How can anyone know that?
What is the point of any of it if you can’t or won’t think clearly and say things clearly? Very first paragraph of Hemant Mehta’s oooh Dawkins is twanzphobic post:
On Saturday, for some reason, Richard Dawkins randomly decided to question the humanity of transgender people — under the guise of I’m-just-asking-questions — while comparing their situation to that of Rachel Dolezal.
No he didn’t. Even if you disagree with what he said, even if you despise what he said, he still did not question the humanity of any people. Not even close. Saying men are not women is not questioning anyone’s humanity.
It’s a pretty glaring sign of a weak case when people keep stumbling into those lies while trying to defend it. If the harm done by not agreeing that men are women if they say they are has to be inflated as denying their humanity, then it’s probably not much harm. If it were real harm, there would be no need to talk childish nonsense about denying their humanity.
Trans people, on the other hand, aren’t changing genders just for the hell of it. They sure aren’t doing it because it gives them some kind of advantage in society. More to the point: They don’t “choose to identify” as the other gender as if it’s some kind of light switch; they are the other gender. If they undergo surgery or take hormones or request a change on their driver’s license, it’s to correct a mistake, not because they wanted to be another gender on a whim.
How does Mehta know that? How can he know it? How does he and how can he know that it’s true of all trans people, i.e. all people who say they are trans? I don’t think he can, so I don’t think he does. It’s in the nature of the whole “trans” belief system that we can’t possibly tell who is faking it and who isn’t, or that absolutely no one is faking it. The criterion is: they are if they say they are. The problem should be obvious: people can lie, and they can be wrong. People can also be confused, ambivalent, changeable – a lot of things that make simple self-descriptions not so absolutely reliable that outlandish claims have to be believed without question. Usually the default is to believe what people say about themselves, unless there’s a lot of cash at stake, but when people say something magical about themselves, politeness does not require us to believe it.
It can be true, and it seems to me very likely that it is true, that some trans people really believe the whole magical explanation and that some are consciously faking it and that some are somewhere between the two. Where Mehta gets his certainty that all trans people just are the other “gender” is beyond me.
So back to Dawkins. He’s comparing a liar, whose lie he passes off as genuine, to trans people, whose truths he dismisses. He’s comparing race to gender, as if they’re the same thing, in a way that allows bigots (including right-wing Christians) to use his words as a weapon against trans people. He also defines trans women as “men [who] choose to identify as women” (and vice versa) when that’s not the case at all.
Not ever? Not ever? But we hear from people who choose it all the time. As the trend has intensified and spread, we’ve been hearing from plenty of people who choose it, and plenty who argue loudly and often that self-declaration is all that’s required.
Why is questioning someone’s humanity just a fun little hypothetical for him?
Does he realize he’s parroting arguments made by conservative Christian pastors who have long fought against LGBTQ rights?
There it is again. Saying that men are not women is not questioning anyone’s humanity. Women and men are human. As for the conservative pastors, there’s always some overlap even with people we intensely disagree with – in fact there’s more overlap than disagreement. If we could compile a list of everyone’s beliefs, most of them would be uncontroversial and universal.
Here’s a more pressing question: What is the Center for Inquiry going to do about this?
When Donald Trump banned trans people from the military, CFI’s president denounced it by saying “We stand proudly with the transgender community as an ally in the fight for equal treatment.”
Well, the foundation that Dawkins began is now a division of CFI. Dawkins is on CFI’s Board of Directors. In the past, when one of CFI’s affiliates posted a transphobic comment online, the organization acted quickly to take it down and reiterate its support for the trans community.
So what will they do now? Do they stand with Dawkins, who mischaracterizes trans people and suggests that those who reject trans identities are unfairly maligned, or do they stand with trans people?
Maybe they don’t see what Dawkins said in such stark terms as Mehta tries to put them in – i.e. as “denying the humanity” of anyone.
For that matter, how does he know it is true for any trans people? While people may honestly (or opportunistically) believe they are the other gender, they are not. That’s the case.
Gender dysphoria might be a very real thing; as someone with body dysphoria, I don’t doubt it. But that does not make anyone the gender other than the one that goes with their sex. In fact, gender is a rather nebulous thing to begin with, and this constant conflation with sex is frustrating and dangerous.
So someone feels like the stereotypes of the other gender fit them better, so what? Be that…and then spend all this enormous energy you are currently wasting bashing women on trying to work with feminist women to get rid of the damn stereotypes altogether, so people can be who they want to be. That does not mean being a woman when you are a man; it means expressing your personality in your own way.
As for the AGP? Get some treatment, for the good of all of us, or find some willing partner who will play lets pretend with you during sexual intercourse, and leave the rest of it alone.
I learned to dislike Mehta sometime ago. He has a smug righteousness that I find grating, and he certainly thinks very highly of himself.
Oh, fuck Mehta. He’s calling for Dawkins’ ouster, in couched language. Dawkins saying questionable things about Muslims, or women, or abused children, or Christians for that matter, none of that was enough to call for Dawkins’ ouster from whatever organization he was a part of, but this is. Can’t possibly have people in an organization who disagree on this one point, can we?
And is Mehta now going to go through all the people on the CFI board and who write for CFI and decide that some of them should be jettisoned for their views on this one topic? Again, without regard to any other topic where people have expressed problematic views?
What a steaming, fetid pile of horse manure that column is.
Not on and off like a light switch, eh?
Then what is Eddie Izzard/ Eddie Izzn’t doing switching on “girl mode” and “boy mode” for?
How can that police officer in the UK be a man some days of the week, and a woman other days of the week?
How come those male sex offenders suddenly become women, after spending their whole lives as males, and male-pattern-violence sex offenders, until they see the opportunity of a fresh set of captive victims? Would they have discovered their womanhood if they were offered a male transgender unit instead of a women’s prison? I seriously doubt it.
From a TIM in the comments section:
Funny, I thought the enlightened, liberal, feminism-friendly ideal was to de-emphasize what sex people are and focus instead on who they are — their talents, their flaws, their virtues, their vices, their interests, their abilities, their history, their highs, their lows and their sense of humor. Don’t view what comes from a man in a radically different way than what comes from a woman. By focusing on the individual, you pay homage to a shared humanity.
Wrong. Everything we are is summed up in whether we’re a man or a woman. This is progress.
What a prime load of malarkey. This particular individual constantly whines about gender critical analysis reducing them (and being a woman) to their genitals when there is so, so much more to it than that. But this is reducing people themselves to their gender. Projection, then.
Two words: Pippa Bunce.
He asked Chase Strangio.
Analogies. How the fuck do they work?
More magical knowledge on display: Mehta knows Daziel is lying. Maybe she is/was honestly delusional? Everyone else knows she’s white, but who knows why she claims she’s Black? Mehta, to fend off and distance his take from Dawkins’ questioning analogization, resorts to the nuclear option, and has to insist it CAN NOT BE the same reason that some people who claim to be trans. To even suggest this is Forbidden and Evil. Daziel is an evil liar; trans people have no choice, and can’t help it. To deny this “truth” of innateness, to suggest that it is any way volitional, puts them uncomfortably into Daziel territory, and “denies the humanity” of someone claiming trans status. Never mind that some in the trans camp claim this volition as a right.
In this case, the Purity Spiral admits of only one sin. The sin of questioning the Most Oppressed. Dawkins has already done a bit of grovelling, which probably is worse than being unrepentant. He blinked first. He has admitted Sin. He should have told them to fuck off. Now, he’s either going to have be very careful from now on, or he’s going to have to eventually say “fuck off” in the end.
But what if transgender activists are really two bears in a trench coat, or three goats in a mu-mu, or perhaps twenty-seven rats in an Adidas tracksuit, I ask you. They may not even be human!
Now that’s how you question people’s humanity.
Unless, of course, the unstated premise is that men are not human.
This should not make someone rush to affirm gender; this should make someone sad for a person who has a life so empty, so devoid of anything like hobbies, vocation, movies, reading, writing, hiking, cooking, photography (Okay, I just listed my life, but so what? I could have said scrapbooking, rodeo, sports, beer, Nascar…) that everything crumbles if you question this one thing that should not really be the core of anyone’s identity, though obviously is going to make up a portion of their identity because the sexes (not GENDERS, dammit!) are treated differently by society.
I feel sad for them. Not sad enough to throw reason out the window.
No, he’s making an analogy. Analogies are useful tools in thinking through an issue; they are never exact, or they wouldn’t be analogies. So while he’s right that race and gender aren’t the same thing, he hasn’t really thought through what the differences tell us. Namely, that while both are social constructs with some basis in real world distinctions, in the case of gender, that real world distinction, male vs. female sex, is truly binary, while in the case of race, the real world distinctions, skin color and ancestry, are truly continua. And yet we are allowed, even obliged, to police racial membership claims, while claims of gender are somehow sacrosanct.
“… question the humanity of transgender people…”
“… attacking my gender identity…”
Neither happened. Several people have discussed the “humanity” bit, so I’ll just add that “questioning” and “disputing” and “disagreeing with” are not “attacking”. Much hyperbole.
Regarding the comparison of race with gender, how many times have we seen TRAs respond to criticism by saying replace ‘trans’ in what you said with ‘black’ or ‘Asian’ and think about how bad it looks or saying that trans women aren’t really women is the same as saying that POC aren’t really human?
Hypocrisy really is their stock in trade.
Really? Whose mistake? The doctor who said ‘Congratulations, you have a boy/girl? The registrar who wrote up the birth certificate? The parents, because they mistakenly insisted on calling their be-penised offspring their son? God? No, they’re not correcting a mistake, they’re acting on a mistake of their own making.
Thought the same thing… He’s supposed to be The Friendly “Atheist”, right?
Given my understanding that the original (genetic) source of humanity was Africa, Dalziel was more correct in claiming African American ancestry than the case at hand?
I pointed out when the Dolezal situation was current that there are a lot of people who appear white but who would be considered sufficiently black by the laws at various times and locations, sufficiently so to be a slave. (“Hypodescent” or “One Drop Rule”.) It’s not impossible, although it appears unlikely, that she might have a sufficiently close black ancestor. That’s a hypothetical, though, not based on any actual evidence; she made up her ethnicity. She wanted to be black, so she claimed she was, made herself appear more black, and went to fight for the rights of black people.
I don’t know that Dolezal tried to claim she was more black than other (black) people, or tried to tell black people how to be black. She certainly didn’t try to focus all of the black civil rights efforts onto the rights of “trans-black” people. She was actually good at her job of fighting racism. So in those ways her situation was quite different from what we see in the trans situation, at least from the more vocal activists.
@AoS # 11:
Whose mistake? Nature’s mistake. Their brain and body appearance don’t match, so surgery, hormones, and document changes help support the self, which resides in the consciousness of the brain.
The general consensus on FA is that transgenderism resembles DSD, and also resembles homosexuality. People who don’t accept that Transwomen are Women are like people who think they have the right to tell someone with CAIS whether they should be a boy or a girl. Those same people would think being gay is a choice to be a pervert. It’s a matter of solid science and/or basic human decency. As far as I can tell, I am the only regular who disagrees… out loud.
Sackbut,
For example, Obama’s mother was descended from slaves, yet her family “passed” as white.
Sackbut #10
“Several people have discussed the “humanity” bit, ”
Including me. I have a few more thoughts I might add in the thread on Hemant’s blog, but I’m not sure if there is much point to engaging with the people who have replied to my comments.
BTW I recently read “Cynical Theories” by Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay. It is about the mostly bad effects of postmodernism. It talks a bit about Trans activism. Worth reading despite the turgid prose of the quotes from postmodernists & those influenced by postmodernism. I guess the quotes are needed to show there really are people who believe or at least say such crap.
Les sigh. Blah blah blah cliche blah blah repetitive blah blah replace gender identity with religious identity blah atheist website blah.
Blah!
It’s endlessly tiresome how difficult it is to convince people that there are, in fact, such true believers. “No, really. When they say that sex is a social construct, or that rape didn’t exist in North America before European colonization, or that 2+2=5 sometimes, they actually mean it. For really realz.”
I figured I should put this here. Hemant discusses two teachers who made an “anti-trans” video, who could be fired, but he oh-so-magnanimously comes down on the side of not firing them. I think he greatly misconstrues the video, as I’d expect, but at least he understands the value of letting people hold different opinions. I, as I expected, don’t see anything remotely hateful or dangerous in the video.
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/04/17/should-two-oregon-educators-be-fired-for-making-an-anti-trans-video/