Guest post: Pronoun usage v environmental issues
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Would risk a backlash.
Certainly, one might examine certain propositions more carefully because of their provenance, but I hardly think it true or sensible to say that ‘nobody has any reason to believe anything you have to say’ on a particular issue on the grounds that ‘you’ are sadly wrong on other issues.
Yeah, I get that on an intellectual level, but I’m looking at this from the point of view of someone who wants the Green Party (when it actually is green and not pink and baby blue) to do better and have a greater influence on the policy positions of more mainstream parties. In going all in on gender ideology, they’ve wrecked their reputation as advocates of scientific realism when it comes to dealing with environmental issues. It’s not just that they’re wrong or mistaken, they’re wrong and mistaken on an issue that has little to no bearing on environmental concerns; they’ve been fooled, and are passing on the foolishness. They themselves are not being sensible or true. They have turned themselves into a witness whose testimony can be shown to be unreliable on this issue. The fact that it’s outside their supposed core area of expertise and advocacy, and that they’ve gone out of their way to embrace it and promote it, only makes it worse. That shows a failure of judgement that doesn’t inspire confidence in their other positions. Their other policy goals and proposals might be marvelously brilliant, but in this one area, they’re poison. How does one balance one’s support when faced with that sort of dogged irrationality?
It’s also not a very good fit with Green aspirations to be open and transparent in their way of doing politics; the trans and Stonewall ethos and methodology has rubbed off on them without any apparent transfer of means and methods going in the other direction. It’s another instance of “Every organization that embraces trans ideology turns to shit.” Internal Green politics seems to have eagerly taken on the unsavoury bullying and intimidation we see coming from trans activism. Maybe the Greens were already like this and I just hadn’t noticed. But they certainly have not become better for having added trans activism to their laundry list. If elected Green representatives get more worked up about pronoun usage than environmental issues, then that’s a step backwards. Probably several. If one is so easily upset by people being mean, then maybe electoral politics isn’t a good fit ; environmental politics doubly so.
Certainly claims, statements, and policies should be examined on their own merits on a case by case basis, and sometimes you have to take the bad with the not quite as bad. In Canada, the only federal parties I’m ever likely to vote for have all gone for genderism at the expense of the rights of women and girls, and needlessly so. Even though the Conservatives would, on the whole, be worse for women (and everyone else), and I would only vote for them if all my other choices were further to the right, it still feels like a betrayal of women to support parties that spout such blatant lies on this one issue. These parties will support this bullshit until it costs them electoraly, and they may do so afterwards, depending on their blindness and commitment. They will blame defeat on any number of other things if they’re unable or unwilling to admit that espousing trans “rights” is a political liability. Unless and until the demand for trans “rights” is seen as the dangerous, anti-progressive, misogynistic garbage that it is, parties seduced by twitter activism will be inordinately eager to signal their “virtue,” even in the face of reality. If there was some way to bring this realization about, to rub their noses in it without handing right-wing parties governing power, forcing misguided leftists to do their soul-searching in the political wilderness, I’d be all for it. I hate having to hold my nose when I vote, but I see little choice for the time being.
I find this exceptionally eloquent. For me, “hold my nose when I vote” has pretty much always been the case, but I must squeeze harder now. I’m also less inclined than I used to be to “support” groups who advocate for some things I agree with but advocate for other things I do not. I don’t know that this is because the latter compromises their credibility about the former (although I agree with YNNB that it does). As I see it, supporting such a group inevitably supports the stuff I’m against, and I don’t want to do that. I have, for example, stopped contributing to the FFRF because of their gender advocacy.
Which is why I don’t like to be forced into following ideological hard lines. Anti-abortion, anti-trans vs. pro-abortion, pro-trans isn’t much of a choice. Once the trans craze is more widely regarded (and properly so) as neither progressive or liberal maybe there will be some improvement. I think it will happen eventually, but it’s been so perversely entwined with other progressive movements that it will be hard to pry it loose and seen for what it is. But our VP being a pronoun person here in the US, and the Prez being an old, white, male, career politician isn’t good at all. Better than TFG, but I was disappointed in the lack of quality (or even decent) choices in 2020 on the presidential tickets. Also I think the supreme court supermajority that was allowed to happen, and still hasn’t been remedied, has been the biggest series of failures by the Dems lately.
It’s interesting (in an alarming and creepifying way) how often on B&W we’ve seen cases where organizations which decide to include trans advocacy into their remit seem to become all trans, all the time, even when their reason for being is actually another cause or purpose altogether. Planned Parenthood, ACLU, Oxfam, NHS, NOW, Stonewall, etc. (not to mention government departments and services, corporations and so on), have all amplified the “trans rights” message to the detriment and exclusion of their original client bases. It’s like some kind of institutional parasitism wherein the aims and goals of the infected host body are bypassed or redirected to reflect the interests of trans activism above all else, or at least much higher than one would have expected. I wonder how much this is a case of new people bringing in new ideas (Trojan Horse) vs. people already in place accepting new ideas (Road to Damascus conversion experience)? And what of the Bandwagon Effect, where trans “rights” are latched onto because they’re seen as new and exciting that might be a good thing to get in on? Are Trojan Horse people going to be more reckless in damaging the reputation and credibility of the established organization than converts? Bandwagoneers are perhaps more likely to be ill-informed opportunists who’ve mistaken Twitter for the real world, in it for a buck. I don’t think there’s much mystery there. Not that there’s no less confusion about the difference between social media perception and reality, but there is, I think, more scope for study and examination of motivation and methodology in the other two. Simple, money-grubbing greed isn’t as interesting. It’s always going to be a factor, but I think it’s not going to factor in as much in examinations of True Belief.
Someone dedicated to the narrower cause of trans “rights” might be more willing to risk the good name of their new-found host group if they see it as a high-visibility platform they can bend to use for their own purposes. Converts may have greater care for the long-term needs of their institution, though it’s possible that the intensity and sincerity of the “conversion” itself might blind them to those needs in the rush to follow the new path to salvation to which they’ve surrendered. I could see either course, or a combination of the two, as a likely possibility. It would be interesting to study organizations that have added trans activism to their remits and see what transpired, Trojan Horse, Conversion Experience, or some of both.
Where would Chase Strangio be without the ACLU? What will it be once she’s done with it? To the extent that trans activism undermines broader support and effectiveness of the host organization, this can only be a short term strategy. How many donors has the ACLU lost over trans “rights” as opposed to new donors gained? Was the fight for “Lia” Thomas and teen boys in girls’ track and field that much of a net gain, compared to its more traditional civil liberties campaigns? Outside of the sheltered bubble of woke social media, I think this tack was a disasterous change in direction, as it highlighted the actual conflict between trans “rights” and the health, safety and dignity of women and girls. It depended on a toxic mix of obfuscatory language and outright lies which, once exposed, cannot be unseen. For the ACLU, the truth should be its greatest weapon, not its worst nightmare. If you have to hide the truth, then your cause is lost, because the truth is always there, waiting to be found, however deeply you try to bury it. If all it takes is the change of a word or two in a press release to expose your tactical mendacity, then you’re in bigger trouble still. People get angry when they’ve been cheated and lied to. The “Lia” Thomas campaign did both. It will be forever more, and to its lasting shame, a part of the ACLU’s legacy.
And what of the legacies left behind in the wake of daliences with trans activism? What becomes of the people and institutions? Trojan Horses, once the impact and credibility of the host institution is spent, can move on the the next host or bandwagon. So long as trans “rights” remain a thing, there will always be another host to parasatize or bandwagon to promote. Converts, tied by bonds of tradition and loyalty unfelt by Trojan Horese infiltrators, might be left amidst the ruins of their once shining organizations wondering “What the hell happened?” (Ironicaly, even trans-focused orgs are not immune to this: see Susie Green and Mermaids.) Have any organizations ever successfully extricated themselves from the clutches of trans activism completely unscathed? Or, like the human bodies subjected to their attentions, have they emerged damaged, stunted, and weakened from the experience?
We’re starting to see some government institutions in the UK begin to “detransition.” As this can happen with a change in the political parties in power, it might not offer a good model for what happens to voluntary, or charitable organizations that have no such constitutionally mandated turnover in their governance structures. To be sure, they will have their own internal politics and dynamics, but they might not follow the same course or timetable as a government department’s shift in policy, which can occur with brutal rapidity, in the right (or wrong) political climate. NGOs aren’t immune to administrative purges, but governments can come to power on the promise of delivering exactly that, particularly if they appeal to people who believe they’ve been cheated and lied to. In the struggle for trans “rights,” it is precisely those fighting for them that consitently rely on cheating and lying. Know your trans “rights” and you’ll know they’re wrong. You reap what you sow. For anyone interested in taking up this cause as a hobby, or a crusade (or a moneymaker), this is what you’re getting yourself into. You have been warned.
I’ve been struggling with this myself lately. I always used to say that in a democracy there is no such thing as not voting. Even staying home on election day is a vote – for your least favorite candidate. Still, when all the available options differ only in how much worse than nothing they are, I can definitely understand the temptation to “wash your hands” of the whole affair. It’s the old asymmetry between sins of omission and sins of commission, between actively doing harm and passively allowing harm. I have talked to people who would not pull the lever to save the five at the expense of the one in the famous Trolley Problem based on something like the following line of reasoning: “If I don’t pull the lever, I didn’t put those five workers in that situation in the first place, the world did. If I do pull the lever, the death of the worker on the side track is on me”. If you are morally responsible for every version of Sophie’s Choice the world throws at you, it seems to follow that the only morally acceptable option is “don’t exist at all In a world where that’s a choice that has to be made”.