Profiles in preciousness
Quite a startling assertion, in a piece that’s not even about trans ideology.
…my experience of an all-girls’ school, followed by twice as long as a trustee of a prison charity, informed a lot of my politics, including why I became a transgender ally. Before I had thought seriously about trans rights, and the immeasurable preciousness of any human being with the courage to live their most meaningful and truthful life…
What???
So Zoe Williams is saying that trans people, as such, just because they are trans people, are immeasurably precious because they have “the courage to live their most meaningful and truthful life”?
There’s so much that’s absurd about that. Where to begin?
One, are trans people the only people who have that particular form of courage? And by the way what’s so scary about it? Also what does it mean? And why is it “truthful” to claim to be something you’re not? Why is it so truthful that you’re immeasurably precious because you claim it?
Two, why is that more of a reason to think people are “immeasurably precious” than any number of other things? Like altruism, generosity, empathy, for example?
Three, why does a quality that’s about the self deserve such hyperbolic flattery? In fact why does it deserve any? I think people are all too ready and eager to “live their most meaningful and truthful life” at the expense of other people. What’s so great about it? Why present it as heroic and rare?
Four, how the hell is it living a “truthful life” when it starts from a gigantic lie?
This ideology rots people’s brains.
I sincerely hope that these are all rhetorical questions, and not a pop quiz because honestly I didn’t read this chapter.
Yes, Zoe it is very difficult to be a person who doesn’t conform to gender standards, In fact, society is so invested in conformance that it is throwing money and effort into convincing such people that they have an actual identity contrary to their sex.
Five, where does anyone get the idea that human beings can be precious? There’s eight billion of us; no one fucking matters.
But we must have a priesthood.
(I mean the old one wasn’t up to snuff what with their sexual peccadilloes* but I’m sure this one will be much better.)
*Fred Sargeant described a particularly odious person on Twitter as a “relocated priest”. I’ll definitely be using that one.
If I cast my mind back to the early days of the New Atheism I remember there were always people in left, liberal, or progressive spaces who’d come forward to defend religions ‘truthiness’ , though they frequently didn’t personally believe in any religion and if they did it was an exceptionally woolly kind. It feels like liberal support for the trans cause is rooted in the same woolly, wafflely sense of “truth” that motivated their support of other peoples goofy beliefs back in the noughties.
They were mostly different people though. Now they’ve teamed up. It’s bizarre.
As I recall, the New Atheists had a sort of split on liberal religion from the beginning — though at the time it seemed like it was simply that they emphasized different aspects. It was agreed that even a nice, soft, squishy liberal version of God was problematic. New Atheism was, after all, a version of atheism which explicitly rejected Accomodationist forms of atheism which gave a pass to “truthiness.”
But some of the New Atheists seemed more bothered by the sloppy thinking and bad epistemic habits of Sophisticated Theology for its own sake, as part of the dangers of Faith, while others seemed focused primarily on the idea that liberal religion, while no threat in itself, gave cover to real enemy: the Religious Right and fundamentalism. As concerns for social justice began to grow, many of those in the latter group began to see liberal religionists as allies against the religious opponents of gay marriage and racial equality. The theological “truthiness” then was forgivable because it was confined to how they thought rather than what they did. There was a battle going on. New Atheism was then rejected because it was too stuck on God.
I don’t think any of the former New Atheists believe they’re involved in any sort of “truthiness”-style thinking when it comes to transgender. To them, the analogy with same-sex attraction makes the squishiness of an inner sense of being male or female seem like a normal part of thinking or feeling in a nonconforming way. The pushback from religious conservatives absolutely confirms it.
I don’t know, it seems to me that some New Atheists who used to be bothered by the sloppy thinking and bad epistemic habits of Sophisticated Theology simply threw all that out the window when it came to the sloppy thinking behind gender ideology.