“Those drugs can’t possibly be legal”
It’s so bad that people don’t even believe it when you tell them.
And people don’t believe it’s happening, and people who warn that it’s happening get silenced and punished.
Tip Jar
It’s so bad that people don’t even believe it when you tell them.
And people don’t believe it’s happening, and people who warn that it’s happening get silenced and punished.
The list of side effects of puberty blockers is a google away, and is featured prominently on the wiki page, yet you’d be amazed (not really) at the number of TRAs that declare them to not have any.
I’ve been thinking more and more about this issue as though it’s a battle of stories. To some people, the Story of Trans absolutely must be a happy story, as uplifting and life-affirming as a lost-dog-reunited viral video. They genuinely think that being a good LGBT ally means simply making sure you fix in your mind a happy story about LGBT people whenever the topic arises.
Isn’t it incredible that there are two kinds of trans “allies”, two groups who actually hold completely opposing views about trans issues, but who remain united in their shared opposition to criticism of gender ideology, because they see anything with a critical tone as an unhappy story. It’s another reason why it feels so unreal being gender critical right now — we’re stuck in between these two contradictory groups all the time: you’ve got the friendly-but-unaware progressives who totally agree with you in principle about things like self-ID and mixed-sex sports and prisons, and children’s school indoctrination programs and draconian speech laws… but they absolutely disagree with you that any of it is happening in any significant way right now — because they have to disagree about that part, because otherwise they’d have to accept an unhappy story about trans into their hearts.
And then you’ve got the indoctrinated true believers, who are the polar opposite, who totally agree with you that all of it’s happening all over the place right now — they love it; for example all these kids getting “gender affirmed” by today’s medical “heroes”, it’s all so squee, like those lost little Labradors on YouTube, reunited with their people at last — but the true believers absolutely disagree with you that there’s anything about it that could possibly be bad or should raise any concerns, because otherwise it’s not a happy story but a potential tragedy.
These two groups’ positions are irreconcilable. There are lots of beliefs shared between each group individually and us — the friendly unawares share with us the belief that this stuff is bad; the zealous allies share with us the belief that this stuff is happening — but between each other their beliefs have exactly no common ground.
And yet, despite their total disagreement on the facts, they’re allied against us, high-fiving each other for simply holding their respective but incompatible happy stories in their hearts about trans in contrast to the the supposed transphobia that we’re perpetuating by presenting facts and arguments which to them don’t sound very nice. It’s so stupid. I mean, if they themselves simply combined their beliefs they’d end up exactly in line with ours — those two happy stories when combined turn into a nightmare.
It reminds me of what Graham Linehan calls Festen moments, in reference to the Danish art film The Celebration, where a family patriarch’s 60th birthday gala is interrupted by his son who reveals that he was sexually abused by the tycoon, and all the guests turn against the son because they can’t allow the happy story of their family dynasty to be darkened. A truth that punctures a beloved story is like a heckler who threatens to spoil a good party.
I’m not so much interested in persuading the true believers anymore. They’ll have their reckoning later. But I hold out hope today for the friendly unawares. I want badly to get through to them, and maybe one way to do that is to show them that the real world is fundamentally not made up of stories. The real world is material; it’s made of a jumble of stuff. So I’d say an accurate way to think of social progress is something like, we’re looking at a bunch of people and things that interact in a big mess of contradictory motives and circumstances and variables and chaos, and our job is to look at facts and balance needs and principles and find ways to reduce harm and increase human rights and justice and wellbeing as best we can wherever possible. It’s messy and it sometimes involves looking and thinking hard at all that messy stuff.
It’s far less accurate to interpret social progress the storybook way: as looking at a bunch of comparatively simple conflicts between forces of good and forces of bad in the world where your job is just to make sure you always find your way to the side of the good guys at the end of each chapter.
I guess what I’m saying is, stop trying to see reality as a story where you can edit out the bad parts and polish up the good parts until, to you at least, it looks the way you like it and it just tells you exactly what you already wanted to hear anyway. We can’t ignore the messy stuff of reality, because it’s the material world, not the stories we tell ourselves and each other about it, that we all have to live in. And we have to find a way to live in it together.
It’s kinda like atheism versus religion, isn’t it. I keep coming back to that comparison. Even when two people or groups who identify as religious have beliefs that completely contradict each other, they’re happy to unite against heretics threatening to darken their happy fictions by bringing reason and science into the discussion. Like Jesus and Mo at the pub setting aside their disagreements for a moment to try and score a point against the bartender.
I think you’re right, Arty. From experience, though, the story metaphor is a difficult one to sell because nobody wants to think they’re believing in fairy tales, even though we all do. Plus, believing in ‘narratives’ is seen by many as positive, now. The narrative justifies the falsehoods told in its name, regardless of their harm. This has always been the case, hence religion, but now it seems to be treated explicitly as a good thing; those on the left seem to believe their narrative is just because they’re on the left and those on the right don’t care about whether it’s just or not because fuck you. Either way, the lies are justified by the story and a lot of people across the political spectrum think this is explicitly a good thing. We shouldn’t underestimate just how much the political landscape has changed recently, in this respect.
I can’t offer a better way to think or argue about all this, though. People need examples of things going off the rails, but – maddeningly – the sheer number of examples doesn’t seem to be important to many people; dozens of examples can always be written off as outliers. What I’ve found tends to peak people – if anything – are particular examples that happen to hit home for unpredictable personal reasons. Stories, in other words…
People are finely-tuned injustice detectors. And outrage machines. We eat injustice and shit outrage, if you’ll pardon the image. But our injustice detectors are so finely-tuned that they’re easily skewed by a convincing story. I agree with you that our job isn’t to sell the friendly unawares a different story, but I think we sometimes need to use stories rather than stats to make people less certain that the narrative they’re clinging to is the less harmful one. Or, more likely, we need both. Or we need stats wrapped in stories. Or the other way around, I don’t know. Depends on who we’re trying to convince, of course.
Anyway, we shouldn’t forget one other story, which is the one James Berry’s friend was clinging to; the idea that there are adults in charge who wouldn’t let bad things happen. You’d think that by now there wouldn’t be a nation in the world with inhabitants who believe this, but here we are. It’s distressingly common. It’s the feelgood story of the century, I guess, and to disabuse people of it is to open their eyes to a lot of injustice they can’t do anything about, which can be overwhelming.
How many times have you seen someone say they won’t get involved in the trans issue because they don’t understand it? It seems like a flimsy excuse, beloved of politicians and influential celebrities, but I think some of these people are genuinely caught between competing tensions: the fear of getting sucked into a crazy conspiracy theory and the dim awareness that there actually is a rabbit away here. They feel they aren’t qualified to judge so they should trust that things will get sorted out for the best in the end, despite every lesson of history to the contrary. Their injustice detectors are flickering between two poles because the injustice of one side is being greatly exaggerated and the other all but ignored.
I think our job (and I’m sure I’m agreeing wholeheartedly with you here, Arty) is to convince people that they’re as qualified as anyone else to judge right from wrong. That they shouldn’t let anyone tell them what to think. That governments, companies, lobbying organisations and other criminals probably don’t have our best interests at heart. That the stories we’re told must always be questioned and we must carefully examine our own beliefs to see whether they’re just stories, too.
But now I’m sounding just like an old-skool skeptic, and they’re really unfashionable. I wonder why…
Arty@3
Yes, because even tru-believers know that at least some parts of their religion are claptrap. How did we peak-god people in the old new-atheism days? Not (usually) by pointing out the stupid bits of religion, fun as that is. Personally, I found it more effective to show people that it’s OK to not believe in gods. That we atheists are nice people without god (well not me, obviously, but most atheists). That the doubts they certainly have about the nonsense in their religion and the harms done in its name are reasonable. And, as per my previous post, that nobody should tell them what to think.
We didn’t wipe out all religion, sadly, but I think the landscape was changed, at least in much of Europe and the States. We have been less successful so far with the trans issue, but the solution is surely the same; we need to show people that their inevitable doubts are justified and worth exploring. And support them if they find that journey difficult.
Stupid apostrophes. Let’s all shout at Ophelia about the edit button now.
This is an excellent commentary, Artymorty. I’d like to respond to this part:
I have encountered the argument that there is no need to make it illegal to perform medical interventions on children because it is not happening at all. Therefore, I guess, the only justification for passing such a law would be gratuitous cruelty towards trans people. The argument that if it’s not happening then passing such a law couldn’t possibly harm any trans people falls on deaf ears. (And gets you banned from liberal blogs, but that’s another story).
I also tried my best (before being banned) to demonstrate that it is logically impossible to assert that “puberty blockers are not being used on children.” It was like pushing jello up a hill. Immediately my interlocutors went into huffy explanations, while ignoring the facts right in front of them: puberty blockers are being used on children + puberty blockers are a medical intervention = medical interventions are being performed on children.
As soon as you deviate from the happy-clappy glitter story, the fingers go firmly in the ears.
Great post, Artymorty!
A less charitable (to the “friendly-but-unaware” camp) comparison might be to compare them to climate change deniers. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the various “stages” of climate change denialism, but just to provide some context, the 3 “classical” stages in their simplest form are:
1. The planet is not warming (ergo no regulations).
2. The planet is warming, but we’re not causing it (ergo no regulations).
3. The planet is warming and we are causing it, but it’s not a problem (ergo no regulations).
Your two camps seem to correspond roughly to stage 1 and 3. As many others have pointed out, if this was really about the science, we would expect to see loud disagreement and heated arguments between the inhabitants of the different stages, as well as the different versions of stage 2 (“it’t the sun”, “it’s volcanoes”, “it’s cosmic rays”, “it’s regression to the mean after the Little Ice Age”, etc… etc…), but instead we see almost no debate, and quite frequently roaring applaus for All The Above despite being incompatible. Because it’s not actually about the facts of the at all: It’s about the “no regulations” part, and it doesn’t matter how the heck you get there as long as you get there.
As I have frequently commented in the past, I don’t doubt that many of the people currently riding the TRA bandwagon got on it for reasons that seemed both noble and worthy at the time. The first small concessions may very well have seemed both harmless and benign (“Well, that doesn’t seem quite right to me, but if it helps a marginalized group feel more welcome/respected/safe/included, then whatever, what’s the harm? Maybe I just need to ‘shut up and listen’, or ‘educate’ myself like everyone keeps saying. etc. etc.”), but now you have a stake in defending them. The same rationalizations used to justify concessions A,B,C, make it very hard to resist concessions D,E,F without looking inconsistent or hypocritical, even to yourself (pretty much the definition of cognitive dissonance). By the same logic it’s very hard to resist concessions G,H,I etc. On the way over to the dark side you never “cross a line” where things instantly and abruptly change from “definitely ok” to “definitely not ok” and before you know it you have gone all the way to X,Y,Z and burned all the bridges behind you, and now there’s no way back without admitting to yourself and the world that you’ve been wrong all along, that your justifications were all bogus, and that you may in fact have been a bit of an A-hole.
Bottom line, whatever admirable motives these people may have started out with, it’s far from obvious to me that there’s anything particularly admirable about their motives today. It would be one thing if this was really a positive sum game where trans people had everything to gain and nobody else had anything to lose, but this is very much in dispute, and the flip-side of their willingness to err on the side most favorable to TRAs is a corresponding willingness to err on the side least favorable to feminists and women in general. In other words if TRAs and gender-critical feminists are making competing claims of discrimination or abuse, the former gets to claim victory for free, while the concerns of the latter don’t even deserve a fair hearing but can be dismissed as bigotry and hate in advance.
* Because it’s not actually about the facts of the matter at all
It’s about the “no regulations” part,
Or, perhaps more to the point, it’s about cheering for my own team and booing on the opposing team regardless of who’s “right” or “wrong”.
Latsot,
Oh wow. You’re bringing these ideas about stories to insightful places that I don’t think I could have been able to quite reach. I completely agree with all of it.
Oh my god yes. I still remember seeing someone around undergrad-age in a video arguing that something or other about trans ideology (it doesn’t even matter which tenet specifically, because this applies to pretty much any one) must be true because if it were false, trans people wouldn’t be justified in demanding whatever it was they wanted. It was just a complete and total uncoupling of the concepts of true and false, real and not real, from, well, reality, and replacing them with good or bad, my tribe or their tribe. This person was so far indoctrinated away from critical thinking I couldn’t imagine how to bring her (them? zir?) back. And the ramifications of that kind of thinking being so institutionally taught to a whole generation are so frightening! Taken far enough (and we’re almost there), opposing views might be almost literally impossible to be seen as even plausible let alone opposable if your side doesn’t like them, and people who hold opposing views could be made to seem almost not even real. That’s certainly one way to dehumanize one’s critics and opponents. Scary stuff.
I’d add: I know people like this. They won’t get involved because they strongly suspect that everything I’m saying is right, and they don’t want to end up sucked into it. Fine, fair enough. But often, they don’t just stand back and stay uninvolved, they studiously avoid me afterwards as too controversial despite actually knowing or at least strongly sensing I’m completely in the right. And I doubt any of them are sticking up for me or showing me any support when my name comes up in my former social circles, either. It’s polite to say something about how much fear affects us all, but I’m not feeling very polite today so I’ll use the word I really mean: cowardice. It’s fucking cowardice and I can’t believe how widespread it is and I’m sick of it.
Arty, that is so cogent….and latsot. You have put together a problem I think we all have, though there are some of us who will say “where’s the evidence?” In some situations, though, even the most rational among us will choose the story.
It’s an experience I actually had. My ex left me because he was gay. Whether he just found out, or knew all along and didn’t tell anyone, I don’t know. I do know that the way he left was brutal, ugly, and cruel. It was designed to hurt. It was designed to make sure he got 90% of everything we owned (and Oklahoma isn’t a community property state, so it can be hard to fight that), He even kept things I brought into the marriage, and when my son protested about him having a mother’s day given my son gave me, he just told the child (5 at the time) that’s just the way the world is.
I got to a point where I never answered when my liberal friends asked what happened to my marriage. i knew I would get a constant stream of “oh, you were so lucky to be married to a gay man!” (Translation: I was lucky to be a trophy wife without my knowledge.) They would accept no hint, no idea that he could be cruel and ugly to me, or anyone else, because he was gay. He was also an extremely entitled white male, and he acted like one. They assumed if I talked about anything negative about him, it was because he was gay, and not because he was an entitled shit who treated me like garbage.
The story has to fit the preferred narrative. It’s like all the leftists who couldn’t (and some still can’t) see the truth about Stalin. The narrative is already there, they’ve drawn their lines in the sand, and you better not cross the line. That’s one reason (there are others) why I stay off Twitter.
latsot @ 6 – and sure enough it came to pass. lolsquawk
In much of trans activism the “no regulations” part is a combination of “validation,” and “access to women’s spaces.” This is why “third spaces” for trans individuals is so vigourously opposed. The supposed primacy of the goal of safety and dignity for trans identifying people (the “facts of the matter” in this analogy), squickly become secondary if taking away women’s rights to single sex spacesand services is not included. Overcoming women’s boundaries is the most important part of the package.
It sounds cold-hearted and churlish to demand “proof” that trans community is the most marginalized, persecuted, and at risk for assault, murder, and suicide. But attempts to look into this suggest they are none of the above, yet the claims continue to be made. This greater marginalization and risk is, I believe, a necessary part of the demands being made against women and their alleged “cis privilege.” Without being able to brandish their greater “oppression,” TA claims would be more obvious as the emotional blackmail they are. This gives them the added bonus of being able to recruit the forces of “righteous” misogyny to help fight its battles. GC men are not subjected to anything near the degree of abuse and hatred that feminists are, though they hold the same views and write the same things.
[…] a comment by Arty Morty on Those drugs can’t possibly be […]
There are too many good comments on this post. What ever happened to restraint and minimalism?
Yeah, come on people. Once again you’re making me feel like the dumbest person in the room and it’s just so totally oppressive because I identify as really really smart and brilliant. You have to centre meeeeeeee!11!!!11!
Sigh. Luckily I long ago made peace with not being the smartest or most brilliant person in any room, let alone this one. This thread reinforces that and makes me very happy to have found this niche of the internet.
It is so refreshing to be able to converse with grown-ups without the needy kids demanding attention, we’d be mad not to take the opportunity to do so. I’m sure I’m not the only one grateful to you for allowing us into your little corner of sanity, Ophelia.
Rob @ 17 – so much so that you misspelled your own name!
Dunno.
Sometimes I’m happy to be a lamp shade or book end in the room.
Ophelia, thanks for the cleanup on aisle 17 – oops (blushes), proving once again the truth of what I said.
YNnB @20, yes, quite. I draw the line at door mat.
Always happy to help!