Category: Trans
Assume humanity, then ask about happiness
Trans people‘s say-so is evidence of our happiness. But no one should ask for evidence that trans people are people. Previously, I used Lydia Polgreen’s opinion as an example, and I identified and extracted these writing tips for you. Please note this key distinction.
No one needs ‘evidence’ that transition improves trans people’s humanity
Let’s distinguish scientific uncertainty from value judgment. Anti-trans prejudice doesn’t justify demanding evidence about trans people’s humanity. When we let go of prejudice, some common ‘questions’ dissolve.
Can an identity be true and not true?
On ‘constitutive tension’ in our concepts. Picking apart someone else’s identity? First ask: Why do you want to? What would be gained? And lost? What happens to your own identity in the process?
Gödel is sure Bach, and trans people are sure their gender
Reflections on the Pulitzer-winning ‘Gödel, Escher, Bach’ (1979). Their objection is an infinite regress. They’re laying a trap. If we needed rules about rules about rules, none of us could ever use language at all.
How do we know who we are?
Do we learn it from a crystal ball—or from our guts? How do others state with certainty that they know who they are? Do they have a crystal ball? Of course, we’re jealous. How can we know ourselves, too?
Do we choose to be who we are?
And what, by the way, is choice? If you can’t snap your fingers to change, how do you change? What do we ask people to do when we ask them to change? Why should anyone change?
QAnon fights imaginary cabals
Explained in Will Sommer’s ‘Trust the Plan’. To its followers, QAnon seems to explain the world. It’s also their community. Normal policy can wait until the vampires are vanquished.
What is a Bible?
You already know, and you already know what a woman is too. We don’t have to keep asking what ‘transgender’ essentially is, nor what ‘woman’ or ‘man’ essentially are. There is no essence. But we know what they are.
‘Radical gender theory’ is itself a social construct
The people who’re making it up do not have good intentions. This isn’t a serious intellectual project. There’s no scholarly substance. Chris Rufo just wants to organize the right-wing to make noise and hurt LGBTQ people.
The right wing wants to stop adults from being trans
Knowles: ‘You have to ban transgenderism entirely’. Michael Knowles wants to ban people from being transgender. His ‘love’ for the Kansas bathroom bill is because it ‘aggressive[ly]’ excludes trans people.
Anti-trans bills encourage far-right violence
That may be the intent. It sure looks like the outcome. The far-right wants the support of the center. The center has anti-transgender legislative campaigns. The far-right perpetrates anti-transgender violence.
Why is the far-right ever more intensely anti-trans?
Because they’re bored by finally winning against abortion rights. Fascists oppose trans people because they find difference threatening. Being anti-trans is fundamental to their politics, and it predicts what comes next.