Navratilova did not feel the need to back down
DOCTOR Rachel McKinnon wrote a piece explaining what people should do when they annoy DOCTOR Rachel McKinnon, with particular reference to Martina Navratilova.
Last month, tennis legend Martina Navratilova wrote some now-deleted, unfortunate tweets about trans-women athletes.
Her initial tweet was about trans women athletes competing as women while having a penis. It read:
Clearly that can’t be right. You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard…
Two days later, I weighed in by retweeting the offending tweet: “Welp, guess Navratilova is transphobic.” I also said, “No, you are not ‘pro- trans people’ if you say that trans women with a penis must not compete in women’s sport.” I made the points [sic] that her position is transphobic. Genitals do not play sports.
Saying her position is transphobic is not so much making a point as it is repeating a bit of stale jargon. What Navratilova said is not “transphobic” just because Rachel McKinnon says so. Saying that people with male bodies should not compete against women is not transphobic, it’s just an obviously reasonable claim about fairness in physical competition. Wear skirts, call yourself Jenny, giggle fetchingly all you like, but don’t force your way into women’s sport.
Many others confronted her, but Navratilova did not feel the need to back down from her position.
Imagine that! Some people disagreed with her, some people agreed with her, and she went ahead and felt entitled to think what she thought. She didn’t “feel the need to back down from her position” because no one had succeeded in convincing her her position was wrong. That happens sometimes.
What Navratilova failed to see was that her tweets, whether they were intentional or not, were doing harm to trans women. Her comments were immediately picked up by anti-trans publications and used as justification for their own positions.
What McKinnon fails to see is that much of the shit he talks is doing harm to women, to say nothing of the harm his competing against women in cycling does to those women.
The doc then gets to the instructions on what to do if you trip and say something transphobic. They’re predictable enough: cop to it, apologize, mean it, delete it all, listen to the abuse criticism and thank people for it, commit to doing better and do the work.
(Wouldn’t it be nice to see Rachel McKinnon do that? Ever? Isn’t it interesting that that apparently never happens? We have to nod in agreement at whatever “criticism” is flung, but Rachel can skip through life without being re-educated every five minutes.)
I still have hope for Navratilova.
Nobody is perfect. I’m not perfect. I don’t expect anyone to be perfect. But we should be held accountable for our actions, especially when we hurt people. When people say that something you said or did hurt them, believe them. Don’t try to minimize it or point to what you ‘intended.’
Again, this is a philosopher talking, making it a general and absolute rule that when people say that something you said or did hurt them, you have to believe them. No exceptions, no qualifications, no warnings – just believe them. But what if they are psychopaths, or narcissists, or whiny entitled brats, or con artists, or people who work for Trump, or people who want to do you harm?
Don’t try to minimize it or point to what you ‘intended.’
Here’s an analogy: suppose that you accidentally break my favorite coffee mug. Sure it’s worse if you intended to break it, but even if was an accident, you still broke my mug. You should acknowledge that you broke it, apologize, do something to fix the harm, and then promise to be more careful in the future.
And you should mean it.
Wow – don’t ever drop in at McKinnon’s place. But more to the point, don’t ever go near McKinnon at all. Guess what: that’s not how you treat people. If somebody breaks your favorite whatever, they already feel bad about it, and if you’re not an asshole you don’t want to make them feel even worse.
And I mean it.
I think that McKinnon also fails to see that Navratilova couldn’t give a rat’s ass about McKinnon’s oh-so hurt fee-fees. He is also oblivious to the fact that by continuing to harp on about it, he is showing himself to be just a whiny, entitled little shit who doesn’t know when to shut up and let it go. Plus, of course, any half-decent philosopher should know that the entire world cannot march to a single beat, no matter how woke or how deep into the culture of victimhood the drummer might be.
Right, but if I’m not allowed to tell you that I didn’t intend to break your mug, that I was reaching for a biscuit and accidentally caught your mug with my sleeve, then you’re free to spend eternity telling all and sundry that I broke it deliberately. Anything to allow you to play the victim, eh?
Unless those people are women. And you actually hurt them. Like, for instance, played against them in sports and broke parts of their body because you are bigger than they are like Hannah Mouncey. No, because if you are a trans-woman, you are the one hurt by people thinking you might be a bit big to play sports with women. You might be a bit aggressive to play sports with women. Because you are a woman, damn it, and saying that you might be too big when you just sent someone smaller to the hospital is exactly the same as genocide.
Extension to McKinnon’s Rule: Never, ever, ever listen to anyone born a woman when they say you hurt them, because they are only trying to deny you exist.
This is idiotic in so many different ways, it’s fractally idiotic. It’s a clusterfuck of idiocy.
People can get their feelings hurt when they’re presented with opposing views or with facts or opinions they don’t like. We’re not morally obligated to coddle each other over disagreements about matters of public interest.
Narcissists can get their feelings hurt when nobody notices how special they are. Tough shit.
And of course, not everybody who says they’re hurt really is hurt. Pretending to be hurt in order to manipulate others is a common abusive tactic.
Then there’s the thing iknklast points out: that this horseshit is unidirectional. Feminists point out that transgenderism hurts women. Desisters point out that transgenderism hurt them.
Rachel McKinnon and his ideological cohort don’t follow McKinnon’s rules in response to them. Funny, that.
Then there’s the implication that right-wing sites following the story somehow “hurts” trans people in some unspecified way. That sort of thinking requires more unpacking than it’s worth getting into here.
Let’s just say that the whole thing is an omnishambles of stupid.
Except–the stupidity here is not McKinnon’s, not really. It’s stupid to swallow this stuff without question, but McKinnon doesn’t swallow it. He doesn’t believe this pablum. He knows what he’s doing here. It’s sophistry.
Julia Serano does the same thing. They’re both clever autogynephiles who have found a way to milk this popular delusion for all it’s worth.
MacKinnon is so close to being a parody account. I had a hearty laugh at MacK saying “don’t you know who I am???” to MARTINA NAVRATILOVA, who clearly had no idea and why should she.
This one is so full of self-righteousness, it’s almost funny. I particularly like the insistence that Navratilova should have thanked MacKinnon.
Men only golf courses? Misogynistic. “Men’s Shed” programs, set up as a men only organisation to encourage men to talk about mental health issues? Not misogynistic. It’s not about maintaining power, it’s about safety. So why the refusal to look at the issues involved in women’s sports? Navratilova asked, “is that fair to women?” She didn’t say anything derogatory, or phobic.
When I’m not laughing in horror at MacKinnon, I feel somewhat despairing of the gulf b/w transactivists and gender critical people ever closing. The desperate need to have others validate them, the relentless bullying: there’s a vast insecurity there that is never going to be assuaged. It’s like Trump’s wall.
Navratilova’s tweets were “doing harm to trans women”?
WHAT HARM?!? Please specify EXACTLY what the “harm” consists of. How do the tweets actually CAUSE the supposed harm, once the harm has been identified? Show your work.
They never do that.
And how would those “anti-trans publications” even have known what Navratilova had tweeted without MacKinnon’s “help”?
(Also, that “genitals don’t play sports” line is so dumb. It’s masquerading as a gotcha, but doesn’t everyone read it and say, “Huh? Are you only pretending to miss the point?”)
You should frame that. It’s the closest approximation of self-awareness McKinnon is ever likely to achieve.
I would guess that the reason Navratilova brought penises into her tweet (now there’s a sentence I never imagined writing) is that she was trying to avoid saying something “offensive”. Can’t call them men, because they are not men, can’t say male-bodied because they are women so their bodies are female, etc. Yet, she has to try and get across that she means “grown-ass human beings with all the physical benefits of 20-odd years of life as a human male” or whatever. And that’s already 99 characters right there, so good luck trying to tweet that. And I’d put money on McKinnon knowing that.
Yes, and that’s why I substituted “male-bodied” for “having a penis” – because the latter gave Doc McK the opportunity to say penises don’t ride bicycles yadda yadda. Navratilova used it as synecdoche for “male-bodied” so I just skipped the synecdoche part.
The key thing on this wording is that there is no word you can use (save for “women”) that people like McKinnon will accept. Anything other than “women” will be regarded as hate speech!
And saying that maybe women shouldn’t be competing against women is sort of ridiculous as a concept, right? It would have made no sense.
Walking on eggs, using euphemisms, or trying not to offend is futile. People who are determined to be offended will be offended, no matter what you do. If their “identity” is threatened, the attack dogs will bark, growl, snap, and bite at the slightest provocation.
Meanwhile we have no right to say we are not “cis.”
It’s becoming screamingly obvious that the point behind the trans activists’ rants is to force social affirmation of their woman-ness.
It’s not because they have so much to offer rape victims as counselors. It’s not to participate in sport. It’s not even to pee.
It’s to have the whole world clap as they repeat, “I am the very model of a modern
Major-Generallady woman.”These people need therapy.
What gives it away is that no solution that also accommodates women is good enough. Separate, safe bathrooms? Nope. A trans sports league? Nope. Other work to help rape victims besides direct counseling? Nope.
Yes.
And that’s one reason I’ve dug in so hard. I refuse to be mandated and bullied and coerced into socially affirming people’s fantasies about themselves. I don’t invade churches to harangue the people there, but I refuse to affirm the myths, and I reserve the right to point out why the myths are not credible.
This is pretty much just a blasphemy law in a new guise.
Holms, the difference being that blasphemy is a victimmless crime whereas this is just crimeless victims.
Who’s doing that, Skeletor? Show your work.
However did you get the idea that this post is about what a hero Navratilova is?
We’re doing this because Rachel McKinnon wrote an article about the tweets.
This post isn’t about Navratilova. This post is about claims Rachel McKinnon made in his article. An article in which he discusses the very tweets which were taken down. Taking them down wasn’t good enough for Rachel McKinnon–he wants total compliance.
It’s right there in Ophelia’s opening paragraph, Skeletor, along with a hyperlink to McKinnon’s article so you can read it for yourself.
Do keep up.
Skeletor is way too busy patronizing everyone in sight to bother keeping up.
I’ve just read the piece by McKinnon, and a couple of things leapt out at me. First up is this glaring contradiction beginning with McK quoting his own tweet in response to Navratilova,
before moving on to reference ‘cultural commentator’ (no idea) Jay Smooth’s (ditto)
then informing us that
Yeah, we get it, this is a character assassination designed to paint Navratilova as a transpho….oh, hang on, what’s this?
Fucking Hell! Doesn’t the good doctor of philosophy remember what he’s written literally a paragraph ago? The whole point of that entitled little rant was to inform everyone and their dog of Navratilova’s transphobia and lament her lack of atonement for her sins, then demonstrate McK’s moral superiority and show how the world would be just perfect if we’d all just follow his rules.
Then this wonderful example of ‘do as I say, not as I do’.(emph. mine)
Unless it’s women’s toes you’re stepping on, women’s spaces you’re trampling through, and women’s rights you’re stamping all over with your dainty size 12s, of course.
There are three comments below the article, two of them critical of McKinnon. This bit from the final comment cracked me up
Ouch!
Of course, it’s terribly easy to be “transphobic” when “transphobic” means “questions any claim made by Rachel McKinnon [or other trans activist.]”
@AoS, the Jay Smooth thing was actually pretty insightful. His point, which I agree with, was that it’s a lot easier to continue a conversation with someone when you point out that something they did/expressed was racist, than when you tell them that because they did/expressed some particular thing that meant that they WERE a racist. Starting a conversation by calling someone a racist will make the purported racist ignore anything else you have to say; pointing out that, say, claiming that ‘all lives matter’ is more laudable than that ‘Black lives matter’ is a racist thing to say might make a well-intentioned person with unexamined racist beliefs stop and think, or at least be willing to listen to an explanation and subsequently learn something and change their mind. I’ve been on both sides of these kinds of conversations, and I do find it very helpful when the specific sentiment/incident, rather than the person, is identified as ‘racist’. (Jay Smooth also suggests that these kinds of conversations be approached with a ‘your fly’s unzipped’ attitude, rather than righteous indignation–assume from the start (whether it’s actually true or not, of course) that no one actually wants to be racist, even by accident, so you’re doing the person a favour by pointing it out to them.)
Having said that, though, there’s not enough difference between ‘is transphobic’ and ‘is a transphobe’ (i.e. the difference between ‘is racist’ and ‘is a racist’) for Jay Smooth’s point to be salient in this conversation.
guest @23,
Oh, I think Smooth’s point is absolutely salient, just not in the way McKinnon realized.
To adapt Smooth’s point from the context of racism to transsexism, you won’t have a productive conversation with somebody when you begin by accusing them of being a transphobe — which is exactly how McKinnon opened the conversation.
In other words, McKinnon is citing as “support” a video that explains why McKinnon’s initial salvo was exactly the wrong way to approach Navratilova for a meaningful discussion. As Acolyte of Sagan observed, it’s a contradiction. I think McKinnon perhaps is using Smooth to justify the “Martina isn’t a transphobe, she just said a transphobic thing” approach she now seems to be taking, but without acknowledging that this is a reversal of her initial approach.
I kind of suspect that Jay Smooth (who really is worth listening to!) would note that his recommended approach doesn’t work as well if you flag it as “hey, I really think that you ARE racists/transphobic, but I’m not going to say it any more for purposes of this discussion.” Kind of sabotages the whole point.
I have to say that if I were in the business of employing philosophers (I’m not), McKinnon would be very low on my list. It’s not because they are trans, or because they come across as a bit of a self focused and entitled arsehole likely to be destructive of workplace productivity. It’s because they simply seem to be a bit shit at some of the very basic skills I’ve observed in even students of philosophy. The ability to write well. The ability to string together an internally coherent argument that will also withstand external criticism. The inability to address those external criticisms fully and accurately in order to demonstrate the power of her own argument (shouting ‘you’re wrong now apologise and shutup’ doesn’t count). The ability to be self reflective and self critical. All we’re getting is self absorbed argument from authority. Maybe she feels that in her own time she doesn’t need to apply whatever professional skills she has, but then that suggests that she does philosophy by rote rather than as a deeply ingrained and internalised way of thinking and seeing the world. In other words, not really a philosopher.
Yes. That’s why I keep expressing incredulity that McKinnon is a philosopher, or at least has a job teaching philosophy.
Hey, sophistry is philosophy! Sort of. ;)