Guest post: No not like that, or that, or that
Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on What was that about arbitrary ranking?
One of the things I find frustrating in this area is the insistence by so many that there are simply no legitimate criticisms, and no legitimate critics.
Here you have someone saying that Stock’s work isn’t even “scholarship” and that philosophers should have, I don’t know, tarred and feathered her or something. Whatever is the philosophical equivalent of being disbarred or “struck off” the official Registry of Philosophers, I suppose.
Emily Bazelon writes a very even-handed article for the NY Times about youth gender medicine? Well, what does she know about this subject? Jesse Singal writes multiple articles about this area and does deep dives on the published research? Ugh, that dude is OBSESSED, donchathink there’s something creepy and odd about that?
Anyway, you can’t opine on what went on in those clinics unless you worked there. Oh, but if you did (Jamie Reed), then you can’t be trusted because you’re a transphobic bigot, even if you’re trans yourself, and besides, she was “just a receptionist” (which I’m sure folks here know wasn’t the case). Erica Anderson, a trans psychologist who’s worked in the field? Oh, ignore her, she’s a bigot, too.
The NHS comes out with a report raising concerns about gender medicine in the UK? Well, that’s TERF Island, what do you expect? Sweden, Finland, and Norway, too? Nothing to see here, folks, please disperse. All is well.
There are, of course, public controversies over which there really is no legitimate debate. There really aren’t any reasonable, good faith Flat Earthers. But that’s a pretty high bar to clear, and when you declare that your views have no legitimate opposition, you’re putting yourself out on a precarious ledge.
And it’s really counterproductive. When people can see that it sure looks like there’s some legitimate criticism, attempts to handwave it away — or worse, intimidate or dismiss it with accusations of bigotry — just encourage conspiracy theories and open the door to actual bigots, and the grifters and political opportunists who pander to them. I’m not saying that justifies anyone deciding to go full-on bigot. Anyone who does that is morally responsible for that choice, just like anyone who becomes a full-on white supremacist because they’re a little irritated by wokeness needs to own that choice. But there is simply no way that all the developments we’re witnessing — a massive increase in children being diagnosed and given medical and surgical treatment, and trans women competing in women’s sports, etc. — is going to happen without some societal debate and discussion, and anyone who truly cares about trans people is making a massive miscalculation by thinking they can preempt that debate by just branding everyone who disagrees with them as an ignorant bigot.
TL;DR version: you can’t keep crying wolf (or, in this case, TERF) and be surprised when people stop taking you seriously.
“No legitimate criticism” and “no honorable way out” are, of course, memetic markers of high demand organizations; i.e., cults. I swear, if humanity survives, anthropologists and historians will make careers of studying the spread of Genderism.
Unfortunately, right now, too many doctors and therapists are making careers out of that very spreading.
Are there other topics where we find ourselves hiding behind genuine outrage that has shut-down our brains? Where we imagine that anyone saying something contrary to the group-think is seen as a monster?
@Me;
My guess:
There are still conservative areas of the country where there’s “no debate” about whether God exists and nonbelievers are demonized, but this is shrinking. There are liberal college campuses and the cultures surrounding them where questioning any aspect of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion training, Critical Race Theory, or the Black Lives Matter movement will not unexpectedly lead to immediate accusations of racism & bigotry. There can also be a lot of reflexive hate directed at people who have reservations surrounding “rape culture” and the remedies taken against it.
But I think the trans issue sets the standard. It was derived from other issues, but seems to have unique aspects (i.e. disagreement leads to suicides) that makes adherents more likely to turn furiously against those who are skeptical.
From my experience, yes. Islam – the inability of the left to criticize. Though I haven’t heard anyone literally say “no debate”, there is a tendency to accuse anyone who dares to suggest that there might be some not-so-nice things in Islam.
I have also had that experience in reference to gay men. When left-leaning friends find out my husband left me because he was gay, and that I was, unknowingly, a trophy wife, they get all huffy if I tell them any further details, because he was definitely cruel in the divorce, not to mention attempting to commandeer more than half my salary through alimony (Oklahoma requires ten years of marriage before alimony is a thing so I dodged that bullet; he wanted my money, but not me) or that he kept all the good furniture and stuff, leaving me with a few pans with broken handles and a bed that was old and rickety.
The left has a tendency to be unable to see populations that have been oppressed as possibly having less than great people in them; I find this condescending, like they are all noble children or something. Other populations, other groups, have the same likelihood of having not-so-nice people as white Americans. To say otherwise is to be condescending, actually.
@iknklast,
And related to Islam, also any suggestion that, bad as the Israeli government is and has been, Israel isn’t totally to blame for the situation in Palestine, that perhaps Arab countries and even some of the Palestinians themselves share some of the blame, is enough to get you blacklisted by some leftists. (And of course since they’re leftists, there’s no chance that they’re even a bit antisemitic.)
I’ve been trying to think of topics which enrage me so much I refuse to debate them and don’t consider them a topic for debate. This is harder.
Since I spent considerable time in the skeptic community, I would consider Holocaust denial, Flat Earthism, Young Earth Creationism, and the belief that some people can live on nothing but air to all be legitimate debate topics. I would try to keep them from being taught as truth in a history or science class, but that’s not shutting down the argument or placing individual believers outside the pale. Ordinary, well-meaning people can believe some incredibly stupid or even hateful things. Seemingly sophisticated arguments for the Final Solution or Why Women Shouldn’t Vote would also in my mind deserve serious rebuttal in a situation where they’re seriously being proposed.
The worst examples of the extremes in extremist racist might qualify, though. I don’t consider “kill all the n—s” open for a civil discussion of pros and cons. Not under any conceivable circumstances I once came across a TRA explaining that “no TW in women’s bathrooms” was just like that. While they’re horribly wrong on analogy, they might have hit on a common ground for the visceral reaction.
(There are of course petty personal matters I’ve gone “no debate” on in my own household, but those probably won’t qualify. If I don’t want to hear some pointless complaint for the millionth time, then I don’t.)
I’m less concerned with outrage “shutting down people’s brains” than I am with it deterring journalists, scientists, doctors, etc. from tracking down and presenting helpful information.
There are plenty of topics where there’s a lot of outrage, and where public debate isn’t terribly nuanced, but I’m not sure it matters all that much in the end because most people have the information and arguments that they needed to come to a conclusion, however flawed it might be. Like, the abortion debate has always been pretty heated, but I am under no delusions that one really good NYT or WaPo story is going to win over anyone. (Intimidation of abortion providers is obviously a different issue.)
But with trans issues generally, and youth gender medicine specifically, there are a lot of unknowns, and the average person doesn’t know a lot about the subject. I am still open to the possibility that puberty blockers and cross sex hormones are a sound treatment for many teens — but I don’t think the case has been made yet, and I don’t trust many of the people trying to make it because they’re not engaging with good faith critic and often misrepresenting the state of the evidence and the professional consensus or lack thereof.
This is tangential, but thinking of TWs in women’s bathrooms, what seems to be driving a lot of the visceral reactions to gender-critical views is TRAs believing GCs are calling ALL transwomen dangerous when GCs claim that self-ID gives predatory men an opening to enter women’s intimate spaces. Some of the reactions are self-serving of course and serve to deflect the point being made, which is that making Self-ID legal makes women less safe. They then say “of course no real TW would threaten women” but that’s not the issue. The issue is that accepting Self-ID makes it impossible for women to defend their spaces and themselves as it gives exhibitionists cover when they can blithely claim to be TWs. And just saying “well, if they are predatory cis men then we can deal with them” vastly underestimates how devious such predators are. They’re not going to be bloody obvious about it, and they’ll still get what they want.
And then there’s the matter of transwomen who claim to be lesbians… well, let’s not go there.