Guest post: You plug in your good friend Pat
Originally a comment by Sastra on But I want to, he said.
@Sonderval #10:
Very insightful, and clearly expressed. This misapplied attitude of “look below the surface, it’s almost always more complicated than it appears to the simple-minded” is I think one of the main motivators for an atheist/skeptic/humanist embrace of gender ideology. It’s a sort of forced-teaming with the theory of evolution to go with the forced teaming with homosexuality and gay rights. The combination leads to a very comfortable, smug certainty that they can’t possibly be wrong. A science-oriented person ought to be just as wary of that.
YNNB #8 is undoubtedly correct about the different motivations. I’ll add in the natural human tendency to think small and personal. Say you have a friend or relative who is trans (or have emotionally bonded with a famous or fictional character you feel you know.) You see no harm in letting this particular person, Pat, be considered to be the gender they believe themselves to be. You even try very hard to see them as they see themselves.
Now — every single time you hear or read about problems with either the application of gender ideology or the claims of gender ideology itself, you plug in your Good Friend Pat. Should Pat be allowed to run? To use the restroom? To change a birth certificate? Forget the statistics, forget the specifics of a case or situation, forget the big picture or the women inconvenienced or worse. Answer as if it’s Pat, just Pat, and you’re accountable to Pat …harmless, friendly Pat who simply wants to be themselves. The side to be on will always be that which places you next to your friend. The pat answer is always Pat.
A lot of people say, “What’s that?” It’s Pat!
A lot of people ask, “Who’s he? Or she?”
A ma’am or a sir, accept him or her
or whatever it might be.
It’s time for androgyny.
Here comes Pat!
It’s also another example of learning the wrong lesson. During the campaign for LGB rights, especially marriage rights, liberals saw many conservatives change their perspective upon discovering that a family member was homosexual. So liberals learned that knowing a member of a group brings you to the right beliefs about the group. Since you know Pat, and your reasoning is based on your affiliation with Pat, your conclusion must be the right one. Those who dispute Genderism must not have their own Pats, because they’d be good Genderists if they did. (I’m sure we’ve all been asked, “Do you know any trans people?”)
But this is just the contrapositive of the argument from fallacy: because the conclusion is correct, the reasoning must be correct. Yes, those conservatives came to the right answer, but did they come to the right answer for the right reasons?
I’ve said a few times that no one’s worried about “trans inclusion” if they’re picturing Mackenzie from Neighbours in their head. (Australian soap opera, acted by Georgie Stone, trans activist young person who actually destroyed judicial oversight for trans medicalisation of kids in Australia, but he’s pretty and looks non threatening.)
I think another thing that happens when men in particular think of these Self ID laws is what they themselves would do. And they’re Good Men, so of course they’d never go into the women’s change rooms! Of course they’d feel uncomfortable being “misgendered”. And they never extend their thinking to realise that such laws also free the worst men to do the awful things they want to as well.
It’s all rather like the fella who sees no need for workplace rules about making unwelcome advances to women, since all of his advances were welcome, and you could tell, too, because all those women smiled politely and the date only couldn’t happen because she was busy.
Arcadia, that is right on the mark. Men are sure they wouldn’t do it themselves, but the idea of barring all men from something makes them feel like you are saying they personally are a threat to women. My husband gets upset when he’s on a walk and a woman crosses the street to avoid him. He doesn’t get why she might want to avoid all men, even 70 year old nearly debilitated men. “Why would she be scared of an elderly man? She can outrun and outpunch me even if she’s not good at either.”
The whole idea feels like a personal attack. I imagine for TiFs, it feels the same way.
One problem I see with that attitude is that a lot of men can’t see their own behavior. They might notice it in other men…see, he’s sexist, I’m not…but not notice that their own actions are unacceptable. Trans are sort of in the same category. I think a lot of the trans who attack people, even attack elderly women, see predatory or aggressive behavior as being some one else. They see the attacks they make as self-defense and therefore justified.
@NiV;
The conservatives came to the right conclusion because their main objection to homosexuality rested on the belief that it was unnatural, ungodly, and sinful. The protests were ultimately fueled by distaste and disgust. Those reasons are all vulnerable to anything that humanizes gay people, that turns them from pariahs into friends. Knowing a member of the other group can indeed dispel the feeling that they’re Other. Pat is gay, but such a wonderful person.
Trans Activists have bought into the idea that being trans is like being gay and objections are fueled by an emotion-laden perspective that someone saying they’re not a member of their biological sex (assigned-at-birth) is against nature the same way homosexuality is against nature — meaning morally wrong. But that’s different than the argument that it’s factually false because sex is a category in nature. Pat’s not wicked, but mistaken.
A gender critical position regarding trans identities would be more like a conservative denying that anybody ever had same-sex sex. Obviously, they didn’t do that.