Rules regarding fairness
A programme on Today FM in which a contributor referred to author JK Rowling as a “transphobic bigot” breached rules regarding fairness, objectivity and impartiality, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland has ruled.
A complaint was submitted in relation to a segment of the Last Word with Matt Cooper on September 18th.
It stated that during the weekly panel discussion, one of the contributors stated that Ms Rowling was transphobic, without providing any evidence to back this up.
So you mean there’s not a blanket rule that if you don’t agree that people can literally become the other sex, everybody is allowed to call you a transphobic bigot?
The broadcaster cited UNESCO as defining transphobia as “the irrational aversion, anxiety, discomfort or hatred of people because they are or are perceived to be transgender”.
Do we have words for all examples of irrational aversion, anxiety, discomfort or hatred of people because they are or are perceived to be [insert list of all possible items here]? Are anxiety and discomfort really something UNESCO needs to be calling an evil kind of phobia?
Also, what is the relevance of the UNESCO definition?
It said the panellist in question was of the opinion that JK Rowling exhibits some of the characteristics of transphobia, such as anxiety and discomfort.
Ah I see what they’re doing. They’re pretending that disputing the truth claims of trans ideology is the same thing as anxiety and discomfort about a set of people. Cheap shot. They’re not the same. If your best friend tells you she’s a horse, you’re allowed to think she’s wrong.
If someone rejects Gender Identity Assumption and considers a transwoman to be a type of man, is feeling anxiety or discomfort when this man enters into spaces reserved for women an irrational, phobic reaction? The normal response to such a situation is “no.”
If we accept that the gender critical are sincere in their belief, then they can’t be accused of transphobia. A transphobic person would instead think “there’s a woman who was assigned male at birth — that’s so spooky! I must run!”
I have anxiety and discomfort. Does this mean I am transphobic, or just that I have a teenager?
Re “… discomfort … of people because they are perceived to be transgender”
So, noticing someone appears to be transgender, and wondering what their “preferred pronouns” are, and worrying that you might get them wrong and get chewed out or worse for “misgendering”, that seems to be “discomfort”.
Dismissing counterarguments as the product of blind, visceral, gut-level, “bigotry”, “hate”, “phobias” etc. on the part of your opponents is such a lazy way of poisoning the well, very much like dismissing any inconvenient fact or argument as part of somebody else’s hidden agenda or nefarious plot (“shill of Big Pharma” etc.) There’s also an element of self-fulfilling prophecy involved: If you keep demonizing your opponents, portraying them as vicious, malevolent bigots and haters, attributing to them the worst possible intentions and motives, putting words in their mouths, and interpreting everything they say in the least charitable way imaginable, there’s an excellent chance that they will indeed start hating you back (duh!). It’s hardly conclusive evidence that your assessment of them was right all along.
In less than ten years I have been alienated from the people I considered “my crowd” (not making that mistake again…) not just once but twice: First by the movement atheists and skeptics who threw women under the bus during “Elevatorgate” as well as the ensuing Anti Harassment Policy Wars, and then again by the social justice activists currently riding the TRA bandwagon. In both these cases my bias was in the other direction (if anything, I might be accused of over-compensating). Before the Deep Rifts I had read all of Dawkins’ books and devoured every online article, TV documentary, interview or talk by him I could find, I had defended him from criticism countless times, I had made a monthly donation to the RDF for years etc. Same with Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, James Randi etc. Then after the Schism, I was a strong defender (including putting my money where my mouth was) of the FTB, Skepchick, Block-bot etc. crowd. I followed plenty of TRAs on twitter and even signed some petitions to ban “TERFs” from specific venues (*blush*). Yet in both cases, as soon as I jumped off the bandwagon, the people still onboard immediately jumped to the conclusion that I just had some inherent bias or vested interest in destroying their movement from the outset. I did not, but they sure have given me cause to want to destroy it now.