About the emotional stunting
Much is made of Mermaids’ promotion of puberty blockers, which halt children’s physical growth. In many ways I am far more concerned about the emotional stunting. The #NoDebate, #ProtectTransKids message refuses to acknowledge that our identities are shaped through constant negotiation with others.
By telling children that anyone who does not see them as they see themselves is a threat, Mermaids is preventing the development of mature individuals — adults who understand that we are all defined in the context of our relationships with others, including those with whom we may not always agree.
Exactly. It’s the worship of The Self that is so stifling and damaging.
I think that should read:
‘anyone who does not see them as Mermaids sees them is a threat’
My husband was highly critical this morning of something he read saying we need to unify. In some ways, that’s right, we do need strength in numbers. But the problem with the columnists who say this, and which my husband was mocking, is that they don’t realize that for many of us, that means walking in lockstep with someone whom we disagree with on most things. They don’t indicate which side we should unify around, but for some reason, it always becomes some vague, nebulous “middle”. So we are supposed to give up half of what we believe, and they are? To meet halfway between? In some utopian middle?
News flash for pundits: The “middle” doesn’t always hold the answer. If I say 2+2=4, and you say 2+2=6, we aren’t going to get a better answer by saying 2+2=5. In many issues, too, the answer could lie at one of the extremes, somewhere between but closer to one of the extremes, or many other places. Acquiescing to nonsense, whether from the right or the left, is not going to get us a better world. It is fine to divide into different sides if you have different values and different goals.
The problem is, the extremes and fringes are so ridiculous and so shouty. For those of us who were considered at the extreme, but suddenly find the Overton window shifted so that the extreme is actually now extreme, but being mainstreamed, making nice isn’t always a good answer.
iknklast,
I think part of the problem is that these pundits live in a different world than the rest of us. I don’t mean just “they’re the elite and we’re the common folk,” though that can be part of it. I just mean that the stakes are different for them, in both directions: they’re often insulated from the consequences of the other side’s policies, yet they feel conflict more sharply because of the work and social circles in which they live.
Example 1: Opinion columnists/pundits. I’m sure Ross Douthat is a swell guy and easy to get along with. He seems nice in the podcasts and dialogues I’ve heard him have with liberals over the years, and that’s quite a few since he used to be a semi-regular on Bloggingheads back when I followed it. I have no doubt that liberals like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias genuinely like the guy, and probably for good personal reasons. And if you’re Klein in particular, who is a NYT colleague, you kind of need to get along professionally. If I ever met him, I’d be polite and chances are we’d have a perfectly civil encounter. But that doesn’t change the fact that Douthat is (among other things) a theocrat who thinks The Handmaid’s Tale is an aspirational story. I don’t want to “unify” with someone like that, and as I’m unlikely to ever meet or work with Douthat, I couldn’t give a shit if he’s offended by people like me characterizing his views harshly.
Example 2: This has changed in recent years for reasons that are all too apparent, but it used to be the case that some people were surprised by how well some Supreme Court justices got along. I think Ginsburg and Scalia went to the opera together; some of the others were regular bridge partners. They all tended to speak highly of their colleagues and how well they got along personally. And I think that was a good thing for them, and did no harm to the causes they each supported. There’s no reason that, e.g., Ginsburg should have gone to work every day dreading seeing Scalia in the courtroom and avoiding him in the hallways and shooting nasty glances across the conference room table because they are ideologically opposed. It would have made the job really miserable, and wouldn’t have accomplished anything: Scalia wasn’t going to suddenly support women’s rights because of a scowl from a colleague. But that doesn’t mean that the rest of us should mince words about what the conservative justices are doing. We don’t have to work with them, we don’t see them in the halls every day.
It reminds me of the old debates about Gnu Atheism. The anti-Gnus were always anxious to reduce everything to personal relationships: Richard Dawkins writing a book titled “The God Delusion” was supposedly the equivalent of telling grandma (it was always grandma for some reason) on her deathbed that her religious beliefs are silly, Christopher Hitchens being harsh in a public debate was the same as telling your uncle at Thanksgiving dinner that he’s evil for going to church, etc. etc.
I think this is another area where we’re still adjusting to social media. It used to be that if your neighbor had a yard sign for a political candidate you despised, that didn’t prevent you from having pleasant neighborly chats about how well their garden is growing this year, or inviting them to your BBQ, or whatever. If you were both the kind of people who liked the cut-and-thrust of political debate, you might engage them, but in most instances you just gracefully avoided the topic (and people who didn’t possess that skill/inclination, and would constantly inject politics into every discussion, you learned to avoid). That didn’t necessarily mean that you thought your neighbor was a swell person and that their political views didn’t affect your view of them, it just meant you exercised some discretion.
That’s all a little harder now when so many people are constantly broadcasting their views where their neighbors and colleagues and relatives can see them. It’s not just a yard sign any more. In some ways of course that is more “honest” — we aren’t engaging in so many polite fictions. But in other ways it feels like now most people have become that neighbor who injects politics into every discussion.
Sorry, this meandered around a bit.
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A pro-trans article in an Arizona newspaper a few weeks ago had a line from a trans booster that was about how “trans kids” are under “constant attack by the world” and there was no pushback by the writer of the article on that claim.
But the phrase stuck with me — these kids are being told that they are under constant attack by the world? Constantly attacked? By the WHOLE world? Everybody who does not live in the cult hugbox is out to get them, to attack them, to destroy them? No place is safe but the hugbox if the whole world is out to get you! The cashier at the supermarket may be one of The World. The bus driver might be one of The World. And, of course, anybody who questions the cult dogma in the slightest way is The World coming to attack them.
This movement destroys minds and bodies of the vulnerable young.
southwest 88, it’s so easy to convince young people that the world is out to get them anyway. When you’re going through puberty, it seems like even your body is out to get you. It’s easy to believe especially in an internet world where they’re being fed conspiracy theories 24/7 and are being told how special they are.
Mermaid is simply carrying out the basic ideas in Trans ideology, in which trans people are victims of everything. Their body betrays them; the world hates them. They tell themselves and each other that being “misgendered “ or hearing their “deadname” causes an existential blowout, erasing their existence and provoking feelings of suicide. Everything rests on whether others validate them; a scornful look in a bathroom causes intense brooding and possible anger. It’s all “violence” which makes them feel “unsafe.”
Trans people all seem to share the same phobias. We would call them transphobias, but the term appears to be taken.