You conflate identity and reality
From the Maya Forstater tribunal today [LE is Luke Easley, a Vice President at the Center for Global Development]:
It’s astounding stuff. This isn’t some random young “activist” on Twitter, it’s an executive at an economic research organization. This is adult world, yet the executive thinks identity is reality and people with no identity are corpses.
LE replies: “but you can have that discussion without offensive comparisons to Rachel Dolezal.”
What makes the comparison “offensive”?
Why should you have that discussion without the Dolezal comparison?
How, exactly, is Dolezal’s identity different from a trans identity?
It’s unnerving that adult executives are this confused.
“Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.” – H.L. Mencken
Here’s proof that TWAW really is a thought-terminating mantra. Being on the “right side of history” apparently absolves one from having to engage with the ideas of people who are defined (for you, by others) to be irredeemably “wrong.” Doesn’t work so well if you’re in a position of authority and responsibility and you are held to account for decisions you’ve made without thinking. Do I hear the flapping wings of birds coming home to roost?
And as I often ask, how are Otherkins’ identities any different? If someone “identifies” as being a wolf, who is to say that he is wrong if identity is reality and must be accepted without question? No identifarian has ever even attempted to answer me when I ask that because, I suspect, it’s all too clear in that example where the problem lies.
Also, I’ve noticed that Otherkin-identifying people always choose animals that they seem to like. Wolves, cats, horses, and even dragons, but never slime molds or sea lampreys.
Once the questioning moved into the Dolezal comparison, LE’s testimony becomes an extended, wordier Butterfield Gasp at the mere thought. Yet without investigation, who was to say that she did not actually have Black ancestry? Once her imposture was revealed, no amount of “trans racial theory” would ever save her claims. But it LE accepts on face value Pippa Bunce’s being a woman? How does any coherent “theory” of gender identity accomodate Bunce’s “fluidity” when its polarization seems to be driven by nothing more than opportuism, and manifested in nothing more than stereotypical, sexist wardrobe choices? That’s LE’s exemplar? As far as “hills to die on”, JKR’s choice looks like prime real estate compared to the sorry little patch LE has pitched his tent on. I wouldn’t want a lawyer grilling me if Bunce was the best defence I could muster.
Just like those who underwent past life regression were always famous, or wealthy, but never serfs, thieves, or murderers.
Maya Forstater tribunal? I thought that was long over.
That was part one, and this is part two.
Gender identity is fixed and immutable.
Some days Pip Bunce is a man, some days he is a woman.
Gender identity is fixed and immutable while you feel that particular gender identity. And having a periodically changing, immutable gender identity makes you eligible for honors, positions, and spaces that are meant for women.
Gender identity is so important that not being permitted to live according to your gender identity created such grave distress suicide is a real risk.
Unless living according to your gender identity means having to compete as a man, making it impossible for you to ever win. Winning is more important than gender identity, so your gender identity really only matters if you have a male body with a female gender identity. Female bodied people with male gender identities should be allowed to choose whether to live as their authentic selves and lose, or compete as women and win.
See Lia Thomas vs. Iszac (“Izzy”) Henig.
One of the issues here is that ‘identity’ is such a heavily overloaded word. I mean ‘overloaded’ in the technical, computer science sense: it has lots of different meanings which can be used only somewhat interchangeably. The overall semantics might be broadly the same, but you’ll quickly run into trouble if you use the wrong one.
I think two different senses of ‘identity’ that are relevant here are:
1. Stuff I make up in my head. How I feel. What I want to be seen as. Let’s call this ‘idenniny’.
2. Assertions made about me by the proper official bodies, documents etc. Let’s call this ‘identity’.
So on the one hand, we have documents like my birth certificate which assert various facts about me and on the other, we have unverified things I assert about myself. The clue here is in the word ‘certificate’: the authority is certifying things like my date and time of birth, the name I was registered with at birth, my sex and my parents. If anyone ever needs to know any of those things, the government will certify the facts.
Now, I can change my birth name any time I like. I can suddenly start doing so right this minute without taking a single action other than making that decision. In fact, I have: my birth certificate records my name as Robert, but I absolutely never use that name; it’s always been Rob. That, you’ll have to take my word for because the government doesn’t care what I call myself.
(In fact, that’s not quite true in my case: my driving licence and passport both say “Rob” but since my birth certificate was used to apply for both, there’s a clear chain of evidence that all those documents refer to the same person. But this just illustrates my point even better: the relevant authorities are certifying my identity even though I have two different names.)
It seems to me that the problem in the above exchange is the common one of slipping between identity and idenniny without due care and attention. It’s a very common Motte and Bailey tactic. The problem is not just that a fact such as my sex is material reality when my ‘gender identity’ might be whatever I want it to be, it’s that the legal and social consequences of the two are not the same. That’s why one needs to be certified and the other does not.
Honestly, we should just put computer scientists in charge of everything, we’d soon have it all sorted out.
In case it is not clear, absolutely do not do this.
It would be the worst disaster you could possibly imagine.
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LE’s belief in identity is like some Christians who are so surrounded by Christianity, they believe that atheists also believe in God, and deny God’s existence to express their anger at God.