“Bridges explained to Hawley”
The Washington Post duly takes the party line.
Sen. Hawley accused of transphobic questioning at abortion hearing
Not “Hawley called transphobic” but “accused of transphobic questioning” – which subtly implies that there is such a thing as transphobic questioning.
The subhead isn’t even a little bit subtle:
The Missouri Republican refused to acknowledge that some transgender men can get pregnant
No he didn’t. He refused to swallow the lie that some men can get pregnant.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday on the legal impact of the end of Roe v. Wade, was accused by a congressional witness of employing a transphobic line of questioning.
Or to put it another way, a congressional witness marched proudly into the trap Josh Hawley had set.
Bridges, who had during the hearing defended access to abortion care for all people who are at risk of pregnancy, explained that cisgender women, trans men and nonbinary people can get pregnant.
She didn’t explain anything, she talked the usual line of childish fantasy, making Democrats look like idiots.
Bridges explained to Hawley that the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe impacts cisgender women as well as other groups. Those things, she said, are not mutually exclusive.
Again, she didn’t “explain” anything, she just talked fantasy-riddled jargon, in a very smug manner.
Some experts on gender and reproductive rights use gender-neutral terms including “people with a capacity for pregnancy” and “pregnant people” when talking about these issues, which help illustrate that not only cisgender women have the ability for pregnancy — and cisgender women aren’t the only ones impacted by decisions to restrict reproductive health care.
And all women who know which end is up tell them to stop.
It seems to me that the inability to distinguish between statement (or claim, proposition, etc.) and explanation, is the general problem. “Gender dysphoria” contains in its DSM definition its own explanation. That is, it refers to a symptom-cause pair: “Gender dysphoria refers to the distress that may accompany the incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender.” (DSM-V, p. 451) By this definition, every instance of gender dysphoria is explained by the gobbledegook. There’s no such thing as gender dysphoria without the gobbledegook, and there’s no such thing as an alternative explanation for gender dysphoria. So it’s impossible to concede that gender dysphoria is a real phenomenon without also conceding that the gobbledegook is true. It’d be like appending “…, which God created” to the definition of Earth. Then to acknowledge the existence of the planet on which we stand would be a positive judgement on the existence of God.
Josh Hawley would happily run that video as a campaign ad.
Screechy, that’s what I was telling my husband yesterday. I suspect it will show up soon, if not in his campaign, in that of some other Republican. “Do you want this level of idiocy leading the country? Neither do I!”
And at least at one level, I’ll agree with them. The problem is, their levels of idiocy are no better, and demonstrably dangerous.
A lot of people have a weird tendency to assume that the general public would side with them if only the issue was explained to them in the right way.
To some extent, this is understandable. After all, we believe we have good reasons for our views, and if those reasons were communicated properly to other people, those people would reach the same conclusions as us.
But this relies on an assumption that (1) this is a matter of pure logic, and most people are logical; and/or (2) to the extent there are underlying values that shape people’s views, people share my values.
Fortunately, my contempt for humanity largely protects me from this fallacy. I don’t have much confidence in the average person’s ability to reason, and I’m well aware that I have idiosyncratic views on many things. One of the many reasons I could never run for public office.
Screechy, sounds like we have a lot in common. Sometimes when something ludicrous occurs, my husband will ask me if that lowered my respect for the common man. Since I have little respect for the “common man” (which is one of those catch-all terms that means what you want it to mean at the time you use it), I answer no. He knows all that, it’s just sort of a game with him.
Re #1, but claiming that “trans” = “has gender dysphoria” is transphobic, don’cha know.
Screechy @ 4
I am reminded of an intelligent and well-meaning co-worker who used to insist that all disagreements were because people didn’t have all the relevant facts. That is, any rational person, presented with the complete set of facts (including about future events when relevant), would certainly come to a single conclusion on whatever the issue was. I tried to argue that people have different points of view and different values, but no, those were just people missing facts. He strikes me (in retrospect) as a pathological version of what you describe.
A related fallacy, generally held by white collar educated members of the chattering classes, is that “poor education” is the problem which could be solved if we spent more on teacher salaries and made college free. I don’t think this will s true. Was schooling universally better in 1957…or .1857?
Screechy Monkey #4, iknklast #5
Same here! I don’t think I’m particularly biased in favor of my fellow Norwegians, but if you’re only going to read one Norwegian work of literature in your life, you could do a lot worse than Henrik Ibsen’s play Enemy of the People, a scathing critique of the idea that the majority is always right. The protagonist’s integrity and principles brings him into conflict with vested interests as well as the petty short-term concerns of the mob (the parallels to climate change denialism couldn’t be more obvious), and when he refuses to back down he is branded enemy of the people. The highlight of the play is the most epic, glorious rant (by the protagonist) against the “cursed compact majority” I have ever read.
Or as a more contemporary Norwegian, Jo Nesbø, once put it (my translation), “ordinary folks have beer breath and do scary things”.
Seconded. I have read it; it is not the only work of Norwegian literature I have read, but I do think most of them were written by Ibsen.
I may just steal that line.