Helen, I agree with your main liberal contention that all people should be free to express their own beliefs without external constraint, whether it is always using sex-realist pronouns (as some gender-critical feminists would do), or always using other people's preferred gender-identity pronouns (as some gender-identity advocates would do), or sometimes one and sometimes the other, depending on the circumstances (as I would do).
And I also agree that it is a bad idea to be gratuitously nasty to anyone, even if we liberals also defend people's *right* to be nasty.
That being said, I think Benjamin Ryan exaggerated in implying that using sex-realist language is *inherently* nasty, and that he grossly underestimated the harm that can be caused *in some cases* by using gender-identity language. As one commenter on Ryan's article eloquently observed:
"I get your position but I think you haven't discussed how circumstances may influence the conclusion. One thing is to use preferred pronouns in an ordinary setting, but what if you were to write an article about a convicted offender? I hope you too would acknowledge that "she raped her with her penis" is nonsense. Even the headline "woman convicted" is a lie that should be avoided. Finally, in court proceedings it would amount to conceding way too much, as in the currently ongoing case of the nurse against NHS Fife. I hope you'll recognize that in such cases avoiding any ambiguity matters more and shifts the weight of the arguments to use sex-based pronouns instead."
Curiously, Ryan didn't respond at all to this comment, though he responded to many other comments.
I don't think he does consider it inherently nasty, does he? He's certainly supported my tweets saying that people must be able to decline to use gender-identity based pronouns. I think he just thinks it is kind and respectful to do so and intends to do so. (He's been getting a lot of abuse for doing so)
He is probably ignoring that comment because he has addressed the importance of accurate identifications of biological sex where it is relevant so many times. It often happens that when someone speaks of using someone's preferred pronouns in a personal setting, people will respond by pointing out that it's important to identify biological sex in crime or medical writing. Because Benjamin has spent much of his time over the last few years doing precisely that as a science writer, I think he probably ignores people who explain this to him in the same way I ignore people who explain to me what woke is and why it is bad whenever I criticise the illiberal anti-woke.
Anyway, I don't consider it inherently nasty to refer to a trans woman as 'he'. In a discussion on Twitter yesterday, a trans woman said that she defended people's right to do, but just wouldn't want to be friends with them which seems fair enough.
Also, I see a lot of people saying that, for Ryan to say it is kind to refer to trans people by their preferred pronouns, he is claiming moral superiority and saying that people who do not are unkind, but I think this is too precious and personalised. We are always making arguments for what is ethical, good and kind and I think valid responses to that need to be:
1) No, that is not ethical, good or kind.
or
2) Ethics, goodness or kindness are less relevant than what is true.
Both of these responses can be well-argued when it comes to using preferred pronouns for trans people, but
"If you say this is good, you're saying I'm bad"
is a response from moral indignation, not an argument.
I came here to post the same thing I said under Ryan's post but I see prof. Sokal has already quoted me in full, also correcting some spelling errors and claryfing a bit :P.
I may not be so familiar with Ryan's work, though I try to follow him a little. Even if he addressed those concerns many times before, I don't think it's correct to leave those considerations completely out of the picture in a post that is meant to discuss and explain the issue. You may not want to spend a lot of words on them, but you can still quickly acknowledge the caveats and provide a link. You should also consider not all readers are required to be familiar with all your work.
Otherwise, the post risks being seen as more a "rant" against Ultras or "woke right" than a thorough examination of the matter. This could also explain why some people are quick to misinterpret it "If you say this is good, you're saying I'm bad", because leaving things unaddressed leads to people trying to fill the void.
As for the fact he hasn't replied (yet), I note that all of his replies were already there before I posted my comment, so (considering time zones) he might even not have seen it.
indeed! I have just had to remove someone from commenting on my substack as they persisted in calling me a 'liar' 'deluded' and part of a 'clown show' because I commented that some people are genuinely transphobic. I attempted to be patient and explained that using this kind of language meant I didn't want to engage with her; and yet, she persisted. Some people, on 'both' and any side seem strangely invested in being as vile to others as they can. I guess it is a kind of freedom for some who may feel powerless in other areas of their lives. But it is very irritating and achieves nothing.
It is so unhelpful. I got this response when saying that a clip by Matt Walsh in which he just went on at length about his own feelings of revulsion at Dylan Mulvaney with no ethical argument at all was the literal definition of transphobia. Some people hear a word and read it into a discourse in which people commonly use the term spuriously and just react. I also received the "Here you go again. Typical leftie, calling everyone who disagrees with you 'far right" while describing a self-proclaimed white nationalist and Nazi as far-right.
It seems that some people can never stop in a reasonable place. Is it so hard to reject calls to say things one believes to be untrue and unethical on the grounds of kindness without making a virtue of unkindness?
Thanks, Helen. Seems reasonable to me, though I am not acquainted with any trans-identified person personally, I’m quite familiar with being misgendered (being a tall woman with a low voice who dresses androgynously). Feels awkward. Something about the internet has allowed people to spout really hateful things at times. So voices of reason and kindness feel like breaths of fresh air.
I pivot to "name and neutral", particularly when addressing gender non-conforming adolescents. I don't believe social transition for children and adolescents is a benign intervention, and I cannot bring myself to add to a teenagers distress by calling them something they are not. Communication with teenagers (my kids friends) is already a bridge across a generation gap, and I don't want to be perceived as a "mean mom", so "name and neutral" works so far.
I maintain the right to use pronouns, at my discretion, in vast majority of cases this will be using preferred pronouns; however I absolutely refuse to do so for violent and predatory men who use trans identity to gain access to women's spaces.
Neo pronouns are not something I would never use, they flow awkwardly and are not for me - back to name and neutral.
Its a mixed bag in my pronoun toolkit - but I try to optimize courtesy and compassion while keeping my feet planted firmly in reality.
I'll just say to transgender people, as so many have done before me: Stop trying to make me say anything. It is my voice and my mouth, my eyes and my brain that give me speech. Do what you want to your own body. Leave mine be. Let's just keep things clear and straight (no pun intended); I say what I see.
I agree with the position to a degree. Male sexual mimicry of females is a natural and common phenomenon, which intensifies in competitive mating environments.
In humans it erupts in varying degrees, from just clothing or words to full-blown aggressive delusion. If societal protection against the effects of delusion were complete, and misused pronouns were mere affirmation of the presence of delusion, all for it.
I think we can agree that’s not the case, and pronouns are used now as the confirmation of the absence of delusion.
It will take 15 years - a generation - to unwind from this version of sexual mimicry. Legal foundations need to be shored up, and social conventions, protection from the onslaught against female autonomy by (heterosexual men, again) and social ways to manage men who are compelled to imitate women. Until then, pronoun use is the least of key issues.
Why should a heterosexual rapist be afforded a courtesy of verbal affirmation?
Why should a heterosexual voyeur in sports be afforded a courtesy of verbal affirmation?
Why should a heterosexual bully demanding sex from lesbians be afforded a courtesy of verbal affirmation?
Why should one class of these mimics be given the courtesy but not another class? Is there a test?
Let’s just oppose the imposition of laws - whether to mandate pronouns, to mandate against them, to ban trans therapy, to mandate trans therapy, etc.
The less law we have to live under, the better. The more we do what we think needs law to do instead by organizing and increasing the structure in non-official, non-law-codified society, the better.
I think this is a very difficult issue to properly unravel. At least for me. There are layers and levels that overlap and 'intersect' and a whole wider context that sits over any individual person-to-person act of kindness and civility.
My thoughts are somewhat jumbled and I'm not sure I can articulate them very clearly.
I read a piece on Substack recently in which the author described her experience of a trans youth hesitantly asking for permission to enter the ladies bathroom the author was using. Unfortunately Substack doesn't seem to have a history feature so I can't find it now. Anyway, it was beautifully written and quite moving. Who would not feel compassion for the respectful, but sex-confused, young man in this instance?
I would like to say 'gender-confused', but 'gender' is such an imprecisely defined and woolly subjective term that I don't really understand what it means. Indeed, it seems also to be somewhat circular in that all the 'official' attempts to define it either implicitly or explicitly depend on the existence of the sex binary - which is kind of OK as a kind of 'performative' layer above the sex binary when we have only two genders, but falls apart when we try to apply the definition to something like the *gender* of being genderfluid (or the gender of 'eunuch', for example).
Why have I mentioned this? Because it's an example of how an individual person-to-person interaction for which we might all feel some compassionate stirrings sits within a much wider context.
The problem with things like pronoun usage is that it's a linguistic 'nudge' towards a particular ideological stance - which has wider implications than any specific individual interaction. I think we all had our fill of these kinds of 'nudges' during the covid fiasco.
Another of these 'nudges' which sits in a wider context is the implicit (or often explicit) assumption that such a thing as 'trans' exists as a kind of separate category or 'state of being', rather than being a *specific* example of a delusional state. Which of those is correct? If you really want to 'help' trans people (and I think we should) then it's *critical* to correctly identify the issue, otherwise you might be throwing 'solutions' (like drugs and surgery) at the wrong problem.
So we see people writing things like "my kid IS trans" instead of "my kid believes she is the opposite sex", for example. There's a huge difference in meaning here with an associated consequence for how this condition is dealt with.
There's another issue here in that the very reason (I believe) some of these toxic 'woke' ideologies have taken such root is the steady piece-by-piece erosion that has happened because people wanted to be kind and good and decent. As someone like Gad Saad might say, inch by inch we walked towards the precipice. Is it going to be enough to carry on with reasonable, measured, and calm business as usual in order to restore some degree of sanity, or do we need to be a little tougher?
These questions, this conflict between the individual and wider contextual layer, is not something I know how to resolve. Do I feel tons of sympathy for someone, a man say, who genuinely believes they're a woman and is distressed to find reality at odds with that self-perception? Sure I do. But we also know that this is not the only kind of individual within the category of 'trans'. Included in this category are a lot of men who are driven by an autogynephilic impulse - and the risks (to women) are different here.
We have dealt with these different risk sub-groups effectively in the past. Most men, for example, just on the issue of safety alone, would present no particular danger to women in the ladies loo. But that's not the reasoning we use when we prevent *all* men (at least when we used to) from using the ladies, is it? We don't argue that most men are OK and so they should be allowed in.
I honestly don't properly know how to balance some of the competing 'rights' issues here. Sympathy for the 'genuine' trans guy? Yes. But if that's going to open the door for self-ID 'women' with gonads the size of house bricks into the ladies, then No.
And right there we have the 'nasty' snark coming out, because I think we do need to be more forthright in condemning some of these things - because being 'nice' and 'kind' and 'reasonable' and 'measured' has gotten us into this pickle in the first place.
I agree, but what stands out here, for me, is the observation that the personal is not always political. What is political are rules and laws around women's sex-based rights and single-sex spaces and I defend keeping them. What is personal is how I choose to address my fellow humans and, repeatedly, people insist that I must be using preferred pronouns because I have bought into a political activist stance or have made an abstract philosophical decision to "be kind". No, this is about personal interaction and engagement. When I interact with other humans, my default is to meet them where they are as individual humans, not treat them as a political category and engage with them using a politically-based discourse. I will not be swayed from that approach to engaging with others for as long as I believe that we can and should make a distinction between language/expression/connection and action/harm/authoritarianism.
I understand the instinct to think this way and conflate the two when one is very concerned about a particular social phenomenon and I have done so myself. Before the last decade, I was very much focused on religion and its impact on society, particularly for the rights of women and same-sex attracted people. I don't think God is real and I think it is demonstrably true that the belief that God is real drives a lot of serious social problems including terrorist attacks, "honour" violence, genital mutilation, the persecution of same-sex attracted people and the denial of women's reproductive freedom. Therefore, I believed that we should never speak as though God is real, should put a lot of energy into challenging people who said one was and attempting to convince them otherwise (I never condoned personal abuse) and was critical of people known as 'fatheists' - those atheists considered too accommodating of religious belief when they should be challenging it consistently in all situations so as not to be complicit in a harmful ideology.
I don't think that was very helpful or that it changed anybody's mind. I think it was mostly annoying and that badgering people about the need to consistently challenge any religious believers one encountered in one's own life or the public sphere about their false belief in a 'sky fairy' was an alienating attempt to make them be hostile to family and friends, politicise all their personal interactions with other humans and make them conform their language to that end. It also distracted from the need to focus on the important issues of harm and authoritarian imposition of faith on other people which can be done by people who have a religious faith and those who don't together. They just need to hold values that are the broadest definition of liberal - anti-authoritarian.
I feel the same way about people who constantly badger others about their responsibility to consistently challenge people about a belief in gender identity and to speak in the right way to convey a disbelief in it and accuse them of complicity in a harmful ideology if they don't do that. It's annoying, alienating and dictatorial about how one may conduct personal interaction and engage with other individual humans and also distracts from the goal of addressing harm and authoritarianism. I think we must let people have their own beliefs, challenge them if we so wish when they consent to engage in a discussion about it and allow other people who want to meet them where they are to do that without accusing them of having been brainwashed into an ideology or conditioned to 'be kind' and instead accept that they have their own minds and have made their own decisions. If that decision includes anything that jeopardises women's safety or children's bodies, we should challenge it resolutely. If it doesn't, we can just leave other people alone and let them conduct their own relationships and interactions using their own language
Thanks Helen. As ever, you manage to bring a lot more clarity than I ever could! I particularly appreciated this :
“When I interact with other humans, my default is to meet them where they are as individual humans, not treat them as a political category and engage with them using a politically-based discourse. I will not be swayed from that approach to engaging with others for as long as I believe that we can and should make a distinction between language/expression/connection and action/harm/authoritarianism.”
I think this is a really useful distinction to keep in mind. It’s not a cure-all, I don’t think, because when arguing (even non-robustly) against what I would term GenderWoo it’s often taken very personally and seen to be offensive. Yet I would maintain that it’s right (and acceptable) to criticize an ideology - and it’s OK to do that with some vitriol and mockery if necessary.
The argument against that would be that such an action would, or could, bring “harm” to an individual. I wonder if this isn’t another of those ‘fault’ lines that divide the “woke” (for want of a better word) from others? The woke tend not to be able to draw as clean a distinction between the personal and political?
I've already weighed in over at Benjamin Ryan's post, but I'll put it out here again. Everyone taking part in this discussion needs to read this classic piece before proceeding:
It NOT KIND to mangle language, obfuscate biological reality, confuse children with the idea that somehow that male person they see is a "woman" of any sort. This leads to legal disasters (rape victims compelled to refer to their attackers in court proceedings as "she"), violations of the rights of girls and women in sports, toilets, changing rooms, jails and prisons, the list goes on. Basic rules of journalism get thrown in the garbage, when we can no longer determine the "who, what, when, where, why" in a story when the "who" and the "what," just for starters, are deliberately confused, which makes understanding the "why" ever more difficult. Ben produces some excellent reporting, marred by his obstinate insistence on confusing his readers as to a major, salient fact of his subjects! Do any of you really think we owe "Lia" Thomas, the narcissistic thief of women's swimming championships, the "kindness" of referring to him as "she"? How about Dr. "Beth" Upton, the very male doctor whose insistence on using the female changing room is currently putting a very valuable, experienced nurse's career in jeopardy? Do we need to "be kind" to him? Let me ask you the same question I asked my local newspaper when they fawned all over the woes of the boys who will no longer be permitted to compete in the female category: do you give a shit about girls and women? Why is there no kindness shown there?
This should not need to be said - arguments stand or fall on their own merits - but I am a lifelong leftist, who found Ben's characterization of "gender critical" opponents of gender woo to be "woke right" to be absurdly wrongheaded. Class-based leftists are materialists. Sex is a materialist as it gets, unlike the idealist fantasies of gender identity ideologues. We are flesh and blood, muscle and bone, not digital avatars to be altered to fit a fevered whim.
It is not some form of authoritarianism to protest the imposition of genderwoo in language, law, and policy. These need to be based on FACTS, not on competing beliefs, as the legal scholar Alessandra Asteriti so brilliantly explains in her writings - for which she is slammed by Andrew Doyle, for one example. Doyle is acting the perfect dick in this matter, refusing to engage with her carefully reasoned explanation, and taking swipes at her from his much more prominent public platforms.
I had an awkward situation at work. I'm a hospice nurse, and we were caring for a young grandmother who was in her last days, her adult kids keeping vigil around her bed, sad and quiet. Then there was her grandson and his friend who hung around on the ward, not really interacting with his relatives. He looked a typical teen. But - this teen, having not 'revealed his transgender identity' to his family as they might be bigots, expected staff to call him by another name and she/her. I'm 'live and let live' by nature. But I was nurse in charge of a hospice, where all the patients are dying and relative are about to be bereaved. It's NOT the place to be expected to play 'guess the identity' of a teen who was just behaving as if he was annoyed that Grandma was getting all the attention. He should have been told, gently, that we weren't experts in transgender and that his genuinely upset and grieving relatives weren't in a place to process his new identity right now.. And that the ward's over worked social worker didn't have time for it, either. But no. The kid was affirmed, some of the staff treated him like the most important person on the ward. I just avoided pronouns all together. And felt cross that valuable time was wasted on what I suspect was a flirtation with trans, rather than any kind of real distress.
Agree until your last paragraphs. A legitimate accusation of misogyny is not necessarily an invective. Identity theft victims have good reason to interrogate fraudsters' (and their condoners') motivations.
I don't think Benjamin addresses some clearly articulated (and kind, let's not forget about kind!) critiques in his comments, which is interesting.
I think he doesn't say enough to know what his ontological understanding is, or why it's kind exactly to affirm someone's delusion.
If there are true trans adults, there are true trans kids, so it's actually important to know if he believes in true trans. If he doesn't, why is he willing to use the language of true trans, why is it kind to say he and she according to the wishes of trans people when we know nothing about them and their origin story, why we would we concede that position, when it muddies reality - why should a feminine appearing man care what pronouns we use for him? A real man or woman, grounded in reality can take it. Why are we deferring, when once y
we do we open ourselves up to 'true trans' and therefore 'true trans' kids.
Trans is ontologically parasitic on biological sex. If we allow it to prevail in language, we have lost because it remains hidden. Don't you see?
Helen, I agree with your main liberal contention that all people should be free to express their own beliefs without external constraint, whether it is always using sex-realist pronouns (as some gender-critical feminists would do), or always using other people's preferred gender-identity pronouns (as some gender-identity advocates would do), or sometimes one and sometimes the other, depending on the circumstances (as I would do).
And I also agree that it is a bad idea to be gratuitously nasty to anyone, even if we liberals also defend people's *right* to be nasty.
That being said, I think Benjamin Ryan exaggerated in implying that using sex-realist language is *inherently* nasty, and that he grossly underestimated the harm that can be caused *in some cases* by using gender-identity language. As one commenter on Ryan's article eloquently observed:
"I get your position but I think you haven't discussed how circumstances may influence the conclusion. One thing is to use preferred pronouns in an ordinary setting, but what if you were to write an article about a convicted offender? I hope you too would acknowledge that "she raped her with her penis" is nonsense. Even the headline "woman convicted" is a lie that should be avoided. Finally, in court proceedings it would amount to conceding way too much, as in the currently ongoing case of the nurse against NHS Fife. I hope you'll recognize that in such cases avoiding any ambiguity matters more and shifts the weight of the arguments to use sex-based pronouns instead."
Curiously, Ryan didn't respond at all to this comment, though he responded to many other comments.
I don't think he does consider it inherently nasty, does he? He's certainly supported my tweets saying that people must be able to decline to use gender-identity based pronouns. I think he just thinks it is kind and respectful to do so and intends to do so. (He's been getting a lot of abuse for doing so)
He is probably ignoring that comment because he has addressed the importance of accurate identifications of biological sex where it is relevant so many times. It often happens that when someone speaks of using someone's preferred pronouns in a personal setting, people will respond by pointing out that it's important to identify biological sex in crime or medical writing. Because Benjamin has spent much of his time over the last few years doing precisely that as a science writer, I think he probably ignores people who explain this to him in the same way I ignore people who explain to me what woke is and why it is bad whenever I criticise the illiberal anti-woke.
Anyway, I don't consider it inherently nasty to refer to a trans woman as 'he'. In a discussion on Twitter yesterday, a trans woman said that she defended people's right to do, but just wouldn't want to be friends with them which seems fair enough.
Also, I see a lot of people saying that, for Ryan to say it is kind to refer to trans people by their preferred pronouns, he is claiming moral superiority and saying that people who do not are unkind, but I think this is too precious and personalised. We are always making arguments for what is ethical, good and kind and I think valid responses to that need to be:
1) No, that is not ethical, good or kind.
or
2) Ethics, goodness or kindness are less relevant than what is true.
Both of these responses can be well-argued when it comes to using preferred pronouns for trans people, but
"If you say this is good, you're saying I'm bad"
is a response from moral indignation, not an argument.
I came here to post the same thing I said under Ryan's post but I see prof. Sokal has already quoted me in full, also correcting some spelling errors and claryfing a bit :P.
I may not be so familiar with Ryan's work, though I try to follow him a little. Even if he addressed those concerns many times before, I don't think it's correct to leave those considerations completely out of the picture in a post that is meant to discuss and explain the issue. You may not want to spend a lot of words on them, but you can still quickly acknowledge the caveats and provide a link. You should also consider not all readers are required to be familiar with all your work.
Otherwise, the post risks being seen as more a "rant" against Ultras or "woke right" than a thorough examination of the matter. This could also explain why some people are quick to misinterpret it "If you say this is good, you're saying I'm bad", because leaving things unaddressed leads to people trying to fill the void.
As for the fact he hasn't replied (yet), I note that all of his replies were already there before I posted my comment, so (considering time zones) he might even not have seen it.
Do you defend bens right to speak as HE wishes without being attacked for it? You’re tilting at straw men here.
indeed! I have just had to remove someone from commenting on my substack as they persisted in calling me a 'liar' 'deluded' and part of a 'clown show' because I commented that some people are genuinely transphobic. I attempted to be patient and explained that using this kind of language meant I didn't want to engage with her; and yet, she persisted. Some people, on 'both' and any side seem strangely invested in being as vile to others as they can. I guess it is a kind of freedom for some who may feel powerless in other areas of their lives. But it is very irritating and achieves nothing.
It is so unhelpful. I got this response when saying that a clip by Matt Walsh in which he just went on at length about his own feelings of revulsion at Dylan Mulvaney with no ethical argument at all was the literal definition of transphobia. Some people hear a word and read it into a discourse in which people commonly use the term spuriously and just react. I also received the "Here you go again. Typical leftie, calling everyone who disagrees with you 'far right" while describing a self-proclaimed white nationalist and Nazi as far-right.
It seems that some people can never stop in a reasonable place. Is it so hard to reject calls to say things one believes to be untrue and unethical on the grounds of kindness without making a virtue of unkindness?
Thank you Helen and this piece beautifully illustrates how liberal principles are what is needed for peaceful co existence.
Thanks for all your wisdom!
Thanks, Helen. Seems reasonable to me, though I am not acquainted with any trans-identified person personally, I’m quite familiar with being misgendered (being a tall woman with a low voice who dresses androgynously). Feels awkward. Something about the internet has allowed people to spout really hateful things at times. So voices of reason and kindness feel like breaths of fresh air.
Just got a chance to read this - Thanks Helen!
I pivot to "name and neutral", particularly when addressing gender non-conforming adolescents. I don't believe social transition for children and adolescents is a benign intervention, and I cannot bring myself to add to a teenagers distress by calling them something they are not. Communication with teenagers (my kids friends) is already a bridge across a generation gap, and I don't want to be perceived as a "mean mom", so "name and neutral" works so far.
I maintain the right to use pronouns, at my discretion, in vast majority of cases this will be using preferred pronouns; however I absolutely refuse to do so for violent and predatory men who use trans identity to gain access to women's spaces.
Neo pronouns are not something I would never use, they flow awkwardly and are not for me - back to name and neutral.
Its a mixed bag in my pronoun toolkit - but I try to optimize courtesy and compassion while keeping my feet planted firmly in reality.
I'll just say to transgender people, as so many have done before me: Stop trying to make me say anything. It is my voice and my mouth, my eyes and my brain that give me speech. Do what you want to your own body. Leave mine be. Let's just keep things clear and straight (no pun intended); I say what I see.
Same here, Kristine.
In other words, liberty allows you to pretend whatever you like about yourself, but not to compel others to do so as well.
I'll stick with tried and true reality-based pronouns.
I agree with the position to a degree. Male sexual mimicry of females is a natural and common phenomenon, which intensifies in competitive mating environments.
In humans it erupts in varying degrees, from just clothing or words to full-blown aggressive delusion. If societal protection against the effects of delusion were complete, and misused pronouns were mere affirmation of the presence of delusion, all for it.
I think we can agree that’s not the case, and pronouns are used now as the confirmation of the absence of delusion.
It will take 15 years - a generation - to unwind from this version of sexual mimicry. Legal foundations need to be shored up, and social conventions, protection from the onslaught against female autonomy by (heterosexual men, again) and social ways to manage men who are compelled to imitate women. Until then, pronoun use is the least of key issues.
Why should a heterosexual rapist be afforded a courtesy of verbal affirmation?
Why should a heterosexual voyeur in sports be afforded a courtesy of verbal affirmation?
Why should a heterosexual bully demanding sex from lesbians be afforded a courtesy of verbal affirmation?
Why should one class of these mimics be given the courtesy but not another class? Is there a test?
https://open.substack.com/pub/sufeitzy/p/mimesexuality-10-apparentia-inexorabilis?r=o79yv&utm_medium=ios
Let’s just oppose the imposition of laws - whether to mandate pronouns, to mandate against them, to ban trans therapy, to mandate trans therapy, etc.
The less law we have to live under, the better. The more we do what we think needs law to do instead by organizing and increasing the structure in non-official, non-law-codified society, the better.
Indeed! That’s the most important thing. I’d also like to persuade people to stop doing this in their personal interactions, though.
I think this is a very difficult issue to properly unravel. At least for me. There are layers and levels that overlap and 'intersect' and a whole wider context that sits over any individual person-to-person act of kindness and civility.
My thoughts are somewhat jumbled and I'm not sure I can articulate them very clearly.
I read a piece on Substack recently in which the author described her experience of a trans youth hesitantly asking for permission to enter the ladies bathroom the author was using. Unfortunately Substack doesn't seem to have a history feature so I can't find it now. Anyway, it was beautifully written and quite moving. Who would not feel compassion for the respectful, but sex-confused, young man in this instance?
I would like to say 'gender-confused', but 'gender' is such an imprecisely defined and woolly subjective term that I don't really understand what it means. Indeed, it seems also to be somewhat circular in that all the 'official' attempts to define it either implicitly or explicitly depend on the existence of the sex binary - which is kind of OK as a kind of 'performative' layer above the sex binary when we have only two genders, but falls apart when we try to apply the definition to something like the *gender* of being genderfluid (or the gender of 'eunuch', for example).
Why have I mentioned this? Because it's an example of how an individual person-to-person interaction for which we might all feel some compassionate stirrings sits within a much wider context.
The problem with things like pronoun usage is that it's a linguistic 'nudge' towards a particular ideological stance - which has wider implications than any specific individual interaction. I think we all had our fill of these kinds of 'nudges' during the covid fiasco.
Another of these 'nudges' which sits in a wider context is the implicit (or often explicit) assumption that such a thing as 'trans' exists as a kind of separate category or 'state of being', rather than being a *specific* example of a delusional state. Which of those is correct? If you really want to 'help' trans people (and I think we should) then it's *critical* to correctly identify the issue, otherwise you might be throwing 'solutions' (like drugs and surgery) at the wrong problem.
So we see people writing things like "my kid IS trans" instead of "my kid believes she is the opposite sex", for example. There's a huge difference in meaning here with an associated consequence for how this condition is dealt with.
There's another issue here in that the very reason (I believe) some of these toxic 'woke' ideologies have taken such root is the steady piece-by-piece erosion that has happened because people wanted to be kind and good and decent. As someone like Gad Saad might say, inch by inch we walked towards the precipice. Is it going to be enough to carry on with reasonable, measured, and calm business as usual in order to restore some degree of sanity, or do we need to be a little tougher?
These questions, this conflict between the individual and wider contextual layer, is not something I know how to resolve. Do I feel tons of sympathy for someone, a man say, who genuinely believes they're a woman and is distressed to find reality at odds with that self-perception? Sure I do. But we also know that this is not the only kind of individual within the category of 'trans'. Included in this category are a lot of men who are driven by an autogynephilic impulse - and the risks (to women) are different here.
We have dealt with these different risk sub-groups effectively in the past. Most men, for example, just on the issue of safety alone, would present no particular danger to women in the ladies loo. But that's not the reasoning we use when we prevent *all* men (at least when we used to) from using the ladies, is it? We don't argue that most men are OK and so they should be allowed in.
I honestly don't properly know how to balance some of the competing 'rights' issues here. Sympathy for the 'genuine' trans guy? Yes. But if that's going to open the door for self-ID 'women' with gonads the size of house bricks into the ladies, then No.
And right there we have the 'nasty' snark coming out, because I think we do need to be more forthright in condemning some of these things - because being 'nice' and 'kind' and 'reasonable' and 'measured' has gotten us into this pickle in the first place.
I agree, but what stands out here, for me, is the observation that the personal is not always political. What is political are rules and laws around women's sex-based rights and single-sex spaces and I defend keeping them. What is personal is how I choose to address my fellow humans and, repeatedly, people insist that I must be using preferred pronouns because I have bought into a political activist stance or have made an abstract philosophical decision to "be kind". No, this is about personal interaction and engagement. When I interact with other humans, my default is to meet them where they are as individual humans, not treat them as a political category and engage with them using a politically-based discourse. I will not be swayed from that approach to engaging with others for as long as I believe that we can and should make a distinction between language/expression/connection and action/harm/authoritarianism.
I understand the instinct to think this way and conflate the two when one is very concerned about a particular social phenomenon and I have done so myself. Before the last decade, I was very much focused on religion and its impact on society, particularly for the rights of women and same-sex attracted people. I don't think God is real and I think it is demonstrably true that the belief that God is real drives a lot of serious social problems including terrorist attacks, "honour" violence, genital mutilation, the persecution of same-sex attracted people and the denial of women's reproductive freedom. Therefore, I believed that we should never speak as though God is real, should put a lot of energy into challenging people who said one was and attempting to convince them otherwise (I never condoned personal abuse) and was critical of people known as 'fatheists' - those atheists considered too accommodating of religious belief when they should be challenging it consistently in all situations so as not to be complicit in a harmful ideology.
I don't think that was very helpful or that it changed anybody's mind. I think it was mostly annoying and that badgering people about the need to consistently challenge any religious believers one encountered in one's own life or the public sphere about their false belief in a 'sky fairy' was an alienating attempt to make them be hostile to family and friends, politicise all their personal interactions with other humans and make them conform their language to that end. It also distracted from the need to focus on the important issues of harm and authoritarian imposition of faith on other people which can be done by people who have a religious faith and those who don't together. They just need to hold values that are the broadest definition of liberal - anti-authoritarian.
I feel the same way about people who constantly badger others about their responsibility to consistently challenge people about a belief in gender identity and to speak in the right way to convey a disbelief in it and accuse them of complicity in a harmful ideology if they don't do that. It's annoying, alienating and dictatorial about how one may conduct personal interaction and engage with other individual humans and also distracts from the goal of addressing harm and authoritarianism. I think we must let people have their own beliefs, challenge them if we so wish when they consent to engage in a discussion about it and allow other people who want to meet them where they are to do that without accusing them of having been brainwashed into an ideology or conditioned to 'be kind' and instead accept that they have their own minds and have made their own decisions. If that decision includes anything that jeopardises women's safety or children's bodies, we should challenge it resolutely. If it doesn't, we can just leave other people alone and let them conduct their own relationships and interactions using their own language
Thanks Helen. As ever, you manage to bring a lot more clarity than I ever could! I particularly appreciated this :
“When I interact with other humans, my default is to meet them where they are as individual humans, not treat them as a political category and engage with them using a politically-based discourse. I will not be swayed from that approach to engaging with others for as long as I believe that we can and should make a distinction between language/expression/connection and action/harm/authoritarianism.”
I think this is a really useful distinction to keep in mind. It’s not a cure-all, I don’t think, because when arguing (even non-robustly) against what I would term GenderWoo it’s often taken very personally and seen to be offensive. Yet I would maintain that it’s right (and acceptable) to criticize an ideology - and it’s OK to do that with some vitriol and mockery if necessary.
The argument against that would be that such an action would, or could, bring “harm” to an individual. I wonder if this isn’t another of those ‘fault’ lines that divide the “woke” (for want of a better word) from others? The woke tend not to be able to draw as clean a distinction between the personal and political?
Affirming harmful delusions isn’t kindness. I will not use magic pronouns and most emphatically the plural “they” for one person. Never.
I've already weighed in over at Benjamin Ryan's post, but I'll put it out here again. Everyone taking part in this discussion needs to read this classic piece before proceeding:
https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/
It NOT KIND to mangle language, obfuscate biological reality, confuse children with the idea that somehow that male person they see is a "woman" of any sort. This leads to legal disasters (rape victims compelled to refer to their attackers in court proceedings as "she"), violations of the rights of girls and women in sports, toilets, changing rooms, jails and prisons, the list goes on. Basic rules of journalism get thrown in the garbage, when we can no longer determine the "who, what, when, where, why" in a story when the "who" and the "what," just for starters, are deliberately confused, which makes understanding the "why" ever more difficult. Ben produces some excellent reporting, marred by his obstinate insistence on confusing his readers as to a major, salient fact of his subjects! Do any of you really think we owe "Lia" Thomas, the narcissistic thief of women's swimming championships, the "kindness" of referring to him as "she"? How about Dr. "Beth" Upton, the very male doctor whose insistence on using the female changing room is currently putting a very valuable, experienced nurse's career in jeopardy? Do we need to "be kind" to him? Let me ask you the same question I asked my local newspaper when they fawned all over the woes of the boys who will no longer be permitted to compete in the female category: do you give a shit about girls and women? Why is there no kindness shown there?
This should not need to be said - arguments stand or fall on their own merits - but I am a lifelong leftist, who found Ben's characterization of "gender critical" opponents of gender woo to be "woke right" to be absurdly wrongheaded. Class-based leftists are materialists. Sex is a materialist as it gets, unlike the idealist fantasies of gender identity ideologues. We are flesh and blood, muscle and bone, not digital avatars to be altered to fit a fevered whim.
It is not some form of authoritarianism to protest the imposition of genderwoo in language, law, and policy. These need to be based on FACTS, not on competing beliefs, as the legal scholar Alessandra Asteriti so brilliantly explains in her writings - for which she is slammed by Andrew Doyle, for one example. Doyle is acting the perfect dick in this matter, refusing to engage with her carefully reasoned explanation, and taking swipes at her from his much more prominent public platforms.
I had an awkward situation at work. I'm a hospice nurse, and we were caring for a young grandmother who was in her last days, her adult kids keeping vigil around her bed, sad and quiet. Then there was her grandson and his friend who hung around on the ward, not really interacting with his relatives. He looked a typical teen. But - this teen, having not 'revealed his transgender identity' to his family as they might be bigots, expected staff to call him by another name and she/her. I'm 'live and let live' by nature. But I was nurse in charge of a hospice, where all the patients are dying and relative are about to be bereaved. It's NOT the place to be expected to play 'guess the identity' of a teen who was just behaving as if he was annoyed that Grandma was getting all the attention. He should have been told, gently, that we weren't experts in transgender and that his genuinely upset and grieving relatives weren't in a place to process his new identity right now.. And that the ward's over worked social worker didn't have time for it, either. But no. The kid was affirmed, some of the staff treated him like the most important person on the ward. I just avoided pronouns all together. And felt cross that valuable time was wasted on what I suspect was a flirtation with trans, rather than any kind of real distress.
Agree until your last paragraphs. A legitimate accusation of misogyny is not necessarily an invective. Identity theft victims have good reason to interrogate fraudsters' (and their condoners') motivations.
I don't think Benjamin addresses some clearly articulated (and kind, let's not forget about kind!) critiques in his comments, which is interesting.
I think he doesn't say enough to know what his ontological understanding is, or why it's kind exactly to affirm someone's delusion.
If there are true trans adults, there are true trans kids, so it's actually important to know if he believes in true trans. If he doesn't, why is he willing to use the language of true trans, why is it kind to say he and she according to the wishes of trans people when we know nothing about them and their origin story, why we would we concede that position, when it muddies reality - why should a feminine appearing man care what pronouns we use for him? A real man or woman, grounded in reality can take it. Why are we deferring, when once y
we do we open ourselves up to 'true trans' and therefore 'true trans' kids.
Trans is ontologically parasitic on biological sex. If we allow it to prevail in language, we have lost because it remains hidden. Don't you see?