There must be reprisals
Still not getting it. Aaron Hughes says life is tough for trans and gender nonconforming students at Oxford, then moves on to the more entertaining part about blaming feminist women for the tough life problem.
In spite of its public commitments, Oxford has failed to protect trans people from harassment and discrimination. Its refusal to act when transphobic speakers are invited to talk in its colleges and faculties is damning. Indeed, its willingness to condone the invitation of people who deny the existence of trans people entirely undermines its commitment to trans inclusivity.
Notice the instant and unargued jump from “harassment and discrimination” to “transphobic speakers invited to talk in its colleges and faculties.” That’s a massive jump. We know from experience that people are often called “transphobic” who are not “transphobic” but skeptical of new and counterfactual dogmas laid down about what women are and what we are allowed to say. Is it likely that Oxford would invite someone to speak whose talk would consist simply of abuse of trans people? Hardly. Refusing to sign up to new and counterfactual and peremptory dogmas about what women are is not any kind of “phobic.” Inviting feminist women who don’t agree that anyone who “identifies as” a woman is a woman is not harassment and discrimination. Women have a large stake in beliefs about what women are, and we’re not harassing anyone by disagreeing that men can make themselves women simply by uttering the magic words.
Then there’s the second sentence. We don’t “deny the existence of trans people.” We know very well that trans people exist, not least because some of them never stop yelling at us. What we deny is their peculiar vision of the facts. We deny that men know more about being women than we do, for instance; we deny that we have to step aside and defer to men who say they are women; we deny that men who say they are women get to bully us and bully any institution that invites us to speak or write an essay or attend a meeting.
Next paragraph.
The language we use is shaped by, and shapes, the world we live in. When we give space to transphobic hate speech in our higher education institutions, we normalise violence against trans people.
But it isn’t “transphobic hate speech.” (Note the redundancy. “It’s hatey McHaterson hate speech!!”) It isn’t hatred, it’s argument over truth claims. It isn’t hate speech and it doesn’t “normalise violence against trans people.” That kind of rhetoric is a distasteful appropriation of the real struggles of people who face real exploitation and oppression.
If the university’s silence on the issue of guest speakers is unacceptable, its failure to act when academics within its own institutions endorse transphobic hate speech is indefensible. In recent times, several academics have publicly disputed the validity of trans identities, in particular those of trans women and transfeminine people. At the time of writing, none have been reprimanded by the university.
What is “transfeminine” and how is it different from trans women? At any rate, again: disputing claims about “identities” that contradict material realities is not phobic hate speech. If we buy into the idea that it is, what’s to prevent the next generation from having to agree that their friends are rabbits, cars, pharaohs, whales, daffodils? If we’re not allowed to maintain our ability to distinguish between truth and lies, how can we function at all?
Trans identities are not a subject of debate, academic or otherwise. That members of academic staff can question our existence without reprisal is an indictment of the university’s commitment to trans inclusivity.
Reprisal. The little shit wants actual reprisal now. What will it be? Thumbscrews? The rack? Whipping?
And then at the end there’s a shocker:
Aaron Hughes is a lecturer in French at the University of Oxford’s Balliol College
I thought he was a student, and a first year at that.
A lecturer!
Oh, your “identity” is very, very much a subject of debate. One that people like me will continue to debate until you reel it back in and keep it where it belongs. Which is in your own mind. Not in the rules that other people are expected to live by.
If language is so powerful (and it is), why do these people feel that silencing and erasing women, threatening them and the misogyny inherent in their behaviour and language is ok?
Because they hate women.
People you disagree with being invited to talk is not harassment and discrimination. It can be a failure to discriminate – there are groups and individuals who should be discriminated against but it is not in itself discrimination.
I have serious doubts about that.
Last week in South Africa Andile Mngxitama, the leader of the BLF called for his followers to kill five white people for every one black person killed by the taxi industry, as retaliation for Johann Rupert’s involvement with that industry.
He said that they should kill women, children, cats, dogs, anything that stood in front of them.
Aaron Hughes is complaining that people who have views he finds objectionable are being invited to speak, more often than not on topics other than those he disagrees with them on. The content of what they were actually invited to say is not relevant to him except insofar as that they continue to exist while having said things he personally finds objectionable.
While language can I suppose shape society and be shaped by it, I think in order to do the former it has to be aiming at shaping society. In order for an argument to be convincing it has to, at least to some extent, be designed to convince.
I do not think that questioning or applying critical thinking to trans activist rhetoric is necessarily aimed at convincing people of anything so much as querying the logic of that rhetoric.
The BLF were calling for the murder of entire families, including pets, and I don’t think they were effective at convincing South Africans to do it. That is far more extreme than anything I’ve seen out of the feminist movement.
Everything is subject to debate, especially academic. Ignorance, which is the product of silence more often serves the interests of injustice rather than justice. You cannot correct misconceptions which cannot be voiced.
And that which cannot be questioned should never be accepted as true. If you cannot question your leaders they should not be your leaders, if you cannot question your beliefs then you should not believe them. Cloaking any idea behind a fog of offense is what you do when you know your idea is wrong, not what you do when you think it can stand scrutiny.
This is not a piece aimed at championing trans rights, it is a piece aimed at ensuring that any defense of those rights is rendered flabby through a lack of contact with its opposition.
Also, it kind of bugs me when these idiots act like including a thing they don’t like is excluding them.
I mean if you don’t like vanilla ice cream it isn’t excluding you if the local gelato shop has it on the menu you know?
@3, well that seems to be the thing doesn’t it.
Apparently, holding a different view of the concepts of sex and gender is many things at once: transphobia, discrimination, denial of the existence of trans people, hate speech, normalisation of violence… There really seems to be a lack of any sense of proportion among these trans advocates.
It sounds more sophisticated and scholraly and is a lot less of a giveaway using this varied range of terms and effcts than simply to label the critical analysis of trans activist rhetoric, logic and ideology “double plus bad.”
SCHOLARLY. I meant SCHOLARLY. It sounds way more sophisticated when you don’t spell scholarly wrong.
Sigh.
Where’s a smocking gun when you need it?
Actually I kind of like “scholraly” and it works as sarcasm, so I’ll leave it unless you reeeeeeally want it fixed.
Questioning their claims is not questioning their existence. Besides, it would be Flat Earther-level denial to question the existence of something that is constantly right just there, and very noisily so, like tinnitus in human form.
Thanks for the offer Ophelia, but I’ll let my scholralship stand.
But refuting their claims to womanhood, allowing questions to even be asked, is tantamount to saying the Emperor is naked. The charade ends, the parade is over and those who praised the elegance and refinement of His Majesty’s raiment are shown to be a frauds and liars The little boy in the story who did not get the memo to bow and scrape and oooh and aaah is not to blame for the monarch’s nudity or embarassment. He only pointed out the truth as he saw it, the facts on the ground. Trans extremists’ claim to womanhood disappears in a puff of logic if their claim to it is not unquestioningly accepted and affirmed. To even question the assertion shows its weakness and dependence upon bluff and intimidation. Hackneyed formulae and magical thinking will only take you so far in the face of embarrassing, unyielding facts on the ground. Without some sort of reprisal, punishment or penalty, those who are silenced by fear rather than agreement may peel away from compliance with the demand for obedience to the asserted truth, as their going along with the demand in the first place was not out of any heartfelt loyalty or assent. While in the thrall of intimidation, they may however fetishize and display their own, superior wokeness by pointing out the lack of enthusiasm in others. (Reminding me of the tale told of the spontaneous, enthusiastic, thunderous applause with which a speech of Stalin was always greeted. Starting to clap was a no-brainer. The problem arose once one’s hands became sore. Sore hands or no, nobody wanted to be the guy who stopped clapping first…)
It’s a much more extreme example, but the assassination of atheists in Bangladesh I think, also springs from a similar desire to remove from consideration completely any hint of doubt or questioning of unevidenced assertions of fact, in this case the existence of a particular god. In this case the secret being guarded at all costs is not that The Emperor has no clothes, but that there is no Emperor at all. Allowing the brazen expression of blasphemy to go unpunished is seen as a sign of weakness, and represents a chink in the armour that protects the whole empty construct. It then becomes a competition amongst True Believers to demonstrate the depth of zeal and fervour with which one deals with or eliminates the doubters, blasphemers and apostates, both as a demonstration of the solidity, strength and orthodoxy of their own belief as well as a warning to others to keep silent.
The same goes for the violent response to the cartoon depictions of Muhammad; being able to coerce others into accepting your beliefs and to impose your rules and proscriptions is an excersize in power and, for a short time at least, a method of attempting to create a reality out of nothing but sheer will (and threats or acts of violence). Getting everyone else to go along with it is the tricky part, requiring silence from those who would oppose or criticize. But fear doesn’t always work, or if it sometimes does, not forever.
Criticism is not violence. Speech is not genocide. Baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire are not rhetorical devices.Calling for the death of TERFs is not reasoned argument.
One thing I find problematic about their claims is their utter bloody refusal and/or inability to actually define “woman”. It turns out that “woman” is what they are, and anything they say it is. A word that malleable has no meaning at all, so saying you are a “woman” has no meaning anymore, because a woman can be a man and vice versa. So, if my dog wants to eat my cat’s food (which he does), should he just identify as a cat? Maybe say “meow” now and then? After that, he is entitled to eat the cat’s food?
I said a thing–
“Oxford has failed to protect trans people from harassment and discrimination. Its refusal to act when transphobic speakers are invited to talk in its colleges and faculties is damning.”
“Transphobic” has come to mean any disagreement with transgender dogma.
Don’t believe that the proper definition of “woman” is “anybody who identifies as a woman”? You are a transphobe, and if Oxford allows you to speak–on any topic at all–Oxford is committing transphobia!
“Indeed, its willingness to condone the invitation of people who deny the existence of trans people…”
Nobody “denies the existence of” trans people. What the author means here is “people who do not agree with any or all of the truth-claims made by trans polemicists.”
“Trans identities are not a subject of debate, academic or otherwise”
Of course they are. Why shouldn’t they be? Trans activists make certain claims; other people have every right to subject those claims to rational scrutiny.
There is no human right to be seen as we wish to be seen. Nobody is morally obligated to accept what people say about themselves, uncritically, simply because they say it.
The totalitarian mindset that underlies this sort of bafflegab is breathtaking, but not surprising. If trans activists of the “Queer Theory” school (which is what is on display here) had arguments that could withstand rational scrutiny, they’d make them. Instead, they offer appeals to pity, and do their damndest to shut down open and honest discussion.
Which cannot be enforced to the degree commanded. The Stalin example is quite apt: the most grovelling, obsequious, follower may be caught flat-footed when the Eternal Wisdom of The Leader reverses itself.
Belligerent trans orthodoxy is incoherent, and self-contradictory. Anyone can be sniffed out as a witch at any moment, according to the whim of the mob, or a single self-declared ‘leader.’
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