Narrative is not existence
Nonsense from MP Angela Eagle part 2. It’s sad when people produce so much nonsense you have to address it in pieces.
Jo Grady, the union boss who was also on the panel at the fringe event, claimed people have freedom of speech, but not “freedom to offend”. The University and College Union leader said this was something she taught to her members, who include academics, lecturers and postgraduates.
She said: “Whilst it’s clear that gender-critical beliefs are protected, the form of expression isn’t. You might have freedom of speech, but you don’t have freedom to offend – particularly if that offence is enshrined within law, and I think that’s one of the things that we try and educate our members about quite a lot.”
I bet she does.
I don’t think it’s wrong to argue that legality is not the only issue. There are no laws saying you can’t go up to strangers in the street to tell them they’re ugly, for instance, but morally that’s a horrible thing to do and no one should ever do it.
But Grady wants to extend that kind of thing to cover disagreeing that people can be the opposite sex, and not just strangers in the street but anyone anywhere for any reason. A guy in a skirt is standing by the sinks staring at everyone? Never you mind, it would offend him if you told him to get out.
Dame Angela said the freedom of speech argument on trans rights seemed plausible “until you start analysing it”, adding: “To what extent does freedom of speech ever allow people to question the existence of other human beings?”
I think what the Times is trying to say there is that Dame Angela said it seems plausible to claim that people have freedom of speech to point out that people can’t change sex, until you start analysing it – at which point you should change your mind because if you point out that people can’t change sex you are questioning the existence of other human beings.
Note the switcheroo. Saying people can’t change sex is not questioning the existence of people who claim they can and do change sex. We know those people exist and we don’t question their existence. That’s a non-issue. The issue is what they say about themselves. If I say a dog is not a rabbit I’m not questioning the existence of the dog (and it works the other way around, too – if you say a rabbit is not a dog you’re still not questioning the existence of the rabbit. Or the dog. Or the person recording the whole thing.)
What Dame Angela was trying to say is that you should change your mind because if you point out that people can’t change sex you are questioning the self-description of other human beings. Not the existence, but the narrative, the story, the fantasy. Well, guess what, sometimes we do have to question the stories other people tell, including stories about themselves. Look at Trump for the most glaring example on the planet. You can’t take what he says about himself at face value, now can you. Now extrapolate from that.
Among friends and colleagues, sure, there’s an assumption that what people say about themselves is mostly true. But when the circle widens that assumption narrows very fast. With the vast majority of people we simply don’t know, and in many circumstances we should be cautious about instant belief. Trust but verify.
Women are not repeat not under any obligation whatsoever to pretend to believe men who tell us they’re women.
Seems clear: you have freedom of speech, you just can’t say things.
WTF??? I guess it’s a slippery slope between disagreeing with somebody’s beliefs and wanting to kill them and their entire family and everybody else who thinks like them and their families.
When I first became aware of the skeptical movement back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, one of the issues which drew me in was Multiple Personality Disorder. I watched the film The Three Faces of Eve on TV when I was a child, and as a teenager read and re-read the popular “nonfiction” work Sybil. I was hooked. It was absolutely possible for entirely different people to inhabit the same body, their very real existence generated by trauma.
But a few critical articles in Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer made me question my assumptions. The ultimate cause of MPD appeared to be iatrogenic, a symptom induced by therapy and a cultural template which was adopted by people who used it as a coping strategy for other, less exciting, mental health problems. The “identities” exhibited weren’t individuals in their own right, but inventions of the imagination usually fostered by unconscious prompts from sympathetic therapists who discovered dozens and dozens of patients who happened to have multiple personalities. I needn’t have cried when Eve Black died by disappearing into the less enthralling Jane, the True Self.
There was an increasingly fringe movement which pushed back against the growing skepticism in order to support MPD as completely valid. Those alters were REAL! How dare people deny their existence. Or, if it was the Alter speaking, how dare they deny my existence, the mischievous but protective boy who comes out when things get a little hard to handle and hustles the Others away.
Needless to say, I see a strong parallel here. When a girl goes to a therapist or approaches a teacher and says she’s really a boy named “Leo,” the adults seem to bond with Leo. Any attempt to address the identity as a coping strategy by Jessica is seen as a betrayal of Leo. He’s no longer an alternate personality inside a female body — he’s the REAL personality, the only one. Jessica is supposed to disappear forever into the True Self.
I vaguely remember some joke that goes something like ‘do you believe in full-immersion baptism?’ ‘believe in it? hell, I’ve actually seen it!’
There’s a swingers’ club in my province that periodically has nights when couples and single women are invited but single men are not. And the couples must be hetero or two women. As a result, the club is sometimes accused of having a homophobic policy about who counts as a couple. They defend their position by pointing out the possibility that two single men might team up, pretend to be a gay couple to get in the door, then go their separate ways and start cruising women once inside, which would then contribute to the social atmosphere that the patrons who prefer the couples/women’s nights are trying to avoid.
However, they have a self-identification policy regarding who counts as a woman.
I wonder if they are aware of how absurd this combination of policies is, and are just trying to not get cancelled, or if it’s a striking case of cognitive dissonance. How can one possibly think that creepy men would pretend to be gay in order to violate the boundaries of an event and its patrons, but would never pretend to be trans? In fact it would be easier to pretend to be trans, because you wouldn’t need to find a co-conspirator, coordinate your arrival times, or try to act convincing as a couple. You’d just have to say the magic words.
I’m betting it’s the first. Also rolling my eyes.