You Are Always So Full Of Shit

I wasn’t planning to share this conversation.

“Writer criticises trans activism, receives disproportionate and hyperbolic abuse,” is hardly a newsflash in 2022.

But A) this conversation is pretty interesting in its own right, and B) it’s vital context for an even more interesting conversation that I’ll be posting later this week.

In my article, Trans Activism’s Self-Inflicted Backlash, I pointed out that trans discourse is becoming so incoherent and irresponsible that even grifters like Matt Walsh can seem like the reasonable person in the room.

Stephanie, well…you’ll get the idea.

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Stephanie:

You are always so full of shit. As with any of your opinion pieces on transgender rights, this piece is just dripping with feces. You are an obnoxious narrow-minded transphobe. Speak all you want, you ignoramus.

No. Walsh does not look reasonable at all.

And neither do you.

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I had to draw upon every ounce of the patience and self-discipline I’ve learned over the years to stop myself from just dunking on Stephanie here.

I work very hard to be fair and respectful when I talk about trans activism. But people like Stephanie (and there are plenty out there) make no such effort. I’d be lying if I said responses like this didn’t make me want to sink to something approaching their level.

The problem is, once you give in to this instinct, “they” very quickly becomes everybody who disagrees with you on the subject, regardless of whether they’ve done anything wrong. And once that happens, conversations become, well…like this.

That’s why I’m at such pains to remind myself, and everybody else, that people like Stephanie do not represent the trans community. Even if it sometimes feels that way online.

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Steve QJ:

And neither do you.

It's almost unbearably tempting to write something sarcastic in response to this, but what would that do but add to the toxicity that I'm complaining about and that you're bringing? It's stuff like this that hurts your cause.

Anyway, I'm an open book. If you want to tell me where you think I'm wrong, if you want to have an actual conversation where we treat each other like human beings instead of hurling insults at each other, I'm honestly all ears.

If you just want to prove my point about the toxicity of the trans debate, well, good job I guess.

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Stephanie:

I am an open book too. I have plenty of essays out there, Steve.

Here's the thing: I know this transgender woman "debate" drives eyeballs to your writings. I figure your last essay was successful ($), so you might as well double down on the rhetoric.

I have read your past replies, I know reagrdless of what I come up with, I will not change your mind, one iota.

Here's one random take: The group that is LGB without the T, they have admitted in court that the membership is virtually all straight people.

I quote myself "Speak all you want" so please don't give me the woke mob is silencing you bit. If there is any "toxicity", it is all your making. You got your bros fist bumping themselves and slapping you on the back, you certainly don't care about having a "conversation"

In the end, you have done an impressive amount of work gathering the worst views on trans women. But this essay, has zero reflection on my life, my truth and those lives of my friends. It only serves to make my life less safe, and endanger me further.

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“I know reagrdless of what I come up with, I will not change your mind, one iota.”

This kind of error has become so common that it’s easy to miss. Conversations aren’t about “coming up” with arguments. They’re about (or let’s say they should be about) both parties trying to figure out the truth.

The best you can hope for in any conversation is that the other person listens to your arguments and responds in good faith. It is ridiculous to assume that if you don’t change their mind, they must be at fault.

I mean, sure, if you fail to change their mind, it might be because they’re closed-minded or belligerent or even hateful. But it might also be that you’re wrong or ignorant or didn’t make your point clearly. We’ve become way too comfortable with the idea that our inability to persuade somebody is their fault.

I’ve changed my mind on numerous issues, including trans issues, when somebody made a persuasive argument or showed me a perspective or data I hadn’t seen. But that means that all my current beliefs are based on arguments that have been well tested. If I come across a better one, after a period of examination, I’ll happily use it to guide my future beliefs.

This is how thinking is supposed to work.

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Steve QJ:

Here's the thing: I know this transgender woman "debate" drives eyeballs to your writings. I figure your last essay was successful ($)

Are you kidding me? Look at how often I publish here. Look at how many views (or guesstimate from the claps) my articles on race get. It's so ridiculous to try to imply I'm doing this for the money. If I was, I'd publish 10 times as often and I'd write exclusively about racism. Plus I wouldn't have to deal with comments like yours.

I write about this because I'm not just looking at your life. I'm looking at the lives of people who have had their lives ruined because they were rushed towards transition by the "affirmation only" model of trans care when it wasn't right for them. I'm looking at the lives of women who have been raped or assaulted because the societal safeguards they've had in place for centuries are being broken down.

I'm looking at the lives of people who know nothing about trans people, have never met them in real-life, and think that rage-filled, nasty rhetoric like yours is typical of the trans community because they encounter so much of it online. I'm looking at the lives of the trans people who find themselves less accepted by those young Americans I mentioned, because it sometimes feels easier to just stay away and not risk causing offence by some invisible measure.

And lastly, whether you believe me or not, I'm thinking abut the trans people who will get caught up in the backlash that this causes. I'm thinking about the laws banning gender-affirming care and the fact that there isn't enough pushback against them because trans issues are so poorly understood. I'm thinking about what an absolutely horrible job almost every person I see advocating for trans people online does. Because all you ever do is attack. You don't seek understanding, you seek obedience. This is absolutely the wrong way to get people on your side.

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Stephanie:

Wow. Rage filled. Wow. Crank up the hyerbole much?

Oh please, "Societal safeguards are not being broken down," We, true "transgender women," are not assaulting women. We, true transgender women, are not raping women. (that's not how the hormones work) There are cases of psychopaths and rapists claiming to be trans women because that's what they do.

It took one google search. This

https://time.com/4314896/transgender-bathroom-bill-male-predators-argument/

And this

https://www.mic.com/articles/114066/statistics-show-exactly-how-many-times-trans-people-have-attacked-you-in-bathrooms

And this

https://www-nbcnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna911106?amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16566977786773&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Ffeature%2Fnbc-out%2Fno-link-between-trans-inclusive-policies-bathroom-safety-study-finds-n911106

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It’s worth noting that even though I didn’t mention bathrooms in my reply, and did mention several other issues, including the wellbeing of trans people, all of Stephanie’s links are about bathrooms. Why? Because it’s the easiest issue to hand-wave away.

There’s a powerful irony in the fact that the “man in a wig sneaking into bathrooms” trope, once used by transphobes to demonise trans women, has now become a shield that people like Stephanie hide behind to avoid talking about other female-only spaces.

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Steve QJ:

Wow. Rage filled. Wow. Crank up the hyerbole much?

😂 You're really going to try to lecture me about hyperbole? Jesus. 🤣🤣

Actually, I've written many times that I think trans people should use the bathrooms of the gender they identify as. Maybe I'm not the "obnoxious narrow-minded transphobe" you think I am.

But as I’ve also written many times, bathrooms are not communal changing rooms are not sports are not women’s prisons. The different needs of these spaces require different solutions.

And if you want to claim that every single case of assault or rape in a female space was a man who was pretending to be trans and not a “true” transgender woman, that's absolutely fine with me. I will offer no resistance to that argument whatsoever.

The point is, those men were able to gain access to those spaces because of the idea that a man becomes a woman the instant he says, “I'm a woman.” It prioritises the validation of trans women over the safety of women and it is incredibly obvious that it will be (and has been) taken advantage of by “rapists and psychopaths.”

This is one of the many topics that it would be nice to have a reasonable, good-faith conversation about.

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Just as unsurprising as the abuse that comes with criticism of trans activism, is the way people like Stephanie vanish into the mist when nuance is pointed out clearly enough that it’s hard to ignore.

There’s no room for doubt and certainly not for compromise. The script she’s reading from begins and ends with, “you disagree with me, therefore you hate me.”

But, of course, there’s more to the story than that.

Stephanie inadvertently shares a little more of that story in our next conversation. So stay tuned for part 2.