Unlike most of the people
He really is quite something.
I’ll have to try that more often. “Unlike most people who disagree with me, I DO understand everything.”
Tip Jar
He really is quite something.
I’ll have to try that more often. “Unlike most people who disagree with me, I DO understand everything.”
I wonder if he has wrapped his BIG BRAIN around the Young Earth Creationist arguments. Or the Flat Earthers? They have lengthy, earnest arguments that we must take serious, no?
Like I said…so disappointing. Loved his books.
There’s nothing wrong with fence sitting, but if you understand the different aspects of some problem or other, there’s also nothing wrong with making some preliminary conclusions. As far as the trans debate goes, the activists would have us think they are fighting for basic human equality, which are rights they already have. What they are really fighting for are special rights that would take away other people’s rights, and those are the motives that they hide under a shroud of basic human rights. That’s how I see it in a very crude nutshell, and it doesn’t take a lot of digging to unbury this problem, and maybe make some preliminary conclusions?
Like the JKR uproar. Initially, noone who reacted and denounced her really looked at what she actually said, and jumped to defend the “poor trans people who are being prejudiced against simply because they are trans”, and it persists to this day. Labelled a notorious “transphobe” or “terf” when she is nothing of the kind. Hopefully the abuse she’s now receiving will show that she was never hateful or “phobic” or said anything that remotely hints at that in any way. But only if the reactionaries do a little digging. It was a herd mentality pile on, and the ones that remain who persist in this villification are showing their true colors; they are abusive bullies. Why anyone would want to align themselves with anything led by abusive bullies is hard to understand. I have the same problem with Trump.
Re “Why anyone would want to align themselves with anything led by abusive bullies”
I wonder about this as well. I think a large part of it is that they don’t know those people are abusive bullies, because that side of the story is either unknown to them or the story is turned upside down to present the bullies as the good guys. This points to media (and other) coverage. There are an awful lot of mobs that condemn people or organizations quickly without truly understanding the issues involved, and a distressing number of them are from people I might otherwise consider political allies; those mobs often enough contain or support abusive bullies, but people see them as “the right side of history” and so cheer them on.
Not only mobs, but entire political parties, too.
twiliter,
I think there is something wrong with fence sitting if the fact of your perching there harms others, as I think Pullman is. Or, rather, he’s failing to help people that he easily could. He writes fantasy books for children; his voice could be important in helping children to realise that there’s nothing wrong with their bodies, it’s their expectations that need work. He could do it in his fiction, and he could do it when he’s talking to his fans.
But he’d rather appear wise and all-knowing and float above the debate, resting on the ejected masses of his own self-importance, so he can claim to have been on the winning side all along once he’s decided the debate is over. What happens to actual people – to children, his main audience – in the meantime is beneath him. As I said in the other thread, he might not care about the harms (or care sufficiently to do anything about it that would harm his income or status) or he might not understand them despise his superior all-knowing brane (deliberately, for sure: he doesn’t want to find out that he’s being harmfully negligent). Or something else, doesn’t matter. What matters to him is that he looks wise and benevolent but stern like a loving father, while his children receive unnecessary drugs and surgery which will cause them to be infertile, make them patients for a lifetime and which will almost certainly not solve any of their problems.
Yeah Latsot, that’s pretty much what I was getting at. I do a lot of fence sitting myself if I’m ignorant of some thing or another (of which there are volumes, lol), but the trans issue doesn’t require a lot of analysis to see what’s wrong and where. If he’s in a position to help, then why not? Which you gave possible reasons for, I just don’t know anything about him.
twiliter:
Yes, I wasn’t accusing you of malicious fence-sitting ;)
This kind of attitude has become typical of Pullman and I, personally, declare bullshit. His “I don’t know, maybe shit’s unsolvable” while children burn does not sit well with me. These conflicts can be solved. I don’t think they’ll even be particularly difficult once we finally start agreeing on terms. They can be solved and they will be solved because… well, certainly not because reason will prevail, but because people will lose interest. Celebrities will start saying women have vaginas and it won’t cause an uproar. The media will publish more gender critical articles. Eventually, politicians will step cautiously into the ring. And everyone will have forgotten there was ever a conflict. Everyone other than the people who count, who will do what they can to fix the damage.
What matters most is the meantime and the awful things that are happening to some of the people who are in it. And that’s exactly what Pullman is writing off. He could not be farther away from understanding both sides if he tried.
Well, when he talks about the inability to “see another point of view”, then this does look like BS. There are several points of view at play, and they are out there for all to see. Maybe he’s trying to stick his head in the sand to avoid the trans cult wrath, but even this excuse would be dishonest if he isn’t aware of their abuse of other authors, which is unlikely given his comments. The way to avoid being myopic is to investigate the other points of view, which in this case he is just talking the talk. Walking the walk would lead to some soft conclusions at least, for most people anyway.
It isn’t as if every issue had only ONE fence, let alone two sides. ‘Legit’ trans people ARE targeted…by right wing men and religious bigots. AND…the ranks of ‘self declared’ trans WOMEN include a tribe of violent misogynist crackpots. AND…cultural violence and misogyny have created an atmosphere for adolescent girls that is so toxic that gender-jumping may seem ‘healthier’ than eating disorders or self mutilation.
That’s too many sides of too many fences.