Analogy crime
Child Psychiatry Fellow at Stanford Medical School Jack Turban to Jessica Taylor in response to her objection to a man, Mridul Wadhwa, as director of a women’s rape crisis centre:
Women “demanding” female staff at rape crisis centers is not repeat not comparable to white people demanding white staff at anything. Women are not dominant over men, women don’t rape men, women are not the oppressor class in relation to men, women are not comparable to white people and men are not comparable to black people in discussions of power imbalance or dominance/subordination or perpetrator/victim or violence/injury.
Actually, if someone demanded a white therapist, I probably would oblige, because it does no good to give someone a therapist they have no rapport with. Also, I don’t want to subject the therapist to that. I am aware of the level of abuse that can be leveled at service workers with different skin tone. I’ve never had to be subjected to it myself, as the abuse came primarily from white people, but I have seen friends and co-workers have to deal with it. I don’t ask that of anyone.
Yes, the client asking for a white therapist may be bigoted. If they have been the victim of rape or domestic violence, I think the proper dynamic is to take care of them first and call them a bigot later.
A man in charge of a rape crisis center is one thing. A man who claims to be a woman, and who is setting forth policies that prioritize the rights of men-who-claim-to-be-women over the rights of the center’s clientele, women who have been raped, is something else entirely.
And it does very much seem like it’s about men-who-claim-to-be-women, rather than men in general. Would a woman’s request not to see a male therapist be rejected as bigoted? Does the center even have (non-trans) male therapists?
Re race, the analogy fails in another way. The rejection of male therapists also covers non-trans male therapists, which is not being challenged as bigoted. To equate it to race, a client might have rejected a black therapist, and the request was honored, but the substitute is a black person who claims to be white, and the center calls the client bigoted for not accepting this alternate black therapist as white.
I’ve been told that if a patient ‘demands’ (requests) a white therapist/doctor/whatever medical staff will do what they can to accommodate–their focus is helping the patient, not ‘educating’ them like Mridul wants to do. Besides, the analogy would be closer if the patient were ‘demanding’ (requesting) a therapist of their own minority ethnicity, and it’s definitely best practice for staff to do what they can to accommodate such a request.
Of course, you direct the patient to a white therapist. Therapy only works if the patient can feel comfortable with the therapist. If the therapist’s race is a source of discomfort for the patient, then the therapist can provide no therapy. What, is your position that bigots must be denied treatment? They have to repent, confess their sins, and promise to Do The Work or they get nothing?
Sweet & Spicy Jesus, these people are so fixated on Social Justice and its Manichean oppressor/oppressed dichotomies that they can’t see anything else.
Yes, in Turban’s world, the correct thing to do if a hypothetical white patient asks for a white therapist is to discharge them, publicly out them, hound them out of a job and start an inquisition into their friends and family until they are utterly broken and isolated. Such are celebrated daily on Twitter as “consequences”.
Not quite sure where he gets the idea that transphobia is socially acceptable compared to race, since people are ostracized for being transphobic yet elected to office for knowing the correct code words for racism.
It is brutally stupid analogy, though undoubtedly deliberate.
If I am a white therapist, and a black patient wants a black therapist to help deal with issues connected to racial abuse, that patient is not in any sense racist by virtue of their inability to obtain the needed care from me. Any therapist worth their salt understands that.
Naif #7
That is what I was wondering — has anybody asked Turban what happens if a black person who was assaulted by white people requests to speak to a black therapist? Is that victim also wrong or is it another case of “race is super real but sex isn’t” ???
Southwest88: I think it’s another case of the totalizing woke fetishization of oppressor/oppressed binaries and basing all ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics on it. Whites oppress blacks, and women oppress transwomen. Therefore, everything must be devoted to reversing that oppression. Anything that isn’t is actually reinforcing the oppression, because there is no neutral.
He’s also got the shoe on the wrong foot. It’s exactly backwards about which person is which race. The better comparison would be if a White person were placed in charge of a refuge for Black people who had been the victims of racial violence and oppression. Then, if a Black client requested a Black therapist, it would comparable to refusing the request and forcing the Black person to accept a White therapist. And then the White person in charge of the racial-violence refuge declares open season on the Black client, calling them racist, harassing them on social media, berating them in public, chucking them out of the refuge, and trying to get them fired from their job.
It’s not the trans-ness that’s wrong with putting Midhrul Wadhwa in charge of women’s rape services, it’s the maleness.
Well quite, that’s what I meant by “Women “demanding” female staff at rape crisis centers is not repeat not comparable to white people demanding white staff at anything. Women are not dominant over men, women don’t rape men, women are not the oppressor class in relation to men, women are not comparable to white people and men are not comparable to black people in discussions of power imbalance or dominance/subordination or perpetrator/victim or violence/injury.”