Verification
My god this subject brings out the stupid in people.
Explains? Explains?? Explains what? That’s not an explanation, it’s a stupid and dogmatic assertion.
I’m pretty sure we all used to know that we don’t have to believe whatever people tell us about themselves, because some people lie sometimes.
That becomes all the more the case when what the people are telling us is patently not true. If someone says to me “I am a moose” I’m not required to believe it, not as a matter of good manners and certainly not as a matter of epistemology. A moose wouldn’t be able to say “I am a moose.” A moose doesn’t even know she’s a moose. We’re allowed to keep these things in mind, and form our beliefs accordingly.
How about if I “treat people” however I see fit, after all it’s up to me to decide how to do that, not Chris Rankin, James Max, or any trans people. I don’t see how it will cause “damage” for me to “treat” these people like they might be mentally ill, or delusional, or ignorant, or just plain stupid. They will probably find me patronising or dismissive, more likely evasive, but I have “treated” plenty of people like that without “damaging” them. Pfft.
I’m not taking social interaction lessons from snowflakes any time soon. Y’all do you. :P
“We’re allowed to keep these things in mind, and form our beliefs accordingly.” I strongly agree.
Which reminds me how many people worship at the Church of Trans who call themselves atheists. Wrong. There are no half-assed atheists, you either reject religion or you don’t. If you believe men are women, or vice versa, you are no atheist. Being anti-Christian alone does not qualify.
This toothy fellow James Max seems remarkably thick-witted. Good on Kellie-Jay for bringing it back to reality, again and again. She is wonderfully unintimidated when he starts throwing around words like “hate.”
I’m amused by the part where Max argues that if women get to have dressing rooms without blokes parading their hard-ons around that men should be able to keep women out of private clubs. Max, with his “We should just go back to a segregated society” makes it so very clear how the TRAs and the MRAs are squads on the same team. Is this the tit for tat? You make us open the doors of private clubs to women, and so you have to let us in your dressing rooms?
FWIW, I don’t consider the term “atheist” to mean a rejection of everything that can be considered a religion. Only a rejection of belief in gods. Some atheists do explicitly claim to reject religion of all kinds, and there I agree they are missing the point if they don’t see gender ideology as a form of religion. But there are undoubtedly many other examples of rigid dogma not to be questioned and dissent to be shouted down rather than argued, and those may also qualify. There are also atheists who believe in ghosts, souls, mind-body dualism, and other phenomena that may be used by some as a marker of a “true atheist”; I prefer to use a narrow definition.
Re the OP:
I listened to the interview, and now I have to wash my ears out. Max contradicting himself, Max (a non-expert) calling out Keen for also not being an expert, Max missing the point over and over and over again. Gah.
Sack @4 I’m sure it’s possible that there are some religions that can be considered religions without any metaphysics or unprovable personal beliefs. I don’t know of any offhand, but I think an ‘actual’ atheist (as opposed to a self-styled one) would have no problem with that. I really don’t think religion has to be large or organized, or has to be widely recognized as such. I think the relevant factors are believing in things that aren’t true, and convincing others of that untruth. I call that religion. I would consider someone an atheist who rejects those kinds of beliefs and the promotion of them, and if they don’t, then they are not an atheist. Probably a narrow definition as well… ;)
If the second statement is removed, would that change the truth of the first statement? In other words, is “a transwoman is female and a transman is male” dependent on “ trans people are damaged when other people say otherwise?”
If so, then the damaged trans people would be conclusive evidence of their sex, in the same way the fact that people believing in God is conclusive evidence that God does, in fact, exist. Or, a closer argument: because religious people need their belief in God to buttress their morality and provide comfort and meaning, then 1.) atheists should keep their views to themselves and 2.) God exists.
If a TRA thinks those Arguments for the Existence of God are crap, then they’re going to have to separate the presumed neediness and fragility of trans people from the question of what sex those transpeople are. They’re going to have to make a scientific case for something which did not come out of scientific investigation, but emerged from the social justice concern over protecting vulnerable people — with the science then playing catch-up to the moral mandate.
It doesn’t work. And they know it doesn’t work because they keep going back to the Argument from Damage.
[…] a comment by Sastra on […]
twiliter #5 wrote:
You may call it that, but “believing in things that aren’t true and convincing others” isn’t “religion” — it’s pretty much everything people disagree on, from metaphysics to which movies won the Academy Awards in 1992. The relevant factors for religion are going to involve 1.) a view of reality which involves supernatural or occult forces, beings, Being, and/or arrangement, and 2.) a system for understanding, following, worshiping, and/or aligning oneself with said view of reality.
Being true or false can’t be in the definition — that’s concluded one way or other from evidence because it’s not universally recognized or intuitive. And while religion is of course taught, so are most things. Not all religions proselytize. I think you’re referring more to “religious-like fervor,” or “faith-like adherence,” or some analogy.
Sastra, I’ll agree with that, it’s a much finer point.
How about saying “then I’m not”? Is that damaging to them too?
How about “by that definition, there is no justification for saying that the people whose spaces you demand access to are “women”, hence there is still no justification for including you among those people whatever you prefer to call them“? Is that damaging, and if so, does that make it unacceptable?
Then at least stop talking as if this were all about trans people’s right to define “who they are” when what you’re implicitly sayng is that they have the right to dictate who other people are as well. As I have previously put it, the whole thing boils down to “Women are whatever they have to be to make me one of them, and they don’t get a say in the matter”.
‘when a trans person says they are male or female, that is what they are and that is how we should treat them. It is damaging to them to say otherwise.’
If a trans person truly experiences damage at being told the sex of their body, the root cause is deeper than the mere statement of their sex. The person is experiencing distress at the sexed nature of their body, a psychological issue more fundamental than someone observing what is usually plain to see. The trans person might want people to avoid mentioning their sex as a stop-gap solution, but people can not be obliged to lie.
And of course there is the very real possibility that the trans person is full of shit about the severity of distress experienced. Damage? Get a grip.
twiliter@5
That may be the case, but that isn’t the point. I agree that many atheists claim to reject all religions and all supernatural beliefs, but that’s not what the term means, at least the way I use it. It’s only about disbelief in gods, period. I don’t know what separate term to use for people who disbelieve in any and all supernatural phenomena, or in the concept of supernatural, or all things called religion regardless of what the beliefs are, or any of that, but “atheist” is not that term. THAT is the narrow point I’m trying to make. So I’m not willing to claim that some self-declared atheists are not “true” atheists because they accept something like trans ideology.
Skeptics, on the other hand, are definitely not “true” skeptics if they can’t look at the evidence regarding trans ideology, if they refuse to debate trans ideology, if they declare anyone who doubts the ideology is a bigot. Not all atheists are skeptics, and vice versa. Skeptics supposedly value science and logic and reason. Some atheists do likewise.
Holms – “And of course there is the very real possibility that the trans person is full of shit about the severity of distress experienced. Damage? Get a grip.”
If you can find the damage. It would be like finding a new scratch on a buckled quarter panel. Because trans people don’t behave in a way that shows signs of psychological damage. Right? :P
Sack @12 I see what you’re getting at. I think I’m inserting my own opinion of trans ideology as a religious belief, as it shows enough of the signs (for me at least), but I think you’re saying that some self proclaimed atheists don’t necessarily look at it that way. They may see themselves as atheists, but I don’t. I think atheism requires reasons other than they don’t believe in God because they can’t see her, or “I hate going to church, so now I’m an atheist”, or “I think preachers and right wingers are full of shit, so I’m an atheist” types. I think your definition of skepics is a good one, but I really don’t see calling oneself an atheist without some coherent framework of reason behind it either. In my estimation, believing in trans ideology collapses the framework.
twiliter@14, I agree with you that trans ideology has all the trappings of religious belief and can be called a religion. I agree that some atheists are adherents of trans ideology. (No adherents, as far as I know, agree that it’s a religion.)
I don’t think this makes the atheist adherents not-atheists. There is no god in trans ideology. To be declared not-atheists, they’d have to believe in a god; accepting a religion is not sufficient.
There are atheist followers of nontheistic religions, and atheists who follow theistic religions but don’t believe the “god” part. I still call them atheists.
Sorry, I didn’t intend to belabor this point, but I seem to have been unclear about it.
@15, I think we are just delineating the category a bit differently is all. :)
I think the term “materialist” might be useful for those who doubt supernatural claims more generally?
@Holms #11
That’s the kind of dysphoria I have suffered from all my life. Never wanted to be a biological animal, certainly not a sexed one, and most especially not the disfavored sex. I do know reality, however, and I know there’s nothing I can do about it. So I live as best I can.
Brian M@17
Good suggestion. I will adopt it in my argumentation forthwith.
Well, James Max is a case, isn’t he? Ignorant, rude, unable to think beyond the fashionable platitudes he has imbibed, unable to listen to or to respect what others are actually saying.
But can I take issue with one thing that you say, Ophelia? It is the sentence ‘A moose doesn’t even know she’s a moose.’ I think a moose knows very well that she’s a moose, though she could not consciously express it. She certainly knows that she’s not a wolf, and she certainly knows that wolves are dangerous. Just as wolves know that moose are good to eat, if they can bring one down. I wonder if we too readily assume that knowing and knowledge belong only to an intellect that is somehow beyond nature – the long reach of Plato – and that the only knowledge that is ‘truly’ knowledge is scientific knowledge. I see nothing wrong (having been a shepherd in my mis-spent youth) with saying that a ewe knows its lamb, and a lamb knows its mother. Or with saying (as Franz de Waal writes) that chimpanzees know they are stronger than human beings. Or with saying that the elephant matriarchs who lead the herds have considerable knowledge about where they should go in certain seasons.
Tim, I agree with all of that, it’s just that a moose literally doesn’t know she’s something called “a moose.” It’s another way of pointing to the confusion behind so much of the trans ideology, which I saw Kathleen Stock talking about with some other philosophy type the other day: the mistake that because a concept is social therefore it’s not real. A moose doesn’t need to know humans categorize her as a moose, she can do her moose thing without knowing that.
Brian @17 Except for the argument that the actual doubting of supernatural claims is not a material thing. :D
(no, I’m not arguing for it) ;)
” A moose doesn’t need to know humans categorize her as a moose, she can do her moose thing without knowing that.”
I’m just visualizing a moose walking away, through the marsh, side-eye to those who would define her, and chomping on her delicious wet weeds.
Hahahaha good.
!!!