The Rest Of The TERFs Are Glad To Support Her Bigotry
In today’s hyper-polarised world, a sure sign that you’re onto something is that everybody at the extremes is mad at you.
One extreme thinks you’re “woke” or unpatriotic or a “snowflake.” The other thinks you’re “far-right” or a white supremacist or some kind of “-phobe.”
And all you really are is sane.
I'm not endorsing mindless centrism here. Yes, both sides almost always have a point. But the right side of an issue is very rarely the middle. Nor am I saying that being sane means you're correct. It’s extremely easy to be sane and wrong. But sane people can at least be persuaded by new information.
In this conversation, Kurtis wrote a tweet that seemed (albeit uncharitably) to consider both sides. But sadly, I didn’t have to scratch too deep to find the insanity.
Kurtis:
I support same sex care. If you want to delay your own healthcare bc you don’t want a trans person touching you, fine. What I don’t support is Henrietta calling trans women troons with malice & framing them as predators. Her disability isn’t a shield from criticism. She’s a bully.
Steve QJ:
I'm with you in opposing calling trans people troons. But it's disingenuous to pretend this is about not wanting "a trans person touching you." It's about not wanting intimate care to be provided by a male. I strongly suspect Henrietta would also object to me providing that care.
Kurtis:
I’m glad at least 1 person agrees that was bad of Henrietta. The rest of the TERFs are glad to support her bigotry which is unsurprising.
Steve QJ:
Sure, but it's also bad of *you* to misrepresent a disabled woman's desire for same sex intimate care as transphobia instead of a perfectly reasonable boundary around unknown men. If you support same sex care, as you claim to, then why pretend you don't understand this?
Later that day, just out of curiosity, I decided to visit Henrietta’s Twitter feed. At which point I saw this…
Steve QJ:
Actually, never mind. I wish I hadn't taken you seriously. Preaching about name-calling after tweeting garbage like this is a new level of hypocrisy.
Kurtis argues that Henrietta is a transphobe for using a term like “troon.” And sure, that’s fair enough. But somehow convinces himself that calling women “c**ts” and threatening to rape them is fair enough too.
Trans-inclusion is the most polarised debate I can think of. Not because it’s the most complicated or urgent or existential threat facing society, but because it’s the purest expression of the reality denial and dehumanisation and hypocrisy that’s poisoning all of our discourse.
We don’t have to agree with the other side. But if we want to do anything but go to war, we have to at least try to understand each other. And more importantly, we have to be willing to hold ourselves to the same standards we demand from the “enemy.”
Politics, race, feminism, you name it. The extremists on either side don’t hesitate to call the other side evil or stupid (or worse) so that they can justify refusing to engage with them. They get to argue with their straw men and swear at each other on social media and never have to grapple with the fact that they're only making things worse.
Maybe that’s why they get so mad when people are reasonable.
My progressive friends often accuse me of "both-sides-ism" (is that a word?). It's true that I strain to understand all arguments and try to land at the right place.
But on the exhausting and absurd trans debates, allow me to stake out a position based on 5 years on Medium reading hundreds of articles on the debate by trans ideologues, trans people, feminists, liberals et al.
There are a fair number of really reasonable, decent, reality-based trans writers--Tara Ella, Lady K, and Ann Williams to name several. But as a group, there is a level of hostility, of ad hominem attacks, of disrespect, of complete delusion and of unreasonable entitlement among trans writers that really sets them apart.
If they want fairness, they have to be fair in return. If they want respect, they have to respect in return. If they want recognition, they have to recognize reality.
I've had it. The trans activists can grow up or go to hell. They are turning me into someone I don't want to be.
I'v been blown away by the trans discourse on disabled women like Henrietta. Disabled people have sat quietly by for a number of years now, as the trans community (wrongly) claim to be the most marginalised, most excluded, most powerless people on the planet. It's been galling, but whatever. Disabled people know who they are and aren't looking for public validation for their 'identities'., and have just shrugged along with the whole thing. I did think however that the trans community would have some general respect that other communities may, no matter how quietly they go about it, have some claims of their own to make. But no, TRAs are merciless. No one's needs come before theirs. Not even a women paralysed from the chest down, who requires care for the most basic and intimate of needs The violent misogynist attacks on Henrietta for standing up for her right to same sex care have left me dumbfounded. How did we get here?