Here is a Twitter conversation I had yesterday:
Chris Geidner's tweet sort of proves my point. He makes a loathsome accusation that I must be anti-trans simply because I have some issues with the most extreme factions of trans activism. I feel like I should hardly need to say this, but I'm entirely pro-trans and favor them being treated without bigotry or unfairness in nearly every possible way.
But no matter how much you believe in a principle, there are always difficult edge cases. This is just life in an imperfect world. Free speech is not absolute. Neither is gun ownership. Or even abortion, about which I have about the most extreme pro-choice position imaginable.
But if you express even modest doubts about trans rights edge cases you're likely to be accused by trans activists of "erasing" them. Or "literally" doing violence against them. Or being complicit in their murder. For examples of this, you need go no further than the hundreds of replies to my tweet.
For the sake of clarity, here are three trans edge cases that I consider legitimate:
Sports. If you've grown up as a man, it means you've grown up with testosterone coursing through your body. This gives you more strength and stamina than most women, which is why men's and women's sports were segregated in the first place. There would be no women's sports if we did otherwise. The same is true for someone who transitions to female after puberty: no matter what drugs they take, they're almost certainly more muscular than most women. It's difficult to say just where the line should be drawn, but the basic argument about unfairness is pretty obvious.
Minors. Minors are always an edge case, and once again the reasons are pretty obvious: They don't have fully developed brains or fully grown yardsticks of what's urgent and what's transitory. This makes treatment of trans minors a tricky subject, especially in view of the questions that have recently caused many liberal European countries to retreat on gender affirming care for minors. America's red-state cranks have, as usual, gone way overboard in creating new laws forbidding trans medical treatment for minors, but that doesn't mean more moderate questions about the right way to treat minors don't have some reasonable arguments behind them.
Free association. This is tricky, but there are women who want to socialize in certain circumstances with others who grew up as girls. This is because their backgrounds and experiences will be different from those who grew up as boys, and they will sympathize with their reminiscences and complaints differently. This is truly a difficult issue, however, since free association has so often been a mask for simple bigotry.
I've been wary of trans activism for many years, ever since Lynn Conway and Andrea James launched a vicious jihad against James Bailey because he wrote about scientific research they considered harmful to the trans cause. Not necessarily wrong, mind you, but unhelpful. And that meant he must be not just mistaken, but a monster.
This is typical of trans responses to research in their field: praise it if it helps the cause, demonize it if it doesn't. This is hardly uncommon among activists of all stripes, but that doesn't make it any better. If research is clearly wrong or biased, that's one thing. But condemning something just because it causes problems for the approved narrative is quite another.
The cruel and abhorrent attacks on trans people that have skyrocketed over the past few years among right-wingers is enough to make me sympathetic to almost any response. Unfortunately, attacking indiscriminately against even arguably legitimate criticism does nothing except make the wingers look more like the reasonable ones. It's unhelpful.
The New York Times article was blatantly dishonest: essentially a rehashing of debunked claims from a proven liar.
The reality is a world in which it remains almost impossible for trans people to get the medical treatment they need -- and new laws are making it even more challenging. I'm not going to get into whether that is "erasure" of just wanton cruelty, but if you are not opposed to what's going on it seems fair to suggest you are complicit.
Protesting the Times hardly seems aggressive to me, any more than climate actisim does. Some of the most vulnerable people in our society are being denied fundamental rights. Protesting that seems entirely reasonable.
Thanks for starting us off with an example of aggressive activism! Instead of branding Jamie Reid "a proven liar" you could wonder why a left-of-Bernie lesbian, married to a trans-man and a long history of liberal and LGBTQ activism is worried about what she saw happening.
And you live in a very different world from me if you think its "almost impossible" for trans people to access medical care - in my world it seems impossible for a kid questioning just about anything to not be steered towards issues of gender identity and medicalization.
The way out of the mess is with honest discussion ... and shutting it down with hyperbole and lies and bad data isn't helpful. Or, if you prefer to bolster Kevin's point - the problem isn't with people choosing to live as transgender but with TRAs who demand absolute submission to ideology.
+1
Exactly right. The NYT spent months verifying what Jamie Reed said, and found their own ex-patient of the clinic. Ms. Reed is NOT a “proven liar,” she is a whistleblower.
After reading the NYT article, it was evident that the NYT provided zero evidence that her claims were verified.
The article stated that some of her claims were corroborated, but then provided no corroboration.
The ex-patient you cite did not regret the treatment she received and found it beneficial.
The NYT article does say that many of her claims cannot be verified and that at least one was proven wrong. Other articles have highlighted many claims thst were proven wrong. The NYT article also said that she directly lied about one of her claims when she claimed that the clinic was not informing patients of risks but it turns out that she was aware that this was in fact happening. This is called a lie.
That her stories and fantastical claims have fallen apart seems more important than appeals to her authority because maybe she is like Bernie.
But how dare those big meanie AGGRESSIVE ACTIVISTS take an interest in whether or not wild claims can be verified. HOW RUDE!!
She didn't make fantastical claims.
She made shocking claims, but sadly they are for real. The only disputed story was that a family said they were in a lawsuit possible situation (liver damage) but they chose not to, and Jamie immediately acknowledged that she got that story second hand and might have missed some details.
Azeen went to great lengths to investigate and corroborate her claims.
You lie:
and:
and:
and: Oh Hell. Why bother. Next time, get your ducks in a row before you start beating your gums.
LOL - from below you state :
"The MSM are not your friends, nor should they be uncritically relied upon for data. Not saying you can't glean something from what they publish, but every article must itself be subject to the same when, what, where, how and why fundamentals of journalism as that employed by the source."
And yet here you cite them as EVIDENCE that Reed is lying sack of shit. Again, the point TRAs should take is not in the little details but the fact that someone who was an ally, should be an ally, of the trans cause decided to pull the Emergency Stop cord b/c she saw the train engineers didn't know what they were doing. If you're not willing to listen to her and others like her then you are destined to plunge into a ravine and take the whole train with you.
The small potato pips up with it's usual Drunky McDrunkface routine. I'll decide for myself what I deem a major detail and what perforce is a minor one, thank you very much.
+2
Re sports: Skeletons are different between men and women. Hips being the most noticeable, but there are other bones (e.g. limbs) that can affect performance.
[Insert Adam's Rib joke here]
Picketing a newspaper = bullying?
Agreed, that would be idiocy coming from someone else, from Douchebro Matt it is just shitty. But he's a shithead, everyone knows he's a shithead, and either dismisses him or likes him for it, depending on their priors. Nothing to learn there.
How minorities handle the transition from oppression to mere hatred is a really interesting question in the abstract, and a really painful, difficult one in reality. I suspect the answer is the same as the one about scientific revolutions - change happens one death at a time.
If you have to radicalize for your own survival, tuning it back down as you win is probably impossible to really manage. It isn't a pose, it is a state of being. I think a lot of people are more capable of understanding this when talking about people further away.
Yeah, I wasn't even thinking of Matt Y himself. I used to read him regularly, but I've been boycotting him for years, ever since he doxxed someone.
Maybe he apologized and learned his lesson, which is why he's now anti-bullying.
No, telling journalists that they can *not* talk to Martina Navratilova is bullying. Creating a letter that slanders good journalists with false accusations is bullying.
This is some pretty good dishonesty, there: You wrote, "GLAAD's aggressiveness is pretty typical of trans activists, isn't it?"
Then you characterize Geidner as responding to you saying you had "some issues with the most extreme factions of trans activism."
You included ALL trans activists, including this straight white male in his 50s with prostate cancer and his cis daughter, in your response. You did not say anything about "most extreme factions" until after the interaction, and only in defense of yourself.
You can't libel everyone actively trying to secure rights for trans Americans and then whine because someone pushed back and suggested you are opposed to trans rights.
But Geider is a trans extremist. It's his thing. He takes the most left-wing position on any issue.
The activist personality is often a kind of uniquely humorless social conservative, of whatever stripe, devoted to intransigence on their pet topic.
It's the extremist-ness that gives them a buzz and making a public parade of it.
horseshoe theory is entirely applicable here ...
"The activist personality is often a kind of uniquely humorless PERSON, of whatever stripe, devoted to intransigence on their pet topic."
Fixed it
No, that isn't it, they're always social conservatives.
It's not a horseshoe, it's a full circle.
So ... advocating book burning while employed at the ACLU doesn't strike you as wrong? Do you think the folks at the fund-raising machines of GLAAD and HRC are different in their level of passion, certainty that they are correct, willingness to live in a bubble and truth-bending devotion are different from any of the right-wing, right-to-life operations?
Stop making this a political tribe issue - you're going to get one group of people under-treated in Oklahoma and other red bastions and another group of people over-treated in coastal blue bastions. Under-treatment and over-treatment are harms. Neither are OK.
Find me the book burner.
It isn't about 'tribes', it's about lessening harm. That's the only issue. Anti-trans activists promote harm while pretending it's for someone's own good, a view no serious researchers in the field agree with but a manner exactly out of the rhetorical style book of social conservatives everywhere.
Like them, those advocating an un-nuanced view are always promoting harm, whatever they claim to advocate.
No one should insist that anyone born with a medical condition should spend the rest of their lives living with it untreated only because they happen to have been born that way and it can be exploited to induce an anxiety fit in people who themselves should be treated for whatever it is that allows their anxieties over others to build in this way, allowing them to be exploited themselves to further a general injury to a population of helpless victims.
Chase Strangio, ACLU lawyer, referring to the book "Irreversible Damage" said "Also stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on."
So, Chase didn't reference burning the book, just stopping its circulation. It's still a super backwards position for an ACLU lawyer to take. I'm old enough to remember Skokie.
Trans is not "a medical condition." There is no brain scan, no blood test, no detailed psychological battery of tests that can identify who will benefit from sex trait modification.
In re the much-ado-about-nothing sports issue: trans kids want to go on puberty blockers precisely because they don't want to have a mannish adams-apple or bones by the time they transisition. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. What does _not_ seem reasonable is to deny those kids that treatment and then later on justify excluding them from sports on accounta their build.
Yah, I'm really glad not to be an endocrinologist nowadays, because they are having to make some really tough calls. Puberty changes people's bodies in ways that usually cannot be reversed, and if someone gets stuck with changes dismorphic to their self image then the harm from that is huge and lasting. BUT, beginning gender alignment treatment before puberty means taking the word of a young child that they really need it. Doctors can and do insist that the child must be insistent, persistent, and consistent about it, but even so the chances of error are significant, and the consequences severe. I would be utterly stressed if I was dealing with those cases. Being wrong in either direction is terrible.
Sports seems like the least important aspect of this issue, but for what it's worth I'm with Kevin. I would allow trans women to compete as women ONLY IF they transitioned before puberty. Anyone who has been through male puberty must compete with men, whether or not they transitioned later.
This seems like a fair compromise to me, but only in a world where trans people are freely allowed to begin sex change treatment before they enter puberty. Currently, red states are forcing children to not undergo treatment before puberty and then also punishing them later (by excluding them from sports) when they transition after puberty.
yup
Kevin, I realize the whole blogging gig is basically to weigh in on stuff that's in the public conversation. But you don't actually have to express an opinion on every issue. If I were in your shoes, I would steer as far clear of this as I could. Even if you are right, you aren't going to convince anyone. And everytime you wade into this issue you bring a ton of grief down onto yourself.
Probably good advice. This illustrates the situation where Kevin, due to his chart based Caltech background, diverges from a big bloc of liberal belief.
Credit to Anne Applebaum, but there is a difference between simple majority rule, and liberal democracy.
The Repubs are punching down on trans people because, of course, they can, and secondly, they know that there are like 40% of the population who finds the whole trans situation icky at best and as a result don't mind limitations on it.
But in a liberal democracy you protect vulnerable groups, regardless of how many voters could care less about said group.
These trans attacks are so unbelievably out of proportion to any harm any trans person has done to anyone that I almost see it as impossible to be too supportive.
I appreciate Kevin making a stand for reality. This is a burgeoning medical scandal and we need to talk more about this, not less.
Although I wish we would also talk more about women being locked into prison cells with intact males. The current strategy appears to be distributing condoms, but that seems a tad optimistic.
Kevin, you mention sports, free association, and pediatric transition.
What about housing trans women in women's prisons? What about housing trans women who have a history of rape, murder, pedophilia and other violent crimes against women, in women's prisons?
I am strongly opposed to housing violent trans women in women's prisons and I find it maddening that trans activists avoid the subject.
This is the daily mail but no one else will cover it. It's a horrifying case, be warned:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12345365/Trans-activist-Dana-Rivers-murdered-lesbian-couple-19-year-old-son-hate-crime-preying-inmates-womens-prison-California.html
I also don't think trans women should be allowed in women's locker rooms because of the problems revealed by the Wi Spa case.
I think the fact that activists have shut down conversation on this is finally coming back to haunt the conversation. Now the activists seem manipulative and as if they are hiding something. Also the activist arguments have gotten flabby as a result of not meeting the the opposition on fair ground and arguing on the merits.
The great thing about NOT shutting down your opposition is that you are in continual training in the field of battle and you will simply do better in a fight.
Dana Rivers committed her crimes outside of prison. Are you really saying she's more dangerous than the other murderers in women's prison?
You should also consider the alternative: how much danger will she face if she is sent to a men's prison?
Finally, you shouldn't lie about the Daily Fail covering a story that "no one else will cover." She made the news all over the Bay Area, including the SacBee, SJMN, and all the local TV stations. Your pretense about there being a news blackout here is not an effective fight tactic.
"Are you really saying she's more dangerous than the other murderers in women's prison?" Of course. She went through a male puberty.
To answer the question, where should trans women with violent histories against women be put as prisoners, requires a willingness to listen to concerns. We don't talk about possible approaches precisely because the toxicity in the debate has destroyed the ability to carry on a thoughtful conversation. That toxicity has primarily come from trans activists. You simply can't have a conversation.
It is shameful that women who have concerns about this have been silenced. Livelihoods are threatened if you raise concerns.
I don't have "the" answer to this problem and I'm not interested in deciding on one in the absence of a sharing of concerns. Separate wings in a prison, etc. I don't know what the possibilities are -- and I can't know, no one can know, because the conversation has been shut down.
I think the trans activists lose credibility this way.
"I think the trans activists lose credibility"
- says the guy who lied about a news blackout.
There are many situations in which our society segregates people by sex; in sports, in public bathrooms, in changing rooms, in prisons. In all cases that I can think of, the segregation is done for reasons of differences in anatomy rather than differences in psychology, and is done by anatomy rather than psychology. It seems clear to me that for purposes of segregation by sex, a person with male anatomy should be treated as male and a person with female anatomy should be treated as female.
The confusing case, as others have mentioned, in sports is the person who has fully transitioned as an adult or near-adult and now has one sex's anatomy but much of the physique of the other. Unfortunately, such people are a problem both ways. A person who has male anatomy but grew up female is at a serious disadvantage in men's sports and probably can't compete, but will have a steroid induced advantage over "natural" females, while a person who grew up male has a significant "unfair" advantage as a female, but is at a disadvantage as a male.
It may be that people who have transitioned simply shouldn't be involved in competitive sports.
Approximately 99.99% of Americans are not involved in competitive sports, which I’m taking to mean either sports in which you get paid to play or sports in which you can win some kind of prestigious title. (Not just amateur “best of Bumfuck County” awards.)
The amount of time spent in government and media discussing and regulating who can compete as “female” is grossly disproportionate to the actual “problem.”
I agree, It astonishes me when I read stories about state legislatures spending time on legislation about trans kids in high school sports when there is not one child in the state that will be affected by the law.
Yes, thank you for bringing up males in women's prisons. Most female inmates are victims of crime themselves, and few are violent. Almost none are sex offenders.
Or at least that's how the statistics ran until they started to allow men to identify as women even after their conviction, and to be placed in the female estate even without any particular medical transition and usually with intact male genitals.
Ideally, prisons should be better run so that no inmates are subject to rape or assault. I mean, men rape other men in jail too… so it’s not like women being raped by men in jail is some kind of more important problem. The problem is that American prisons are terribly run, as rapes in other developed countries’ prisons are far fewer, both homosexual and heterosexual.
Also this whole “concern” about women being raped in jail is fairly new on the right. I’m pretty sure women in jail have been raped in the past - sometimes even by the guards - and nobody seemed to care in these red states.
Women being raped in jail is absolutely a bigger problem because almost all men can physically overpower almost any woman, particularly if they are locked into a friggin' cell together.
It's. Not. The. Same.
I'm not on the right so I have nothing to say about that. I am a lifelong lefty who is horrified that people think putting intact males into the female estate is no big deal, because bad stuff happens to men in prison etc etc.
Conservatives like almost nothing better than the idea of men being raped in prison so the pretended complaints about this from them are simply an extension of that, throw that trans woman into a mens prison and their day will be rape and nothing else.
Classic! My point below about friends with shared goals drifting off the path ... should prisons be better? Yes.But here is a weird misogyny that the women in prison have it too good, are "privileged" b/c its extremely unlikely for women->women sexual violence and thus too bad for them?
What I'd like to know is what did Kevin find aggressive about GLAAD's post to begin with? And you have the gall to ask how far they should go in your title? With your response you'd think they threatened to shoot the place up.
Is saying you are going to hold someone accountable (by protesting outisde or sending a letter to the editors, which is what they'll do) aggressive in your eyes?
Tell us Kevin, what else are they supposed to do if even people pretending to be on their side like you say it is too aggressive?
Your comment is no different from the countless bigots that complained when athletes started kneeling down for the anthem to complain about racial or gender issues in the US. No matter what a disenfranchised group does, in the eyes of old, wealthy, white guys like you they can never complain about their plight quiet enough for your taste.
You are not a foaming at the mouth, let's pretend they don't exist type of bigot like your typical MAGA supporter, but you are a bigot enabler.
On social issue after social issue (I've read you for more than a decade), your approach has always been some form of asking for those minority groups to not complain as much, or to dismiss their complain as not really as big a deal as they say, or to suggest that actually the bigots should be given some leeway in their bigotry so they can maybe support the economic policies you prefer.
You may not hold any ill will against any minority group, and may truly want them to be treated fairly, I believe you on that, but you also would probably go on living without a care in the world if you never heard about them ever again, even if their situation never really improved.
To start, Twitter is hardly the place for nuanced discussions. The format doesn't allow it. What may be gray will seem black or white to someone. So if you're making any comment, it's good to understand the context.
For example, if someone says Black lives matter, it means something. It is, I would say, undeniably true. Its opposite (Black lives don't matter) is something most people would agree is unquestionably false. The historical context is that Black lives (in history both old and new) have too often not mattered, especially in police work. That's a truth I don't think is even arguable. So Black lives matter is a way to say there is an injustice that needs attention and needs to be corrected.
But along comes someone who says, All lives matter. Of course, those words are true, as far as it goes. But as a rebuttal to Black lives matter, it works to diminish the need to correct a societal injustice. What we've seen in a few short years is people saying All lives matter as a complaint against Black lives being given special consideration to that becoming a rallying cry for anti-Black racism, a dog whistle we should understand. If you're arguing that All lives matter is true -- what's the problem? -- you're on the wrong side of the issue.
Another example: yesterday I saw someone who should know better defending Vivek Ramaswamy's claim in the debate that "the climate change agenda is a hoax." He said the agenda is a hoax, not climate change itself, so you can't say he's denying climate change. But c'mon. An agenda cannot be a hoax. Ramaswamy knows what he's doing. He's appealing to the climate change deniers and everyone who would lean that way. When he proclaims we need to "drill, frack, burn coal," he's not trying to solve the problem. He'll make the problem worse. No one should parse his words so carefully, give him every benefit of the doubt, so that you deny the denial that he is selling. You're not helping to clarify the truth. You're running cover for a dangerous propagandist.
If you read a lot of NYT coverage of trans issues the past few years, I think the overall impression you get is clear, that supporters for trans issues are a great danger to our culture, especially our youth. Trans is the new red scare. On balance, there's far more fear-mongering about the danger from trans people than voicing of alarm about the dangers to trans people and youth coming from the right wing, from violence and from new laws.
No doubt, the Times runs some articles that are fact-based and add to the discussion of trans issues. But I think it's fair to say, the Times has an anti-trans agenda.
No doubt, GLAAD and other activists promote an agenda that is worth discussion and open to some valid criticism. Even people on the pro-trans side would say they don't have it all figured out. But I think it's fair to say, GLAAD and other trans activists are doing very important work in protecting and saving the lives of trans people, a group under threat at the current time.
So there's some context.
Wednesday the Times runs a lengthy article on a small gender clinic in St. Louis, "one of the 100 or so clinics" in the US like it. It highlights many of the "grave concerns" that critics have expressed about the care patients have received, some of which are "unsubstantiated," though "others were corroborated." I imagine you could write an article about any health clinic in any city in the country and find people with complaints, including some with legitimate complaints. Is that newsworthy? I think this is a case of the Times leaning heavy into its agenda to scare up worries about gender care.
GLAAD tweets it plans to hold the NYT "accountable." (What it did was park a truck with letter-to-the-editor text on signage outside the NY Times building.)
Yglesias cites GLAAD for "bullying tactics."
Drum says GLAAD's "agressiveness is fairly typical for trans activists."
I don't know how else to put this: Don't be surprised people think you're a transphobe.
+ 1
-99
-101
I have two points.
1. The extreme end of trans activism (which I've observed) is where anyone who has a differing opinion is called a transphobe.
2. There is a reason why this extreme end of trans activism exists: they've borne witness to the high risks of being trans and have concluded that anyone who creates room for doubt about the legitimacy of being trans, is effectively anti-trans. They're angry at you, KD, because you give anti-trans folks some room to justify their actions.
So, here's the thing. What is being protested is opinions and laws that are genocidal. I'm not exaggerating. There is a big chunk of people who think trans is a fiction. They think there's no such thing as a trans person, it's a kink, or a scam, or a whim.
They want to erase trans people from existence. They never want to hear about them, or see them, or read about them. This is not an exaggeration. Read about some trans cases and they will become apparent.
That's not to say *you* want that. However, you are engaging in a particular form of discourse, which I used to do, and it goes like this:
1. Trans person says something pretty wild which is maybe exaggerating, but they are doing it in protest to something that is real and happened.
2. Your reply is "You are too loud". There is no affirmation there, no validation of what they want, no sense that you even get the point.
I have learned that if I'm going to critique someone who is working basically for things that I also want to see, to spend a lot of time reaffirming all the things I want that they also want. Only then do I offer a critique.
This does not work well on Twitter. It's one of the many reasons I don't engage in Tweeting.
I don't want to go down the rabbit hole here (so I may stop paying attention to this soon) but I have seen points like this before and it puzzles me.
"So, here's the thing. What is being protested is opinions and laws that are genocidal. I'm not exaggerating. There is a big chunk of people who think trans is a fiction. They think there's no such thing as a trans person, it's a kink, or a scam, or a whim."
[[ Question: how is thinking trans is a fiction equivalent to being genocidal?]]
"They want to erase trans people from existence. They never want to hear about them, or see them, or read about them. This is not an exaggeration. Read about some trans cases and they will become apparent."
[["Wanting to erase" sounds sorta kinda genocidal even though I think of genocide as involving camps and death. Wiping out a people. Some people won't want to read about trans people. Are they genocidal?]]
Let's hypothesize that trans women in women's sports are not allowed. And that pediatric transition, blockers, and hormones are allowed less often and only in studies where all outcomes are tracked. And that trans women are housed in facilities separate from both males and females in prisons. And that lesbians are allowed to have social spaces and events that exclude trans women. And trans is introduced as a topic in public schools in high school only, if at all.
If all this happened, would this be trans genocide? Could you define exactly how it is genocide? Or if it isn't, how it would evolve to become genocide?
I'm assuming that equal rights to housing and employment etc are maintained.
Here's an example from this weeks news: https://www.thedailybeast.com/transgender-woman-makyyla-holland-sues-the-broome-county-after-alleged-assault-by-prison-guards
Makkyla Holland was beaten repeatedly and denied access to medication. That is, the jail/prison officials took the point of view that "there is no such thing as trans".
She was beaten. Repeatedly. Over this issue.
If you are looking for people actually killed, we have to go back a bit further, but trans history is full of trans people getting killed after being outed. Have you seen "Boys Don't Cry"? It's based on a real event, a trans man who was murdered for being trans. There are other cases
If you google "violence against trans people" you will find that Human Rights Campaign attributes 22 murders to trans people last year for being trans.
Denial of access to care is core to this. The people behind this deny the reality of the trans phenomenon and seek to eradicate them from public life.
Woops, a correction. That HRC page cites 38 trans people killed last year, not 22: https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-community-in-2022
There aren't that many trans people out there, which magnifies the number of killings.
@DoctorJay: a potential rabbit’s hole indeed:
“What is being protested is opinions and laws that are genocidal. I'm not exaggerating.”
Examples? What exactly are the “genocidal” opinions and laws in question?
And I hesitate to engage, since your feelings are clearly quite strong on the matter; but, on the off chance that you might be open to some feedback, here it is:
Might it in fact be possible that “genocidal” is not the most applicable word for the situation in question?
Also, Kevin’s whole point, and it is one that I agree with, is that it’s not extreme (let alone “genocidal”) views that trans activists are denouncing; rather,
They denounce utterly normal views held by overwhelming majorities of the population. There’s a headline in the SF Chronicle today accusing Carlos Santana of an “insane” anti trans rant because he said that a man is a man and a woman is a woman. And I don’t find that statement “insane.” I certainly don’t think it’s genocidal. But that’s the kind of statement, and the kind of utterly normal person, condemned by trans activists as representing irredeemable bigotry.
So, which side is the one that’s really suffering from extremism?
+1
All three of your cases have flawed information in them. They contain assumptions. Not all sport is the Olympics, and in many, such as roller derby, trans women are welcome. I have a very good friend who does roller derby in Philly and everyone has a great time. She isn't especially dominant. She wasn't an athlete at all before transition. She's tall, but maybe not as fast or as powerful as the other women who play.
Furthermore, she's on T blocker and E. These have an impact, even in an adult, on physiology and metabolism. So trans people do not have quite the advantage that many people think.
In this case we could A) look at empirical evidence of an unfair advantage to trans women specifically (not men) and B) ask the women in the sport if it matters to them.
I'm not that concerned about the Olympics. The trans swimmer was good, but not that good. It doesn't say "massive advantage". Phelps has a big advantage because his limbs and body are so long, should we regulate that?
2. There is no care given to trans minors that isn't ALSO given to cis minors, in much greater numbers. cis minors get blockers to stop early onset puberty. Cis minors have boob jobs, probably 3000 a year or something like that. Nobody's saying "protect them!"
3. Freedom of association says we really can't have laws that insist that groups accept certain people as members. That's really hard. But we can insist that those groups are being foolish and cruel. Most humans have some weird obsession with purity somewhere. That doesn't make it right.
We are not doing orchiectomies on "cis minors" but everybody saw Jazz get bottom surgery at age 17 on national television.
There is no reasonable comparison between inserting breast implants (which shouldn't be happening to minors) and complete nullification of the breasts. When they do this, they remove the nipples completely, trim them down to a "male" diameter and then lay them onto skin that used to be the upper surface of the breast, having first abraded the skin enough that it is raw and bloody. Usually the nipple will "graft" onto the new location and survive as a sort of decoration, albeit with no sensation and no function.
Transition is an adult decision. There are more detransitioners every day, the lawsuits are already in process.
The whole “people born as male have an unsurmountable advantage against people born as female” bullshit is the same as “people born of African descent have an insurmountable advantage against people born of Asian or European descent.”
Just because some Olympic sports are dominated by Kenyans doesn’t mean we argue for segregating sports by race. (We used to and we rightfully stopped.) It’s going to be the same with gender soon.
Wait, what now?
Are you saying there should not be female sports at all?
Now I understand horseshoe theory. I'm guessing you identify as a liberal, and yet here you are saying that the only women who should compete in sports are the ones who can compete with men.
Let me state this simply: men and women are different. Very, very different.
Kevin states:
"I've been wary of trans activism for many years, ever since Lynn Conway and Andrea James launched a vicious jihad against James Bailey because he wrote about scientific research they considered harmful to the trans cause."
For me (and no doubt for countless others), the clear sign that trans activism had been subsumed by counterproductive extremists was their treatment of JK Rowling.
The NYT ran an article 2-3 months ago in which a columnist examined Rowling's words and pointed out that there isn't actually any "transphobia" there. I'm sure the NYT received vicious denunciations as a result, but let's look at some of Rowling's words for ourselves:
"Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?"
This was in response to an incident where a woman had been fired for stating a belief that biological sex is real.
And that tweet from Rowling is the kind of thing that gender ideologues denounce as hate speech. That tweet, and others like it, leads to Rowling receiving, in her own estimation, enough death threats to wallpaper her entire house.
And, sorry, but if you're not ready, willing, and able to admit that there are serious problems with extremism in the trans rights movement, you just aren't being honest.
Please. Every movement has some extremists. Climate activists in Western Europe have blocked major downtown thoroughfares in big cities to draw attention to the cause. PETA exists for no other reason than to discredit people who care about ethical treatment of animals. On those issues we are able to separate the extremists from the actual cause. Why can't we do the same with trans issues?
Given the anti-trans laws now being passed in red states, it might occur to you that trans activists have good reasons for feeling particularly vulnerable right now.
In my comment above, I refer to “serious problems with extremism”
In reply, you reference the fact that “Every movement has some extremists.”
But the two are not the same thing.
The serious problem that I refer to is one where a legitimate movement for trans accommodation has been utterly subsumed by extremists. And that’s not just a problem with “some” people; it’s now the defining characteristic of the whole movement.
Yes - this is easy. If a Transactivist, then an extremist.
Here's a simple test ..
Are transwomen natal males who have elected to live as women?
Might kids grow out of their identity?
Is it possible for adults to mistakenly identify as trans?
do men have an advantage in pretty much every athletic sport except long-distance open water swimming?
can co-morbidities influence the adoption of a trans identity?
Should cis women, as a show of support for similarly marginalized members of society and in recognition of their privileged status, give up the right to natal women's spaces and sports?
Answer Key: No to all but the last. If you pass this test, you're an extremist activist b/c you aren't willing to allow for nuance in the debate.
"if you're not ready, willing, and able to admit that there are serious problems with extremism in the trans rights movement, you just aren't being honest."
Yes.
You have a friend or family member ... you've done a lot together b/c you enjoy similar things, have similar values. Then they start down some dark path of substance abuse or think hats with 88 on them are cool. You try - as a friend - to talk to them about it: No really, you aren't managing your alcohol/meth intake. No really, 88 is a problem that conflicts with all these other values and experiences and you're being led down a rabbit hole.
Your friend can listen and engage in some self-reflection - or cut you off with some crazy talk about "you can't control me!" and run off to find their dealer.
Its time for an intervention.
The thing is, you are focusing on extreme parts of the protest to the bad thing, rather than the actual bad thing, which is trans denial, trans exclusion, trans harassment, trans eradication and anti-trans violence.
That makes your priorities seem a bit suspect. More than a bit.
Why give'em the time of day? You _know_ what their priorities are.
Well said.
I assume this guy was addressing Yglesias, who is an idiot.
OK, let's see if I have this straight. Trans-people are still being murdered (a woman was murdered recently for merely having a rainbow flag in front of her store). States are prohibiting them from using public restrooms or receiving medical care. But if trans-activists verbally attack someone and the attack is unfair, that's extreme? How many people are they murdering every year?
If you were prohibited from receiving any cancer treatment by people who had "concerns" about cells used in the research which produced viable treatment options, and also some people wanted you dead because you'd already received some cancer treatment, what level of activism in your favor would constitute being too "aggressive"? If you lived in 1850, would you be anti-slavery but still say that the Underground Railroad is going too far with their criminal behavior?
None of the examples you provide of trans activism appear to even extend to criminality, so this is a more temperate response than abolitionists took before the Civil War.
As for your concerns:
1. If fairness is the concern, why in the world would "men" and "women" be where you end the categorization? Would boxing be fair if a 350 pound boxer fought a 120 pound boxer, because they're both men? One man may have abnormally high testosterone; can he be banned from competing entirely? Surely if you want competitive sports to be fair, you should determine matches on the basis of ability. If a woman or a transwoman competes at the same level as a man or transman, why shouldn't they compete? If one is far better than the others, they should surely compete with comparable people and not with a simple male/female category. If someone states concerns which apply to men and women quite apart from the issue of gender change, while refusing to take them into account except with men and women who have undergone a gender transition, that suggests their concerns are a cover for bigotry.
2. Minors and medical treatment surely is an edge case in circumstances far beyond gender change. Some treatments may stunt a child's growth or render them infertile or do other damage. Why in the world would states need to pass laws in this specific circumstances while allowing all other forms of medical treatment involving minors to be handled between doctors and families? And what specifically is it about the way medical care for minors, even controversial forms of treatment, are being handled currently that you think makes the current system need revision in light of this specific kind of care?
3. Free association. I'm sorry, was there some law or regulation forcing women to talk to transwomen against their will which I wasn't aware of? Allowing someone to use a bathroom is hardly a stricture on right of free assembly. Surely even bigots are free to refuse to speak to the people they hate, so long as they aren't in an environment where people are protected from discrimination on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, or religion.
Your comment on free association admits to an awareness that bigots have historically used excuses for their bigotry. Can you acknowledge that bigots also like suppressing dissent by claiming that it is too loud, too aggressive, too extreme, happening in the wrong places and being conducted in the wrong ways? When an anti-trans activist launches vicious jihads against trans people, gets them fired, smears them as pedophiles, how often do other anti-trans activists protest that or tell them they're protesting in the "wrong way"? How often do you? Bigots hate transpeople for no good reason, but can you see that some transpeople might have good reason to hate anyone who sounds to them like a bigot?
The small group, the group with less power, has to be louder to effect change. And they put themselves at risk when they do so. It's easy for us to want to debate the trickier parts of the issues, because none of this is a matter of life and death for us. For them, it's life and death every single day. Maybe extending them some grace for reacting a bit strongly to criticism from people who claim to be their supporters should be easier for us than acting as if the harm to our feelings can in any way equate to the harm they have and continue to suffer.
You don't have to support John Brown abolitionist tactics in order to recognize that the crimes committed against enslaved people in America were so widespread and abhorrent that they might justify even war in order to put them to a stop. Nor do you have to favor war as an option to understand why others might. Matt Yglesias will be fine regardless of what happens with trans rights; the same isn't true for transpeople.
The issue has been that "That Fucking Newspaper" only publishes articles about the edge cases and only quotes the people that want to demonize trans people and the medical professionals that treat them. For the Times, there is only one side on this issue.
Yeppers. The MSM are not your friends, nor should they be uncritically relied upon for data. Not saying you can't glean something from what they publish, but every article must itself be subject to the same when, what, where, how and why fundamentals of journalism as that employed by the source.
Kevin, I agree with your there trans cases. It’s a tough time for all. I have cancelled my subscription, of years, with the NY Times as it feels as though their ‘balanced’ reporting and comments are becoming very right leaning or I am becoming more to the left.
This essay pleads for attention to nuance and difficult edge cases. But statements like "GLAAD's aggressiveness is fairly typical of trans activists," "I've been wary of trans activism for many years" and "This is typical of trans responses to research in their field" are not nuanced statements. They are straightforward examples of "attacking indiscriminately". If you want to ask others to practice nuance and attention to edge cases, don't start with multiple instances of sweeping condemnations.
To put it another way: when most members of a group denounce you, I don't think you can claim that "I'm entirely pro-trans". Unless you are saying you are more pro-trans than trans people? Being "pro-trans" is not simply about favoring "them being treated without bigotry or unfairness". It's about what you think should be done to achieve that.
"GLAAD's aggressiveness is fairly typical of trans activists,"
This is beyond dumb. These are not horseshoe theory "equal examples of extremes". JFC why do I keep coming back here? Sometimes it's not a bad read at all, but other times it's just aggravating. Guess that's me being extreme too huh.
Most of the comments here support Kevin's point about extreme views. Calling criticism genocide is an extreme view.
My observation is that gender ideology has become a sort of religion. It's got catechisms, like TWAW, and rests on the belief in a gendered soul, which is internal, eternal and immutable for kids, justifying treatments that sterilize them before they are old enough to vote (because if you block puberty at its start and follow with cross-sex hormones you are sterilizing that kid) but also somehow gender is fluid and everyone is on their own unique gender journey, which means that women should allow intact males in their spaces and lesbians should learn to love girldick. Google "cotton ceiling."
It's odd how the kids get all the heavy medical treatments and surgeries and the men can skip all that and just say they feel like a woman.
But how seriously should we take, oh, you for example? You're sloppy and argue by fiat rather than fact, so of course I don't take you seriously. For example 'the majority of comments' and 'the majority of commentors' are two entirely different things, and say, did you actually count the number of comments pro and con? Of course you didn't. But it sure felf good saying that, didn't it 😉
Oh wow, you got me.
Way to ignore all my arguments. Can you explain why gender is rock solid and unchanging when a kid declares it, but fluid and malleable for adults?
I didn't ignore all of your comments; I pointed out one that showed reckless disregard for the truth as evidence for my assertion that you're a sloppy thinker with -- wait for it -- a reckless disregard for the truth. Given that, why _should_ I respect anything you have to say?
I'm still waiting on some insight as to why gender is immutable for kids but not for adults. How many times can you divert to side issues?
You don't get it, do you son? Until you give me a reason to respect what you say -- and you've already been caught lying -- I don't feel compelled in the slightest to give you or your comments any oxygen. You'll notice I don't give the two drunks at the end of the bar the time of day either; the most attention they get from me is to call the bartender over if they get too rowdy.
The NYT piece is transparently shoddy work.
Kevin, a bit of advice: If you want to convey sincere concerns about the policy implications of transgender identity, don't do it in the context of a journalistic hatchet job that centers a dishonest nut. And for goodness sake, don't link yourself to someone who contends that civil complaints about journalistic malpractice constitute "bullying."
I truly believe you are better than this.