Settled or not settled
There’s a sub-conversation about “double standards” in the comments on A matter of simple semantics. That’s a conversation that’s basically going on all the time, with just about anyone who has moral or political views on things. The putative double standard boils down to: You think Question X is settled, while you think Question Y is not. You think there is room for discussion on Y but not on X. You think anyone who denies or disputes X is reprehensible, while you don’t think that of people who deny or dispute Y.
Well, yes. I do think some Question Xs are settled, or should be treated as settled.
Consider the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example. That’s a charter for establishing certain basic Xs as settled, for everyone.
I consider genocide a settled question. Slavery; forced “marriage”; judicial punishment for “blasphemy”; murder; rape; child abuse. I could go on.
It’s not surprising or shocking to consider some things more contentious than others. It would be strange to think of all things as exactly equally contentious.
Or to put it another way, this is the old “yes or no” issue again. Some questions can easily be answered with a yes or no, and others can’t. That too is not surprising or shocking.
The example I used was Abortion. Is that settled for you? Is that settled in general? Are people who have settled on complete bodily autonomy for women members of the purethought police ? How convenient for you that causes you believe in are settled but the ones you don’t are not.
Really? Gender can be an unsettled issue – But Trans women (and trans men) are deluded should be a settled question, no ? And yet you have supportive articles without once mentioning what the complaints are about (for e.g. Germaine Greer). Its surprising to me that someone can suggest that the important distinction about women is a big smelly hairy vagina and not get critiqued by you . In any other context you would have ripped that view to shreds.
And yet that’s not what I said. I didn’t include every “cause” I believe in. I chose ones on which there is broad agreement, whose violation is widely considered bad. I chose the UDHR because that’s the whole point of it.
As I told you in the other thread, you’re mistaken about my views on abortion. You seem to assume you know what I think about everything, but you don’t – Greer on a big smelly hairy vagina for instance. Please try to say what you’re saying without putting words in my mouth.
Deepak, are you saying that because some questions are unsettled they all are? Really?
We’re still fighting for abortion rights because it is *not* a settled matter. We have to define what we mean by gender each time we start a discussion on gender because there are multiple meanings and no default one has been established.
@quixote
Clearly because I think some questions like (Are trans women deluded) are settled questions must mean that I am not saying that all questions are unsettled.
Im complaining about this repeated portrayal about people who think that the question of are trans women women is settled as brooking no distinctions – and I think that there is a marked difference between a question of What makes a woman a woman? v/s a conclusion that People who have hairy smelly vaginas are women , the rest are deluded men . And I am frustrated that the latter is being treated the same as the former (by implication , rather than anything outright).
@Ophelia
Are you saying that those questions which have broad agreement are settled questions ?(and by implication those that dont are not?) Because if so are Atheists fully human? is an unsettled question andshould a woman have full bodily autonomy isn’t settled either.
Are people who will critique any response other than – ” Yes, Atheists are fully human” and “Yes women have to have full bodily autonomy”, people who brook no ifs and no distinction” aka the purethought police ?
I believe some questions are settled and some are not – same as you – and we probably have overlap too – i just dont expect to be part of the purethought police because there are areas we don’t overlap. (And Im reacting because some of the things you are objecting to is things that i might do / have done)
And thats it for me on this topic.
Deepak – why are you talking about “the purethought police”? I did a search and you’re the only person who has used that phrase here. I’ve used Purethought blogs several times, but that was a reference to some of my former colleagues. If you’re saying you might have acted the way they did, well, I’m saying if you had then you would be an asshole. But you didn’t, so I don’t see the need to speculate.
I’m saying that some questions are more settled than others. It’s not an absolute, it’s a comparison.
@Ophelia
I misremembered purethought blogs as purethought police so my mistake- and Im assuming that you are condemning certain viewpoints and attitudes rather than particular people when you say that.
For e.g. Im inclined to not see an issue in some students protesting against giving a platform to Germaine Greer (and i think that she has some pretty horrible views , no matter what other good she might have done) – So as long as the university is consistent and transparent and fair Im ok with either outcome-
But all you have said on this matter leads me to think that you will classify me as
a. Someone who brooks no ifs and buts
b. Another example of a middle aged man going after an old feminist.
c. Another example of how women get criticised but men get a pass for the same views.
And no , Im not attempting to put words in your mouth – I read your blog this is the impression I get – I may be mistaken – and I may not be
What – you aren’t pro-choice ?
Embarrasing to post after saying last one – but you did have a question.
Some aspects of the trans conversation are not at all settled. The science isn’t settled. We don’t know the etiology of being trans. We don’t know the long term effects of puberty blockers. We don’t even know for sure, long term, whether SRS is the best treatment for gender dysphoria.
And questions of gender, its meaning, its place in human society, whether we should “abolish” it or not and whether that’s even possible, are far from settled.
(It should go without saying, but sadly doesn’t, that the above doesn’t mean trans people should be treated with disrespect, denied treatment, or in any way denied human rights. That is settled.)
I don’t think this quite addresses the issue. The tension is that you are willing to declare some questions settled, but are criticize other people declaring questions settled. For example, when coining the “Up for Debate” hashtag last year, you attacked the idea that women’s right to bodily autonomy should be up for debate as ridiculous and disgusting. How is that categorically different from the “are trans women women?” attacks?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentially_contested_concept
Yes, I understand that that’s what Deepak is angry about. I’ve already addressed that. Yes: I think that some questions are more settled than others. I don’t think that’s an astonishing view. I think it’s silly to say “You think this is settled but that isn’t” as a complaint or rebuke.
One is a matter of rights, ethics, and public policy. The other is an ontological question.
Some people insist that answering the question “are trans women women?” with any nuance or ambiguity disparages trans people, leads to or enables violence against them, or otherwise undermines their rights and safety. I have not seen a convincing argument for that; it’s a point of dogma.
So, yes, categorically different.
I don’t know that “convincing arguments” are necessary here; how about just “here are things that happen in the lives of transgender people”?
As for “disparaging” – I can directly attest that when anyone tells my son that, despite his insistence, in some nuanced way he’s not *really* a boy; it hits him harder and with enough hurt to leave him mopey for days. Is that the sense you mean “disparaging”, or do you mean it in some other way?
As for violence… about a month ago, a neighbor’s child (age 6) began arguing with and insisting to my son that he was really a girl… that everyone called him a boy’s name just to be nice. My older son (age 8) stepped in when he saw how upset this was making his brother, and informed the child that his brother was, in fact, a boy (just like him). The child apparently felt
1) This was a lie
2) Lying is wrong
3) Telling the truth is right
4) Both my kids were trying to make him feel bad for doing the right thing.
With the emotional maturity of, well, a 6-year-old, the boy snapped in frustration and attacked my older son. My (older/bigger) son fended the attack off as best he could, but his glasses were broken and he got a few scratches before the other child ran back to his house.
It turned out the kids parents were of the opinion that “transgender boys aren’t really boys”, and conveyed that [ontological and thus *totally* harmless] idea to their child. Along with instructions to be courteous and “play along” with my son’s pretend name.
On a positive note, peace was made – we had a great talk with the boy’s parents. No vilification here; their original opinions stemmed from ignorance (utterly unfamiliar with trans* issues, apparently they’d assumed we had the same attitude, and were playing an elaborate make-believe game until our “daughter” grew out of “her” fantasy). Upon learning how deeply engrained our son’s “sense-of-boyness” was, and with a little more educational material about transgender kids in general, they admitted how much sense it made (and how much healthier it was for my son) if everyone just accepted that he was, plain and simply, a boy. They told their child they’d been mistaken, that our son wasn’t playing some weird / elaborate make-believe game at all, but simply was a boy. I believe, “Oh.” Shrug. “Okay”, was the full earth-shatteringness of this revelation (understandably – *that* made a lot more sense than all these grown-ups walking around telling lies).
On an even brighter note, since the incident (and the parents’ change of heart), both the younger boys have seemed to become much closer friends (for the past week, their child has rung our doorbell almost daily to ask our son to come out to play – something that just didn’t happen previously).
I’m not sure I’d say that constitutes “Transwomen aren’t really women” actually “enabling violence”; the violent reaction here was 99% 6-year-old temper tantrum. But I do bring it up because of the trepidation (coupled with the Hillsboro HS story and a few other local incidences) that this little tussle is probably not going to be an isolated incident, but rather a sign of more violence to come. No, I don’t think the sole driver of that violence is the ontological idea “there’s just too much nuance to accept ‘transwomen are really women'”. But it sure as hell doesn’t help.
@ 13 Lady Mondegreen
I think that’s too glib. I suspect there are many trans women who consider acceptance of their status as women to be much more “a matter of rights, ethics, and public policy” than an interesting metaphysical conundrum.
Silentbob: yes, the problem is that the distinction “factual/ethical” (or “the matter of rights/the ontological question”) is really fuzzy. Sometimes I even have this impression that for Ophelia’s critics it’s not just “much more a matter of rights”, but a matter of rights exclusively – in other words, that they treat the question “are trans women women” as *thoroughly* about rights and ethics.
From this point of view, the only relevant fact of the matter would be that trans women self-identify as women (and I think it should indeed be admitted that some operational, practical meaning can be given to this). In the next move it’s enough to declare that there is no additional “fact of the matter” here at all – ontological or shmontological – and that from now on, the *entire* decision to be taken is political. In effect, from now on any “nuance or ambiguity” is received as an opposition against trans RIGHTS for a very simple reason: there is nothing else left to be nuanced or ambiguous about.
Just see what happens when some people try to introduce e.g. biological factors (chromosomes, ova etc.) or types of socialisation as crucial for the discussion. This is immediately seen as a politically hostile move made e.g. in order to restrict the access to special ‘women only spaces’. And my suspicion is that in a lot of such cases the critics treat the question “are trans women women” as plainly meaningless beyond the issues of rights, ethics and social status.
(Hmm, and what is my own opinion on this? That’s a good question which I probably should answer one day – at least to myself.)
More like you believe it’s okay to criticize people for debating issues you believe are settled, but believe others are wrong to criticize people for debating issues they believe are settled.
In other words I think I’m right about some things while other people are wrong about those things. What a staggering, unprecedented, mind-boggling state of affairs.
Maybe I’m missing an unstated assumption. I believe that it’s possible to argue for the wrong position in good or bad ways. I read your last post as criticizing the method of argument (refuse to tolerate nuance or distinction when you believe something is settled) rather than the argument itself (trans women are women). In other words – given their beliefs the people attacking Dawkins for his tweets were right to do so.
Of relevance to this discussion (and others) is this thread over at Pharyngula…
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/10/28/i-dont-know/
Some of the comments are worthwhile and raise points worth considering. Some not. This comment…
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/10/28/i-dont-know/comment-page-1/#comment-980043
Seems at direct odds with LM @9 above regarding the status of the science behind trans(ness?). I’m not familiar with the science and so can’t pass judgment. I’m also from a physical sciences background and have an inbuilt suspicion of social science. Not because I doubt that the field has something useful to contribute, but because I’ve spent enough time talking to social scientists to see them chucking statistical analysis at some very unscientifically collected data.
(Forgive the way I’ve presented the links. I’m at work, very tired and frankly can’t be bothered making it look pretty)
This. Thank you, Ariel.
@Rob, the only long term study of trans people following SRS that I’m aware of is this famous Swedish one:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885
But the controls are non-trans people; as the study’s authors wrote, outcomes may have been worse without SRS. The authors note:
According to Wikipedia, the long term effects of puberty blockers are unknown.
Here in the US, the wrong opinion about the etiology of (some) gender dysphoria can lead to serious harassment, as Alice Dreger chronicled in her book, Galileo’s Middle Finger. That’s likely to have a chilling effect on the science.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Middle_Finger
Oops. I forgot that including links would hold up my comment, and posted twice. Ophelia, could you just let the second one through? (They’re not identical.)
Thanks.
For the sake of trans children and society as a whole, I do hope puberty blockers turn out to be safe in the long term. Imagine a world where it becomes normal to administer blockers so that individuals can choose which (if any) kind of puberty they want to undergo, and when to do so.
That would be a good thing for a lot of children, I think, not trans children only. I felt way too young for the body changes of puberty – if it had been easy and normal to take blockers, I might have.
Although, given what people that age are like…maybe there would be contempt for kids who chose to delay but weren’t trans.
I had an uncle who failed to go through a normal puberty (back in the ’40s), which was then corrected by giving him growth hormone and testosterone in his late teens.
Given the emotional scars that he (and his family) ended up carrying for decades after I shudder at the thought of anything similar occuring frankly.
“Are women human?” falls into which category?
The second.
What’s your point? Do you believe that asking “are trans women women” is tantamount to questioning the humanity of trans women? If so, take that up with the people who demanded Ophelia answer the question. Do you believe that a qualified answer is tantamount to denying the humanity of trans women? If so, that’s quite a leap.
LM @22, thanks. Interesting reading.
Rob, there has been a lot about how more kids are undergoing puberty earlier than used to be typical. Countering this trend medically would be a boon. And once this kind of treatment is normalized, I can see people realizing that puberty can be delayed until an age when executive function is better.
You’re welcome, Rob.