Counter-letter
Well anyway they’ve written a letter too so ha. They’ve written their own Big Important letter that repeats The Dogma so there. Take that, Bad People.
Days after a host of prominent literary names signed a letter defending JK Rowling “against hate”, more than 200 writers, publishers and journalists including Jeanette Winterson, Malorie Blackman and Joanne Harris have put their names to another stating their support for transgender and non-binary people.
In order to imply that The Enemy is undermining transgender and non-binary people.
The letter, which is described as “a message of love and solidarity for the trans and non-binary community”, was pulled together by acclaimed writers Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Daisy Johnson. With signatories also including Juno Dawson, Elizabeth Day, Max Porter, Nikesh Shukla, Sara Collins, Irenosen Okojie, Mary Jean Chan, Naoise Dolan, Olivia Sudjic, Sharlene Teo and Patrick Ness, it states that “non-binary lives are valid, trans women are women, trans men are men, trans rights are human rights”.
There it is again – the empty meaningless jargon, robotically repeated. It’s like the Doxology or the Pledge of Allegiance or the Dale Carnegie ego-booster.
The statement was put together in the wake of an open letter signed by 58 writers including Ian McEwan, Lionel Shriver, Susan Hill and Philip Hensher, which highlighted the abuse directed at Rowling, and the “insidious, authoritarian and misogynistic trend in social media”.
So let’s have another insidious, authoritarian and misogynistic letter. Can’t have too many, can we.
I always shake my head when I read the non-binary part of the gender catechism. Whatever priest of gender that wrote this must’ve just thrown up xir hands and thought to xirself:
“We need these people to fluff up our numbers, but honestly even WE have no idea what the hell non-binary is about. What can we possibly say about … oh, THEIR LIVES ARE VALID! That sounds inclusive and is also meaningless, so we never have to say what non-binary actually means!”
And throwing in the non-binary also reinforces what trans is about: maintaining the binary. Without the binary, there are no trans, there are no non-binary, there are just people that behave in whatever way suits them. Not special. Not snowflakes. Just men in a dress, women in pants, short-haired women and long-haired men, glitter and rainbows, and people being who they are.
Without the binary, they have nothing except what the rest of us have – biological realities and their own lives. No one to look at them or admire their bravery or tell them what heroes they are. Nothing but what the rest of us have.
Re “the binary”, I saw this 2018 essay by Jane Clare Jones was being shared by some people I follow recently:
A Note on ‘Smashing the Binary'”
It’s meaningless boilerplate jargon, but the main point is not the meaning, but the obligatory acceptance and repetition that is demanded. It’s not just that non-binary lives are “valid,” it’s that they must be validated by all and sundry. Validation and affirmation. The demand that we see things that are not there and affirm the reality of things that are not real on pain of ostracism and shunning. It’s not a demand for justice but a power play, with the added bonus of having our noses rubbed in our refusal to comply should we have the nerve to so refuse. Remember though, “Be kind!”
Re: non-binary.
It bothers me that it doesn’t bother anyone else that non-binary is heterological. It’s not even merely heterological. It’s some kind of meta-, extra-, or paraheterological, because applying it creates something to which it does not apply; i.e., a binary.