Rather than a legitimate feeling
One of the comments allowed to remain on the American Booksellers Association’s Facebook post yesterday captures the eccentric nature of the ideology:
The book is a ploy for people to see gender dysphoria as a trend rather than a legitimate feeling. It’s ideology is one where being transgender is a “fad”. Someone’s gender identity is not a debate. It’s not something to question or say isn’t true based or crap science or psychology. The simple answer to the author’s “mysterious” question as to why gender dysphoria is more widely acknowledged is because society is finally opening up to discuss and talk about it. Not because it didn’t ever exist before. Society has purposefully been heteronormative and forced people with gender dysphoria to remain silent and stuck. This isn’t new. Gender dysphoria has existed as long as humans have. As have transgender individuals. And what they decide to do with their bodies is their choice.
First claim: gender dysphoria is a legitimate feeling.
Sure it is. There must be lots of kinds of dysphoria and they’re all legitimate feelings, because what would an illegitimate feeling be? You feel what you feel. But that doesn’t mean what you feel reflects a truth about the world, or that what you feel imposes some kind of obligation on everyone else.
Second claim: the book’s ideology is one where being transgender is a “fad”.
Yes, and? Of course it’s a fad. Its faddishness is reflected in the comment itself. It’s reflected in the melodramatic language of the ABA’s apology. It’s reflected in the numbers. It could be a harmless fad, or a benign fad, or a wonderful fad that will reverse climate change – but it’s clearly a fad.
Third claim: Someone’s gender identity is not a debate.
That’s the core mistake. Yes it is. If someone’s [___] identity contradicts external reality and has an impact on other people then yes it is [up for] debate. Absolutist libertarianism about something called gender identity is not reasonable except for the single occupants of desert islands.
Third claim restated: It’s not something to question or say isn’t true based o[n] crap science or psychology.
Yes it is. It’s something to question based on a number of things, including our own perceptions. We’re not required to perceive other people as the sex they aren’t simply because they order us to. We’re not required to and besides that we can’t – we can’t override our perceptions that way.
That’s the core issue, that third claim – that people’s internal fantasies about themselves are a mandate for the rest of the world. The wack nature of that claim is why the whole movement is so absurd and bonkers and hyperbolic and melodramatic. We can’t do that, we can’t believe personal claims that deny reality, and a pseudo-political movement that tries to force us to is doomed to drill its way into the center of the earth and expire.
And we certainly can’t be expected to accept such claioms while at the same time accepting that gender is “fluid.” Sometimes. But it’s also fixed solidly enough that if I don’t get a phallectomy I’ll kill myself and it’s your fault.
“Third claim restated: It’s not something to question or say isn’t true based o[n] crap science or psychology.”
Nobody says something “isn’t true based on crap science”. I get what they’re trying to say, something like:
Person 1: “I don’t think that’s true.”
Person 2: “On what basis?”
Person 1: *provides justification*
Person 2: “That’s crap science.”
But in this example, Person 1 was perfectly capable of saying the thing isn’t true, and doesn’t think the justification is crap science; the latter is Person 2’s assessment. How is Person 1 to know it’s crap science without raising the question? And Person 1 may disagree that the science is crap; perhaps they can discuss it, and perhaps come to agree that the science is crap, or perhaps Person 2 might be convinced it actually isn’t crap. None of this can happen if Person 1 is not allowed to question the thing in the first place.
I think it’s clear than any scientific evidence that disputes gender ideology will be declared “crap science”. So perhaps the claim could be rephrased as “Any attempt to use science or reasoning to question gender identity or say it isn’t true will result in the justification being declared ‘crap’ summarily.”
I can buy the claim that sex dysphoria has always existed (I don’t, but it’s plausible) but it’s the sort of thing usually solved by being eaten by a smilodon… You only get this sort of thing once survival stops being a primary issue.
They can’t even keep their own terminology straight. What does sexual orientation have to do with this? Did they actually mean “cisnormative”? Or, are they purposely conflating sex and gender? Sloppy or sneaky? At this point I’m not giving genderists the benefit of any doubt.
Once I have been conceded the right to define the terms and the ways they can and can’t be used, then it’s game, set and match; to me.
YNNB,
Yeah, I noticed that, too. Heteronormativity would actually encourage male-bodied people who are attracted to men to identify as women, and vice-versa. If I’m not mistaken, that’s actually happening in some countries where homosexuality is still forbidden.
That was an excellent laugh; thank you.
Well… Posie Parker argues that if, say, a woman somehow believes that she has a penis, that’s not “gender dysphoria”, because gender isn’t a tangible thing about which one could feel dysphoric, and it’s not even “sex dysphoria”, because a woman with a phalloplasty is a woman; rather, it’s more of an “appendage dysphoria”, no different from if someone thought that she or he had a third arm. So perhaps “gender dysphoria” is an illegitimate description of a real feeling. Of course, as Ophelia says, this feeling doesn’t express any reality about the world; but I’m saying further: perhaps the description isn’t even a meaningul (“legitimate”?) description of what the person feels.
Maaaaaybe this is what the TRAs mean by “This is a legitimate feeling, and you’re saying it’s not”? Maybe they mean: “This is a meaningful description of the feeling, and you’re saying that it’s not?” I don’t know. Just a thought.
Ophelia, I would just like to offer my congratulations that you, unlike the author of the post, were able to use “its” and “it’s” correctly. I have just about given up on winning that battle with my students (or anyone else, including newspapers and magazines that should know better).
All this talk of “illegitimate feelings” and “___ people are valid” always reminds me of a Warren Zevon lyric: “you’ve got an invalid haircut.” No, I don’t know what it means; I’m pretty sure it was intended to be nonsense.
So, one question. Do we have to accept that Paul McCartney really is the walrus? Or are we doing him real violence if we do not?
The Walrus was John, though. Paul is a paperback writer.
(or wants to be)
GW @8, in my understanding of this belief system, the words legitimate and valid describe sacred feelings that have the transcendent power of identity to create things like Trans Women Are Women (TWAW), like Christian transubstantiation turns wafers and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.
So in Ophelia’s quote from the ABA Facebook post…
… secular explanations of sacred gender feelings are sacrilege that must be attacked to defend the belief system.
There’s evidence on both sides.
Certainly John wrote (and sang) I Am The Walrus. But John also wrote in Glass Onion “Well here’s another clue for you all/The Walrus was Paul.” Is John denying his Walrusness? It would seem so, if Paul was The Walrus, the implication being there is, and was, only one. Does the later text supersede or augment the earlier? Is one to be given privilege over the other? Are we limited to a univocal reading of either? If we adopt a more expansive, and, dare I say inclusive definition of Walrushood, it could be that John is extending Walrusity to Paul, meaning that there is a possibility, or a necessity for a pluraity of Walri, perhaps a universal (though aspirational, rather than hegemonic) Odobenus-ness.
Imagine all the Walrus/Sharing all the world.
The word you are looking for is ‘walrusitude’.
Well, this certainly puts a lot of songs in a new light. Turns out the late great Chris Cornell was indeed the highway, Cherie Currie is a cherry bomb, Jimi Hendrix was a voodoo chile, Paul Simon (or was it Art Garfunkel?) is a rock (and an island), Tom Waits is a rain dog, Neil Young is a child, Thom Yorke is a creep, Frank Zappa was the slime etc. But perhaps the most disturbing thing to come out of all this is that apparently James Hetfield is your life (yikes!). Sad but true.
Bjarte – John Prine’s feeling that you’d be leaving soon was legitmate, too.
Since I once identified to my therapist as pond scum, it certainly means that my therapist was wrong to tell me I am not pond scum. What was he thinking? By not validating my pond-scumhood, he was doing literal violence and could have driven me to suicide! Think I have a lawsuit on my hands? Or did I actually have to die to have a lawsuit on my hands? Is it enough to identify as dead?
This can get very complicated…
“and a pseudo-political movement that tries to force us to is doomed to drill its way into the center of the earth and expire.”
I wish I believed this. Exhibit One: Christianity. Going strong for 2000 years or so.
All I can suggest is beware of ducks.