, as it has blinded you.
So why the drive-by, if you’re really reaching out? Hang out. Engage. If you think we’ve fallen to an ideology, show us where it’s compromised our reasoning. If you think there’s a problem with ideas of AGP or social contagion, show us how we’re wrong. You know many of us, we’re mostly friendly. Unlike the commentariat of certain blogs we’ll argue but we won’t dogpile. We’ll pick apart your points, if we can, but we won’t try to stop you making them.
My guess is that you won’t, because you know I’m right. You believe things now that you’d never believe in any other sphere of human foolhardiness. But we’re not the ones scared of a fight, or of being proved wrong. So if you want to discuss these things, I’m sure you’d be welcome. If not, then I hope you remain, forever, Former.
I might quibble with the “we don’t have an ideology” bit.
Doesn’t everyone have an ideology? Now, if the point is that we don’t all share a single ideology, I suppose that’s true.
I did hesitate at that too. It’s a risky thing to say about the self, I think. I’m not sure I have one single ideology I could put a name to, but I think I most likely do have fragments of various ideologies.
But I hope I manage to avoid having the kind of ideology that depends on a magical belief. That’s for sure my intention.
Over all though the post is hair-raisingly eloquent, and one of my bits of ideology is that eloquence must be put in the spotlight.
@3 Agreed, well done latsot, though it looks like getting through to the ‘Silentbobs’ of this issue is futile. I was happily ignorant of this person until yesterday though, so while it would be interesting to hear a coherent argument to the contrary, I sure don’t expect one. After a little digging yesterday I did see an interesting skirmish from 2018 that Silentbob was involved in, where that Myers dude actually said that “some women have a penis.” To this I say produce evidence. Show me even one woman with a functional penis.
Thought so. :P
I do find myself worrying about the radicalizing (I don’t think OB is in any way responsible for this)… it’s all too easy to fall to the dark side if you try to take a position other than the “correct” left wing position. The pull of Manichean dualism is too strong and the idea of a welcoming tribe so appealing. This is why it’s oh so important to ask yourself continually “Are we the baddies?” and evaluate the answer.
Very eloquent.
Here’s an interesting question. Imagine that transmen and transwomen don’t claim to suffer deep pain and anguish. Their suicide rate is admittedly average. Gender dysphoria is generally agreed to be uncomfortable, but not all-consuming. And they still insist that everyone is born with an internal gender identity, sex is assigned at birth, their gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned, gender identity determines whether someone is a man or woman, and therefore some women have penises and some men menstruate.
Would the same skeptics who accept those claims from unhappy trans people, accept them now?
As Sastra alluded to in the other thread, the problem is definitional. If your definition of “woman” includes some people who have a functional penis, then PZ’s quote is self-evident (just like the claim of Rape Crisis Scotland that it has women-only spaces that include people with penises), and all the other claims of the TRAs follow logically from that. The problem is that they can’t come up with a coherent, reality-based definition of the word, and any defense of the longstanding definition of “woman” as the category “adult human female” is met with vitriol and accusations of violence, transphobia, and other thought crimes.
Hard to know. If the real reason behind it has nothing to do with the misery of certain unhappy people that claim to be the opposite sex, and really an attempt to impose very rigid stereotypes about behavior and ways of thinking of people of the two sexes, and to put women down — then why not accept them even if “trans” people weren’t unhappy?
@Sastra #6
Very interesting question indeed. Given that so many statements that disagree with trans ideology are rebuffed with reference to suicide, murders, or assault, I would like to say no. I have a feeling that wouldn’t be the case, though. It’s extremely hard to get people to change positions important to them.
There is a poem by Vachel Lindsay, The Mouse That Gnawed the Oak-Tree Down, in which a mouse spends a great deal of time and energy gnawing down an oak tree, but finds the reality of what’s inside doesn’t match what he thought: no angel-cake, no buttered bread, no cheese, no meat. He comes up with a different rationalization and starts gnawing down another tree.
I think people currently deeply invested in this ideology would, like the mouse, come up with different reasons to stick with it, although fewer people might be tempted to join them.
(I’ve probably mentioned the poem before, but it’s a good poem.)
Interesting question indeed.
I would want to know a lot more about the nature of the discomfort.
So let me get this straight, “Silent” Bob is finally actually going to go silent? After years of contrarian weirdo bullshit ranting, he is finally going to use this topic as his exit ramp? I can’t say that I’m disappointed.
WaM @7 Anything is possible if we abandon the definitions of ordinary language. Some whites are black, some suns are moons, some ups are downs, and so forth. Some women have a penis is just not true, and if language allows for such definitions, then language itself is unreliable. I won’t fall for that trick, it makes more sense that the minority of people who abuse language to promote such a fringe agenda are simply wrong and lack credibility.
twiliter,
I’m not suggesting that you abandon the definition. It’s just that asking for evidence is futile when you’re arguing with the Humpty Dumptys of the world.
GW #8 wrote:
No. Not, I think, from the liberal, rational skeptics we’re talking about. I’m fine with accepting SilentBob et al’s insistence that they believe their views are not just feminist, but a way of eliminating gendered stereotypes (or at least believing such stereotypes “don’t particularly come into it.”)
Sackbut #9 wrote:
Agree. But I was really wondering what would have happened if the hypothetical situation had been there from the beginning. How much does the motivation towards social justice, empathy, and respect color the way the TRAs approach the fact claims?
If transgender ideology were embraced by the religious right, like in Iran, and explicitly seen as God’s way to “fix” homosexuality, would the current split among liberals have ever happened? Would the tenets of Gender Identity Theory still have been defended by science-advocates invoking intersex and searching brain scans? I tend to doubt it, but I don’t know.
Ophelia Benson #10 wrote:
Why?
Shouldn’t it be largely irrelevant? A woman whose “recovered memory” of being molested by the obstetrician when she was born isn’t more or less credible if she’s distressed , bemused, or in-between.
@13 Show me a woman with a functional penis, and I’ll show you a man. I’m sure the trans cultists don’t want to play that game. Even the most passable trans “woman” fails to be a woman if he has a functional penis (and still fails beyond the chopping off of same) I’m not going to think up new words to describe things when the old words suffice, I’m not in the super special, ultra marginalized group of elite and unique snowflakes to even attempt it. Nor would I want to be. :P
Oh, you have papers that say you’re a biologist? Pfft.
WaM, just to be clear, I’m not disagreeing with you at all. :)
I’m trying to imagine this one following Daryl Davis’s lead and actually doing the hard work required to change minds that he so vehemently proclaims are in want of change.
Nope. Not seeing it.
twiliter,
Yeah, I get that. :) I’ve made a (perhaps overly-convoluted) linguistic argument in the past on how you can conceive of the category “woman” in such a way that you can see trans women as being marginal members of the category, while still maintaining adult human females as the central members (somewhat analogous to birth vs. adoptive mothers). I still think there’s merit in that argument, but it’s not worth the effort to try to explicate it when I know I’d just be dismissed as another transphobe.
I think … Those science-advocates, those erstwhile brothers and sisters in arms against the tyranny of religion, may have been root-motivated by that impulse toward social justice, empathy, and respect. Their avowed devotion to skeptical, rational inquiry, even for those with a happy talent for it, was always and only an overlay, adopted post hoc for the dispassionate legitimacy it lent to merely moral motivation. By their fruits ye shall know them indeed, for in ceding priority to a moral imperative they demonstrate the reality of their commitments, whether they realize it or not. In the final judgement, isn’t that what many of these very same people would say and have said of the religious vis-a-vis actions with respect to professed beliefs?
This sort of hit me, what the TRAs are doing. This is so similar to the abuse leveled at Katherine by Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew (my least favorite of all Shakespearean plays; I can hardly stand to watch it). It’s typical male games – the world is what I say it is and my woman (in this case, all women) must accept.
PETRUCHIO
Come on, i’ God’s name, once more toward our
father’s.
Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon!
KATHERINE
The moon? The sun! It is not moonlight now.
PETRUCHIO
I say it is the moon that shines so bright.
KATHERINE
I know it is the sun that shines so bright.
PETRUCHIO
Now, by my mother’s son, and that’s myself, It shall be moon, or star, or what I list, Or e’er I journey to your father’s house. to servants. Go on, and fetch our horses back again.— Evermore crossed and crossed, nothing but crossed!
HORTENSIO, to Katherine
Say as he says, or we shall never go.
KATHERINE
Forward, I pray, since we have come so far, And be it moon, or sun, or what you please. And if you please to call it a rush candle, Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.
PETRUCHIO I say it is the moon.
KATHERINE I know it is the moon.
PETRUCHIO
Nay, then you lie. It is the blessèd sun.
KATHERINE
Then God be blest, it is the blessèd sun. But sun it is not, when you say it is not, And the moon changes even as your mind. What you will have it named, even that it is, And so it shall be so for Katherine.
But, but, but … Elizabeth Taylor! Also, yes, Richard Burton, but Elizabeth Taylor. Admittedly, not as much as in Ivanhoe*, but still, Elizabeth Taylor!
And since it’s relevant to the topic of skeptics and quasi-reliigon, some Ivanhoe:
My favorite (and the most revealing) part is still Former’s reference to Ophelia’s “overwhelmingly male commenters”. If he really believed the things that gender ideology required him to believe, there would be no way for him to reach such a conclusion. It just goes to show, once again, that even the TAs themselves are not able to consistently live up to their own demands. And I’m still waiting for an explanation from Former about why, in his opinion, abortion rights is a feminist issue. But as usual it’s Doublethink all the way down.
Re ‘adoptive vs birth parents’, I just read this the other day:
https://hollylawford-smith.org/the-adoption-analogy-revisited/
‘My favorite (and the most revealing) part is still Former’s reference to Ophelia’s “overwhelmingly male commenters”. If he really believed the things that gender ideology required him to believe, there would be no way for him to reach such a conclusion.’
Haha good point. ‘Did you just assume their gender?’ Apparently the worst thoughtcrime there is.
Bjarte@22:
I, too, liked that part and got no small amount of snickers out of it. It really is very revealing of his mindset in a number of different ways, albeit not in any kind of surprising way.
Nullius in Verba #19 wrote:
A very good point. In fact, the more I think about it — the hypocrisy of the religious saying one thing (“God is love”) and doing another (“”Burn the infidel”) — the more I realize that the division between Rational Skeptics on the transgender issue is probably rooted in one set being primarily focused on religion-is-false and the other set being primarily focused on religion-is-harmful.
Although I’d jump on the bandwagon criticizing the actions of the Christian Fundamentalists, I always knew that I’d be arguing against theism even if the theists were as morally exemplary as our idealized version of ourselves (because that’s exactly what I did on IRC.) Whereas many atheists insisted they’d be live-and-let-live and utter not a word against the existence of God if Christians would only “keep it to themselves” and not cause harm. And more than once they said — or I suspected — that they’d convert to Christianity if only Christians would live up to their own moral standards.
Why didn’t they join one of the nicer religions? Because the nicer religions give cover for the bad ones to flourish, and cause harm.
And why did they think the Bad Religions were causing harm? Because bad people who wanted to cause harm were using them as a cover.
Ophelia has famously written “Truth matters.” Yes. I believe it’s central. And I also believe the vast majority of members of those Bad Religions are good people doing what they think is right. What’s absolutely critical to the rational skeptics who used atheism as a tool for social justice might be important, but not the starting point, to those of us who now find their arguments for TWAW weak, unconvincing, and wrong.
Sastra @ 14 – about wanting to know why I want to know a lot more about the nature of the discomfort. Because I think it’s relevant. Discomfort is just part of the human condition, and we can’t and don’t try to eliminate all of it. Your thought experiment is that gender dysphoria is “generally agreed to be uncomfortable, but not all-consuming,” and I would want to know more about that.
And on the other side, the bad religions give a certain rationale to the nicer ones. Liberal religions struggle to identify a reason for anyone to be part of that particular religion. If all the religions are equal, then why are you a Presbyterian? What makes you think that is the right thing to be? Early childhood training, of course, and they might happily answer that, understanding that they are Presbyterian because they were raised Presbyterian.
That might be why there was a period where the liberal religions were losing members rapidly, while the conservative ones were growing. They gave you a reason to actually be part of that religion. And, on the same rationale, they gave you a reason for feeling smug and superior not only over atheists (which liberal religionists are quite capable of doing, and do frequently), but also being smug and superior over all the other religions, and even many members of your own religion. You have the right answers; no one else has the correct answer, and will, of course, be damned for eternity. It’s very comforting to a particular class of people, but it also gives the arguments for why Christianity, why Presbyterian, giving the liberal religions a break from having to do the uncomfortable explaining that yes, they are right, but they have tolerance with those that are wrong (which most of them will not say out loud).
But is the level of discomfort relevant to the question “how can we form a fair society which helps all its members flourish?” or the question “are the tenets of Gender Identity Theory true?”
I think it’s the first, but not the second. A competent scientist who wasn’t concerned with the problem of eliminating suffering but was cognizant of the scientific evidence cited by TRAs would not come to the conclusion that some women produce viable sperm. Whether the transwomen were desperately certain and needy or casually assertive and independent would be a minor bit of data unlikely to effect the outcome.
Iknklast #27 wrote:
Liberal religionists often lump atheists and conservative religions together for that very reason: we’re not saying “We think different and that’s fine” as if we’re choosing mashed potatoes over fries at a smorgasbord. As you point out, they don’t say the quiet part out loud — that they’re claiming something about the universe. Keeping mum that way sometimes fools them into thinking that whether God exists or not isn’t about truth, but about preference— and, ultimately, about personality. “Nobody has the right to tell anybody their deeply-felt beliefs are wrong” quietly morphs into “If your beliefs are deeply-felt, then they’re true for you. Don’t let anybody try to change who you are.” Fundamentalists challenge our right to self-determination.
The parallel between that, and the criticism hurled at those who don’t accept other people’s right to self-identify into the sex they “belong,” is interesting.
Well this is the core issue, isn’t it. When we say it isn’t true we’re met with ANGUISH SUFFERING SUICIDES. That has nothing to do with whether it’s true or not but by god it’s used as a bludgeon to make us stop saying it.
Replying to 28 there, not 29.
As I was mumbling yesterday, in personal contexts on issues that don’t matter, the “don’t hurt people” bludgeon is ok, indeed necessary. It may be true that Uncle Bill talks too much or Aunt Jean tells jokes that aren’t funny, but keep it to yourself. Nothing is lost by not hurting people’s feelings that way.
But in public contexts on issues that do matter? Whole other story.
Ophelia: Humans play fast and loose with the truth all the time. It’s normal and healthy. There are many contexts in normal life for which factual accuracy is of at most marginal importance, at least with respect to certain subsets of facts. Whether Great-Uncle George’s tie is ugly doesn’t really matter in the vast majority of imaginable situations. I can devise thought experiments that twist the importance knob either way, but in the real world? In the real world, his tie’s ugliness is so irrelevant that it can almost be considered not a matter of fact at all, and any utterance regarding it is less information conveyance than speech act.
The difficulty is finding agreement on this question: In which contexts is the factual accuracy of a particular utterance relevant?
————–
Sastra:
I can’t remember whether I’d consciously noted that parallel before, but you’re certainly right to make it. The QUILTBAG+ has been pushing a certain radical ecumenism of truth not at all unlike that of the liberal religionist, exemplified in Unitarian Universalism. “All religions are valid” is not far removed from “all identities are valid”. The more you think about it, the better the comparison becomes. “If he identifies a Christian, then he’s a Christian. There are many ways to be Christian, all of them equally valid, so you can’t say that he isn’t.” The transposition to gender identity is so obvious it actually hurts.
You just reminded me that I got into this very argument on an atheist blog not more than a week before I was permanently banned for failing to accept that trans people were who they said they were. “Who am I to define Christianity for other people, etc.” As I recall, this was shortly after I admitted that I had some sympathy for conservative Christians faced with self-defined Christians who believed Jesus — and even God — were myths invented by humans and that “atonement” for “sin” in a “crucifixion” was as silly as believing that Christianity was “true.”
Apparently basic definitions are judgmental impositions and a form of gatekeeping and yes, I noticed the similarity at the time. It may have been triggered with my expressing agreement with conservative Christians on anything at all, but I have little doubt that the principle was sincerely held.
Nullius – Well, yes. I don’t think I was saying anything incompatible with that. I was saying something rather different though – different, and not so technical, but still of some relevance.
Ophelia: Oh, I wasn’t disagreeing in any way, merely elaborating.
Sastra:
It is Christians who say ‘God is love’.
“In the Quran there is no demonstration of God’s love, by God, for God’s people. Instead, man must show his love for God by his own deeds.” It is Muslims who say “burn the infidel.”
Of course, there was a time when Christan clerics were burning those they disagreed with at the stake (for not acknowledging their clerical authority.) eg Giordano Bruno. But that can be seen as a passing fashion. It does not suit them to try it today, at least not to my knowledge.
https://luk.staff.ugm.ac.id/kmi/off/XIslam/IslamOnline/LoveofGod.html