I promised not to call them transnazis, you call them activists, but whatever we call them they are a complete pain in the ass and they invite derision and ridicule. Derision validates the sense of persecution that is for them the foundation of identity.
Nobody is "transphobic," there is only "incredibly transphobic." Before I get to my…
I promised not to call them transnazis, you call them activists, but whatever we call them they are a complete pain in the ass and they invite derision and ridicule. Derision validates the sense of persecution that is for them the foundation of identity.
Nobody is "transphobic," there is only "incredibly transphobic." Before I get to my point let me say that gender dysphoria is a tragic, painful and debilitating condition and those who use it for attention or who would cast it as some sort of alternative lifestyle deserve as much contempt as we can shovel their way.
But we are talking about a pattern here. The same pattern appears in opposition to Israel's savage brutality toward those who resist the larcenous taking of Palestinian land and livelihood; Israel is a cruel right wing country and its wholesale theft of land has nothing to do with the Jewish faith, driven wholly by bigotry and profit. Settlement construction is big money.
But when people argue for an end to shooting children from helicopters they are labeled "antisemitic"; that it isn't the political state of Israel they speak against, but Jewish people all over the world. The equation is reinforced:
Israel = Jews = Israel = Jews = Israel = Jews
Speak against a slobbering savage like Avigdor Lieberman or against the rationalization for mass infanticide in The King's Torah, why, you're just one step from dropping the Zyklon-B.
And everyone acts so damned shocked when hatred of global Jewry rises again. Who could have seen that coming?
Same with "trans." Those you call activists are not seeking a place in the world nor any reconciliation nor any relaxation of tension. They revel in doing harm and the genuinely dysphoric are not their concern nor ever will be.
Real dysphoric people have their own problems and what scant resources are available to help them are being squandered and wasted by people who just want attention and have found a way to get it.
Let's not pretend to be shocked when this backfires.
As we discussed, I don't want trans people to turn up here, to a space where certain aspects of trans activism are being challenged, and see language like this. Just as I wouldn't want black people to come here and see people comparing BLM to nazis or women to see feminists being compared to nazis.
If you're not sure why I think invoking nazism to describe any group of people other than actual nazis stifles productive discourse, I'd be happy to have that conversation. If you think it's unreasonable of me to ask you not to use this word, please tell me where you think I'm going wrong. But otherwise, this kind of rhetoric has no place here. The very last thing I want to be doing is policing language. So please don't make me have to do it.
Contempt is a uniquely self-defeating way of dealing with people. Even people who really are evil. Daryl Davis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw&t=1s), a personal hero of mine, has personally convinced over 200 klan members to leave the KKK. And the people he convinced have done the same for hundreds more. He did this, by turning up at klan rallies, as a black man, and speaking to them calmly and respectfully. If we didn't know he was real, many people would laugh at the idea that this were possible.
Of course, the vast majority of people don't have the stomach for that kind of work. Nobody could criticise them. But I do criticise those who satisfy themselves with the belief that those they disagree with are worthy of contempt. It is impossible to achieve anything at all with this mindset except to deepen divisions. And worst of all, the habits of thinking necessary maintain that mindset hurt the people who practice them.
I've been a big fan of Daryl Davis since I watched "Accidental Courtesy" when it first aired on PBS. Mr. Davis would be dead if he took a confrontationally hostile approach. But he does it in the face-to-face world. I could quote Mike Tyson.
So in the middle of a discussion about the need for nuance, listening, and complexity in discussing trans issues, we reduce an entire nation-state with millions of people to being "a cruel, right-wing country." (Which happens to be mostly populated by the descendants of refugees from the world upheavals in Europe and across the Muslim world in the middle of the last century.)
Whatever the problems are between the Jordan River and the sea, they're complicated, and have been for a very long time. And yes, lots of Jews, me being one of them, think that there's an organic connection between the land of Israel and the Jewish people- which in no way endorses or promotes any particular governmental policy but does shape how some of these conversations play out.
I've been to the West Bank and slept in Palestinian homes and seen maps in the refugee villages ringed by bullets outlining the entire State of Israel. I've also seen Israeli soldiers be cruel in executing policies that they didn't vote for and don't support. To reduce the settlements to "big money" is to ignore the entire history since UN resolution 181, which the Jews accepted and the surrounding states didn't, leading up to wars in 67 and 73 which Israel didn't want to fight.
Regarding Avigdor Lieberman, you might call him a slobbering savage, but he's also the guy who brought down Bibi Netanyahu, an act of improving the world the likes of which neither of us will ever accomplish. He's also an ardent supporter of the right to be secular and resist the encroachment of state religion. That's something progressives might like, no?
As for Torat HaMelech, the racist book that advocating preemptively killing some putative enemies- you know that the Attorney General of Israel indicted and convicted one of its authors for incitement, right?
I'm not asking you to join the Likud, I'm just pointing out that these issues are really, really complicated and if you want to effect change, listening and learning is probably a better strategy than condemning an entire country on the basis of its most extreme elements.
"And while those extremists alienate everybody who doesn’t agree with 100% of their demands, public opinion is shifting against the trans community in general."
in pointing out that frivolous charges of bigotry only make things worse for innocents, then you were alone in that misunderstanding. The diversionary charge of "antisemitism" is as cheap a shot as "transphobia" and the comparison between rising public disgust with global Jewry and the "trans" community is an inevitable one. More homologous than analogous.
But if you think replacing a politically cautious figure like Netanyahu with a bloodthirsty settler bigot like Naftali Bennett is some sort of improvement ...!
FTR both my grandmothers had their European families murdered in the Holocaust and I am 87% Ashkenazi by genetic analysis. However my choice is atheism.
Hi Chris, I did understand your point, which you made very clearly. I think in the course of making that point, some generalizations were made which are out of the spirit of this blog, and FWIW, I certainly didn't call you antisemitic or anything else. I don't disagree with you that some right-wing Jewish organizations are too quick to call critics of Israel "antisemites, though I don't see much evidence that this is causing a backlash against Jews in the US outside certain online progressive communities. After all, the most violent incidents against Jews in recent years- in Poway, Pittsburgh, and Jersey City- didn't have anything to do with Israel.
I think your point is much stronger when it comes to accusations of racism. Look at the huge backlash against the specter of "CRT".
Finally, I do think Naftali Bennett, of the now deposed coalition, was a better PM than Bibi, because Bennett brought Arabs into the coalition along with right-wingers and moderates, and didn't engage in the constant racist incitement that is Bibi's SOP. Bennett also sought to repair relationships across the world that Bibi had fractured. But that's all water under the bridge as of yesterday afternoon. The world moves faster than a blog debate.
Group 1: This goes to the heart if the issue of trans-what? People who are genuinely gender dysphoric have it tough and I don't want to make it tougher. Before transition surgery they must "live as a woman (or man)" which is met with resistance in the case of trans-women and may have danger for the trans-man. They are the real trans-persons but not the only ones.
Group 2: The enhanced transvestite with silicone breasts and some of which have a face that can "pass." A trip to a pornography site will reveal this trans group as retaining fully functional male sexual ability. For the most part homosexuals who may pose no danger to women if their sexual interest is in men. But they are functionally male.
Group 3: The fad group. Not really gender dysphoric, but could be a danger to themselves, or their children if puberty blockers or surgery takes place before they discover that they are really not gender dysphoric. As Bill Maher quipped, "If kids knew what they wanted to be at the age of eight, the world would be filled with cowboys and princesses. I wanted to be a pirate. Thank God nobody took me seriously and scheduled me for eye removal and peg leg surgery."
Group 4: And then there is another trans, the one at issue in this discussion. Predators seeking access to spaces where women are most vulnerable.
I don't know what the percentages the greater trans population is made up of. They all present different challenges. Finding a place in a society not fully accepting their condition (group 1), danger to themselves (group 2 violence from a deceived sex partner) or to themselves in the case of reckless medical intervention (group 3), or possible danger to women (group 4).
My go with plumbing solution is a hardship for the true transexual who must live as their new gender. Transvestites in Thailand don't seem to find that as an obstacle. I don't know what to say about the faddish except that I feel sorry for them if the end of the road is ruin. Pragmatically the best solution for the group 4 predators.
All that to say, what do you mean by trans? We could be discussing different things. I didn't even list the "activists" with that.
Group 2: last I read most transvestites are heterosexual
Group 5: the "nonbinary" claiming intermediate gender. Some of them extending this to claiming intermediate biological gender with absolutely zero physical or genetic corroboration yet flying into rages (with lots of 2-5 company) if this claim is questioned. The most strident pushers of the "they/them" horseshit. 100% fake and universally demanding an extra ration of special attention from everyone/
Group 6: want nothing to do with sex, either in the gender sense or the intercourse sense.
That's news to me, but I've made no attempt to gather statistics since they would be the result of self-reporting which is unreliable in my opinion. Your comments are to the point. My incomplete list is just to say that the trans group is not a monolith. Group 1 & 4 present issues hard to reconcile, especially with the others muddying the water.
I promised not to call them transnazis, you call them activists, but whatever we call them they are a complete pain in the ass and they invite derision and ridicule. Derision validates the sense of persecution that is for them the foundation of identity.
Nobody is "transphobic," there is only "incredibly transphobic." Before I get to my point let me say that gender dysphoria is a tragic, painful and debilitating condition and those who use it for attention or who would cast it as some sort of alternative lifestyle deserve as much contempt as we can shovel their way.
But we are talking about a pattern here. The same pattern appears in opposition to Israel's savage brutality toward those who resist the larcenous taking of Palestinian land and livelihood; Israel is a cruel right wing country and its wholesale theft of land has nothing to do with the Jewish faith, driven wholly by bigotry and profit. Settlement construction is big money.
But when people argue for an end to shooting children from helicopters they are labeled "antisemitic"; that it isn't the political state of Israel they speak against, but Jewish people all over the world. The equation is reinforced:
Israel = Jews = Israel = Jews = Israel = Jews
Speak against a slobbering savage like Avigdor Lieberman or against the rationalization for mass infanticide in The King's Torah, why, you're just one step from dropping the Zyklon-B.
And everyone acts so damned shocked when hatred of global Jewry rises again. Who could have seen that coming?
Same with "trans." Those you call activists are not seeking a place in the world nor any reconciliation nor any relaxation of tension. They revel in doing harm and the genuinely dysphoric are not their concern nor ever will be.
Real dysphoric people have their own problems and what scant resources are available to help them are being squandered and wasted by people who just want attention and have found a way to get it.
Let's not pretend to be shocked when this backfires.
"I promised not to call them transnazis"
And yet...
As we discussed, I don't want trans people to turn up here, to a space where certain aspects of trans activism are being challenged, and see language like this. Just as I wouldn't want black people to come here and see people comparing BLM to nazis or women to see feminists being compared to nazis.
If you're not sure why I think invoking nazism to describe any group of people other than actual nazis stifles productive discourse, I'd be happy to have that conversation. If you think it's unreasonable of me to ask you not to use this word, please tell me where you think I'm going wrong. But otherwise, this kind of rhetoric has no place here. The very last thing I want to be doing is policing language. So please don't make me have to do it.
Contempt is a uniquely self-defeating way of dealing with people. Even people who really are evil. Daryl Davis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw&t=1s), a personal hero of mine, has personally convinced over 200 klan members to leave the KKK. And the people he convinced have done the same for hundreds more. He did this, by turning up at klan rallies, as a black man, and speaking to them calmly and respectfully. If we didn't know he was real, many people would laugh at the idea that this were possible.
Of course, the vast majority of people don't have the stomach for that kind of work. Nobody could criticise them. But I do criticise those who satisfy themselves with the belief that those they disagree with are worthy of contempt. It is impossible to achieve anything at all with this mindset except to deepen divisions. And worst of all, the habits of thinking necessary maintain that mindset hurt the people who practice them.
Thanks for the link to the TED talk. I had never seen that.
I've been a big fan of Daryl Davis since I watched "Accidental Courtesy" when it first aired on PBS. Mr. Davis would be dead if he took a confrontationally hostile approach. But he does it in the face-to-face world. I could quote Mike Tyson.
So in the middle of a discussion about the need for nuance, listening, and complexity in discussing trans issues, we reduce an entire nation-state with millions of people to being "a cruel, right-wing country." (Which happens to be mostly populated by the descendants of refugees from the world upheavals in Europe and across the Muslim world in the middle of the last century.)
Whatever the problems are between the Jordan River and the sea, they're complicated, and have been for a very long time. And yes, lots of Jews, me being one of them, think that there's an organic connection between the land of Israel and the Jewish people- which in no way endorses or promotes any particular governmental policy but does shape how some of these conversations play out.
I've been to the West Bank and slept in Palestinian homes and seen maps in the refugee villages ringed by bullets outlining the entire State of Israel. I've also seen Israeli soldiers be cruel in executing policies that they didn't vote for and don't support. To reduce the settlements to "big money" is to ignore the entire history since UN resolution 181, which the Jews accepted and the surrounding states didn't, leading up to wars in 67 and 73 which Israel didn't want to fight.
Regarding Avigdor Lieberman, you might call him a slobbering savage, but he's also the guy who brought down Bibi Netanyahu, an act of improving the world the likes of which neither of us will ever accomplish. He's also an ardent supporter of the right to be secular and resist the encroachment of state religion. That's something progressives might like, no?
As for Torat HaMelech, the racist book that advocating preemptively killing some putative enemies- you know that the Attorney General of Israel indicted and convicted one of its authors for incitement, right?
I'm not asking you to join the Likud, I'm just pointing out that these issues are really, really complicated and if you want to effect change, listening and learning is probably a better strategy than condemning an entire country on the basis of its most extreme elements.
If you did not understand that I was expanding on
"And while those extremists alienate everybody who doesn’t agree with 100% of their demands, public opinion is shifting against the trans community in general."
in pointing out that frivolous charges of bigotry only make things worse for innocents, then you were alone in that misunderstanding. The diversionary charge of "antisemitism" is as cheap a shot as "transphobia" and the comparison between rising public disgust with global Jewry and the "trans" community is an inevitable one. More homologous than analogous.
But if you think replacing a politically cautious figure like Netanyahu with a bloodthirsty settler bigot like Naftali Bennett is some sort of improvement ...!
FTR both my grandmothers had their European families murdered in the Holocaust and I am 87% Ashkenazi by genetic analysis. However my choice is atheism.
Hi Chris, I did understand your point, which you made very clearly. I think in the course of making that point, some generalizations were made which are out of the spirit of this blog, and FWIW, I certainly didn't call you antisemitic or anything else. I don't disagree with you that some right-wing Jewish organizations are too quick to call critics of Israel "antisemites, though I don't see much evidence that this is causing a backlash against Jews in the US outside certain online progressive communities. After all, the most violent incidents against Jews in recent years- in Poway, Pittsburgh, and Jersey City- didn't have anything to do with Israel.
I think your point is much stronger when it comes to accusations of racism. Look at the huge backlash against the specter of "CRT".
Finally, I do think Naftali Bennett, of the now deposed coalition, was a better PM than Bibi, because Bennett brought Arabs into the coalition along with right-wingers and moderates, and didn't engage in the constant racist incitement that is Bibi's SOP. Bennett also sought to repair relationships across the world that Bibi had fractured. But that's all water under the bridge as of yesterday afternoon. The world moves faster than a blog debate.
"𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘥𝘺𝘴𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘤 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘪𝘵."
Group 1: This goes to the heart if the issue of trans-what? People who are genuinely gender dysphoric have it tough and I don't want to make it tougher. Before transition surgery they must "live as a woman (or man)" which is met with resistance in the case of trans-women and may have danger for the trans-man. They are the real trans-persons but not the only ones.
Group 2: The enhanced transvestite with silicone breasts and some of which have a face that can "pass." A trip to a pornography site will reveal this trans group as retaining fully functional male sexual ability. For the most part homosexuals who may pose no danger to women if their sexual interest is in men. But they are functionally male.
Group 3: The fad group. Not really gender dysphoric, but could be a danger to themselves, or their children if puberty blockers or surgery takes place before they discover that they are really not gender dysphoric. As Bill Maher quipped, "If kids knew what they wanted to be at the age of eight, the world would be filled with cowboys and princesses. I wanted to be a pirate. Thank God nobody took me seriously and scheduled me for eye removal and peg leg surgery."
Group 4: And then there is another trans, the one at issue in this discussion. Predators seeking access to spaces where women are most vulnerable.
I don't know what the percentages the greater trans population is made up of. They all present different challenges. Finding a place in a society not fully accepting their condition (group 1), danger to themselves (group 2 violence from a deceived sex partner) or to themselves in the case of reckless medical intervention (group 3), or possible danger to women (group 4).
My go with plumbing solution is a hardship for the true transexual who must live as their new gender. Transvestites in Thailand don't seem to find that as an obstacle. I don't know what to say about the faddish except that I feel sorry for them if the end of the road is ruin. Pragmatically the best solution for the group 4 predators.
All that to say, what do you mean by trans? We could be discussing different things. I didn't even list the "activists" with that.
Group 2: last I read most transvestites are heterosexual
Group 5: the "nonbinary" claiming intermediate gender. Some of them extending this to claiming intermediate biological gender with absolutely zero physical or genetic corroboration yet flying into rages (with lots of 2-5 company) if this claim is questioned. The most strident pushers of the "they/them" horseshit. 100% fake and universally demanding an extra ration of special attention from everyone/
Group 6: want nothing to do with sex, either in the gender sense or the intercourse sense.
"𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘢𝘭"
That's news to me, but I've made no attempt to gather statistics since they would be the result of self-reporting which is unreliable in my opinion. Your comments are to the point. My incomplete list is just to say that the trans group is not a monolith. Group 1 & 4 present issues hard to reconcile, especially with the others muddying the water.