Another consignment of geriatric shoe manufacturers:
Same old same old. Moore didn’t say anything “transphobic.” That’s all there is to this brand of “activism,” isn’t it – defining all dissent and argument as “phobic” and then pitching a “shut it down!!” fit on the basis of that wild definition. Everything except abject agreement and compliance is “transphobic” so…get aboard or get punished.
Along with how domineering and highhanded it is, it’s so intellectually vacant.
As a scholar of this stuff? What stuff? His field is American Studies. That’s not a science. On what basis are we supposed to think he knows more about the science than Hadley Freeman and Suzanne Moore?
And nobody has any beef with trans people “just for LIVING” – that’s the usual lie that “activists” of this type resort to because they haven’t got anything better.
I tell you what, though: this crap doesn’t work. I know that from experience. Having people shout slogans at you over and over and over instead of actually making an argument doesn’t work. Instead of persuading you or cowing you it pisses you off. Not recommended.
Comments
15 responses to “As a scholar of this stuff”
Do people really believe that “science has shown that there aren’t actually two sexes and that being a women isn’t actually a matter of biology”?
I guess that’s what they think when they keep scoffing at that obsolete “high school” biology.
Ah, yes, deterministic. We have been so successful at promoting the idea that biology isn’t deterministic of fluffy lady brains being good at nurturing while solid men’s brains are good at logic, they have now taken it to the next (il)logical step: that biology isn’t deterministic of your biological characteristics. Wow.
Only…we haven’t actually been all that successful at promoting the idea that biology isn’t deterministic of your cultural stereotypes; the trans thing shows just how unsuccessful we’ve been, Because they have gender ideas that fit the “wrong” gender, they belong in the other gender box.
So while biology now isn’t deterministic of your biological characteristics, your sociological characteristics are deterministic of the box you belong in…biologically. Just…double wow.
I actually am a scholar of this “stuff” (we biologists usually call it biology), and it makes my head spin to think about these twists and befuddlements.
I suspect they know it hasn’t; that’s why they won’t debate or offer counter-arguments or even do anything beyond shouting slogans.
Ben #1 wrote:
Yes, they do, but in the same way that Creationists think science has shown that Intelligent Design is the best explanation for life. They can bring up a lot of studies and throw a lot of evidence around, but without a clear definition either of “woman” or “the Intelligent Designer,” they’re only working backwards from a nebulous but appealing conclusion.
They also assume that claiming there are only two sexes is connected to denying the existence of intersex, believing that homosexuality is wrong, and wanting to enforce strict gender roles. Again, it’s similar to the Creationist belief that people who believe in evolution deny the existence of complexity, believe there is no such thing as right or wrong, and want to enforce atheism. They straw man the scientific arguments and then heap the motivating desire for negative consequences on top of it.
Sastra, there is one key difference, though. Creationists are willing…even keen…to debate with Evolutionists, because they believe their evidence is stronger than that of the evolutionists, and that they can own the debate. Or because they know that they will have preachers debating scientists, and preachers are adept at communicating ideas to crowds who are already open to their ideas, while scientists are often less adept at the rhetorical tricks used by the creationist crowd, and try to stick to just the facts, ma’am.
On the other hand, a lot of TRAs are probably painfully aware that standing up in front of a crowd in your enormous male body looking like an enormous male stuffed into a dress and high heels will make it readily evident that you are not a woman, but a man who dresses like a woman…especially next to nearly any woman that would be on the debate stage with them. When they can control their picture and avatar on Twitter, and shout shouty memes at unknown, unseen people, it might not be as obvious to most that their argument about being women hinges on something as empty as it does.
@iknklast:
Good point. I wonder if part of the reason for the difference might be status: creationists have everything to gain by debating evolutionary scientists “as if” they were a legitimate scientific alternative. They’re underdogs. Trans Activists, on the other hand, have succeeded in placing themselves in the position of Accepted Standard of Decency — while simultaneously claiming to be marginalized, browbeaten, and easily damaged.
Which contributes to the evidence that analogies are only analogous in some ways, or they’d be the same thing…
That does seem plausible. The TRAs really don’t have anything to gain by debate, because that would be seen as giving legitimacy to their opponents’ views. And getting their opponents’ views out there to be seen, which they make plain cannot happen because it will lead to actual violence, mass murder, and suicide.
Another self-proclaimed ‘scholar of this stuff’. It must be because they are at least half-aware that they have no genuine arguments, only wild and self-serving assertions about ‘transphobia’ and being personally ‘heart-broken’, that these people keep insisting on their academic credentials, a cynical strategy, surely, that hitherto at least has been working in a way, particularly in consequence of the proliferation of new academic subjects and a general decline in standards of argument and some nicely ignorant and easily led students. It’s like toads blowing themselves and up and hissing when they feel themselves endangered. (I respect the toads, though; I love the creatures.)
‘Dr Steven W. Thrasher’ – it sounds like the name that might be given by a writer to a sadistic master in a humorous novel about some benighted public school in England. We had a few of those where I was, and worse. Vide: ‘Review reveals scale of abuse scandal at London private school’ (headline in The Guardian).
Dr Steven W. Thrasher, classics master at Low Dudgeon school for boys. It fits.
!
This is very tenuously related, but that led to a line of thought which resulted in finding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histrionic_personality_disorder – well isn’t that curious.
Well there you have it – trans women must be women based on the higher observed incidence of such behaviour..
Urgh – I can’t manage to get quote tags right without the preview button. :-/
Fixed?
Perfect, thank you.