Guest post: Focus like a laser
Originally a comment by latsot on That’s sense?
This is what I was trying to say in a recent thread. We’ve lost the ability to stick to the argument. The trans ‘movement’ is incredibly distracting and it’s almost impossible to get through a rebuttal of a single argument without being deflected by a new articulated lorryload of insanity hitting you amidships.
Far be it for me to tell people how to activist. I tried that in the olden gnu atheist times and look how that worked out. I can’t even get through a single paragraph without mixing a metaphor, nobody should be listening to me. I mean, “amidships”? Where the fuck did that come from?
But having said all that, what we all need to do is focus a lot more on what we cannot concede. Unapologetically. Irreverently. Rudely. Belligerently. Like a bellicose giant, to steal a phrase from Dawkins. Like people, what is more, who will not take any shit.
I know all of us around here are brilliantly cross and argumentative already, it’s what I love about this place. And the message here could not be clearer: men are not women, women are not men, what the fuck is this non-binary bullshit anyway? But we’re all in danger of losing focus when we argue because of the distracting gew-gaws of fuckbuggery I mentioned before. This is why I miss the brilliant Helen Staniland on Twitter. She was absolutely focused on one particular issue, usually phrased as the question you’ll all be familiar with. No matter what nonsense came her way, she found an entertaining route back to that question. Very effective, that’s why She Had To Go. Me, I’m all over the fucking place, but I learned a lot from Helen. Focus like a laser on your bottom line, on the thing you’re not willing to concede, and your enemies will scamper about it like cats.
You see? Even I can do metaphors when I really try.
In other words, framing (sorry) is important. This is not an argument about rights. Nobody’s rights are in danger. This is because trans people have all the rights the rest of us have anyway and we are absolutely unwilling and unable to compromise on the existing rights of women and homosexuals. We won’t do it. It won’t happen. That’s not the argument and it never has been and never could be, but it’s horrifyingly easy to be sidetracked into arguments about rights anyway.
The argument has to be about what we can concede, and it turns out it’s loads of stuff. We can stop judging the gender non-conforming (come on, even we who consider ourselves more enlightened do it a bit, we can admit it and we can try to stop doing it). We can fight more for acceptance of the gender non-conforming: upset at events where drag queens read to children because of the grotesque and harmful caricature of ‘femininity’ and non-conformance on display? I am, I’m fucking furious about it. But what I do is complain about it instead of setting up more positive events about gender non-conformity.
What I’m saying is that’s the kind of concession we need to make; to be as open to doing things that help people who are lost as we are resolute in not giving up rights and language and free speech. I think we are, but we are easily sidetracked into debates about rights because we are somewhat logical beings who care a great deal about truth. And because we are emotional beings who care a great deal about injustice. We’re easy – in other words – to manipulate.
As I’ve said before, negotiation is about creating options, not about giving away things we don’t want to give away in exchange for not being beaten with a pink baseball bat. Come at me with the bat, trans activists. Come at me. It will not work out well for you and I will not budge one inch. But I will happily work with you and your many, many other enemies to help de-marginalise the non-conforming. I’ll move heaven and fucking earth for that.
Now…. why won’t you work with me to do that, trans activists? It’s a question worthy of Helen.
Here is something I wrote to respond to a trans person on the thread after Hemant Mehtah’s post about Dawkin’s twitter comment on trans. I’m not whether to bother posting there, but would be interested in any suggested improvements to articulate just why I have disagreements with trans activism, including how to make as many as possible who read it, see my comment as civil & worth considering.
________________________
I now have a hypothesis about why we are talking past each other.
I think you (& trans people/activists generally?) attach much more importance to the question “Man or Woman?” than I do.
Yes part of my identity is that I am a man, but there are so many aspects of my identity to which that is irrelevant.
I enjoy outdoor activities such as, hiking biking canoeing X-C skiing….
I enjoy reading, Science, History, Science Fiction…
I enjoy baking & eating cookies.
And many other aspects of me.
Any & all of these could equally be true of a woman.
More generally why do we ask the question “Man or Woman?” about someone.
I think a large part of the progress over the last few centuries toward more equitable societies, comes from realizing that question is irrelevant to many situations, and giving the question any consideration in those situations will be unfair to someone.
Should this person have the vote? Man or Woman is irrelevant.
Should we hire this person for a particular job? Man or Woman is almost always irrelevant.
Should we have laws or customs saying that this is men’s clothing & that is woman’s clothing?
Laws, I would say probably never. Customs, I would say usually no.
Should we market some toys as for boys & some as for girls? Never.
The occasions when the question “Man or Woman?” is relevant, all seem to come down to situations where physical differences between the sexes, usually related to the reproductive systems, matter in some way.
Eg: for some medical care the differences matter
It is at least arguable that there should be separate mens & womens public washrooms, or separate mens & womens sport competitions. The reasons for separation, if valid, come down to physical differences between the sexes.
And of course for most people considering the question “Do I want to get naked in bed with this person?” “Man or Woman?” is an important consideration (though very much not the only one) & it is the physical differences between the sexes that they are considering when thay ask “Man or Woman”.
I so far haven’t thought of an exception to my rule for when the question “Man or Woman?” is relevant. Please inform me if you do.
So it is the physiology & anatomy of the body that determines the answer to “Man or Woman?”, not some mental aspect of the person. (The anatomy will sometimes be ambiguous & then the best designation is probably ‘intersex’.)
So if you got annoyed by being told “You can’t do that, that is a girl thing & you are a boy” or “You can’t do that, that is a boy thing & you are a girl”. You were almost certainly right to be annoyed. But it was because boy or girl was actually *irrelevant* to the situation & you should just do it because you like it & it harms no one. Deciding “I like girl things so I must be a girl” or “I like boy things so I must be a boy” is just a mistake if that is what you did.
Jim
I got some (perfectly fair!) pushback for saying that “…gender critical feminists […] take the position that being “female” doesn’t say anything about you other than the most superficial and irrelevant physical facts”. You formulated what I meant to say far more precisely than I did. I was trying to make a point about which side is actually guilty of “gender essentialism” (besides my rant was already more than long enough!). As I mentioned earlier in that same guest post, words like “man” and “woman” are just convenient short hands for sets of physical traits, not cosmic revelations about who you are as a person. When people like me say that having a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers makes you a “woman”, believers in gender ideology think we are inferring something more about the person than what we started with when all it really means is that having a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers makes you a person with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers. Hardly a radical claim when you think about it. They are the ones who claim that being “man” or “woman” or “[insert non-binary gender of choice]” defines you as a person, says something vitally important (yet unspecified) about what’s going on inside your head, your inner life, your thoughts and feelings, your social roles (“trans-women are socially women”) etc.
I definitely agree with the sentiment, but as I have mentioned a few times, I’m increasingly doubtful that this is a major part what’s driving contemporary trans activism, at least of the TERF-bashing kind. As valid as these considerations are, I suspect they are far more important (and persuasive) to the gender-critical side than they are to the most vocal TRAs. To repeat something I wrote earlier…
I think there’s another way the who is what question matters, one which is somewhat airy and hard to pin down, but not therefore trivial. I think it’s to do with common experience. Women have the experience of growing up female, and certain kinds of weirdness that go with growing up female. The same applies to men. Maybe for people who “came out” at 3 this won’t be the case, but in general, an adult man who says he’s a woman is going to have grown up as a boy, and he won’t have experienced a lot of things that only girls experience. We don’t know, from the inside, what the other sex’s experience is like. I think being expected to pretend otherwise is a less than reasonable expectation.
Which is, in itself, a dubious concept, especially since 3 is about the point where kids have really developed and integrated ideas of gender differences. Of course, I don’t need to say that to anyone here. We’ve already discussed the obvious problems with accepting what 3 year olds “identify” as. They are not yet able to map all their feelings and ideas to reality (some will never achieve that; the rest of us achieve it only imperfectly). Things tend to be A or B to them, and their reasoning is simplistic and flawed.
When my 3 year old “identified as” an elephant, I did not start feeding him peanuts, let him sleep in a cage, or sell him to the zoo. Nor did I take him for ear and nose enlargement surgery.
Thank You for the commentary to my comment.
I think I will post it as it stands to Friendly Atheist.
Ophelia: I will save your point to work in if I post this little essay somewhere else. Perhaps just add it as a postscript & properly attribute it to you.
THAT”S TERRIBLE! You should be reported for Family Violence! Is there a statute of limitations for prosecuting parental failure to provide an elephantoplasty?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnDm3HaCQeg