Branded complicit
Elizabeth Nolan Brown went to an LGBT summit the other day and wrote it up for Reason.
During a lunch break at The Atlantic LGBT summit Thursday, attendees were invited to watch an informal panel discussion on transgender civil rights. Panelists included several transgender activists, as well as several non-trans panelists included for their expertise on legal issues (such as Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner Chai Feldblum) or proximity to the conversation (such as an Atlantic staff writer who covers social justice). This, it turns out, was problematic.
Erasing marginalized people from discourse about their own communities has long been a problem, of course. But the fact remains that, at the moment, there are no trans EEOC commissioners. There is no trans executive of the American Civil Liberties Union D.C., or on the White House outreach team. Considering that this was not a panel on the trans experience per se but a dialogue on legal barriers to equality, the inclusion of cisgender people who work directly on these issues hardly seems a mystery or a microaggression.
Commissioner Feldblum and moderator Steve Clemons pushed back slightly, defending the inclusion of non-trans panelists on these grounds. No good. Before long, those who thought having cis people on the panel was OK were branded complicit in the fact that trans people are often the targets of physical violence. Once again, nods and murmurs of approval from the audience.
Were they told they have blood on their hands?
here’s some other conventional wisdom gleaned from the summit:
- Being “safe” means not just freedom from actual or threatened physical violence but also avoiding offensive or hurtful language.
- Gender identity is established in early childhood (“between three and six years old,” according to Hattaway Communications research associate Nicholle Manners); for parents, helping children transition to their preferred gender identity at a young age is the only humane position.
- Laws that are redundant or practically unenforceable are still worthwhile for their “symbolic” power. (Says Scott Shackford: “I remember when people defended anti-sodomy laws as symbolic.”)
- Anything short of unconditional affirmation of minority-activist goals is a form of “erasure.” The correct response when talking about politics and policy is to assess who has the most potent victim-profile and then defer to them. By assessing people on things like race, gender expression, and sexuality rather than the content of their ideas, we are showing them proper respect.
The urge to police people’s language at the summit was also strong—comically so, at times. During one Q&A session, an aggrieved audience member suggested panelists watch their use of the word “states” when referring to American land, as it was exclusionary to those who live in U.S. territories.
And it was impossible not to notice a contradictory impulse in so many of those gathered. At the same time as people praised the non-binary “gender spectrum,” they reinforced old tropes about masculinity and femininity, and the centrality of biology to both. One speaker said he knew his daughter was trans from a young age because Nicole—assigned male at birth, like her twin brother—liked to dress in pink and avoided boy toys. Another speaker described a man as being “in touch with his feminine side” because “he cries a lot.” (Nothing regressive and gender-stereotypical to see here!)
That’s one I still haven’t seen any sensible explanation or reconciliation of. I don’t think I’ve even seen any acknowledgement that it is contradictory. I still want to know – why is non-binary seen as on a continuum with trans when in fact it’s the opposite?
For years, feminists have fought against the idea that there’s something inherent in girlhood or womanhood that explains most of the gendered preferences and traits foisted on us. Now this viewpoint gets a pass, as long as it’s espoused by the LGBTIQ community rather than the usual old patriarchy.
Not from me it doesn’t.
You’ll wait in vain for that acknowledgement, because that would invite critical thought and disagreement, and those are violence.
Elizabeth Nolen Brown observed:
So this part resonated with me:
That said .. oof. It’s Reason.com. Any time David Boaz and Andrew Sullivan are quoted approvingly, major red flags appear for me. Of course, since it’s Reason.com, they’re pretty much the only people they quote.
David Boaz has a long history of supporting any pseudo-libertarian cause that makes him enough money, most of which are highly regressive (it’s where the money is!). From the linked article:
Cake! How dare I be forced to accept money in exchange for goods or services by operating a public business! (No seriously, read that Tweet.) I don’t really need to expand on this, do I?
Andrew Sullivan’s position is basically “my marriage is legal, now shut the fuck up”. Again, from the linked article:
The gay rights movement has finally succeeded. Except for housing and employment discrimination. Sullivan is very much against those things, because libertarianism. And the fact that he probably doesn’t really have to deal with that, now, does he. I also really enjoy his “and those college kids these days” digression.
Oy. I can’t claim to be the best thinker, but then, neither can any of the staff writers at reason.com. They’re paid not to think well.
Ouch, my main point somehow vanished from that:
While I definitely agree with that “resonated” portion, I must say I can’t accept the characterization of events from this source. It’s not reliable. It’s like quoting the World Net Daily as to the murderous tendencies of Muslims. They might get something right, but you’ve got to pick the nugget from the dross. So. Much. Dross.
Reason.com: Showing why reason is important through counterexample.
Jeezis, what a disgusting piece of crap that article is.
It’s titled, LGBT Rights vs. Religious Freedom Looms Large at #AtlanticLGBT Summit and we’re left in no doubt as to which side the author is on:
Oh yeah! Yay for the Cato Institute! Yay for “religious freedom” (read religiously sanctioned bigotry).
Translation: People of conscience approved of the government passing laws prohibiting religious discrimination against gay people.
So illiberal! Almost as illiberal as Islamists being expected to address audiences that are not segregated by gender. Imagine expecting people to put up with things that offend their religious sensibilities!
How about those pushy gay folk, eh? They think their “right to shop for cake anywhere” trumps “freedom of conscience”. I haven’t been this shocked since some uppity black folk thought their “right to sit a lunch counter” trumped someone else’s “freedom of conscience”.
Call it ad hominem if you like, but I have no confidence Elizabeth Nolan Brown, lover of “religious liberty”, is giving an accurate account when she claims:
Is it possible what actually happened was the experience typically reported by parents of transgender children? That the child insisted their gender was other than that assigned, that the parents tried to talk them out of it, that the child was adamant over an extended period of time, that the parents eventually relented and accepted the child’s claimed gender identity, and then the child wanted to dress and act like other children of the same gender? Or are we seriously to believe the parents really declared their child to be a transgender girl based on a preference for pink? (I smell horseshit.)
Patrick @ 3, yes, it’s Reason. Just the other day I expressed surprise at reading an article at Reason that I thought made sense. I agree that the bulk of this article is shit, because it’s all about the “freedom” of people who own restaurants and similar to refuse to serve people they hate for putative religious reasons. It doesn’t necessarily follow that everything in the article is shit.
Silentbob @ 5 –
I on the other hand have seen many claims of the type “she/I loved dolls and pink so we/I knew she/I was a girl.” Maybe I notice claims of that type more than you do, because I’m a woman & a feminist, or because I’ve seen a lot of illiberal bullying opposition to discussing this openly, or both.
@OB:
But it sure remains a possibility. I mean, after reading that Reason article I feel a need to not only independently verify that this LGBTQ Summit actually happened, but that LGBTQ people — nay, human beings — exist at all.
Some shit just doesn’t wash off. :)
Oh, please. That’s a fourth-grade argument. All laws restrict others’ freedoms. I have a car that will go 100 mph. Why am I limited to 70 on the interstate? Why can’t I smack MRAs with a shovel? etc, etc
“For years, feminists have fought against the idea that there’s something inherent in girlhood or womanhood that explains most of the gendered preferences and traits foisted on us.”
If not most gendered preferences can be explained in that way, then at least some can?
Damion #10,
I’m not convinced. But I could be, if you were able to find a gendered preference or trait that’s been proven to be inherent, with no aspect of it caused by socialization or culture. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
This is about where I jumped the train. Is the first item really all that controversial? The notion that “safe spaces” are deliberately carved out places where an oppressed group doesn’t have to deal with the shit that they might otherwise face is pretty much a standard definition for social justice activism.
The second one should probably read, “as early as” rather than “between”–a former trans writer over at FtB, Natalie Reed, said frequently how much she hated any one narrative, including “the girl who knew” being posited as the universal trans ‘truth’.
Yes, some laws are symbolic, in that they express a desire for where we want our society to be, rather than where it has grown to be currently. Such laws are often unenforceable, at least at the outset.
And that last one… It’s dead-on true. Once a child has been identified as trans, early transition is advisable. If nothing else, early use of hormone blockers give the kid time to really make up their mind, one way or the other. Delay and denial just increase the intensity of the dismorphia and the difficulty of transition later on.
Freemage @ 12
I used to be very much on board with the safe space concept; and in truth I guess I still am. What has given me pause for thought is that there does seem to have been a move by some to expand the concept of ‘safe space’ very widely as a means to suppress discussion that they disagree with. Examples include: feminists being unable to publicly discuss gender and the narratives told around this in public without being accused of being TERF’s (or worse) and, more importantly, being accused of violence and complicity in assault and murder; and (attempted) no platforming of secular speakers or activists because of the ‘harm’ that they will do to the religious sensitivities of others. A cursory google search over the last month will provide more than sufficient examples.
I am very much down with the concept of a ‘safe space’, be that a physical area set aside for private use by a group to hold discussion or simply find refuge; or a virtual space such as a chat room, blog or whatever where the moderator or owner states those are the rules.
I’m not down with turning all public discourse into a safe space though, which is where the trend seems to be going in certain areas.
It has to be recognised by all parties that by definition any space defined as safe for one group may be challenging, unsafe or simply inappropriate to another group. That is, almost needs to be, part of the give and take of society and is quite different from clubs or groups that exclude people based on sex/race/religion or whatever.
Damion
Hence, the claim that it is illiberal to force business to refrain from discrimination is bollocks.
It was Pieter who said that.
Holms, I left that deduction as an exercise for the reader.
Congratulations.
“…if you were able to find a gendered preference or trait that’s been proven to be inherent, with no aspect of it caused by socialization or culture.”
What would that even look like, hypothetically? It’s hard to imagine a possible world in which at least a few traits are measurably gendered (or more precisely, sexed) and in which culture hasn’t layered something on to that natural predisposition.
Damion #17,
“Gendered preference or trait” was actually your language, and it’s not ideally clear. What I mean is this. Men and women have different bodies. For example, women can get pregnant; this is a biological fact. That’s not “gender.” “Gender” is the expectation, for example, that because women can get pregnant, they must therefore be more nurturing than men. I’m saying that, until someone can find an example of a norm or expectation related to gender (as opposed to a biological fact related to sex) that is inherent and cannot be changed by culture, I will continue to believe that none exist.
Rob: I’ll concede the notion that language used by social justice advocates routinely gets abused by some and co-opted by others. The right usually tries to turn it around without appreciation of context, and all too often younger advocates and older but recent converts, full of more earnestness than experience with the subject, push the concepts well beyond the range they should be applied to, or just misstate them poorly. However, by the overall tone of the article, I’m pretty sure the original author was not complaining about either thing, but rather was deliberately trying to take a steaming dump on the very concept.
Freemage, that clarifies. I think we are in agreement on those points.
Cressida #18
Hey now, that phrase was copy-pasted from the OP.
Women are socially expected to behave in a more nurturing way, to be sure. It remains up for debate whether this is entirely due to social conditioning or whether women are to some degree biologically predisposed to be more nurturing than men (on average) on account of the relative advantages of maternal investment over paternal investment during the relevant era of evolutionary adaptation.
Or rather, it should be up for debate. Probably, it isn’t.
In my comments, I requested *proof* of an inherent gender difference. The above is nothing more than speculation. There’s not a shred of evidence for it. There really isn’t.
Cressida, I don’t know how such a question can be ethically investigated at all, as it is impossible to raise children healthily without social influence, and it is probably impossible to make the social influence gender neutral.
It is easy to support ‘socialization has at least some involvement in gendered difference X’ – we can record how others reinforce the difference, we can seek counter-examples among different cultures or in different times. But if difference Y ends up being consistent among all cultures we have information about, the behavior would still be at least partially socialized (because there is very little that humans know how to do without socialization), but that is not sufficient to disprove inherent difference that socialization exacerbates.
One might imagine having children raised mostly by and in the presence of people who don’t know their sex, (somebody has to diaper them, I suppose these people would have to be forbidden from talking to anyone else in the experimental set-up). Would it be possible to get IRB approval for something like this?
I hate to break it to you, but, yes, it is. And, yes, the jury’s still out. Men and women generally tend to express compassion differently–with women behaving in more “nurturing” ways–but I’ve yet to see any strong evidence that women are inherently more caring and pro-social, kinder, than men. (The fact that I haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, of course. The point is that the question is being studied.)
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-it/201306/are-women-really-more-compassionate
I hate to break it to you, but it is.
.
Anat #23, I don’t know how one would go about proving anything about any of this. That’s not my responsibility, since I’m not a scientist or a psychologist.
What is my responsibility (I feel) is to call out misconceptions when I see them. People say “men and women have inherent behavioral differences because evolution” all the time, so I assume those people believe there is evidence for this. There is not.
I’m not saying it’s not true. I can’t know that, since there is (let me repeat myself) zero evidence.
Cressida, in science one doesn’t seek to prove things. One can disprove a pre-existing model, and one can support an alternative model, but it is very unusual to positively prove anything (because there can be multiple models that explain the same data).
Also my understanding of ‘inherent’ and yours are different. When I say a trait or a difference within a population is ‘inherent’ I am not saying society or culture have nothing to do with it, I am saying society, culture, and other external influences do not create it entirely out of uniformity.
Take for example adult height – it is a robust trait of individuals, and while it is influenced by environmental factors (for instance how much dietary protein was consumed in childhood and the time following puberty) it is also influenced by one’s genetics (some genes with a strong influence, some with a weaker influence), and some individuals will be short no matter how much protein they eat.
This likely also applies to major personality traits (which curiously show greater heritability in adulthood than in childhood).
Anat, do you have a point or are you just trying to argue with me?
I’ve clearly stated my position.
My point is that we are never going to get anywhere as long as we speak a different language.
Anat, is it your contention that “nurturing” is a robust trait, defined as:
The first question I have: how do you measure nurturing? I mean, I know how to measure height.
I have … other questions. But frankly, without a standard unit of nurture, they’re irrelevant.
I’ll elaborate slightly on my question — it’s far from uncommon to see “nurturing” defined as a subset of activities that includes breast-feeding. Even under the most inclusive standard, the vast majority of breast-feeding individuals are women. This means (most) men don’t breast-feed. Therefore, women are more nurturing than men.
*LOGIC HAIRBALL*
Anyways, hopefully that illustrates my question — “nurturing” is a very loose term subject to quite a bit of interpretation. Not like “height”. Height is well defined.
No, I think ‘nurturing’ is very subjective. I consider my husband and my brothers more ‘nurturing’ types than me, despite my 2+ years of breastfeeding. Mostly, I suck at people skills and treasure being alone. Which of course says nothing about people in general.