Guest post: They write books that indicate that they know better
Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Confused stan.
So, that’s not the actual governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz. It’s someone who “stans” him. That being said, Walz does go along with the gender woo stuff, as does the Lt Governor. He signed the bills making “affirmatiion only” treatment the law, allowing those who live in states that don’t provide transmogrifying medicine to children to travel here with a shield against prosecution to get transmogrifying medicine, and would likely sign a trans hate crime bill if it passed his desk.
But this business of “scientific consensus” is a statement that frustrates me on a forum such as X. (I don’t think we need to say “formerly known as” anymore.) A main reason that I am leaving it in a couple of days is that such posts are impossible to correct, and the more I try the more I realize that it takes a good bit of science education to go through and explain why it’s wrong. There is no “TL;dr” version that can be distilled into a single post, and it’s not long before we realize that the person with the anime avatar and pronouns in the bio is not really interested in understanding it.
As Sastra demonstrates, there is a whole lot of question-begging in this issue. I have read several science articles with the requisite peer review that rest on the presupposition of trans.
As a skeptic, I do not question the experiences that people have for not fitting into the gender expectations of their sex. Ellen Johnson, former President of the American Atheists, shared an image on Facebook of a description from someone who compares being trans to being left-handed and forced to write with their right hand. Okay, that’s an experience. Being left-handed was once punished, and we get the word “sinister” from the idea that left-handedness violated superstition. People seem to have bought into the idea that feeling like they have the wrong gender expression for their sex is prima facie evidence that their body is hosting the wrongly sexed mind. And they use the idea that sometimes the hormones that the mother transfers to the fetus overwrite the genetic hormones that the fetus produces in order to produce a feminine boy, or a masculine girl. (I have no clue what they think produces an NB.)
Feminine does not equal female. Masculine does not equal male. They are the gender expressions most commonly associated with a specific sex, but they are not evidence that anyone is really the “wrong sex for their gender identity.” If someone feels wrong for their assigned gender category, perhaps the idea of gender restrictions is wrong. It seems to me that this is the more likely explanation than somehow someone is “born into the wrong sex.”
And this is especially where the Professional Skeptics are frustrating. I know they know better. They write books that indicate that they know better. Harriet Hall knew better and her colleagues shot her down for it at SBM. So, really, the mystery is why are skeptics taking this path, and why do they denounce gender skeptics as bigots? It’s exposing those skepticism “stans” who just take what Steven Novella, PZ Myers, et al say on its face rather than follow on and do their own analysis of what they see and read and hear. Because Novella talks about scientific consensus, these disciples now don’t seem to have any idea what it is. It’s certainly not a definition published by the APA.
I suspect the two questions are related and have a similar answer — a sense of Justice as well as honesty. Many skeptics got into movement skepticism because they “could see how pseudoscience/woo/religion hurts people.” Their rational analysis is ultimately motivated by a desire to prevent harm. It’s not uncommon for these skeptics to assure others that they wouldn’t care what people believe, they’d never bother with their research and arguments, they’d never think much about the issue at all, if it wasn’t for the direct damage it causes — or the indirect damage it causes by making more dangerous beliefs seem plausible. They’re motivated by compassion — and that’s often accompanied by a scorn and hatred of the purveyors of harm. This form of skepticism involves a crusading spirit for justice against oppressive beliefs and believers, as opposed to emphasizing a questioning search for truth and an understanding of common human follies.
Thus, the reason people who identify as transgender are “the wrong sex for their gender identity” instead of a gender nonconforming person of their sex is that bigots think it’s wrong to be gender nonconforming AND bigots also think it’s wrong to be trans. Look at where the Religious Right stands! See how they want to control the folks they hate!
Both the bigots and this subset of skeptics see a transwoman as a kind of extreme version of an effeminate man, just as homosexuality can be thought of as an extreme version of male femininity. Skepticism calls out irrational abuse. There is no rational reason to be against gender non conformity or being gay. Therefore there could be no rational reason to think the bigots might have a point, at any point.
Once rationality is seen as the moral path away from bigotry — and you see which direction the bigots are going — another skeptic saying “but women are female” is going the wrong way down the moral path. Jump over the arguments. Gender skeptics are routinely accused of not being honest. We’re refusing to look at which group we’re hurting, and which we’re helping, because we secretly root for the bad guys.
“Because Novella talks about scientific consensus, these disciples now don’t seem to have any idea what it is.”
A good illustration of argumentum ad populum Mike, well spotted.
Thank you, Twiliter! And, I think you have nailed it, Sastra.
BTW – “They Write Books” is an inside joke from a conversation that I had with an atheist in Arizona who was repeating some sort of diet nonsense like the Alkaline Diet, or similar. I said I don’t know that the people she was getting her information had a scienitific background, and she replied “They do know! They write books!”
That’s quite the standard of evidence, right there.
Ha! Harry Frankfurt wrote a book about those kinds of books. It’s titled ‘On Bullshit.’
Mike, I had a similar experience at an atheist conference, but it wasn’t even books, it was pamphlets. Is the ability to put a sentence together now credentials for everything? In that case, everyone on this site could become an instant expert on whatever they wanted to talk about.
Iknklast, there’s a slippery slope from a pamphlet to a tract. Would that atheist be willing to accept that Jack Chick was credentialed?
Apparently you don’t even have to do that to be President.
I think everyone is vulnerable to motivated reasoning. The right wants to insist that a fetus is a baaaaby and the left want to insist that transwomen are women and a woman is whatever a woman wants to beeeee…