Guest post: It’s not that easy
Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on A “so” doing a lot of work.
How does failure to believe a claim = erasure of the claimant? There’s no connection. The world would have to be entirely imaginary for that to work.
Person A: “I’m a unicorn.”
Person B: ” There’s no such thing!”
Person A: vanishes without so much as a puff of smoke.
Unfortunately for him, there really is an actual material reality which isn’t affected by his imagination. Unfortunately for the rest of us, if absolutely everyone else suddenly agreed that there’s no such thing as ‘trans’, he would go on stubbornly existing.
To be fair, I think the “erasure” is supposed to be metaphorical. As in, Person B’s retort causes people to believe that Person A isn’t actually an unicorn, or even that Person A doesn’t exist.
The issue, of course, is that there isn’t much evidence to support A’s claim in the first place; really, the claim of erasure is an excuse which aims to compensate for this lack of evidence. You can only observe it to be true if you already believe it to be true. The same strategy is used to back up various religious beliefs: consider faith healing, for instance.
Erasure is, in this case, just an emotive and pseudo-intellectual way to claim “bad things is happening to us wot”.
Erasure is an actual phenomenon, such as when the name or words for someone or something are stricken from records. Which is (by Jove!) exactly what is happening when “woman” and “girl” are stricken and replaced with gender-neutral, dehumanizing logorrhea.
Thanks for providing me with the opportunity to learn (via a web search) that the quotation Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away is credited to Philip K Dick.
Alan, another one I like is ‘reality is what kicks back when you kick it’. (I found it attributed to Victor Stenger, but I’m not sure that’s where I first heard it).
Victor Stenger once glared at me in an elevator. Really glared; it was quite odd. /irrelevant gossip
C J Cherryh wrote an entire book based on the premise of “reality kicks back” – “Wave Without A Shore”.
Back in the day, this sort of half-baked solipsism was reserved for student pubs and one too many bong hits.
Since gender is supposed to be a “core belief” — and core beliefs are identifying beliefs — and how you identify yourself is how you define yourself — then core beliefs are necessary to the definition of “You.”
Remove the element necessary to the definition and whatever you’re defining doesn’t exist. Without which, nothing.
1) Bachelors are unmarried men.
2) Bob-the-Self-Defined-Bachelor is married.
3) BOB DOES NOT EXIST!!
Or:
1) Women are human females.
2) Roberta-the-Self-Defined-Woman is male.
3) ROBERTA DOES NOT EXIST!!
Murder by logic.
Even so, the accusation that we’re “erasing” trans people by failing to validate them always makes me think that we’re the people sitting in the audience failing to clap for Tinkerbell and … her light goes off and stays off!!
Dead. We did it. We let down the Boy Who Won’t Grow Up and all the Wendy’s in the audience, too.
This reminds me of the joke about Descartes’ death. When a waiter asked him if he wanted wine with his dinner, he replied “I think not”, and poof! he disappeared.
Once again, I am in turns amused and humbled that a little comment has been the seed for a great thread. Some wonderful responses here! I wish I could write as well as Ophelia, or the rest of the commenters on this wonderful blog (the only one I read daily)!
Sometimes a little comment packs a lot into a small space. Think haiku etc.