The difference
Sastra makes an interesting point on Jerry Coyne’s post about FFRF’s cowardly stab in the front.
One of the things about the transgender topic which has really stood out to me is the huge emphasis its advocates place on victimhood. While that may be a major component of all the areas of critical social justice, when it comes to the transgender it’s turned up to 11.
Trans people are the most marginalized, the most oppressed, the most vulnerable, the most fragile, sensitive, and easily offended. Suicide is seen as a likely and not unreasonable reaction to gender dysphoria. Meltdowns over misgendering are understandable. There is apparently no pain so great, no sense of alienation so cutting, as other people thinking you’re one sex when in your mind you’re not that sex. It removes your humanity and prevents you from functioning.
It’s true. Other struggles for rights and equality haven’t worked that way: they have put the emphasis on equality and the accompanying goods like respect, dignity, rights, fairness, openness, participation. The goal was not “Feel sorry for us!!!” The goal was very much the contrary. Do NOT feel sorry for us; don’t patronize us, don’t “protect” us; don’t pat us on the head; give us our rights and get the hell out of our way.
Why is the trans campaign so different?
My guess is that it’s because the trans campaign is (of course) dominated by male trans people as opposed to female ones. Male trans people pretend to be women. What are women? The weaker sex. More fragile, more sensitive, more emotional, more feeble, more whiney. To play a convincing woman you have to be in floods of tears most of the time, and in danger of being humiliated and degraded and beaten to a pulp all the time.
Part strategy, part kink, all bullshit.
Yes, I think that’s exactly it. And I think it’s also to do with the fact that there’s a fatal paradox at the heart of the transgender movement that cannot be addressed logically, so walls of emotional appeal and taboo have to be enforced around it to keep the whole enterprise from collapsing.
The paradox is that most men who dress up in women’s clothes can’t simply admit that they’re men dressed in feminine attire, because their own sexual tastes strongly discriminate between femininely-dressed men and “actual” women. It’s precisely because they can instinctively distinguish so clearly between males and females just as we all can — they react physiologically differently to females over males just as we all do; in their case, females turn them on in ways that males cannot — that they must be seen as literal women.
All that shouting about how vulnerable they are is really just a different way of saying, “shut up and ignore the fact that none of this makes any sense OR YOU’LL HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS.” What they really mean is, “shut up and ignore the fact that this is all a giant fetish and you’re getting in the way of our fulfillment of our sexual desires.”
It’s almost enough to make one think fetishes are not an unmixed blessing.
Other struggles for human rights have focussed on facts – these are the rights we’re being denied and this is why we should not be denied those rights. The transgender ‘struggle’ cannot use those facts because they already have the same rights as everybody else; it’s why they shout ‘trans rights are human rights’ but never specify which rights they are demanding. So their tactics have to be emotion based – it’s all they have.
Is the trans movement dominated by the male trannies these days though? Their interests, I’ll grant you, but the loudest and most effective online bullies seem to be They/Thems and the likes of Strangio (at least it seems that way). Given the ROGD-style surge in female participation in the fetish that wouldn’t be surprising. Y’all’ve been at this for over a decade; the dynamics have probably changed a bit.
BKiSA, it isn’t necessarily the males doing the shouting, but the shouting is happening predominantly on their behalf. They are the ones that need all this noise and heat, because they are trying to push into women’s spaces without any limits. A trans identified female can often walk into a male space and use the bathroom without being noticed, if she has been taking testosterone. There isn’t a push to insist on TiFs in male sports, or male prisons – for obvious reasons.
And yes, the they/thems, the non-binary, the ‘queer’, are having a heyday. They really, really have to shout, because the NB, Ace/Aro, Queer (many of whom are heteronormative but need to be special, so they identify as ‘queer’) make even less sense than the trans. They are not, however, as obviously threatening, since a lot of them are women that just want their special points and don’t necessarily pose a threat to other women unless they wrap barbed wire around a baseball bat or something.
The dynamics are changing, but it is still the TiMs that pose the biggest threat, and a lot of the noise is being generated on their behalf. It is on their behalf that women are being told to move over. Most of us don’t give a flying fuck if there is an ‘NB’ woman in the bathroom with us; we probably won’t even notice.
I think people who identify as transgender are vulnerable in a way other groups aren’t, and this is reflected in the way they approach their demand for civil rights.
Tell a gay man he’s not gay and he doesn’t stop having sex with other men. Homosexuals are not asking to be believed. A black person isn’t primarily engaged in begging others to reassure him that he’s black, they acknowledge that he’s black, others must acknowledge that he’s black, too. Activists are focused on getting others to accept that it’s okay to be a member of this minority — there’s nothing inherently wrong with them. Treat them fairly. Let them exist in peace.
Trans activists may pretend that trans people are in the same boat and asking for the same things, but the real argument’s over whether trans people exist in the way they say they exist. They become ordinary gender nonconforming people if they don’t.
I wonder whether the focus on appeal to pity/misery could be just that it works. I mean, they’ve been trying to find the most effective tactic for a really long time. Playing victim may just be the most effective rhetorical strategy, at least with those who consider themselves liberal and especially with university students and faculty. One might even say it’s disproportionately effective, to the point that it almost seems tailor-made to target specific demographics.
According to a 2021 survey of psychologists:
When asked whether scholars should be completely free to pursue research questions without fear of institutional punishment for their research conclusions, among men, the majority (60.5 percent) said “yes,” 37.0 percent said “it’s complicated,” and 2.5 percent said “no.” Among women, the majority (59.6 percent) said “it’s complicated,” 39.8 percent said “yes,” and 0.6 percent said “no.”
When asked whether scientists should prioritize truth or social equity goals when the two conflict, among men, the majority (66.4 percent) prioritized truth, 32.4 percent said “it’s complicated,” and 1.3 percent prioritized social equity. Among women, the majority (52.1 percent) said “it’s complicated,” 43.0 percent prioritized truth, and 4.8 percent prioritized social equity.
According to a 2017 poll on support for free speech,
65 percent of men surveyed believed that supporting the right to make an argument is not the same as endorsing it; 51 percent of women disagreed.
Nearly 6 in 10 liberals (59%) favor a law that would require people to refer to transgender persons by their preferred gender pronouns, not their biological sex. This is in sharp contrast to what Americans overall support. Nearly two-thirds (62%) oppose a law requiring people use certain pronouns for transgender people while 37% would support it. Moderates (60%) and conservatives (82%) are highly opposed to such laws, including 59% of conservatives who strongly oppose.
According to a 2021 survey on academic freedom, only 28% were willing to have lunch with someone who doesn’t believe in magic gender, with age, sex, and degree of Left-ness being highly predictive of support for authoritarian policy.
Making truth anything other than the highest virtue is foolishness of such magnitude you can’t even find it on the foolishness chart. That 33.7% of male and 56.9% (!) of female psychologists could disagree with that is staggering. That only 35% of men and nearly half (!) of women apparently don’t distinguish between a right, an argument, and a belief is … Well, it’s explanatory, at least. And since when is compelled speech compatible with liberalism?
Ugh, that was supposed to be nicely formatted as a nested list. I even tested the HTML before submitting. :(
It’s very nicely formatted.
I’ve assumed all along that the misery/pity focus is because it works. We know it works – we’re all too familiar with the maudlin wailing that substitutes for argument or persuasion, and with how shockingly effective it is.
I think the thing that gets me is how specifically effective it is with liberals. It makes me wonder if every political attitude comes with a completely unprotected backdoor that people will simply pretend isn’t there.
NiV, it would be interesting to see that survey done with scientists; I suspect the trans would find out that the scientific consensus is not on their side. It’s easy to see the P.Z.s of the world, because they have drunk the Kool-Aid. But the rank and file of scientists and science professors seem more likely to see the world through science, not ideology, at least on an issue that is plainly a scientific question. I base this only on my own experiences, where the only instructor in our science cluster who believed in gender woo was the Psych prof (and why was she in the science cluster? To give the trade students an easy ‘science’ course to fulfill their requirement. Tells you how rigorous our Psych 101 class was).
Nullius, I think I’m enough of a consequentialist to be in the “it’s complicated” camp if only to avoid giving the impression that I support straw man fantasies such as atheists trying to covert old ladies on their death-bed (the dying person is always female) to some non-existent form of nihilism. But beyond that maybe there’s some form of truth we shouldn’t pursue (the secret of immortality – that one scares me maybe more than the threat of nuclear ever did.) I mean I’m not convinced – it’s just that it’s, well, complicated. (And I hate answering survey questions were the terms are not clearly defined, which pretty much always, they aren’t.)
Might there be knowledge that we ought not know and so ought not research? Well, whether we ought know something (e.g., the secret to immortality) is a truth-functional proposition. [It is either true or false (not neither and not both) that we ought know it.] To argue that we ought not know some fact is to argue that it is the case (i.e., it is true) that we ought not know it. (To argue that there may be some fact we ought not know is also to argue that it is the case (i.e., it is true) that we ought not know it. And so on ad infinitum into the highest orders of modal qualifications on possibility and necessity.) So assume it is the case (i.e., it is true) that there is some knowledge we ought not know and ought not research.
If it be true that we ought neither know nor research something, then that truth logically and necessarily precedes the decision to forbid research. Imagine the research were capriciously forbidden without checking whether it should be forbidden. Does that intuitively seem right? Imagine that it’s instead forbidden despite proof that it isn’t something that should be forbidden. Worse, imagine that it’s proven to be something that should not be forbidden! One’s intuition must be twisted indeed for that to feel right. Truth always has priority. Not telling the truth, not teaching the truth—truth itself.
It really isn’t complicated, just as 1+1=2 isn’t complicated, despite the fact that it took Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead 379 pages to get there in Principia Mathematica. Truth must precede all, for all supervenes on truth. It can be no other way without abandoning our existing notions of justification entirely.