“You must trust me to know my own identity”
Josephine Livingstone at the New Republic apparently thinks that people are simply not allowed to discuss or write about what is meant by “trans” and how we know any of it is true and subjects of that nefarious kind.
Jesse Singal, who has gained notoriety on the left for his frequent tweeting and writing on trans issues, says he just wants to talk. When readers get angry with him, which happens often, he sees them as curtailing a productive conversation that he has prompted in the spirit of a free and vigorous exchange of ideas.
How dare he. No, what we’re supposed to do is find the Correct trans people on Twitter, find out what they say, memorize it, and point to it if the subject ever comes up. How do we know they have it right? Never you mind; we’re not permitted to ask questions of that type.
But if there were a neutral space online for this imagined debate about, say, trans children, its location would certainly not be Jesse Singal’s Twitter feed. There’s a reason that we have a saying about not dignifying an idea with a response.
But anyway we’re not supposed to have a debate. We’re just supposed to find out what the revealed truth is, and then shut up. If we wonder how anyone knows all this, we must keep it to ourselves.
Singal’s lamentations elicit a very particular weariness among trans readers. His logic is circular, and obsessive. In returning to the subject repeatedly, Singal seems intent on cracking some truth about the trans experience that is not accessible to him, as if provoked by that very inaccessibility. And this is the epistemological challenge that trans culture lays at cis culture’s doorstep: You must trust me to know my own identity. To extend full humanity to trans citizens means marking the limits of cis knowledge.
Ok, dropping the sarcasm now. That’s not an “epistemological challenge”; it’s a command to accept narcissistic bullshit without question. There is no such imperative. No, we are not required to trust anyone to know her or his “own identity” if her or his claims about said “identity” are implausible. We don’t have to extend people in general that kind of sweeping trust, because people can lie and people can be mistaken, yes even about their own identities. Of course they can; self-knowledge is subject to warping by self-interest, self-protection, self-love, to name just three obvious distorters. So no. That’s one reason the claims about trans identity are so contested and so contestable: they really entirely on subjective understanding of a magical self, and that’s not a strong basis for genuine knowledge.
That fact is clearly politically anathema to a lot of people right now, but that doesn’t make it any less true. The fact that the New Republic employs someone (Livingstone is a staff writer) who can’t see that is kind of embarrassing.
(There is also, to repeat, the simple fact that people can lie – yes, even about their “own identity.”)
One of the reasons that trans skeptics get so riled by this demand is that it implies that their empathy and their intellect have borders. It also denies the universality of human experience, and undermines the notion of a pure discourse where only reason prevails. Ironically, nothing makes those borders starker than the Singals of this world patrolling the edges of a culture war, demanding that their opponents meet them at the fence for a healthy conversation.
Can you figure out what that’s supposed to mean? Because I can’t.
Maybe we should just trust it.
Huh? How does this imply that? Not that I have any doubts that my intellect has borders (and my empathy). I am not infinite, nor is my ability to reason or feel. Everyone’s intellect has borders. Everyone’s empathy has borders. We are a limited species, but the fact that you believe in magical words and I don’t does not make me more limited than you are.
This is just a way of saying “You’re just whining” and “shut up” to people who have arguments that the trans community is unable to answer with logic, reason, or empathy. So all they can do is shout “TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN. PERIOD.” and “DEATH TO TERFs”. Sorry, saying “I yam what I yam” is not an argument. It’s not a rationale. It’s not the last word on reality.
Forget debating. Forget skepticism. How about simple confusion? Because my limited intellect seems to contain a lot of that.
“Huh? What do you mean you’re a woman? What is a ‘woman’? How are you using that term? What does ‘trans’ mean to you?”
I think I’ve got that last quoted paragraph interpreted.
I believe it’s supposed to mean that “critics are bothered by the claims of trans activists because those claims imply that trans people have special knowledge to which critics must defer, and the critics are hung up on silly concepts like objective data that is accessible to everyone. But in fact, trans activists have unique knowledge of what it is like to be trans that non-trans people must simply accept as true. Singal’s insistence on independently verifiable facts rather than personal subjective testimony just proves that he doesn’t get it.”
Or, in simpler terms: shut up and accept what you’re told, your opinions don’t matter.
Heh, yes.
I’ve been thinking about this “unique knowledge of what it is like to be trans that non-trans people must simply accept as true” lately – this weird (or laughable) assumption that trans people really do have perfect, reliable knowledge about being trans and their feelings about their gender, while cis people have no such knowledge. I’ve been thinking about a dialogue that goes like:
Trans person: I know my gender identity doesn’t match my body.
Not-trans person: I’ve always had that feeling too.
Trans person: No, it’s not the same. For trans people it’s much more intense.
Not-trans person: How can you know that?
I haven’t bothered to imagine any further dialogue, because it would just go in an endless circle. But the reality is…they don’t know. They assume it but they don’t know it.
But, the wokies reply, if it were the same, the not-trans person would stop being a not-trans person.
But they don’t know that either. It could be that the feelings are indeed the same, and equally intense, but that the difference is in how the person deals with the feelings. There could be a whole array of differences, in situation, upbringing, resilience, ability to consider the future, emotional regulation, etc etc etc.
That doesn’t seem to get discussed enough.
Funny how “extend[ing] full humanity to trans citizens” means “never question what they say, and accept that a ‘woman’ is anyone who claims to be one.”
Journalists, philosophers, researchers, doctors: take note. Shut up.
Okay, how is it that (to use Screechy’s translation) ” trans people have special knowledge to which critics must defer” but women (or anyone else at all) don’t? How does a trans person know what “feels like” to be a woman BETTER than a woman 1.0? Why can’t GC women posess any sort of “special knowledge” (that comes from, you know, actually BEING women) to “which [trans] critics must defer?” Is it only trans people who got the Secret Decoder Ring in the mail? Are they the only ones with their souls tuned to the right frequency?
Does this writer say whether a trans person needs surgery and hormone treatment to “become” their target gender, or have they “always” actually been their gender and need no such medical interventions to be considered such? My understanding of trans ideology (slight as it is) suggests that this is a bit of a contradiction, and that maybe there are at least two trans ideologies at work here. How does one determine which (if either) is true? If questioning “transness” risks highlighting these differences and contradictions, I can well understand from the trans activists’ point of view that debate and inquiry must be shut down ASAP, lest the incoherence of the whole enterprise be laid bare.
And speaking of contradictions and incoherence, how does this writer square the claims of trans ideology regarding gender with the concurrent “non-binary” movement/trend/fashion/pathology/whatever? And, just like the “surgicalized, hormonized” vs.the “intact, self-ID” wings of the trans movement, they can’t both be right (if gender is some deep, foundational, real, personal essence, how can non-binary people lack it altogether, assuming I’ve correctly understood each camp’s claims), though they are very likely both wrong.
Ophelia, if we talked about it we would have to confront a number of things TRAs don’t want us to discuss. Autogynephilia, for one. Or the contradictions mentioned by YNNB.
For those interested, here are Ray Blanchard and Michael Bailey on gender dysphoria in young people. It’s not one thing.
https://4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/
How else are gaps in demographic experience bridged but by discourse? BLM activists had no such qualms, and now I, a white guy, have a window into the black experience. The never resorted to tripe like this:
And I suspect the main reason they didn’t was because they were well aware that white people wouldn’t know much about being black and hence the difficulties faced by black people; that’s what privilege is. And so they bridged the gap with discourse. Same goes for #metoo and feminism in general, same goes for LGB activists.
But not T activists. Why not? I suppose one difficulty the others managed to overcome was to have a position that was internally consistent, and to state only those figures that were verifiable, two hurdles that have so far been insurmountable to the T.
It really is sounding more and more obviously like religious language–the correspondence between the ineffable nature of transness and the ineffable nature of communion with god(s) (and the difference between ‘false’ or ‘surface’ belief and ‘genuine’ belief) is becoming more direct.
One thing that pisses me off about the author’s approach here is that in fact I doubt anyone gives a shit about what you believe about your ‘identity’. Identify as whatever you want. It’s perfectly possible to go about your day in public identifying as a stuffed crocodile. Honestly, no one will care. You can keep it to yourself, you can tell other people, whatever. What people object to is how your feeling about your identity manifests in the real world–how it causes specific, identifiable harms to other people. Another direct correspondence with religion–no one cares what you believe; we care when your beliefs negatively affect others.
YNNB @6,
A very, very good question.
Also:
TRA: Respect people’s understanding of their own identity, you cis woman.
Woman: I don’t identify as cis. That’s not my identity.
TRA: YES IT IS! That’s what you are!
What I really want to know is, if ‘a transwoman is a woman, end-of, don’t argue, shut up’, why the need for the sub-categories ‘cis’ and ‘trans’? It’s almost as though that as well as they claim to know themselves, they know deep down that there really is a difference between women and transwomen.
It would seem they still want to distinguish themselves as stuuning, brave and extra-special over and above boring, ordinary, natal women. Also, a non-trans centered feminism is going to waste much too much time getting involved in abortion rights, human trafficking, pay equity, workplace harassment and other distractions to focus on stunning and brilliant transwomen’s need for validation.
Thanks, not Bruce. I knew there’d be a rational explanation.