Without a hint of irony
Sarah Haider on atheism and gendertheism:
I have never seen anything like it. In amazement, I watched scores of people I respected add pronouns in their emails, flags to their bios, and repeat circular mantras like “trans women are women”. The same people who laughed at religious credulity accepted the idea of a “gender” fully and without question, and worse–they suppressed all open discussion. Overnight, the same people who campaigned against blasphemy laws enacted their own version without a hint of irony. I watched long-standing figures in the movement be cast down for this crime of doubt; first by insane radicals on social media, but as the disease progressed, also by the most prominent organizations we had.
In other words, movement atheism had betrayed nearly every value it claimed to stand for.
I think of all the kind and generous people I had met there (including the heads of FFRF), and my heart breaks to see their fall. There are many, I’m sure, who are bowing only because the pressure to do so is enormous, and I can sympathize with this and wouldn’t wish a woke mob on anyone. I myself stayed silent far longer than I should have. But while I have compassion for the bullied, I am astonished at the zealotry of the believers, who are legion.
Same. Same, same, same.
At the same time FTB started in on you, I was being told that, as a white woman, my plays were unacceptable unless they were diverse – I needed people of color in every play, apparently. (I have not noticed white male writers being told this). Shortly after, I was informed that a play I wrote that had people of color in it was not acceptable, because I am white. So I must have people of color, but I am not allowed to write people of color…the take home message being: White Women are not Allowed to Write Plays.
At that point, I was just beginning to be aware of the trans stuff…and it was the FTB pogrom that clued me in. I knew a bit about bathroom bills, but that was about it, and I hadn’t really formulated an opinion.
I have always been a believer in diversity and equality; what we are being asked to bow down to is neither.
I still don’t entirely understand why all these people who prided themselves so much on their intellect and rationality went so hard for THIS one. You, an atheist, chose to take Kierkegaard’s leap of faith for cross-dressers, of all things. You pronounced a pastel Shahada for a passel of bossy transvestites.
I don’t even slightly understand it, and never will. The absurdity and fictionality seem so obvious.
Maybe…they thought it was similar to the gay rights movement? They thought the demands of the trans ideology were the same as the gay rights movement, and that only nasty reactionary bigots were against the trans movement. Certainly around 2018 that was the line that people like Owen Jones and Juno Dawson were pushing.
https://janeclarejones.com/2018/09/09/gay-rights-and-trans-rights-a-compare-and-contrast/
And don’t forget the Anglo-American left had moved away from their support for civil liberties then. “Let the person with the unpopular opinion speak. If he or she is wrong, you can explain to the person why their opinion is incorrect” had disappeared. Instead, “No debate” had become the standard retort to any attempt to discuss issues.
Some people have no good reason to. There are some prominent examples at top levels. Intellectual self evaluation is notoriously faulty and generally ego driven.
I don’t understand it either. All I can guess is that they are using evaluative criteria that I don’t have access to. I mean if they are giving it any thought whatsoever.
Well sure they thought that, but that’s just the same question over again. WHY did they think that? Especially over time – why did they go on and on and on thinking it?
If we could get enough of them to come here to B&W and explain why, maybe we could get some answers, or at least some of the folks here would be able to figure out a hypothesis in general terms, but beyond that I really don’t know. It seems the why of it isn’t something they can figure out either, or be willing to share if they did.
I’m sure I’ll be labelled a right wing bigot for even suggesting such a thing.
I think “why” isn’t strictly answerable, at least, not coherently, even by the most enthusiastic proponents.. I don’t think they know “why” because they’ve never given it a thought. It’s purely a non-rational, emotional, position
Which also begs the question. lol
I could believe this of Musk, who’s reaction to his trans son is well documented, but everyone?
twiliter @ 7, nah, that ship has sailed, years ago. They don’t explain, they just assert. Over and over and over.
Like “God exists” except that we have a way of knowing that sex is binary and immutable. So it’s actually worse than religion. It must take some special kind of ignorance or denial or a combination of something that I surely don’t understand.
I think that’s the description of the Dunning Kruger effect.
In addition to the too-quick agreement that people are born trans the way people are born gay — and opposition must therefore be both religious and conservative in nature — I think there was another too-quick agreement that the rational, secular, pro-science nontheist was prone to make: the rejection of binaries and strict categories in trans doctrine is just like the rejection of creationism in evolution.
Nature blends. We don’t have fully formed animals just popping into existence with no relation to each other. Atheists in these organizations believed that they understood nuance. Simple–minded fundamentalists, on the other hand, can’t mentally grasp gradual shades, where there is no “first fish” but a slow procession of not-a-fish to not-quite-a-fish to getting-pretty-close. The idea that we’re not all men and women but exist on a continuum superficially resembled a familiar stance taken against the black and white thought processes of the anti-scientific creationist.
Unfortunately, in order to put a rejection of binary sex categories in with evolution, you have to ignore the evolution of sex. You have to be able to separate sex from reproduction. That’s where I think the sense of superiority to the clunky religious mind comes in and takes over the commitment to doing a thorough analysis. We KNOW they’re wrong about how nature works. Doesn’t “there are only two genders” sound just like “I ain’t descended from no ape?” Sure it does. It’s more complicated than that. We understand complexity and the many, many genders.
Nuance.
I think it might be more than just thinking it’s like the LGB. I think for most people it is the LGB. When the T stuck their letter on the acronym, they tied themselves to the LGB so firmly (I think they used gorilla glue) that for a lot of people questioning the T means also questioning the LGB. That’s why the “no LGB without T” is so powerful; it solidifies that perilous conjunction, making this all part of the same battle. Then, of course, they tied it to anti-racism, which is an even more tenuous relationship (like, none at all, not even a smidge). So questioning T makes you a racist as well as a homophobe.
I think there were two initial forces that really helped the TRAs claim territory in the atheist space:
1: The Camel’s Nose. While there’s always been a push for bathroom, sports, prison, etc access for trans women within the core of the movement, initially the loudest voices were just talking about housing and employment discrimination, and the right to be free to be in public without being harassed, assaulted or jailed. These got coupled with pronouns and name-changes, which were also not seen as too objectionable–letting people live how they wanted really was a plausible parallel to the gay rights movement. (Note that there was, at that time, a common phrase about ‘living as a man/woman’, rather than ‘being a man/woman’. Softer language, easier to swallow.)
2: The Enemy of My Enemy. So, all those reasonable demands I just listed (and the sneaky ones at the end)? Yeah, they were vehemently opposed by the Christian Right in this country, who were just getting over their defeat in the Loving decision. There is something that can be legitimately called transphobia among that group, an irrational hatred of anyone who violates gender norms (especially men who voluntarily choose to adopt feminine signifiers, since that, by default, means moving ‘down’ a category for die-hard religious conservatives).
Now, obviously, we are WAY past that point. But a lot of reasonable people were captured by that original two-prong attack. And once they were in, well, cognitive dissonance is a helluva drug, kids. It’s pretty much one big Sunk Cost fallacy from that point on.
This is where the pernicious conflation/confusion/replacement of sex with gender has done much of its dirty work. “There are only two gametes” is much harder to argue against than the indeterminate (and growing) number of “genders”, which is why stating this is met, not with counterargument, but by being shouted off the stage and branded an evil transphobe.
Another part of the denigration and denial of sex upon which genderism depends is the downplaying of our ability to clock someone’s sex, even in poor light, and from great distances. It’s part of our evolutionary inheritance, and often requires a lot of effort to fool, especially men trying to pass themselves off as women, some of whom just won’t ever succeed. The idea that we need to “inspect” genitals, gametes, or DNA for most TiMs is an attempt to move any discussion away from sex altogether (“It’s complicated! It’s messy!! It doesn’t exist!!! CLOWNFISH!!!!), and the fact that most men don’t pass. Women, not being a threat, may pass more easily with a bit of facial hair and loose, frame-concealing clothing. If it were only TiMs we were having to deal with, the issue of “trans rights” would have much less power and influence, and be much less concerning. TiMs, for the most part, are the main drivers and the chief threat in all of this; their unreconstructed male entitlement gets their demands taken seriously, and makes them an ongoing danger to women.
Ophelia @ #6
I am a British lesbian. Years ago I was active in the political fight for lesbian and gay rights. As bit by bit we won our cause, some campaigners who had built their lives around activism for LGB rights began to contemplate a future when they wouldn’t be in demand for interviews, speeches, articles etc; they wouldn’t any longer be Somebody. Meanwhile transsexual activists were calling for the LGB movement to lend them support.
It should be noted that at that time there was little knowledge or understanding of autogynephilia. It was commonly assumed that all or most crossdressers were gay men. Transsexual males who presented full-time as women were liable to be interpreted as gay men who couldn’t cope with acknowledging their sexuality.
The repeal of Section 28* in 2003 was a landmark in the UK. One effect was to make LGB campaigning organisations and some campaigners refocus from promoting gay rights to taking up the cause of supporting the trans movement. Trans activists were appealing for support – ‘You’ve won your liberation, now support ours’. Certain lesbian and gay activists, some of whom had made careers out of campaigning, while others had at least gained plenty of attention and kudos from it, saw a new cause to exploit.
Thus the LGBT movement developed. And by this time we’ve reached the point where the ‘T’ is continually added to the acronym, regardless of whether there is any case for doing so. Quite often it is added in historical contexts where it simply doesn’t belong: like the current Wikipedia page on Section 28.
*This is the text of Section 28 as it was enacted in 1988:
The Wikipedia article quotes the legislation accurately, but then goes on to use ‘LGBT’ throughout.
Real question:
What does “cognitive dissonance” mean?
The people who so vehemently declare both X and Y, where X and Y are logically inconsistent, never seem to have any feelings of dissonance about their self-contradictory beliefs. *I* have much stronger feelings of dissonance than they do about their beliefs. They seem obliviously happy and sure about their positions. They don’t see any inconsistency or contradiction at all. It’s as if they are immune to or amnesiac about the principles of logic, when applied to them. Wherein is there any “dissonance” in their cognitive makeup?
Freemage, did you mean Obergefell instead of Loving? The Loving case happened in 1967, and I don’t think the Christian right has been focused on trans for that long; even the trans haven’t been focused on trans that long. And the Loving case was about interracial marriage, not same sex, so I was wondering…
maddog @19 I think that has to do with intellectual integrity. It seems as if most people can compartmentalize their various beliefs once they reach some kind of conclusion about them, and never subject them to scrutiny again, particularly in light of how these different beliefs relate to each other. Being open minded and willing to disrupt these various beliefs, especially if they are long held and ingrained, and have been reinforced by confirmation bias, is most probably not an easy thing to do, and also probably not very common. I have found myself holding on to some idea or other tenaciously, and (so I thought) justifiably, only to be proven wrong, or finding out that the idea was incompatable with other held beliefs. It’s humbling, but also work. I know of people who spend their whole lives (and very happily) not questioning very many things at all, not seriously anyway. I don’t think that that’s necessarily a lack of intelligence, but more a matter of temperament.
“We understand complexity and the many, many genders.”
Nature (biology) doesn’t care about genders. That’s sociology, and psychology. The holly bush has no gender soul. We know what sex is, and it’s all bout the gametes. We don’t have any coherent definition of “gender” – not any more. It used to be that “gender” was just a polite term for sex, or a way to talk about sex that wouldn’t set the 12-year-olds into giggling paroxysms. Then we started talking about “gender” as the set of social expectations that a human culture demanded of the sexes – basically, the stereotypes. Now it’s some inner soul that is somehow unattached from your sex while simultaneously being rigid social roles that you must conform to.