Guest post: Burying the go-to explanation
Originally a comment by Freemage on A small but important right.
It always blows my mind how swiftly virtually the entire Left forgot about the phrase “Schroedinger’s Rapist”. It was the go-to for the explanation why women couldn’t just trust a random guy, even though he might seem all right – because rapists don’t wear neon signs on their heads, and thus you only know a guy is a threat when he actually reveals himself to BE a threat.
And of course, this was true even though the vast, vast majority of men not only aren’t rapists, but are repulsed and revolted by the idea of rape. The harm that can be committed by the small minority of men who are rapists vastly outweighs the ‘harm’ done to men by not having women’s immediate trust.
So even if trans women are less likely to rape than men (unproven, of course, but a frequent claim deeply believed by the TRAs), that doesn’t lower the risk to zero (we have actual proof of that, thanks), and therefore the principle still applies.
Excellent post, Freemage. I don’t know how many times that thought has run through my head. Once upon a time, PZ got this. So did a lot of other people. Now they seem to have forgotten that women are vulnerable to the stronger sex and that even one rapist in a group of 100 men makes the group of 100 men dangerous, especially when we don’t know which one is the rapist.
iknklast@1:
That really appeared to end the day that PZ understood that his blog earnings would be drastically cut if he didn’t lose the ability to distinguish between men & women, it seems. Circa 2012, if I am not wrong. It caused me to lose all respect for him. Is the correlation a false indicator? Maybe. I don’t know. I have yet to see any evidence for it. PZ seems to bend over backwards publicly for the trans cult whenever it seems like it might cut into his bottom line, which is a massive betrayal to people like me who first started reading his blog because he seemed to be the small town professor-guy speaking truth to power.
James, the motivated reasoning of Steven Novella, David Gorsky, and PZ is nakedly transparent. I know they know better, and they know that we know that they know they are discarding reason when it comes to this issue. I wanted to throw away my copy of “Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe” when they deleted Harriet Hall’s post on SBM and replaced it with three articles based on anecdotal evidence for trans experience. But since I bought it for Kindle through Amazon, it’s stuck there as a constant reminder.
Like you, I looked up to PZ, and being in the Minnesota Atheists had frequent conversations with him up to that point. He was so dedicated to the Skeptic Way that he even talked about how lousy the Sherlock Holmes mysteries were due to the “whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer” dictum is when it comes to science.
He knows better on this subject, and I can’t even bring myself to open Pharyngula anymore.
It was 2015. PZ went all-in on the trans dogma after FTB imploded over my thought crimes in July & August 2015. He tried to avoid it at first and then gave up. As I’ve mentioned too many times, he secretly implored me to stay but did absolutely nothing in public to make that tenable, and then in the end he helped make it impossible.
James @2,
For what it’s worth, and I would certainly defer to OB, who knows him better and was on the inside at FtB, I’ve never gotten the impression that PZ is motivated by money. He never really seemed to put much effort into monetizing his audience, was slow to get into video, his book was apparently mostly a collection of old blog posts. That’s not a criticism: in a world of “influencers” obsessed with inflating their audience for monetary gain, that’s refreshing.
My impression is that PZ’s position is a mix of being sincerely convinced that the TRAs are on the side of right and goodness, and being a little scared of his fan base, which he has always treated as largely beyond his control. Which is true in the sense that he can’t simply order them to do as he wishes, but false in that he could have shaped its composition by making different choices.
I think it’s true that PZ wasn’t motivated by money during the 2015 fight, because the reality is FTB never generated much income in the first place, especially not compared to what he made at his peak on the old science blog. I think it was more to do with his fanbase – his “horde.” Maybe also to do with the fact that FTB was his and Ed’s baby, and he was trying to hold it together. But, more degradingly, maybe also to do with wanting to keep up with the putative New Most Oppressed Of All. Not wanting the hassle. Not wanting his students giving him the stinkeye.
PS I doubt the “being sincerely convinced that the TRAs are on the side of right and goodness” part because if that had been the case he surely would have denounced me from the start, instead of holding off for weeks and then denouncing me.
Back when I frequented and helped run some atheist chat rooms on IRC I noticed a divide among the atheists. I belonged to the group who were all in favor letting in the theists and debating on (arguing about) religion. That seemed to be a critical aspect of being an enlightened and rational atheist, after all. Respect the other side, listen, and respond. They’re not very different than us, for they care about truth and are willing to put themselves out there. If we don’t understand the other side, we don’t understand our own, be prepared to change your mind, the problem is dogma, not believers, etc etc.
This was diametrically opposed by atheists who considered the religious the very worst part of religion and wanted them either kept out of the chat room or torn to shreds. The religious— at least the ones who wanted to “push their views on others” in an I’m right/You’re wrong framework, were abusive and controlling. They didn’t care about truth or their doctrine. Haters are going to hate and happily distort religion for the purpose of forcing others to bow down to them. The “rational atheists” were kidding themselves. Fundamentalists never change their minds: throw Them out and concentrate on people who are worth it.
At the beginning, the first view was common. When I finally left IRC, the second view had the majority. And some who had begun pro-debate had jumped sides out of frustration and, they explained, experience. I had the virtue of starting out with low expectations and it was hard to disillusion me. But, among other problems, this was boring.
I don’t think this dynamic only played out on IRC — or confined itself to atheism. The Us vs Them mentality can lead to a knee jerk assumption that anything They’re in favor of, is wrong. Anything They have trouble accepting is probably right. And above all — write them off. Going No Contact is wisdom. Letting them run rampant spouting hate in #atheism or anywhere else is folly at best. Atheists need a safe space.
I’ve often wondered how many otherwise skeptical people who support trans identities and Trans Rights would have done so if conservative Christians had declared it an obvious truth (we’re all born with an internal God-given gender) and preferable to homosexuality. Probably at least some (and possibly PZ.) But those atheists who viewthe world through a no-debate framework based on oppressor and oppressed would have had a very easy path towards a conclusion — the other conclusion. I think they would have said gender identity doctrine was pseudoscience, and Shroedinger’s Rapist a valid objection to self-ID.
Sastra, I too, fondly remember times like those. At 70 I am now too old to worry so much anymore, but as I was growing, learning, and changing, I would often force my left wing self to read right wing authors, all in the name of “Know thy enemy”, and also on the off chance I just might learn something new.
When the Great Gender Wars broke out at FtB I sided with PZ. Briefly. But something seemed off about their case, Ophelia seemed to know more about the topic, and when she decamped, I followed her back here. I kept reading FtB for Caine and what she awakened in me about American Indian’s struggles, Mano for our shared love of cricket, and Marcus for, well, Marcus. But I can’t remember the last time I went there.
These days I am content to see out my time still fighting for women’s rights, something that began with my first pro-abortion march in 1968. I cannot believe that we still have to march to protect that, among many other women’s rights.
James, I am confident PZ does not adopt a stance to maximise his blog income. If he did, he would have sided with the likes of Shermer, Harris and similar rather than with Rebecca Watson when it became clear organised atheism was packed with obnoxious dudebros. He took the position against them at great cost – his invites to public debates, conventions and the like instantly shrivelled almost to nothing.
Such a shame he then abandoned women’s interests later by siding with the new hotness… but I am confident it was not for money.
Huh, there were only two comments on screen when I wrote that… turns out, if you go to bed instead of commenting, you should probably refresh the page the next day to see if anything new has been said.
Heh. Still a valuable comment though.
More sad that even now the husk of what was the Womens’ March is now beholden to gender ideology and they even changed their logo to reflect it.
@Holms;
Rebecca Watson apparently supports the current doctrine on trans identities. She recently came up with a definition of “woman” which has drawn much praise from parts of the internet:
“…A woman is a person who our society typically associates with the female sex.” — Rebecca Watson
I was astonished to see this held up as an answer to the “transphobes.” It’s filled with holes you could drive a truck through. For one thing, if the majority were to believe that transwomen are men — given this definition, they’d be right.
Good god. What a twerp.
I see it’s not actually original to Rebecca: she credits it to “a very entertaining YouTuber I subscribe to by the name of Samantha Lux: a woman is a person who our society typically associates with the female sex.”
Oh well if a very entertaining YouTuber says it it must be true.
PZ said right on.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2022/07/12/what-is-a-woman-2/
And then said it again.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2022/08/30/a-good-analysis-even-with-the-wittgenstein/
The whole thing is still a mystery, though. The conversion was quite fast, the forgetting about simple truths too (e.g. the Schrödinger’s Rapist among others); and having gone through this too, I can acknowledge that one feels the dissonance quite strongly. Nobody can go through this conversion without feeling the dissonance. I mean, the potential conflict with feminism is not arcane, it is straightforward.
As a result, I have a hard time accepting it not to be about monetization, because else what’s left? It’s either dismal hypocrisy or dogmatism, and both are also difficult to swallow from people that indulged into skepticism quite reasonably. Well, there’s that last potential hypothesis: “Peer pressure for being cool”, which is also devastating since while it is possibly conceivable for naive teenagers to fall for this, nobody expects adults to give it up and play that stupid game.
This is not unique to PZ, many previous Sciencebloggers –and professional biologist at that, casually share memes that are so disappointingly wrong about biological sex. I really wonder how these people can look themselves in the mirror, for I’d be so ashamed of myself if I did so.
It is indeed. I will never understand it. In fact it only get harder to understand as time goes on.
@Ophelia,
I don’t want to trace it back, but he wrote also something last year or two in the lines of secondary biological characteristics (possibly primary too, I don’t remember exactly) being mere “statistical epistemes” (or something like that) that cannot really be relied on.
He probably did not realise that applied more broadly, this would mean throwing out over 80% of biological sciences, and science as a whole too if one was willing to be a bit more general. Hard to believe it was said in good faith.
Well, since we’re on the topic…
Basic Argument #1:
In other words, a definition of “woman” which doesn’t include males who identify as women is a bad definition which doesn’t make anyone happy or satisfied. It’s interesting that causing happiness and satisfaction seem to be vital to an acceptable definition, though the focus seems to be on accuracy. An accurate definition of “woman” should not exclude any women. If that was the argument, it would be begging-the-question, since the underlying issue is whether transwomen fit into a legitimate definition of “woman.” But criteria are included. Unfortunately, they also beg-the-question.
Transwomen are Women because they:
1) Know they are woman (in dispute)
2.) Have a history of womanhood (in dispute)
3.) Interact with society as women (this might mean they tell other people they’re women and, in situations where women are treated differently than men, are either treated as if they were women or demand to be treated as women. Or, this could mean that women have a set of womanly mannerisms and habits (head-tilting, submissiveness) which defines social interactions with a woman. Either way, it’s hard to credit this as definitive.)
4.) Present as women (feminine clothing, possibly feminine mannerism. Women = feminine. I’m not happy or satisfied.)
5) Live as women (seems like a reprise of #3&4, with the added possibility that there are ways of living that no woman should pursue.)
None of this is convincing. The first two are pulpit- pounding (“They KNOW they are WOMEN!”) and I can imagine a hypothetical female who refuses to interact with people in womanly manner, who eschews proper feminine presentation, and who lives as no proper woman should live. And yet, she’s a woman.
The price of including Transwomen as Women would seem to exclude poor unfeminine Hypothetical if I didn’t have a sneaking suspicion that all this boils down to nothing more than “a woman is anyone who believes she’s a woman.”
A hypothetical world now in which nobody is ever wrong: a world of faith.
Wtsf. “A heedless child might think differences between two things mean they’re opposites and rule is no touching, so I will pretend this is a perfectly reasonable assumption and then assume it’s what you aimed for. On the contrary. I say it’s perfectly fine for men to interact with society in “womanly, feminine” ways, present themselves in “womanly, feminine” ways, and live in a “womanly, feminine” way because we need to throw out all that nonsense about “womanly, feminine behavior” being exclusive to women! Men can do that too!”
JFC.
Sastra #22
If I were a lawyer representing the GC side in one of the many court-cases Ophelia has been covering, I would ask the genderists why, in their opinion, we need words like “man” or “woman” or “gender” at all. We don’t usually start by coining a word or phrase and then look for something it can refer to. We usually start out with something we want to say, and then come up with the words and phrases to say it. What is this “something” in the case of “man” or “woman” or “gender”? I don’t think I have ever heard a TRA say anything that didn’t ultimately presuppose that words like “man”, “woman”, and “gender” do indeed refer to something, and the only question is what (as opposed to establishing the need for such labels in the first place).
I would also ask them to explain their position without using words like “man”, “woman”, and “gender”* entirely. E.g. I have often made a point of substituting “adult person with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of egg-producers than sperm-producers” (or something similar) for “woman”, in which case TWAW boils down to the nonsensical claim that:
This also clearly exposes the fallacy of the obligatory attempts to lump in “trans women” with black women, disabled people, working-class women etc. One item on this list clearly doesn’t belong with the others:
Black people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of egg-producers than sperm-producers.
Disabled people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of egg-producers than sperm-producers.
Working-class people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of egg-producers than sperm-producers.
Trans-identified people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of sperm-producers than egg-producers.
Of course, TRAs would try to come up with some other substitute for “woman” specifically designed to include TIMs. Still, any attempt to explain their position without the obligatory reliance on word magic (if it’s called the same, it is the same), equivocations, and bad puns is bound to be very enlightening indeed.
*Or other words that are in turn defined in terms of “man”, “woman” or “gender”.
@ Bjarte Foshaug;
Clever idea, but I suspect that, among the preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of egg producers than sperm producers, the Genderists would put the strongest, most representative, most definitive innate physical trait of all — the brain in which the Identity of an Egg Producer resides.
Sastra
That’s still a vast improvement over the infinite regresses of circular logic we’re used to and allows for follow up questions like:
• Exactly how are the brains of porn-crazed, ultra-aggressive, infinitely entitled sperm producers who are attracted to egg producers and revel in violent rhetoric against egg producers who stand up for their own interests more representative of egg-producers than other sperm-producers? Where are your citations?
• If egg-producers and sperm-producers literally have innately different kinds of brains, everybody knows the sex of their own brain, and the brains of TIM’s are of the former kind, what does that say about detransitioners? Do they literally change to a different kind of brain? If not, please explain. Where are your citations?
• Etc. etc.