Steve, I am not sure what to think about all of this stuff. Your reasoning and subtle understanding of all of the issues here seems quite sound. But it all seems faintly reminiscent of an adult arguing with a 5 year old when they are upset. The kid is being driven by emotions, and by an overly narrow view of the relevant context. No …
Steve, I am not sure what to think about all of this stuff. Your reasoning and subtle understanding of all of the issues here seems quite sound. But it all seems faintly reminiscent of an adult arguing with a 5 year old when they are upset. The kid is being driven by emotions, and by an overly narrow view of the relevant context. No amount of adult argumentation is really going to move the discussion forward. I second your desire for more rational discourse in this world, but I am not sure continuing such discussions with rationality is actually furthering that agenda. Sure it means that 1/2 of the discussion is rational, but taken as a whole the discussion really goes no where. Further any onlookers will mostly stop looking if they are rational, and if they are not, when then they will already have an opinion for or against, and this calm against the raging sea will have no effect on them.
I only bring this up, because I have seen you present ideas in very compelling and even handed ways. In ways that I felt might cause adjustment in the way the reader things about certain issues. So it seems a waste to expend your brilliance in this way..... I am not sure about this, its just a gut reaction that I thought I would share.
"But it all seems faintly reminiscent of an adult arguing with a 5 year old when they are upset"
Hi Dan! Thanks for this. Haha, the above quote is kind of true. But I've taken a deeper understanding of all kinds of issues away from many conversations where the person I was talking to was immature or nasty. These conversations aren't just a collision of different facts and statistics, they're a collision of different life experiences, different world views. It's one in a million that one somebody's worldview will flip 180 degrees because of a well-phrased argument on the internet. Especially from a stranger.
I have these conversations because they help me understand where people are coming from better, because other people read them on Medium, and because I get to share them here and have further conversions about them. The people reading can figure that out for themselves, but can also see why certain arguments, maybe arguments they'd also believed, don't quite work. That's all much more important to me than whether a single person admits they might have missed something.
By this point, I'm quite confident that I have a deeper understanding of trans issues in general than most of the individual trans people I speak to. Because, unlike almost all of them, I've spent years reading things that are pro-trans *and* things that highlight the negatives of gender ideology. But even with (or perhaps because of) all the research I've done, there's huge amounts of complexity to how to resolve these issues that requires understanding where everybody is coming from. From the most reasonable to the Stephanies of the world.
It's quite easy to capture the rational arguments in articles. I can be clear and dispassionate and evidence-based. But the more emotional points of view only appear in the comments. And to really figure this mess out, we need to understand those perspectives too. Because, sadly, people spend more time being emotional than rational.
Steve, I am not sure what to think about all of this stuff. Your reasoning and subtle understanding of all of the issues here seems quite sound. But it all seems faintly reminiscent of an adult arguing with a 5 year old when they are upset. The kid is being driven by emotions, and by an overly narrow view of the relevant context. No amount of adult argumentation is really going to move the discussion forward. I second your desire for more rational discourse in this world, but I am not sure continuing such discussions with rationality is actually furthering that agenda. Sure it means that 1/2 of the discussion is rational, but taken as a whole the discussion really goes no where. Further any onlookers will mostly stop looking if they are rational, and if they are not, when then they will already have an opinion for or against, and this calm against the raging sea will have no effect on them.
I only bring this up, because I have seen you present ideas in very compelling and even handed ways. In ways that I felt might cause adjustment in the way the reader things about certain issues. So it seems a waste to expend your brilliance in this way..... I am not sure about this, its just a gut reaction that I thought I would share.
"But it all seems faintly reminiscent of an adult arguing with a 5 year old when they are upset"
Hi Dan! Thanks for this. Haha, the above quote is kind of true. But I've taken a deeper understanding of all kinds of issues away from many conversations where the person I was talking to was immature or nasty. These conversations aren't just a collision of different facts and statistics, they're a collision of different life experiences, different world views. It's one in a million that one somebody's worldview will flip 180 degrees because of a well-phrased argument on the internet. Especially from a stranger.
I have these conversations because they help me understand where people are coming from better, because other people read them on Medium, and because I get to share them here and have further conversions about them. The people reading can figure that out for themselves, but can also see why certain arguments, maybe arguments they'd also believed, don't quite work. That's all much more important to me than whether a single person admits they might have missed something.
By this point, I'm quite confident that I have a deeper understanding of trans issues in general than most of the individual trans people I speak to. Because, unlike almost all of them, I've spent years reading things that are pro-trans *and* things that highlight the negatives of gender ideology. But even with (or perhaps because of) all the research I've done, there's huge amounts of complexity to how to resolve these issues that requires understanding where everybody is coming from. From the most reasonable to the Stephanies of the world.
It's quite easy to capture the rational arguments in articles. I can be clear and dispassionate and evidence-based. But the more emotional points of view only appear in the comments. And to really figure this mess out, we need to understand those perspectives too. Because, sadly, people spend more time being emotional than rational.