If You Question "Trans" Ideology, They Will Slander You
link
This is a well-established conclusion by now--there's really no denying it. [That is: the title of this piece.]
I've already posted on Singal's excellent piece on kids who think they're transgendered and then change their minds, and on the hysterical response from the transgender left.
Look, goddamn it: this debate matters.
The leftist theory of transgenderism is false.
And if you don't care about that: it has major policy consequences.
People representing themselves as the opposite sex is perfectly fine under most conditions; but a man representing himself as a woman is still a man. There's not one single decent reason against that obvious truth. Representing a non-A as an A does not make it an A (except, possibly, in few irrelevant trick cases.)
The theory simply doesn't work, and doesn't come close to working. But if you say that, a flock of crazy people will descend on you and try to destroy you. (See Alice Dreger's, Galileo's Middle Finger for details about how Michael Bailey was slandered and his reputation destroyed for the sin of actually investigating and hypothesizing about transgenderism.)
So...are we going to tolerate this? We wouldn't tolerate it from the right. Are we going to tolerate it if, say, the polygamy lobby uses the same tactics? After all, they seem to work like a charm. Why is everyone but the right apparently ok with extremists winning consequential public debates via slander and character assassination? I don't understand this at all. Is it that they're afraid? Or that they don't care? Or that they are fine with the use of psychotic anti-liberal tactics so long as it's by the left?
Even if you buy every bit of trans ideology, you should oppose how its proponents are conducting themselves in this debate.
Oh and: if their arguments were good, they wouldn't have to do this. But when you're pushing obviously unsound arguments, ad hominems are probably your best. Rational persuasion is out of the question, but that leaves at least trickery an badgering.
And don't forget! Part of the dogma is that trans ideologues don't seek to silence their opponents! You see...we're completely making that up!
Anyway: three cheers for Jesse Singal.
This is a well-established conclusion by now--there's really no denying it. [That is: the title of this piece.]
I've already posted on Singal's excellent piece on kids who think they're transgendered and then change their minds, and on the hysterical response from the transgender left.
Look, goddamn it: this debate matters.
The leftist theory of transgenderism is false.
And if you don't care about that: it has major policy consequences.
People representing themselves as the opposite sex is perfectly fine under most conditions; but a man representing himself as a woman is still a man. There's not one single decent reason against that obvious truth. Representing a non-A as an A does not make it an A (except, possibly, in few irrelevant trick cases.)
The theory simply doesn't work, and doesn't come close to working. But if you say that, a flock of crazy people will descend on you and try to destroy you. (See Alice Dreger's, Galileo's Middle Finger for details about how Michael Bailey was slandered and his reputation destroyed for the sin of actually investigating and hypothesizing about transgenderism.)
So...are we going to tolerate this? We wouldn't tolerate it from the right. Are we going to tolerate it if, say, the polygamy lobby uses the same tactics? After all, they seem to work like a charm. Why is everyone but the right apparently ok with extremists winning consequential public debates via slander and character assassination? I don't understand this at all. Is it that they're afraid? Or that they don't care? Or that they are fine with the use of psychotic anti-liberal tactics so long as it's by the left?
Even if you buy every bit of trans ideology, you should oppose how its proponents are conducting themselves in this debate.
Oh and: if their arguments were good, they wouldn't have to do this. But when you're pushing obviously unsound arguments, ad hominems are probably your best. Rational persuasion is out of the question, but that leaves at least trickery an badgering.
And don't forget! Part of the dogma is that trans ideologues don't seek to silence their opponents! You see...we're completely making that up!
Anyway: three cheers for Jesse Singal.
posted by Winston Smith at
2:05 PM
7 Comments:
" Why is everyone but the right apparently ok with extremists winning consequential public debates via slander and character assassination?"
Because the Left has captured elite opinion almost entirely, and the purpose of the slander and character assassination is to safeguard their power. I don't really see any other effective explanation.
The obvious next step is to realize that when power is abused, as the Left is blatantly doing in the transgender case, and has done in the demolition of the humanities, it is time to push for a changing of the guard. Let's hope the very benign heterodox academy style change wins out over a more radical version, but the current state is just not stable. The Left is too far-gone.
Word, Anon.
And they suck.
Though I also believe, incidentally, that sane people have to stand up to this. The left is not going to see the light and opt for rational discussion. The only way to deal with them is for sane people to respond--first of all by standing up and speaking out on issues like this, and, second, by calling bullshit on their unbridled use of accusations of prejudice to stifle dissent. They need to be absolutely fucking *hosed* for that. Using false accusations of prejudice to get your way (a core tactic of those in the grip of slave morality) is repulsive. People need to pay a price for it.
Absolutely. I'm thinking more in terms of institutional transition. I like the viewpoint diversity approach because it forces competition on fair terms. The PC left will almost certainly lose, and most importantly, everyone will see them lose. This will justify the changing of the guard in a robust way.
What scares me is we are past the point where that could work. Because their power is so entrenched, and because they are so opposed to rational discourse ipso facto, there might not be a world where a bunch of non-PC intellectuals can come in and say, "Hey, that PC stuff is garbage because X,Y,Z". The tools that remain when that isn't available are much scarier, think the talk about revoking tenure (so they can then be fired) or funding for various departments. A lot of that will have to come exogenously too, of course, which will not be well-received. Basically I don't see how any solution doesn't create a massive backlash, which will create its own backlash, etc.
(Not that you are opposed to any of this, I'm just playing the scenarios in my head and trying to tally the risks that are building.)
With all due respect, you are mistaking the positions taken by a small group of trans people and their young supporters for the position of "the left." It's true that it is hard for "the left" to criticize these people, because it's a fault of the left that it finds it difficult to criticize anyone who has been marginalized. But you will also not find left people of a less cultural/sexual orientation going out of their way to defend these attackers.
You may very well be right, Anon. I actually thought of that, but kind of blew right past it...in part because I agree...but am pissed at the part of the left that's remaining silent for remaining silent.
Winston, this one is just for you. I know you are down on the notion of 'toxic masculinity'. This article is from a psychologist in the field and seems to verify that it can be a real problem--and for the men sometimes as much or more as for the women they interact with.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/opinion/sunday/men-metoo-therapy-masculinity.html
Obviously this doesn't prove every cockamamie claim about it. But...well read the article and comment on it. I am genuinely interested in your opinion.
Dunno, PM.
I wonder to what extent this is an advertisement for a niche kind of shrinkage. And we're getting what could be a carefully tailored account of some very extreme cases.
But I've said before that I thought *everybody* realized that masculinity can be messed up in a bunch of ways--as can femininity. I've long thought that what we might call the prevailing gender world-view in the U.S. is pretty screwed up, and difficult to live in. And I agree, specifically, the masculinity can go very, very wrong.
Which is not to say that I think that hashtagtoxicmasculinityslashhashtagMeeeeToooo is sane. It's all crazy in the way that the crazy left is crazy. But on the very minimal and not-at-all-remarkable points that (a) there are bad sectors of masculinity (and femininity), and (b) the rape/sexual-assault/sexual-harassment continuum is bad...well...honestly, who disagrees?
I mean...I grew up on a farm. People were in many ways more just *people* there. And this was before pop culture pervaded everything. The current cultural atmosphere already seems to me to be largely built on a cornerstone of exaggerating gender. Women always dressed up and coiffed and fit, men all pumped up and metrosexualed-out or lumberjacked-up...It's a rich-people's problem that we've all inherited because everybody's so rich now. Or so I sometimes think. I dunno.
So: I got nothing interesting.
You?
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