London Taliban
My rage thermometer just broke.
She only wrote the book on the subject, literally THE book on the subject.
But please, tell us again how the trans craze in no way impinges on women’s rights.
Tip Jar
My rage thermometer just broke.
She only wrote the book on the subject, literally THE book on the subject.
But please, tell us again how the trans craze in no way impinges on women’s rights.
Well, you see (a) she’s just a cis woman, and (b) she’s an obvious terf bigot. Cis terf bigots [ed: What’s the proper order here? Is it “big red ball” or is it “red big ball”?] don’t have rights.
I wonder if Khan did this directly?
I can’t believe the slumber in the skeptical community on this issue. When I first joined the “Atheist Community” the general consensus was that since religions were so bad towards women, then atheism would be better by default. Not so much, eh?
Not standing up to the trans issue when women are censured, censored, deplatformed, fired, threatened, or doing anything to recognize that the power imbalance remains against women due to a metaphysical claim raises my ire against the larger skeptical community.
Is it possible that they were largely misogynistic and this is a way to express it out loud while remaining “progressive?”
Taking the None of Your Business approach to “how people want to identify” is certainly a great mask for misogyny, which is an enabling tool for sexual violence. Who’s there to point this out to Sadiq Khan? Not the sceptics.
Michael Haubrich #2 wrote:
More like a split, I think, though the majority seem to be on the TRA side. Those skeptics still skeptical on the trans issue would include Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Harriet Hall, and a few whose names escape me at the moment. Except for Ophelia Benson, of course.
I don’t think we should evaluate the others by assuming they don’t sincerely believe they arrived at TWAW through a skeptical process informed by science. They do believe it. Nor have they abandoned basic feminist principles. They’ve accepted certain facts which, if true, add “transwomen” to the category of women — and then they proceed from there.
Not so much malevolent or uncaring, as sloppy. And then they proceed from there.
Good points.
Sastra — I suppose you’re right, the prominent atheists and skeptics who have bought into TWAW still “identify as” feminists and critical thinkers. And yet, and yet… They know all about cults, yet they have embraced one, right? By at least some of the characteristics of cults which they all accept: the unquestioned (and unquestionable) acceptance of absurd premises, the “othering” of those who disagree, the silencing and expelling any dissenting voices. For the most part I think that we TERFs examine and test our biases and assumptions all the time, we listen to those who disagree with us and try to see their point of view, we call out bad behavior from our own side. In a word, we try to be reasonable.
Other skeptics – Andy Lewis, Maria MacLachlan, Alan Henness, Author of Jesus & Mo.
That is, they’ve accepted certain claims as facts. Therein lies the problem.
One could reduce it to one big factual claim that governs all the others: the claim that feeling acute discomfort with (in, as) one’s own sex is the same thing as being the other sex.
There’s always that nagging doubt, when it seems like the rest of the world is wrong and a small few feminists and skeptics (and skeptic feminists) are right, that perhaps there’s something I’m missing. But then I shake it off by realizing that this idea that a genderspirit is what makes us men or women is an extraordinary claim with poor definition and no evidence but huge negative effects for women.
I’m way too cautious to make a claim like that about any group I consider myself part of.
But, having said that, I do think the trans cult has a particular weakness in basing so much of its rhetoric on hysterically hyped-up pity. The constant drumbeat of “most marginalized/ostracized/victimized group in the world” is absurd and stupid and does not speak well for their ability to pause and skeptic.
Peter N #5 wrote:
Yes — except they’re framing it in terms of dealing with neo-Nazis and racists cleverly trying to position their view as “one side of a reasonable controversy” even while Jews and People of Color are wandering the streets and desperate for the basic necessities of life. There are suffering people at stake, so they’re not a cult: they’re The Resistance.
The book The Coddling of the American Mind talks about 3 “Truths” taught to those who thirst for social justice.
1.) What doesn’t kill us, makes us weaker.
2.) Trust your feelings.
3.) The world is divided between Good people and Bad people.
I think some skeptics fell for reasonable versions of each, and then progressed to where we are now.
@Ophelia: also add Jerry Coyne
I sometimes wonder how much of that silly rhetoric is grounded in the foundational problem that transing consigns people to a drastically narrowed dating pool. Of course trans people aren’t the most victimized in the world, but they may well be the most unlikely to find a sex partner in the world, for obvious reasons. If so it’s sad, because all the whining and sobbing they can possibly do isn’t going to change that.
Why is it a phobia to imagine that certain individuals who have experienced trauma might be most comfortable surrounded by people most like themselves?
Why is it hateful to consider that healing services might be more effective when the traumatized have some control over with whom they associate and the spaces that make them feel the safest?
Why is it enlightened to forcibly control the environments of individuals who are the very victims of forcible control?
Why are the needs of a single individual far more important than the needs of an at risk population?
It’s not exactly a matter of “people most like themselves” though. It’s more a matter of people in the category vulnerable to assault by the other party as opposed to people in the category not vulnerable to assault by the other party. They can be radically unlike each other in a million ways, it’s just that one core – physical – reality that makes the difference.
I agree with Ophelia. It’s not so much that a rape victim wishes to have people most like her, it’s that she doesn’t want anyone most like her attacker.