This Zack Beauchamp guy – he’s a senior correspondent at Vox. He wrote a long piece on the Harper’s letter and cancel culture and all that. In that context he talked about The Trans Question – aka won’t someone please think of the trans ladies.
Kate Manne and Jason Stanley, philosophers at Cornell and Yale, respectively, put the point nicely in an essay on the free speech debate in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Kate Manne and Jason Stanley are both very hostile to feminist women who say that women are women and men are not.
“When oppressed people speak out — and up, toward those in power — their right to speak may be granted, yet their capacity to know of what they speak doubted as the result of ingrained prejudice. And the way in which they express themselves is often then made the focus of the discussion,” they write. “So it is not just that these people have to raise their voices in order to be audible; it’s also that, when their tone becomes the issue, their speech is essentially being heard as mere noise, disruption, commotion. Their freedom of speech is radically undercut by what is aptly known as ‘tone policing.’”
Zack Beauchamp comments:
We saw this at work in the backlash to the Harper’s letter. Much of the controversy surrounded the decision to include a signature from J.K. Rowling, who has emerged as one of the most visible anti-trans figures in our culture. Rowling sees the backlash to her statements about trans people as a threat to her right to free expression; “as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech,” as she put it.
Already we’re in the muck. Rowling is not “anti-trans.” Disputing a new (and stupid) ideology that claims
1. men are women if they say they are and
2. it’s phobic and right-wing and evil to say that’s nonsensical
is labeled “anti-trans” or “transphobic” or TERF bigotry or all those. But the claim is nonsensical and it shouldn’t be framed as evil or murderous or violent to say so…but Zack Beauchamp does just that by labeling Rowling “anti-trans.”
But for a lot of trans writers and thinkers, having to constantly debate Rowling’s position— that the movement for trans equality is a threat to the safety and status of cisgender women — is a mechanism for excluding them from public discourse.
Hello Mr Beauchamp. I’m a woman. Are you aware that women are often excluded from public discourse? And have been as far back as we have any records? Does it occur to you at all, ever, that passionately defending men who say they are women, while slandering women who say that men are not women, is also a mechanism for excluding them – women – from public discourse? Does it occur to you at all, ever, that it’s not actually your place to be telling women that we’re just a fraction of the category women and that we have to “include” men in that category if they tell us to? Does it occur to you that you yourself are “punching down” by doing that? Because it sure as fuck occurs to us.
It is so hurtful to be told you aren’t “really” a woman or a man, to subject yourself to the public abuse and threats that inevitably follow when debating anti-trans voices, that the psychological cost effectively forces trans thinkers to self-censor.
How hurtful is “so” hurtful? How do you know? How do you measure it? Do you ever wonder how “hurtful” it is for women to be told to shut up and move over to make room for men who say they are women? Do you think about women (as thinking beings like you) at all?
Contrary to the notion that worries about safety are absurd, LGBTQ writers and writers of color commonly do experience threats of violence for participating in public debate.
You know who else experiences that? Women. We experience it a lot.
Allowing Rowling to speculate about which women should really “count,” in their view, contributes to crowding them out of the public sphere.
It’s not speculation though, it’s just material reality. And what about the way they – and you, by writing dreck like this – contribute to crowding us out of the public sphere?
[T]here are precious few trans people in positions of power and influence, and treating Rowling’s view as an odious-but-worth-debating view makes it less likely that trans people feel comfortable existing in the public eye. Why should trans people have to treat anti-trans voices as legitimate argumentative partners when no one would, for instance, expect a Jewish writer (like me) to debate a neo-Nazi?
But trans people are not equivalent to Jews, or to black people, or to the working class, or to immigrants, or to refugees, or to women. Also, women who refuse to agree that men are women if they say they are are not equivalent to neo-Nazis. Not even close.
I’m so sick of these smug shits.
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