Under the banner of freedom of speech
But! Don’t worry – the Laurier Rainbow Centre wrote an emergency Facebook post to explain how transphobic it all is.
Dear Laurier Community,
In the face of recent media attention, we feel it is our responsibility to speak out against the climate of transphobia that is being fostered at Laurier. The university’s silence on these issues has allowed for a one-sided perspective to be cultivated in the media that is entirely disconnected from the experiences of trans people. We speak now as a collective of queer and trans students, asking you to engage critically with the media you read and to hold our community with care.
On Friday November 10th, an article was published in the National Post that disparaged the university’s response to a situation that emerged in a first year Communications course. We are obligated to uphold the confidentiality of all parties and, therefore, are unable to comment directly on the situation that instigated this article.* We can, however, speak to the ways in which this article, and the dozens that have been published since, are defending and perpetuating transphobic beliefs and attitudes.
*Nonsense; it was all over the press for days, with the protagonists named. Also a situation can’t “instigate” an article. They mean “inspired” or “motivated.”
Under the banner of freedom of speech, the news media have advanced a critique of institutional practices aimed at increasing inclusivity and challenging oppression. The always present but often unnamed ‘other’ at the center of these critiques, are the trans and non-binary individuals who these institutional practices would support. We must understand the ways in which these attacks on the “PC culture” of the university are, in actuality, attacks on the needs of trans people that these critics do not support.
The discourse of freedom of speech, is being used to cover over the underlying reality of transphobia that is so deeply ingrained in our contemporary political context. Ironically, these discourses seem intent on silencing those who speak out against the systemic violence perpetrated against trans people while propagating a far right ideology. In fact, recent empirical studies conducted by White and Crandall (2017) have shown that freedom of speech endorsement is predicted by underlying prejudicial attitudes.
So…they’re saying Rambukka was “speaking out against the systemic violence perpetrated against trans people” when he bullied and browbeat Lindsay Shepherd for using a brief clip of Jordan Peterson in her tutorial? How was he doing that? Shepherd wasn’t endorsing Peterson, so even if you accept the claim that Peterson is perpetrating violence against trans people, it’s not reasonable to claim that Shepherd is also doing so.
We must, therefore, be critical of the ways in which trans bodies are being appropriated as the battleground on which the war of freedom of speech is waged.
Really. Shepherd stole trans bodies and fought a battle while standing on them? Really? Why hasn’t this been reported?
Debates about gender neutral pronouns or the validity of trans identities are not only discussions about (dis)allowable speech but, also, affronts on the reality of trans experience. These debates, regardless of how “neutrally” they are presented, constitute a form of epistemic violence that dehumanizes trans people by denying the validity of trans experience.
No they don’t. You can’t use “regardless of” that way. You can’t say “regardless of the obvious fact that presenting an example of an opinion is not the same as embracing it, I’m going to say it is, because I want to” and expect to be taken seriously. That’s a good deal more “epistemically violent” than anything Lindsay Shepherd did.
For trans people, these debates invalidate their gender identity or expression as wrong or pathological, with very material impacts for their well-being. According to a national study, two-thirds of trans youth in Canada have engaged in self-harm and one-third have attempted suicide (Veale et al., 2015). For cisgender (non-trans) people, these debates validate the ideologies of cisnormativity and genderism that inform transphobia, once again with material impacts for trans people. According to the Trans Pulse project, for example, 20% of trans people in Ontario have been physically or sexually assaulted for being trans and 34% have been verbally threatened or harassed (Bauer & Scheim, 2015).
In this context, we must respond to the enactment and maintenance of transphobia and problematize media that upholds transphobic ideologies. We should take students’ concerns about their safety and well-being as a result of the intensification of these ideologies on campus very seriously. These concerns are real, with students accessing the Rainbow Centre for support around experiences of harassment in their classrooms, on campus, and in online forms, as a result of this increased media attention. The Rainbow Centre itself is being targeted on this issue, with antagonizing posters being left on our windows and emails criticizing our educational initiatives around Transgender Day of Remembrance.
These experiences of transphobia and their aforementioned implications, are the realities in which our conversations about this issue need to be embedded. We all have a responsibility to create an environment for learning and living in which trans people are safe from epistemic and transphobic violence. We all have a responsibility to speak out about these issues, and we call on our allies who have remained silent to please take a stance. This political moment is intent on derogating trans people in the name of freedom of speech and we cannot allow for this profound violence to be continued.
It isn’t violence. There are arguments that can be made about ways that speech can create climates that become friendly to violence; I think Trump did that during his campaign, for instance, and has been doing a lot of it since. But that doesn’t make the speech itself “violence” and people will just roll their eyes when you tell them it does.
Grade: F. Repeat the course.
Enforcing dogma is kind of the taproot concept of ‘epistemic violence’, come to think of it.
No. Your experience is one thing; your interpretation of it is something else. People do get to debate that. We don’t take anything and everything anybody says about themselves and their experience as incontrovertible truth, and we shouldn’t have to. Questioning your epistemology (and ontology) is not “dehumanizing” you. Hell, you should be questioning them yourself.
And then the appeal to pity. If you don’t believe in trans dogma, trans people will die. I’ve said it elsewhere, I’ll say it here: it’s as if we are all obligated to believe nonsense–or at least shut up about it if we don’t–because emotionally fragile people (or those with personality disorders) might not be able to handle robust disagreement. IF YOUR POLITICAL STRATEGY IS EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL, YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT.
It’s all just a way of saying, “Don’t you dare disagree with us”.
I have to suspect that maybe, just maybe, there’d be less actual, literal, physical violence perpetrated against trans individuals if all the effort directed against preventing “epistemic violence” were shifted over to preventing them being beaten, bruised, knifed and murdered. Granted, that may take some work that isn’t all from the safety of keyboards, and it may involve less righteous, pleasurable bullying of 22 year old female graduate students, but surely our brave heroes of freedom of gender identity can make that sacrifice.
Why, of all issues, does trans-rights have this appalling fringe of thugs and bullies? The actual suffering of trans people, especially against MtF, ought to inspire some real action. But these warriors don’t seem to be interested in facing down Republican demagogues in red states. Far easier to wage Milo-worthy campaigns of harassment and sabotage against….funny how its always women.
This bit is rather insidious (or invidious, or maybe both):
“….while propagating a far right ideology. In fact, recent empirical studies conducted by White and Crandall (2017) have shown that freedom of speech endorsement is predicted by underlying prejudicial attitudes.”
OK, sure: we know all about Freeze Peach Warriors, really we do. But this is just trying to tar the whole concept by associating it with some truly horrible people (many of whom are bad-faith actors seeking to use the cover of free speech to subvert free society itself). Some of us are old enough to remember when LGBT publications were legally suppressed as obscene. This is one of those rare moments when I really do have to shake my head and sigh: “The kids these days”.
Lady Mondegreen
Here is something I think that is important in a lot of this: suicide threats are a common feature in abusive relationships.
John the Drunkard:
“Why, of all issues, does trans-rights have this appalling fringe of thugs and bullies?”
I can’t decide if there’s some sort of causal connection or if it’s just a coincidence of timing: trans rights broke out into the mainstream at around the same time that illiberalism and contempt for free expression came back into fashion as the New Hotness among progressives.
John the Drunkard: “Why, of all issues, does trans-rights have this appalling fringe of thugs and bullies?”
Smells like male privilege to me. Has anybody noticed whether complaints like those leveled at Ms. Shepherd come predominantly from people who were raised as males and only later came out as females?
Question of the day: “Why, of all issues, does trans-rights have this appalling fringe of thugs and bullies?”
Several reasons, as usual with such things, but a core one is that the whole concept is about belief, and belief that is mandatory on pain of punishment at that. That’s why I pointed out Owen Jones’s sloppy use of the word “rights” the other day: we need to be clear about what “rights” we’re talking about. Being trans means being acutely unhappy and not-at-home in one’s natal (“assigned”) sex, and moving to live as the other sex. If the world around us were a lot more androgynous and relaxed about who wears what, moving to live as the other sex would be less difficult and fraught…but we don’t. Living as the other sex is no longer enough, and it’s morphed into a demand that everyone swear belief that the trans person is and always has been that other sex.
That’s a very demanding demand. That fact all by itself does a lot to select for very…spiky personality types, who police the borders and punish people who don’t obey abjectly enough.
So that’s one reason.
Today’s Jesus & Mo seems inspired by this incident.
@11: The “lived experience” argument often sounds to me a bit too much like arguments for the existence of God based on personal religious experience. Fine: your experience is whatever you say it is, but the point is it’s *yours* and can’t license larger claims without more work. I’m sure there’s a reasonable idea lurking somewhere in there, but as so often happens, it’s gotten taken up and used a slogan.
@Sackbut, thanks for the heads up, that’s brilliant! It is definitely inspired by this incident, Wilfrid Laurier University is one of the tags. :)
Jesus & Mo, inspired. As usual.
Also, the fact that the whole argument seems to be, “ZOMG you’re making me want to kill myslef and that’s all your fault.” Recognized as abusive everywhere except when it’s a way of shutting down women. The pattern is out there, shouting at everyone, but hey, why start listening to the people pointing it out now? They’re just women.
And then, the misgendering as “epistemic violence”? Welcome to the female condition. You said you wanted to be part of it. (Oh. You didn’t mean the dishwashing, diaper-changing, invisible, unglamorous, ignored part?)
@10: I’m sadly deficient on all the theory in this area, but I have no problem with the idea that gender is a social construct (indeed, if gender just is a set of expectations and conventions about physical presentation, and social behaviour and role, then that follows by definition). But recently (or perhaps I wasn’t paying attention in the right places) I’ve been seeing claims that sex is also a social construct, the apparent justification being the existence of intersex conditions. Granted, where there is a continuum of characters any boundaries drawn will be somewhat arbitrary, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still distinguish types along the continuum. To claim otherwise seems to sail rather close to saying that all human knowledge is socially constructed and there are no facts of the world. But surely it is a fact of the world that I was never going to gestate and bear a baby, whereas the only way my wife was ever going to participate in the reproductive game was to do exactly that, and surely that fact means something.
Steve – quite so. That’s why I said “sex” and not “gender.” It’s possible to “live as” the other sex* but not to become it.
That is heresy though. That was my answer when the Pharyngula crowd started grilling me, and that answer was considered profoundly evil and reactionary and loathsome.
*Then of course you have to define what that means, and definitions vary.
Tangent, again. Trouble in Beirut (via Twitter; my bold):