Not to him maybe
Even at his dumbest and most dogmatic and fingers-in-ears how can he think he knows this?
He can’t know that; no one can; it’s not possible. It’s not knowable that zero men who identify as women will ever rape anyone or that zero men who identify as women ever have raped anyone. There are in fact reports of trans women raping women. I would love to know how he, a philosopher, thinks he can know that it has never happened and will never happen.
Not to mention, how could a professional philosopher, presumably with a higher level of education, so misunderstand the question? Why does he assume transwomen are males? He can’t answer that question, because the only answer is because they are males.
That too, but what specifically interests me about this response is how he can think he knows that. For an adult and an academic it’s like not knowing how to count past 4.
He’s not even making a genuine argument – this is exactly the kind of puerile ‘Gotcha!’ response adults get from young teens, and atheists get from theists. It’s a blatant mis-representation of what she wrote. And what’s more, those teens and theists usually only make that response in spoken arguments, where it is harder for the anyone to find out exactly what their interlocutor actually said – so this response makes him look incredibly stupid.
Ahem. 98 convicted male sex offenders, serial killers, etc. who “identify as women” and have tried to be sent to women’s prisons.
Yes, he does give the game away. And having been caught, he has to be extra-aggressively dismissive and condescending (which he already had dialed up to eleven) in order to distract and cover up this error.
Good point. Have we ever seen him count past four?
Jason Stanley: Biscuit Thief.
Something I forgot to emphasize above is that I noticed he makes three telling leaps at the same time:
males => trans women, and trans women=>[embattled minority group], and violent crime=> rape. He was primed to do exactly that because this connection (which he is so strenuously trying to both avoid and deny) is uppermost on his mind. His hair-trigger desperation to paint any and all such connections and suggestions as bigotry shows that this is a sensative point for him, to the extent that he goes looking for it and finds it when it’s not there. Never mind that this sort of po-faced disengenuousness gaslights all the women inmates who have already suffered at the hands of (conveniently trans-idenifying) male RAPISTS imprisoned with them. It’s like he’s saying “The answer is: ‘Trans women aren’t rapists.’ What was the question?” If he truly believed what he’s been saying, wouldn’t he be fighting for the freedom of the wrongfully incarcerated [embattled minority group] TiMs who have been unjustly, impossibly, accused and convicted of rape?
As Ophelia points out, he can’t possibly know this. If he did know this, could he provide us with a complete list of any other crimes or offences we are compelled, a priori, to pre-emptively exclude TiMs from ever committing? Jay walking? Shoplifting? Parking in front of fire hydrants? Burglary? Arson? Are they absolutely, automatically incapable of everything criminal, or just the rapes? A list like that would sure come in handy.
How do you know, Jason? This would be a bit of epistemology that they would be reading still in 200 years. Here’s your chance! You’ve written articles and books and all; it should be a piece of cake. Unless…. Wait. You wouldn’t make an unsupported claim in an argument, would you?
Jason Stanley’s “philosophy” in 3 words. >> Impertinence demonstrates superiority. (as seen on twitter)
Ugh, “dialogue” is a verb now?