If you cannot name
Let’s see if we can figure out how this works, or if it works.
There’s something that I see GC people saying a lot, JKR said it, and they’re right
“If you cannot name your injustice or oppressor, then you can’t fight it”
And then they try to stop people saying transphobe, TERF, even cis. They try and shut down all discussion of transphobia
I don’t know what Montgomerie has against periods at the end of sentences…Maybe it’s a sly joke about the fact that trans women don’t have periods?
Anyway, I think I have figured it out, and it doesn’t work. You have to name the injustice and the oppressor accurately. They both have to be real. We’re well familiar with people shouting about “injustices” that aren’t real at all – look at Trump for example. Look at angry White Pride demonstrators. Look at men who are furious that they can’t find a woman who wants to have sex with them. And yes look at the kind of trans activist who tweets “KILL ALL TERFS” and the like.
It’s not an injustice or a form of oppression that a man thinks he is a woman inside, or that a woman thinks she is a man inside. It may be a lot of other things – a misfortune, an unhappy situation, a misery – but it’s not an injustice, because justice doesn’t come into it. Injustice and oppression require agency, which means they require agents, and there are no agents behind this feeling of being the other sex. It’s just something that happens (at least according to the accounts people give – it’s so subjective and so quick to change shape that it’s hard to know), as opposed to something that someone did.
Is it unjust and oppressive that we don’t all believe that sex is a matter of self-description as opposed to fact? No, because it can’t be, because we need to know which is which for a long list of reasons.
So the truth of “If you cannot name your injustice or oppressor, then you can’t fight it” doesn’t apply to what Montgomerie is talking about. Trump should stop saying that dead people voted, because it’s a lie and he’s engaged on a criminal attempt to steal an election and destroy what’s left of American democracy. Montgomerie should stop talking about “transphobes” and “cis people” because those are not real categories and they are used to bully and ostracize feminist women.
I didn’t see where JKR said anything like that. I did see where she said “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them”… And I think she forgot to say ‘as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else’, but maybe that’s implied.
At least (?/?) reiterated the trans cult dogma terminology, yet again, lest we forget.
Re: missing periods.
I don’t get it myself, but it’s not a new phenomenon. Apparently, the fact that I can type and am properly fluent in my native tongue, so that typing with proper spelling and punctuation doesn’t negatively impact my overall speed, means that my text missives are curt, abrupt, cold, aloof, and callous.
My eyes can’t roll harder.
“And then they try to stop people saying transphobe, TERF, even cis. They try and shut down all discussion of transphobia” — So this translates as the trans cult can call just about everyone who isn’t trans their “oppressors” without any justification, so if they call you cis, then you are cis, and a transphobe. If you are a feminist, also a transphobe. Who are the bigots here? Bigotry dressed in some “woke” movement is still bigotry. The trans cult isn’t asking for help, they are at war with everything that does not bow down to their propaganda, and everyone who doesn’t put a stupid, redundant pronoun in their twitter profile. Sounds oppressive to me.
@2 I text this way also, a long, unpunctuated, run on sentence with an occasional comma, devoid of capitalization. I do however use emojis. ;) It hasn’t seemed to affect my (more or less) traditional writing in public, but sometimes it’s tempting.
I think what he means is “if you cannot dehumanize your enemy, you can’t hate her.”
Like twiliter, tha quote doesn’t ring a bell with me either — not as specifically written, that is. I can’t find where JKR said it, and it sounds unlikely that she’d be talking about “naming our oppressor,” as if she wants to say “— It’s MEN!” Or “It’s BAD PEOPLE! Which we can fight now!”
What I have seen though are GC feminist complaints about the inability to use language and concepts necessary to explain the roots of our oppression— words like “sex” and “woman” and “man.”
“ Yet in the name of inclusivity, women are being stripped of the language required to identify and challenge our own oppression… Altering the definition of the word “woman” … makes it impossible to describe and analyze the structural oppression that accompanies living in a female body. ” (Pelican Lee, 2018)
This sort of thing is a far cry from hurling insults at an enemy in order to call them out.
I often omit periods in on-line text.
on-line is short-attention-span theater, 280 (nee 140) character limit, tiny mobile screens, etc. Every character counts, and I use them sparingly.
I commonly use line breaks in place of periods when I am typing sentence fragments, or a list of items, or making an argument with a series of short, connected sentences.
If I’m typing prose in paragraphs, I still use periods.
A question for anybody who has read or watched the Harry Potter stories.
Could that supposed JK quote possibly have come from one of her books, either in its entirety or paraphrased? It certainly sounds like a pearl of wisdom that a trainee wizard would need to know if he’s to overcome the bad guys, and we know how some people find it hard to distinguish fact from fiction.
AoS #8, I read all seven books and saw all eight movies.
That text isn’t in any of them.
HP has some sub-plots that raise issues of social justice, but it is direct action, not meta-complaints about the oppression of language.
AoS,
It could be. I only read the first book, but I’ve seen the films. I don’t recognize the exact quote (assuming it even purports to be one), but there is an ongoing thing in the Harry Potter stories about how most people refer to the villain Voldemort as You-Know-Who, and eventually Our Heroes say that it’s silly not to use his name. (Of course, then there’s a weird regression in the last film, where it’s dangerous to use the name.)
I’m certain Sastra is right @6 and that’s the source of the garbled OP. There’s (rightly) a lot of that sentiment around at the moment.
I think the JKR ‘quote’ may be a rough paraphrase of a tweet of hers, saying in part “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased.” If not that, then I have no idea.
Sun Tzu. The Art of War. 6th. Century BCE.
Maybe not Potter, after all.
There was a study done recently that said the younger generation (GenZ?) considers the fact that “old” people (meaning Baby Boomers, I guess) use periods is an act of hostility. That’s right, periods are…hostility. Making a sentence readable and sensible…an act of violence, maybe? Literal violence?
Words mean nothing anymore. Apparently punctuation means even less.
I think the point on agency is an important one. It is part of why I am not inherently opposed to trans, what I’m opposed to is the behaviour and arguments of some trans people.
I don’t think trans is a choice, anymore than I think atheism is a choice, because you can’t really choose your beliefs or non-beliefs.
There is a fundamental issue here around correctness. I think we can all agree that being correct is superior in a pragmatic sense, but I don’t think that we necessarily think of having the correct facts as a position of moral superiority. Having correct facts is certainly useful, but at the end of the day justice is what you do with those facts.
Which I think maybe is why so much of the trans debate is so toxic. The TRAs, as opposed to most trans people even, come from a wing of the left that takes factual positions as points of morality. It is part of the whole “Wokeness” movement.
“Terfs” are seen as the enemy not because they’re actually doing anything much to trans people, but because they question the facts that trans activists claim. The whole schtick around “Denying the humanity” and all of that, is all about arguing facts as if taking a position on those facts is a matter of ethics.
Which poisons the well in a lot of these cases. It makes discussion so much more difficult when it is claimed to be injustice, to raise factual points.
And it drives wedges between people who would not ordinarily see each other as necessarily adversaries. We’ve seen a rise in misogyny on the left, as gender critical feminism is seen as the enemy, but I dare say all of the gender critical feminists think someone getting murdered or harassed for being trans is terrible. It isn’t about whether you accept he is a she, it is about the fact that people shouldn’t be murdered or harassed for wrongthink.
That I think is a major disagreement within this debate – it is part and parcel of a much larger social trend which takes factual positions as moral ones. A social trend where being “wrong” makes you fair game, and thus raises the stakes on the arguments being put forward in a way that shifts us away from honesty and towards hyperbole.
This is where you get language as violence from – and it really isn’t working for anybody. The Trans side of this debate is under the same pressure as the “Terf” side – in that both sides see the other as presenting justification for the harassment they receive, because who is wrong is who it is okay to bully.
And that isn’t really how it should work.
Or am I looking at this weird?
@Bruce Gorton #15
I’m not sure that we can’t choose our beliefs.
Re #15
Your argument about making factual positions into moral ones makes a lot of sense to me. A lot of left-leaning commentary on things like gay rights and the rights of religious minorities seems focused on not just tolerance but full-fledged acceptance. Conservative Christians are deemed bad not just for failing to provide goods and services to gay people, but for thinking that being gay is immoral and against their religious dictates. People are condemned not just for denying rights to Muslims, but for failing to agree that Islam is a beautiful religion of peace.
To me, it is of primary importance that we grant rights and respect to those with whom we disagree. I applaud those conservative Christians who do their jobs while still considering their clients immoral and damned. For those who refuse to do their jobs, the issue is their actions, not so much their opinions.
This is where the suicide threats and invented harms become so pernicious. Wrongthink has to be shown to do actual damage, otherwise it’s just a disagreement.
I think that does make a lot of sense, Bruce. At the same time, like Colin I’m not convinced we can’t change our beliefs. I think we can if we see it as possible and not-wicked, and if we’re willing to make the effort.
The whole point of “faith” after all is to make it a matter of refusing to doubt or question or think or research or discuss or anything that could cause the mind to change. It’s just religion’s long con, a very trumpian one – “The first virtue is to believe what I – the author of this book, hello my name is god – tell you without question.” So convenient.
Ophelia Benson
I think our beliefs can change, but I don’t think we can really choose them.
I mean, we come to our beliefs through a combination of instinct and experience. This is why the bullshit industrial complex (think deep state, illuminati nonsense, QAnon, Goop etc…) makes such a big push to discredit data sources that contradict their claims.
It isn’t that the true believers in that crap chose to believe it, so much as their experiences led them to believe it. They can’t not believe it, without some sort of further data to dislodge those beliefs. I think this may well be why the age of algorithms has also been such a fertile breeding ground for this stuff, the people who were inclined to believe it are directed towards more of it, and away from anything that might contradict it.
But I think we’re getting into free will here, and I suspect we may have contrasting views on that.
I’m fairly certain that we can’t choose our beliefs. Ultimate questions about free will aside – if we “choose” to believe something then we surely are being dishonest as if we really believed it there would be no question of choice.
I suppose there’s a distinction between intellectual belief and, er, subconcious/gut belief? Even with intellectual belief the process of building a conviction is more a series of realizations rather than decisions, although our internal experience may seem otherwise. Self-knowledge is not infallible right?
Perhaps at best you can choose to engage in actions (what you read, who you listen to) that is more likely to cause your belief to shift in a particular direction? Choosing not to think might be a choice, but it is more a choice about whether to engage with material that might change belief rather than directly choosing what to believe.
Perhaps that’s all an incoherent muddle. :-)
Well I can agree it’s not entirely a free choice (see: six impossible things before breakfast), but I also think a lot of people do choose (however incompletely) to believe absurdities because it’s fun or comforting or exciting. Or to put it another way “belief” isn’t always 100% belief. It can be more a hope, or a wish, or a mix of the three, or a mix of the three plus doubt. Surely that’s why the religions go on and on about it – they seem to see it as never all that secure.
I posted while Banichi was posting (i.e. hadn’t seen that comment). There are some things we can’t not believe, but there are others we acquire, and acquisition is more voluntary, isn’t it? I believe the Himalayas are in Nepal and China, but I’ve never been there, I don’t believe it in the involuntary way I know I’m typing this post at this moment. I “believe” it because I assume the infrastructure that tells me so is reliable. I see that as in some sense voluntary.
It has been my experience that there is at least a belief that we can choose our beliefs. For instance, the Christian insistence on “fake it until you make it” – if you fake belief long enough, you will come to believe. I think there is a lot of truth to that, as you invest so much energy. I also know that people who lie about things they know are lies (i.e., my brother telling people he was married to a fashion model when he wasn’t) come to believe the lies are true.
But I think the problem with trans isn’t so much whether we “choose” our beliefs. I think it is more analogous with the phenomenon of created belief. Other people can create beliefs in our minds…this has been demonstrated by experiment…and lead us to believe them. I think this is more what is happening in the trans community. People with some sort of problem, who never thought of themselves as the opposite sex, google their symptoms. Trans sites come up, offering to explain their symptoms, giving them comfort and support and telling them their problem is being born in the wrong body. That can be seductive, because they certainly don’t feel right or comfortable in their world, and maybe it is the body that is wrong, not the mind or the world.
So it isn’t so much a “chosen” belief as a “created” one. I think that is worse. Someone else creates our personality, and is persuasive enough to get us to believe it, and those someones prey on unhappy, sometimes desperately depressed, vulnerable people.
As I read Bruce’s comment #15, I can set aside his first two paragraphs that sparked comments 16-23 about beliefs.
I read his comment as mainly about Gender ID/GC arguments that use facts and morality in a weird way. To begin, I agree with how things should be:
Then he says what goes wrong:
This articulates a concern of mine. If I tell my friends facts that counter a narrative in the Gender ID movement, I expect my friends to deflect from those facts by judging me morally wrong to raise those facts. And they would think they played a morality card that trumps all fact cards in this game.
Maybe this pattern is some kind of logical fallacy, but I don’t know a name for it. Maybe the best I can do is describe the pattern concisely, e.g. as I just did, as a game with cards.
This is something I brood about a lot – albeit not in exactly the same terms, which is probably why I went off on a tangent about how voluntary belief may be. I brood a lot about the fact that all the venom and bullying is because we don’t and can’t believe that people can literally be the opposite sex just by saying so. That is indeed a belief that I for one am stuck with. It never stops surprising me that that’s seen as morally evil.
> Montgomerie should stop talking about “transphobes” and “cis people” because those are not real categories
Cis people are people who aren’t trans people
Transphobes are people who are committed to their irrational prejudice of trans people. Like a homophobe is someone who is more than just someone with a single homophobic view, it’s someone with is committed to homophobia
Both of these groups uncontroversially exist, and as I pointed out you can’t discuss the oppression of trans people, which is very trivially an observable thing, without being able to describe them. Good luck trying to combat homophobia without being able to say homophobe or straight people
What JKR and many GC people want to do is take away trans people’s ability to describe the oppression they face for being trans, but on top of that their ability to describe the oppression they face for being women or gay
@Katie Montgomerie #26
People who are not gender conforming face oppression whether they identify as trans or not.
@Colin Day #27
Being “gender conforming” or not is seperate from being trans. It is something else we need the words to describe though for sure. Trans and cis people who conform to gender stereotypes generally face less abuse, because of patriarchal pressures. Importantly the abuse GNC people face, trans or cis, for being GNC is seperate from misogyny or transphobia. An example a GNC trans woman may be banned from adopting a child because she is trans, shouted at on the street for having short hair and “masculine clothes”, and groped in a nightclub for being a woman. Three different types of abuse that we need to be able to describe to counter
Dave Ricks:
Just noticed this. In answer to your wondering, it’s a pure non sequitur. Here’s a valid argument: If A, then B. Not B. Therefore, not A. Here’s a pure non sequitur: If A, then B. C. Therefore, not A.
More specifically, it’s often used as a form of avoiding the issue. That is, If A, then B. C. Therefore, you’re evil if you try to claim A. You don’t want to be evil do you? Hey, everyone, look at this evil person! Let’s cancel him/her!
But really, it’s all just at root an appeal to emotion.
Katy:
No. This is false. This is misrepresenting the opposition in such as a way as to create an easy target, and then to take victory against this construct as indicative of or equivalent to victory against the real thing. The name for this particular variety of non sequitur is straw man.
The actual objection is not to the use per se of transphobe or transphobic, but to the overbroad use thereof, whereby mere skepticism is treated as morally equivalent to bigotry. Despite Jews’ self-identification as the chosen of God, I am required neither to believe nor to act as if I believe that to be true. My skepticism is not bigotry, nor is it anti-Semitic, Judeophobic, or misohebraic.
The actual objection is not to the use per se of cis, but to the demand that others use that terminology; as first this infringes upon freedom of expression and conscience, second it becomes a sophomoric rhetorical wedge toward the claim that females and males-who-identify-as-women are both subcategories of female, and third it endorses a particular model of psychological—to which they do not subscribe. I do not have to refer to myself as unclean, sinful, or damned, despite the fact that many religions label me as such. Neither must I refer to God-given rights or abilities, for I do not believe that there is a god to give any. If I do speak in such terms, it is only explicitly metaphorical, stylistic, or ironic, for otherwise others would reasonably interpret my speech as supporting a metaphysics that I view as false.
If you genuinely believe in the soundness of your conclusions and the validity of the arguments that bring you there, you should have no fear of representing the opinions and arguments of those with whom you disagree in their strongest possible form. Burning men of straw is a sign of weakness, not strength; of uncertainty, not conviction. Build instead your target from the strongest steel.