New science or new human rights?
Sastra raises the perennial question of what we are talking about when we talk about how “some women have a penis” [and related subjects, which are infinite in number]. She asks if it’s a matter of new discoveries in science or new sensitivities to human rights, which is a very good question.
I was thinking about the purported “new sensitivities to human rights” yesterday, wondering for the billionth time why there is such heightened sensitivity to and compassion for men who claim to be women when there was never such sensitivity to and compassion for feminist women with their old sensitivities to human rights. Why are the sensitivity and compassion so very heightened, so frantic, so loud, so hyperbolic, so laced with threats? Why are so many people so extremely passionate and agitated about this form of “liberation” when that was never a thing for feminism? It’s as if feminism had been for “Karens” all along.
I was thinking about it, and it occurred to me that maybe it’s because most people or nearly all people or all people are in fact more or less squicked by fake genitalia and medically unnecessary mastectomies and the like. Maybe it’s because most people or nearly all people or all people actually don’t want to “date” trans people and they feel horribly guilty and ashamed as a result so they overcompensate.
Could that be it?
This seems right. We live in a world where everyone is constantly second-guessing their every public utterance lest they end up on”the wrong side of history” or are seen to be “unkind” so over-compensation is pretty much inevitable. See also: yasslighting.
I hadn’t seen yasslighting before; excellent addition to my vocabulary.
The public concern for feminism is spotty, but it’s there. Candle light vigils for rape/murder victims gets sympathetic coverage, as do “feminist” causes like the dignity of sex work and the liberating effects of porn. Feminism as a cause is publicly respectable.
Perhaps what separates feminism from transgenderism is that the former has too much history to present women as victims suddenly emerging blinking and sniffling into the sunlight. When you look at the level of heightened sensitivity and compassion directed towards the trans-identified, it seems to resemble the heightened sensitivity and compassion we direct towards children, not adults. Phrases like the most vulnerable, the most marginalized, signals weakness and helplessness. The exaggerated accolades coming from trans allies (“You look GREAT!” ) sounds very much like the way we sometimes overcompensate praise when talking to anxious children or even the mentally handicapped. They need our reassurance as much as they need our support. Poor babies.
Combine this with People Deserve To Do Whatever They WANT individualism and the conviction that the Religious Right is at the bottom of any and all criticism and it’s a recipe for hyperbole and a call for Call Out Culture.
But feminism never got the level of frenzied sympathy and love that is lavished on trans people. Never never never never – that did not happen. The way people talk about trans people, especially trans “women,” bears no resemblance to the way people talk and have talked and did talk about women, especially after feminism roared back into life.
But as you say, it sounds like the way people talk to nervous children, so we probably wouldn’t have wanted to be talked about that way. But it is fucking galling to see men who pretend to be women talked about that way.
Funny you mention that. I was just catching up on B&W and a few posts back I just wrote about how gender identity ideology’s unpopularity is its strongest selling point. But in my view, that’s not because it generates guilt in people, but because it creates a large market for people who need to see themselves as more progressive & virtuous than others to act superior to and proselytize against. In a world where all the major civil rights campaigns have been adopted by the establisment (at least in principle, if not entirely in practice), progressives are left in a precarious position: they must cannibalize the edifice of civil rights they’ve created, just to keep the holy war going. Purity spirals, infighting, and the rapid deterioration of civil rights ensue if the defenders of civil rights can’t adapt to their new position as a part of the establishment, and their role of maintaining and improving the civil rights frameworks that are already established (in principle) within the status quo.
Maybe the numbers can partly explain why feminism never reached the frenzied sympathy level: there’s an inverse relationship between the size of the minority and the amount of virtue one can supposedly accrue for championing them. Women are always half the population, and that’s just not a small enough number of victims to make a hero out of championing them.
Perhaps it’s something like that, anyways.
come to think of it, it’s right there in the word — minority!
Of course I meant something like marginalized or vulnerable or discriminated-against class, but it’s so easy to slip up and call women a minority instead, so powerful is the idea that smaller numbers mean more marginalized.
Ophelia:
But part of feminism’s purpose was dispelling the illusion that women are delicate, fragile babies that can’t be allowed near anything because their little feminine hearts can’t take it.
Arty:
I would concur on that. I’ve said as much about the intersectional viewpoint with respect to females. The larger group is the oppressor, and each progressively (ha) smaller subdivision accumulates oppression, apparently in at least additive fashion. That’s the logical consequence of “multiple intersecting identities”.
Nullius – which is why I said “But as you say, it sounds like the way people talk to nervous children, so we probably wouldn’t have wanted to be talked about that way.”
I figured as much. I just thought the point worth emphasizing that real civil rights movements don’t seek to infantilize or to appeal to pity. They instead seek to bring people into equal standing and dignity.
That’s a pretty key point I think Nullius. Not that there’s a law or anything that describes how a civil rights movement has to operate, but the fact they find it so damn hard to rely on any coherent philosophy or clearly articulated specific goals says a lot.
I agree with Artymorty on the number issue. Promoting “trans rights” is the perfect virtue signaling because (as many so-called allies tend to say) “why would it even affect you”? Fighting for “trans rights” is very improbable to actually affect your rights (unless you are a women in sports, or in prison or…,) and so besides a lip service to the principle you need not change your behaviour, your life, society or anything. So it costs you nothing.
I rather think it’s a whole lot of things working in concert:
First, we are still (male and female) raised to centre male needs, wants, desires, “rights”.
Second, we are raised and praised for “being nice” and “doing the right thing”, hence civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights etc.
Third, “trans rights” allows you to *think* you’re doing all of the above at once – centring the male (but don’t think about that), being nice, doing the right thing, while also being in the Right Side of History which only the Cool Kids are.
Fourth, it asks nothing material immediately. For the governor to sign a bill allowing “trans inclusion” no program needs funding, no policing, nothing. It’s stroke of a pen stuff. Like “ending homelessness” by striking vagrancy, home invasion, squatting and trespassing laws off the books. You literally do less than you used to.
Fifth, it takes ages for the consequences to really hit home, comparatively, and enough times that it’s a thing, a theme, not just a blip, an error, a nothing serious.
There’s probably more. But all that is in play, I think.
Another thing about the frenzied sympathy and accompanying righteous anger: I think it’s the anger and sympathy women (in particular) are allowed to have. Women hold enormous amounts of pent up rage and empathy for our own we would like an outlet for, but giving it to women – unless it’s an obvious thing, like a murdered woman – I think comes off too self centred, too selfish, and women are socially prohibited from that. So they pour it out on an allowable cause, the right kind of women.