I think your comment about the difference between more moderate views here versus the American ultra conservatives is actually really important.
I'm not sure yet how you would prove it, but I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons the debate has become so poisoned is because trans rights activists see the actions and arguments of the American Right (which are pretty appalling) and then equate that with the views of more sceptical people in the UK and elsewhere.
So rather than engage with their specific points, they just lump everyone in the same pot and assume people like Helen Lewis believe the same thing as those much more extreme people, and are therefore not deserving of a platform.
TL,DR: American politics is poisoning everything, and it sucks.
Yep, I think that’s also why the American left is more “woke” (for lack of a better term) and we’re “TERF island” over here - because in America, it’s like a reflexive reaction to religiously-inflected bigotry. Which makes it impossible to concede that, for example, (as I wrote in the piece linked right at the bottom), there can be trade-offs routed in progressive feminist ideas and not just bigotry.
It's weird though, isn't it, that they acknowledge us as TERFs. That in itself is a tacit concession that the movement is some flavour of progressive - let's not forget that the acronym is "trans-excluding *radical feminist*". Ron de Santis isn't a TERF, he's TE but he's definitely not RF.
I think your stuff about the zoomed out view is on the money.
Because the entire thing is framed by some as a fundamental question of values, even an "existential" question in some spheres means that drilling down and finding anything approaching compromise, or even common understanding, is very difficult (read probably impossible in the current climate).
Really what this ought to be is a pretty dry exercise in delineated the boundaries of a difficult "competing rights" scenario. In which I think most people, not at the cliff face, would agree that there are competing rights, and think that there should be an ability to mediate between them.
My experience of dipping any sort of toe in the water on the debate though is that for some of the most fierce proponents of these war even the suggestion that this is an issue of competing rights, and not one of absolute truth, gets you, well..... marmalised on line.
I can only admire your willingness to see a 3rd rail and grasp it with both hands!
Like many here I still have fond memories of the peak of the skeptic movement, devoured books by Goldacre, Dawkins and Hitchens (C), and enjoyed a weekly podcast exploring the stories of the time from a skeptical/rationalist perspective. I really really would love to follow a technical debate about where to draw the line in these thorny areas. How to balance the desire of transwomen to live their lives fully as women, while keeping vulnerable natal women safe from predators who might seek to abuse those newly granted freedoms? How can we best help gender dysphoric children? How can we know when or even whether giving puberty-delaying medications is safe and beneficial? How do we treat the tiny number of trans-identifying prisoners?
These are complex questions with no single right answer. They demand subtlety, nuance and understanding. And I think by and large most people understand that, which I think is shown by the polling. But the internet does not optimise for subtlety, nuance and understanding.
And as we know we cannot have a single topic where the extreme polarisation of American politics doesn't poison the discourse in the UK. On one end we have reactionary conservatives, who seem to find anything associated with sexuality disgusting even if it's slightly at one remove like different gender identities. They seem to have decided that we don't need a technical debate because the whole idea is against God and there should be no change to improve things for trans and non-binary people.
That is more than matched by radical advocates for "trans rights", who see any compromise from a maximalist position as evidence of transphobia and hate. The kind of people who simultaneously beseech us to "be kind" while launching pile ons against feminists that inevitably result in threats of violence, rate, and murder.
And then what passes for debate descends into meaningless slogans ("trans right are human rights", "sex based rights") and sealioning about the definition of sex and how the existence of DSDs prove that sex is not binary in humans. On the one hand you have people demanding "no debate", which has echos of the kind of religious fundamentalism the New Atheists were rejecting. On the other you have literal fundamentalists telling us that accepting trans people is evil. If you think on balance that violent rapists shouldn't be housed in the female estate you're a transphobe. If you think transwomen can be trusted to use female toilets without exposing themselves, you're in league with perverts and rapists. If you think it might be better for a young person not to transition than have to detransition, you support genocide. If you think it perfectly possible for a transperson to live their day to day life in their chosen gender, and not too much to ask for everyone else to treat them as if they were born that way, you're erasing women.
So I despair of it all really. I'm glad this talk with Helen Lewis and Hannah Barnes (both of whom I have a lot of time for) can go ahead after all. I do think we skeptics should stand up to the bullies, but I can fully understand why the poor sod on the receiving end of a firehose of shit decided he couldn't face it any more.
It's clear why the Skeptic movement died - they won their battles and then didn't ever new ones. The Bush era of "teach the controversy" is long behind us.
Ironically the same movement that's caused this latest ruckus is a great example of how a campaigning group can move on from success - LGB equality is more-or-less a done deal these days but just adding another letter was able to sustain groups like Stonewall which otherwise would these days would be greatly in excess supply.
Do you think they 'won their battles'? Is there now substantially less religious intolerance, anti-vax sentiment, bad science, belief in astrology, in alternative medicine, in woo, etc? Or is it more likely they found a new enemy with a new name?
Thanks for the typically thoughtful piece, James. Maybe next week you can do something less divisive and explain who's right and who's wrong in the Israel/Palestine conflict (and explain how AI has produced the perfect three-point plan to resolve the whole thing).
In all sincerity, this is something I've struggled with. To be candid, I've trans friends and gay friends and I tend to defer to them. My gay friends in particular are wary of what they see as a recycling of the arguments that gave us Section 28: broadly, concern for children's welfare being used to launder some pretty ugly views and the assumption that any child that identifies as gay (or, in this case, trans) is at best going through a phase or at worst has been groomed by predators. Furthermore, and I think you can definitely see this playing out in the States, they fear an anti-trans movement acting as a vanguard for a broader anti-LGBT movement. How justified these fears are, I'm not qualified to say - but one can understand responding quite vociferously if you think your very way of life is on the line.
This is more just loose thoughts than an attempted argument but hey, it's a dreary Wednesday morning and you asked (sort of).
The thing about this is that there is parallel thinking on the other side of the argument too (at least in the UK). The TERFy women's groups are terrified that trans rights is a stalking horse for misogyny, a rapist's charter etc. I don't personally agree with them on this, but they aren't saying this for rhetorical effect as a bogus excuse to shit on trans people - they really believe it.
Ultimately no common ground can be found while neither side takes the other side's rhetoric in good faith.
To be provocative, to what degree do you think there is value in the polling on this issue? I have literally no skin in the game, but it seems to me that the fundamental problem with a question like " should there be a commitment to allow all transgender people in the UK to be able to live their lives free from harassment, abuse and intimidation?" is that there no consensus on what that means. (I imagine) that for some that would mean treating transgender people with the same respect and tolerance that is shown to other minority groups, while I suspect for others the Isla Bryson case is an example of abuse towards a transgender person.
Put another way, I'm not sure that the polling shows a broad consensus on this beyond the fact that most people want nice things and don't want not nice things.
Fundamentally, this issue is about choices and there are only three - either "transwomen are women (and vice versa)" in which case they can access all female-only spaces; transwomen are not women in all/some circumstances, in which case they must use male services (e.g. prisons, hospital wards); or special allowance is made to allow transwomen to use designated spaces where using female-only spaces would be inappropriate - prisons, hospitals, sporting events etc
The third option is the neatest but also the most expensive with the risk of creating white elephants - would a transwoman-only Olympics, or a designated prison wing be worthwhile?
Do you know of any polling which really gets to the nub of this problem - i.e. would you be in favour of making special provision for transgender people, even if this meant higher taxes and/or reduced services elsewhere to pay for this? I fear the rest is just apple pie and motherhood.
you talk here about how it's important to debate subjects freely in order to guide policy decisions, and i think that speaks to a blindness on your part about how gender-critical talking points actually function in a society where gender-affirming healthcare is already locked behind a twenty-year waiting list and entirely unnecessary segregation.
in this context, by accepting gender-critical talking points as even worth discussing, you have already ceded that bodily autonomy and basic decency are conditional. not only does this legitimise the existing segregation of trans healthcare in this country, it also legitimises the existing criminalisation of abortion procurement, and opens the door to further restrictions on contraception and self-presentation.
discussions about the nature of gender and fine-grained inspections of when segregation is appropriate are all well and good, when had in good faith, but the fact is that the only policy question that is of any real consequence to trans people in this country right now is whether humans own their own bodies. anyone who's arguing either way about what gender is with an eye to policymaking has already ceded that bodies instead belong to lawmakers. this, i believe, is why so many people feel so strongly that there is nothing to be gained from such a discussion.
The thing is, the law does already place limits on bodily autonomy. We have term-limits on abortion. Children cannot consent to sex. There is no legal trade in human organs.
Framing the argument exclusively in terms of bodily autonomy is bound to bring these comparisons up. The precedent is clear that it is indeed legitimate for the state to place limitations on bodily autonomy, so these things have to be argued on a case-by-case basis.
the examples you cite aren't purely restrictions on bodily autonomy, though; they're protections for one party when interacting with another. they protect people from being exploited (or killed) within power dynamics that render consent impossible. there's no legal trade in human organs, but there are plenty of organ donors
segregating trans people's access to hormones, for instance, instead of just prescribing them under an informed consent model, addresses no power dynamic whatsoever
To take the point about medicine specifically: there is no right in the UK to obtain any specific medication on request. For me to have access to any particular treatment for a condition I would have to go to a doctor and they would have to be satisfied that prescription was appropriate. In that sense the request for trans-related medical care is no different from any other.
oh i one hundred percent agree. the problem is that, at the moment, trans-related medical care is very different from every other. this is what i mean by segregation
cisgender balding men and cisgender women in menopause can be prescribed hormones or hormone blockers by their GP. the only requirement is that they understand what the risks and consequences are, and that the GP believes it will help. in order to obtain the same medicine, transgender people must access a specialist service where they must perform gender stereotypes and answer invasive questionnaires in order to pass some bar of being 'a real trans'. even without the twenty year waiting lists, this arbitrary gatekeeping benefits nobody
This is outside my expertise, but the risks associated with menopause treatments are different from those associated with interfering with puberty, even if they both involve the use of hormones. I don't think it's unfair that different standards apply to seeking treatment for either condition.
your earlier point, which i agree with, is that requests for trans-related medical care should be treated the same as any other: a GP should explain the risks and consequences, and the patient and doctor should make a decision based on that. the substance of those risks is, of course, to be considered on a case-by-case basis. i'm confused about what changed between you asserting that point and now
for what it's worth, cis children with hormone deficiencies can also be prescribed hormones by their GP; if that's not interfering with puberty, i don't know what is
But, I think Alex's point is correct. The state does place limits on bodily autonomy usually to prevent an individual harming themselves or harming each other. Unless you think that there is no case at all where a trans man can harm someone by being in a female-only space (in which case let's start with combat and contact sports), then it's legitimate for authorities to say that 'in X case, Y cannot happen'.
Whether trans people have freer access to hormones is a separate issue entirely, but even if say, medical access for trans people was the state's 1A priority there would still be legitimacy in policing the borders of female-only spaces.
we do not live in that world, and niche policies about access to particular spaces are, as you have demonstrated here, a great way to distract from the much larger and actually relevant obstacles that all trans people share. the fact that you don't appear to know what a trans man is makes me pretty confident that you're coming to this discussion in bad faith, or at least with woefully little knowledge on the subject. consider, also, that there is no way to police such a restriction that isn't hugely invasive for anyone who dares to be at all gender nonconforming in anyone's eyes
but none of this is relevant to policy decisions in the context of how trans people are treated in this country today
(for the record, trans men who *have* made it through a GIC are often not given access to, for instance, cervical cancer screenings. this is the kind of routine problem that actually affects their lives)
To answer on someone else's behalf, you seemed to imply that a trans man would require access to female-only places - but a trans man is someone who identifies as male. A trans *woman* would identify as female and would be the person e.g. fighting Ronda Rousey in the UFC. Referring to such a person as a man could be construed as misgendering.
I agree with you on trans rights, but I'm aware that many people who don't understand anything about what trans people go through haven't thought of it/framed it in this way before. Wouldn't a talk including this exact viewpoint be valuable?
it doesn't seem like that was what was planned, though, and it's pretty difficult to make this kind of argument and have it stick when other people who have the stage are having an entirely different conversation. it's easy to get sucked into, for instance, debating the legitimacy of trans people's experience of gender when that's what the opposition wants to talk about
“it's easy to get sucked into, for instance, debating the legitimacy of trans people's experience of gender..”
In a strictly rationalist framework like I imagine Skeptics organises around (never been a member), everything must be up for debate, surely. You have to distinguish between what might be solipsism (“my experience of gender”) and what could more generally be called material reality (“my biological sex”). (Yes I realise that ultimately *everything* could be solipsism but for these purposes we assume we are not brains in a vat.)
Assuming as you seem to that some things just shouldn’t be discussed or questioned is *exactly* the problem here. It’s only a matter of degree to go from “don’t question the legitimacy of my experience of gender” to “don’t allow these people to discuss their findings about a clinic which doesn’t question the legitimacy of people’s experience of gender”.
Also congratulations to James, who could retitle this Substack “Let’s Find A Third Rail To Touch”. I’m here for it.
This is the only Substack where you can hope to find the author both touching the metaphorical third rail, and also possibly discussing actual third rail systems used on railways.
i said that i find those conversations valuable, when had in good faith, and i meant it. the nature of the various properties that fall into the bimodal distributions we call sex and gender are interesting. the problem that i (and, i am positing, most people who object to events like this) have is that you can't have those conversations in a way that might influence policy without all sides implicitly accepting that individual bodily autonomy is conditional; these discussions, when not purely academic, can only influence policy in ways that serve to legitimise the state's claim to own the bodies of its subjects
"i find those conversations valuable, when had in good faith"
I'm going to appear argumentative (because I am), but you accused someone else here of coming to the discussion in bad faith when it was absolutely obvious from what they said that they came from a position where they weren't familiar with the jargon. That's not bad faith, which is a faux naivete. If you don't understand the phrase, or can't recognise when it is and isn't being deployed, I'm not going to trust that you can recognise if someone is arguing "in good faith" (which anyway tends to be in the eye of the beholder).
Sex is not bimodal ("having two separate popular values, or modes, and a spread of lesser values in between and outwith the modes"). It's binary. Please do not make me tap the biologist.
"these discussions, when not purely academic, can only influence policy in ways that serve to legitimise the state's claim to own the bodies of its subjects"
I'm just a humble journalist used to writing for the people on the Clapham omnibus, so you'd need to translate this into language they and I can understand. An example would be helpful, because that phrase I quoted means absolutely nothing concrete to me.
the comment you're alluding to said that someone appeared to be either arguing in bad faith or be uninformed on the subject. both possibilities were posited. it appears to have been the latter
sex is a vast and messy collection of properties. the state of a person's genitals at the time of their birth (the property from which we derive the definitions of the terms 'cisgender' and 'transgender') is but one that demonstrates bimodality. performing surgery on intersex children's genitals to make them conform to a constructed binary does not make that binary the truth. there are cisgender women with xy chromosomes and malfunctioning hormone receptors. chromosomes have more than two configurations. biology doesn't end in primary school
an attempt to rephrase my final quoted point: i believe that human bodies belong to the people who live in them, and that you have to reject that position if you're willing to accept that debates on the nature of gender can influence policy
In my experience, the majority of trans people, including activists, agree with the statement: “There are some cases where it should be legal to provide services and spaces that are only for women who were female at birth, even if that means excluding transgender women”
A more illuminating question might be "There are some cases where a service or space that is only for women should be accessible to transgender women"
I suspect that would reveal that many of the "moderates" are not so moderate.
That would be a great polling question - would be fascinated to see the response to that!
More broadly agree with your point to - that’s why I wish this debate would focus more on specific policy questions (“what about women’s prisons?”, etc), as I suspect it would be easier to find compromises when not arguing in big, abstract terms.
The women's prison issue is one where there are so few cases that really a big picture inflexible policy is not needed. It's absolutely fine to have some areas of public policy that are decided on a case by case basis by people directly briefed on the facts.
"Heckler's veto". Wow. They gave in to precisely the people they shouldn't have given into. (I may employ this term myself in my writings in the future).
To inject a further note of pessimism into this attempted debate, I don't see that pieces like this – slightly ashamedly reasonable – are likely to convert censors on the trans rights side. As you've noted, they see discussions on this subject as offensive, at minimum, and at maximum harmful. That's what justifies social stigma and even violence as a response (as evinced by those who want to "punch a terf").
I can't see that we should pay any mind to people who think like this on trans rights or any other topic. If they aren't willing to talk that's fine: the rest of us shouldn't listen. That may mean we've excluded some people from the conversation, but it's a reasonable consequence for their behaviour. And the option is always open to them to stop censoring others and participate.
"If they aren't willing to talk that's fine: the rest of us shouldn't listen."
That's totally sensible, but the problem - as James points out - is that *they* don't want other people to talk, and use social stigma and implied threats of violence as leverage. It's good that the Helen Lewis event is going ahead at a location TBA, but the fact that it had to go through one iteration is bad. I don't know what the simple answer is; "don't give in to implied threats" is hardly useful, and some of the protests are truly ugly even when they don't succeed.
My main point that I don't believe the censors can be reasoned with, because their views on what it's acceptable to debate are so far removed from concepts of open debate and normal public opinion. There is a cohort that has stretched definitions of harm and safety to such an extent that many commonly-held ideas are difficult to express.
I agree with what you said, and I don't claim to have a simple solution to the pressures affecting event organisers. The only thing I can suggest is a concerted effort to keep having these discussions until censors concede that they cannot shut this debate down.
I'll post here for anyone who hasn't yet read it, but this is the granddaddy of essays examining/theorising why scepticism/new atheism died so completely: its adherents found a new organising theory of sin:
Excellent article and a good pointer as to why the Skeptic ‘movement’ is not what it was. I speak as someone who, up until a few years back, was highly enthusiastic about the Skeptic movement, a regular at my local Skeptics In The Pub and also QED. I now feel I would not be welcomed because I have questions about this subject and no pro nouns. Ironically James you were one of the people who got me into that world with your, much missed, Pod Delusion podcast.
Is your reply, perhaps, not also a little obtuse? I would say I don't 'have' pronouns, because I don't think pronouns are something one can 'have'. That the phrase is a non sequitur. There are pronouns that are standard in our language to refer to someone (male) like me. But I don't make any pretensions to control the speech of others.
So the claim to 'have' pronouns is one more attempt to beg the question in favour of a very particular belief system around gender. And it's a belief system I don't share or wish to participate in.
I'm not sure I really grasp what you're getting at, sorry. You seemingly do have preferred pronouns (he/him). What you seem to be opposed to is people saying they have different pronouns than those that would indicate the sex they were born as (i.e. the 'standard'). It seems to me a rather banal and arbitrary thing to be opposed to, unless I've got the wrong end of the stick?
If you're not grasping it, this may be a case of the fish not being aware of the water it's swimming in.
I take seriously the post-structuralist critique of language common on the SJ left. That forms of language can have embedded in them assumptions that affect how we think about things when using that language. But I note that instead of using that critique to move to more neutral ways of speaking, they've instead turned it into a an arms race. So there's a very deliberate attempt to force language use that embeds within it the assumptions of their own ideology.
Consider the difference between: "My pronouns are ..." - expected to be said by all present, and "I'd really appreciate if you could call me Miss/Sir and refer to me by male/female pronouns" - said by the one person who's gendered expression is radically different from that typical of their sex.
The first contains the assumption that we all 'have' pronouns, because we all 'have' a 'gender' (using a highly contentious notion of gender as some sort of personal property, quintessence, or soul - a further embedded assumption). The other does not.
What I'm saying, is that to even use the phrase 'have pronouns' is, whether you're aware of it or not, to align yourself with a set of ideological beliefs about gender that are the very ones in dispute when it comes to trans issues.
Yes your right, I do have pro nouns but I don’t, unlike a lot of people, I don’t feel the compulsion to announce them to the world to prove I’m a good person.
See, I'd like to discuss this because I think you're simultaneously right but also not really taking it in the best faith. Full disclosure: I put my pronouns (he/him) in my social media profiles and in my work email signature. I do this for a number of reasons. The work email signature is, to be frank, me bowing to corporate culture more than anything else. Why they're in my social media profiles, however, is, well, three reasons:
1) To signal where I lie ideologically - similar to someone putting #FBPE or #Antivax or whatever in their profile.
2) To signal my virtue - so people think I'm a good person and I receive an imaginary pat on the head; like why someone might wear a poppy or one of these neat Marie Curie flowers.
3) To provide cover to trans and nonbinary people - to help make it usual to freely offer one's pronouns. This is similar to why straight people might use 'partner' instead of 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend' - to make it stand out less when someone with a same sex partner isn't comfortable in outing themselves.
I don't think this is without caveats (one trans friend pointed out having to offer their pronouns at work would basically be forcing them to out themselves in what they feel is a hostile environment). But can you at least sympathise with the third point?
It's really good for you to be transparent in this way. I think there is a lot of motte and bailey switching between the propositions out there (or indeed just presenting it as 'just what you do', ie points 1+2 but in a way that implies dissent is sketchy)
Point 3 is clearly the most sympathetic to liberal-minded people - but I think it's to some extent an empirical question whether it's *actually* an effective way to do it, versus a bit of a rationalisation (with 1+2 as underlying motivation). And I've seen dissents both from trans-affirming / trans people and gendercrits on its merits in this respect; putting aside the open objections to the politics of it (many essays elsewhere). In some organisations it's going to be forcing dissenters to 'out' themselves, potentially to hostility (depending on the extent of formal or informal compulsion), so you can flip the argument the other way too, depending on your priors of course.
Re: your example with "partner" - I'm sceptical (!) That the growth in this usage relates to that motivation (even unconsciously) so much as i) more long-term hetero couples remaining unmarried, 'bf/gf' not sounding very grown up and ii) general preference for gender-neutral terms across the board, they sound more 'modern'.
Cf. liberal norms on race/cultural identity - we accept that it's an issue of variable importance to different people, it's considered polite to be non-dismissive when someone *does* bring it up but not to be intrusive if they don't, some people are obviously 'read' but others are ambiguous, it's impolite to make assumptions based on your own preconceptions, if you're unsure allowing maximal leeway is the way to go. And actively drawing attention to / strengthening divisions along those lines (except where wholly relevant) is generally to be uncomfortable or worse to all involved including the marginalised party.
All fair points, and I tend to agree with you re the partner thing - I was just grasping for an analogue and it's the best I could find at short notice!
It's actually kind of useful to specify the pronouns you prefer to be referred by if your gender is ambiguous (because your outward appearance doesn't match your gender) or obfuscated (for instance, the fairly anonymous nature of online interactions).
Some (okay, probably many) people may adopt them for social clout in the circles they want that clout in, sure. But for those who've been misgendered and would rather not be, it's valuable
“but they should not be deciding on healthcare matters any more than evangelical church-goers should decide on abortion.”
I don’t think Lewis or Barnes is “deciding” healthcare. Barnes has *reported* on the disquiet *among staff* at the Tavistock, where the Cass report separately found lots to be disquieted about. Sure, treat gender dysphoria; but the question AIUI is about diagnosis, not treatment.
And in a democracy, evangelicals (should) get the chance to vote on abortion terms along with atheists, agnostics and everyone in between. (I think abortion limits are one of the trickiest questions we face in medical treatment. But this is OT enough.)
I think your comment about the difference between more moderate views here versus the American ultra conservatives is actually really important.
I'm not sure yet how you would prove it, but I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons the debate has become so poisoned is because trans rights activists see the actions and arguments of the American Right (which are pretty appalling) and then equate that with the views of more sceptical people in the UK and elsewhere.
So rather than engage with their specific points, they just lump everyone in the same pot and assume people like Helen Lewis believe the same thing as those much more extreme people, and are therefore not deserving of a platform.
TL,DR: American politics is poisoning everything, and it sucks.
Yep, I think that’s also why the American left is more “woke” (for lack of a better term) and we’re “TERF island” over here - because in America, it’s like a reflexive reaction to religiously-inflected bigotry. Which makes it impossible to concede that, for example, (as I wrote in the piece linked right at the bottom), there can be trade-offs routed in progressive feminist ideas and not just bigotry.
It's weird though, isn't it, that they acknowledge us as TERFs. That in itself is a tacit concession that the movement is some flavour of progressive - let's not forget that the acronym is "trans-excluding *radical feminist*". Ron de Santis isn't a TERF, he's TE but he's definitely not RF.
I think your stuff about the zoomed out view is on the money.
Because the entire thing is framed by some as a fundamental question of values, even an "existential" question in some spheres means that drilling down and finding anything approaching compromise, or even common understanding, is very difficult (read probably impossible in the current climate).
Really what this ought to be is a pretty dry exercise in delineated the boundaries of a difficult "competing rights" scenario. In which I think most people, not at the cliff face, would agree that there are competing rights, and think that there should be an ability to mediate between them.
My experience of dipping any sort of toe in the water on the debate though is that for some of the most fierce proponents of these war even the suggestion that this is an issue of competing rights, and not one of absolute truth, gets you, well..... marmalised on line.
Couldn’t agree more. Hence why I was a bit nervous about posting this!
I can only admire your willingness to see a 3rd rail and grasp it with both hands!
Like many here I still have fond memories of the peak of the skeptic movement, devoured books by Goldacre, Dawkins and Hitchens (C), and enjoyed a weekly podcast exploring the stories of the time from a skeptical/rationalist perspective. I really really would love to follow a technical debate about where to draw the line in these thorny areas. How to balance the desire of transwomen to live their lives fully as women, while keeping vulnerable natal women safe from predators who might seek to abuse those newly granted freedoms? How can we best help gender dysphoric children? How can we know when or even whether giving puberty-delaying medications is safe and beneficial? How do we treat the tiny number of trans-identifying prisoners?
These are complex questions with no single right answer. They demand subtlety, nuance and understanding. And I think by and large most people understand that, which I think is shown by the polling. But the internet does not optimise for subtlety, nuance and understanding.
And as we know we cannot have a single topic where the extreme polarisation of American politics doesn't poison the discourse in the UK. On one end we have reactionary conservatives, who seem to find anything associated with sexuality disgusting even if it's slightly at one remove like different gender identities. They seem to have decided that we don't need a technical debate because the whole idea is against God and there should be no change to improve things for trans and non-binary people.
That is more than matched by radical advocates for "trans rights", who see any compromise from a maximalist position as evidence of transphobia and hate. The kind of people who simultaneously beseech us to "be kind" while launching pile ons against feminists that inevitably result in threats of violence, rate, and murder.
And then what passes for debate descends into meaningless slogans ("trans right are human rights", "sex based rights") and sealioning about the definition of sex and how the existence of DSDs prove that sex is not binary in humans. On the one hand you have people demanding "no debate", which has echos of the kind of religious fundamentalism the New Atheists were rejecting. On the other you have literal fundamentalists telling us that accepting trans people is evil. If you think on balance that violent rapists shouldn't be housed in the female estate you're a transphobe. If you think transwomen can be trusted to use female toilets without exposing themselves, you're in league with perverts and rapists. If you think it might be better for a young person not to transition than have to detransition, you support genocide. If you think it perfectly possible for a transperson to live their day to day life in their chosen gender, and not too much to ask for everyone else to treat them as if they were born that way, you're erasing women.
So I despair of it all really. I'm glad this talk with Helen Lewis and Hannah Barnes (both of whom I have a lot of time for) can go ahead after all. I do think we skeptics should stand up to the bullies, but I can fully understand why the poor sod on the receiving end of a firehose of shit decided he couldn't face it any more.
It's clear why the Skeptic movement died - they won their battles and then didn't ever new ones. The Bush era of "teach the controversy" is long behind us.
Ironically the same movement that's caused this latest ruckus is a great example of how a campaigning group can move on from success - LGB equality is more-or-less a done deal these days but just adding another letter was able to sustain groups like Stonewall which otherwise would these days would be greatly in excess supply.
Do you think they 'won their battles'? Is there now substantially less religious intolerance, anti-vax sentiment, bad science, belief in astrology, in alternative medicine, in woo, etc? Or is it more likely they found a new enemy with a new name?
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godlessness-that-failed/
Thanks for the typically thoughtful piece, James. Maybe next week you can do something less divisive and explain who's right and who's wrong in the Israel/Palestine conflict (and explain how AI has produced the perfect three-point plan to resolve the whole thing).
In all sincerity, this is something I've struggled with. To be candid, I've trans friends and gay friends and I tend to defer to them. My gay friends in particular are wary of what they see as a recycling of the arguments that gave us Section 28: broadly, concern for children's welfare being used to launder some pretty ugly views and the assumption that any child that identifies as gay (or, in this case, trans) is at best going through a phase or at worst has been groomed by predators. Furthermore, and I think you can definitely see this playing out in the States, they fear an anti-trans movement acting as a vanguard for a broader anti-LGBT movement. How justified these fears are, I'm not qualified to say - but one can understand responding quite vociferously if you think your very way of life is on the line.
This is more just loose thoughts than an attempted argument but hey, it's a dreary Wednesday morning and you asked (sort of).
The thing about this is that there is parallel thinking on the other side of the argument too (at least in the UK). The TERFy women's groups are terrified that trans rights is a stalking horse for misogyny, a rapist's charter etc. I don't personally agree with them on this, but they aren't saying this for rhetorical effect as a bogus excuse to shit on trans people - they really believe it.
Ultimately no common ground can be found while neither side takes the other side's rhetoric in good faith.
To be provocative, to what degree do you think there is value in the polling on this issue? I have literally no skin in the game, but it seems to me that the fundamental problem with a question like " should there be a commitment to allow all transgender people in the UK to be able to live their lives free from harassment, abuse and intimidation?" is that there no consensus on what that means. (I imagine) that for some that would mean treating transgender people with the same respect and tolerance that is shown to other minority groups, while I suspect for others the Isla Bryson case is an example of abuse towards a transgender person.
Put another way, I'm not sure that the polling shows a broad consensus on this beyond the fact that most people want nice things and don't want not nice things.
Fundamentally, this issue is about choices and there are only three - either "transwomen are women (and vice versa)" in which case they can access all female-only spaces; transwomen are not women in all/some circumstances, in which case they must use male services (e.g. prisons, hospital wards); or special allowance is made to allow transwomen to use designated spaces where using female-only spaces would be inappropriate - prisons, hospitals, sporting events etc
The third option is the neatest but also the most expensive with the risk of creating white elephants - would a transwoman-only Olympics, or a designated prison wing be worthwhile?
Do you know of any polling which really gets to the nub of this problem - i.e. would you be in favour of making special provision for transgender people, even if this meant higher taxes and/or reduced services elsewhere to pay for this? I fear the rest is just apple pie and motherhood.
you talk here about how it's important to debate subjects freely in order to guide policy decisions, and i think that speaks to a blindness on your part about how gender-critical talking points actually function in a society where gender-affirming healthcare is already locked behind a twenty-year waiting list and entirely unnecessary segregation.
in this context, by accepting gender-critical talking points as even worth discussing, you have already ceded that bodily autonomy and basic decency are conditional. not only does this legitimise the existing segregation of trans healthcare in this country, it also legitimises the existing criminalisation of abortion procurement, and opens the door to further restrictions on contraception and self-presentation.
discussions about the nature of gender and fine-grained inspections of when segregation is appropriate are all well and good, when had in good faith, but the fact is that the only policy question that is of any real consequence to trans people in this country right now is whether humans own their own bodies. anyone who's arguing either way about what gender is with an eye to policymaking has already ceded that bodies instead belong to lawmakers. this, i believe, is why so many people feel so strongly that there is nothing to be gained from such a discussion.
The thing is, the law does already place limits on bodily autonomy. We have term-limits on abortion. Children cannot consent to sex. There is no legal trade in human organs.
Framing the argument exclusively in terms of bodily autonomy is bound to bring these comparisons up. The precedent is clear that it is indeed legitimate for the state to place limitations on bodily autonomy, so these things have to be argued on a case-by-case basis.
the examples you cite aren't purely restrictions on bodily autonomy, though; they're protections for one party when interacting with another. they protect people from being exploited (or killed) within power dynamics that render consent impossible. there's no legal trade in human organs, but there are plenty of organ donors
segregating trans people's access to hormones, for instance, instead of just prescribing them under an informed consent model, addresses no power dynamic whatsoever
To take the point about medicine specifically: there is no right in the UK to obtain any specific medication on request. For me to have access to any particular treatment for a condition I would have to go to a doctor and they would have to be satisfied that prescription was appropriate. In that sense the request for trans-related medical care is no different from any other.
oh i one hundred percent agree. the problem is that, at the moment, trans-related medical care is very different from every other. this is what i mean by segregation
cisgender balding men and cisgender women in menopause can be prescribed hormones or hormone blockers by their GP. the only requirement is that they understand what the risks and consequences are, and that the GP believes it will help. in order to obtain the same medicine, transgender people must access a specialist service where they must perform gender stereotypes and answer invasive questionnaires in order to pass some bar of being 'a real trans'. even without the twenty year waiting lists, this arbitrary gatekeeping benefits nobody
This is outside my expertise, but the risks associated with menopause treatments are different from those associated with interfering with puberty, even if they both involve the use of hormones. I don't think it's unfair that different standards apply to seeking treatment for either condition.
your earlier point, which i agree with, is that requests for trans-related medical care should be treated the same as any other: a GP should explain the risks and consequences, and the patient and doctor should make a decision based on that. the substance of those risks is, of course, to be considered on a case-by-case basis. i'm confused about what changed between you asserting that point and now
for what it's worth, cis children with hormone deficiencies can also be prescribed hormones by their GP; if that's not interfering with puberty, i don't know what is
But, I think Alex's point is correct. The state does place limits on bodily autonomy usually to prevent an individual harming themselves or harming each other. Unless you think that there is no case at all where a trans man can harm someone by being in a female-only space (in which case let's start with combat and contact sports), then it's legitimate for authorities to say that 'in X case, Y cannot happen'.
Whether trans people have freer access to hormones is a separate issue entirely, but even if say, medical access for trans people was the state's 1A priority there would still be legitimacy in policing the borders of female-only spaces.
thanks for so efficiently demonstrating my point
we do not live in that world, and niche policies about access to particular spaces are, as you have demonstrated here, a great way to distract from the much larger and actually relevant obstacles that all trans people share. the fact that you don't appear to know what a trans man is makes me pretty confident that you're coming to this discussion in bad faith, or at least with woefully little knowledge on the subject. consider, also, that there is no way to police such a restriction that isn't hugely invasive for anyone who dares to be at all gender nonconforming in anyone's eyes
but none of this is relevant to policy decisions in the context of how trans people are treated in this country today
(for the record, trans men who *have* made it through a GIC are often not given access to, for instance, cervical cancer screenings. this is the kind of routine problem that actually affects their lives)
What is a trans man, in your view? Let's see if we can agree a common definition before we start opining on each other's motives.
To answer on someone else's behalf, you seemed to imply that a trans man would require access to female-only places - but a trans man is someone who identifies as male. A trans *woman* would identify as female and would be the person e.g. fighting Ronda Rousey in the UFC. Referring to such a person as a man could be construed as misgendering.
I agree with you on trans rights, but I'm aware that many people who don't understand anything about what trans people go through haven't thought of it/framed it in this way before. Wouldn't a talk including this exact viewpoint be valuable?
yes, sure
it doesn't seem like that was what was planned, though, and it's pretty difficult to make this kind of argument and have it stick when other people who have the stage are having an entirely different conversation. it's easy to get sucked into, for instance, debating the legitimacy of trans people's experience of gender when that's what the opposition wants to talk about
“it's easy to get sucked into, for instance, debating the legitimacy of trans people's experience of gender..”
In a strictly rationalist framework like I imagine Skeptics organises around (never been a member), everything must be up for debate, surely. You have to distinguish between what might be solipsism (“my experience of gender”) and what could more generally be called material reality (“my biological sex”). (Yes I realise that ultimately *everything* could be solipsism but for these purposes we assume we are not brains in a vat.)
Assuming as you seem to that some things just shouldn’t be discussed or questioned is *exactly* the problem here. It’s only a matter of degree to go from “don’t question the legitimacy of my experience of gender” to “don’t allow these people to discuss their findings about a clinic which doesn’t question the legitimacy of people’s experience of gender”.
Also congratulations to James, who could retitle this Substack “Let’s Find A Third Rail To Touch”. I’m here for it.
This is the only Substack where you can hope to find the author both touching the metaphorical third rail, and also possibly discussing actual third rail systems used on railways.
i said that i find those conversations valuable, when had in good faith, and i meant it. the nature of the various properties that fall into the bimodal distributions we call sex and gender are interesting. the problem that i (and, i am positing, most people who object to events like this) have is that you can't have those conversations in a way that might influence policy without all sides implicitly accepting that individual bodily autonomy is conditional; these discussions, when not purely academic, can only influence policy in ways that serve to legitimise the state's claim to own the bodies of its subjects
"i find those conversations valuable, when had in good faith"
I'm going to appear argumentative (because I am), but you accused someone else here of coming to the discussion in bad faith when it was absolutely obvious from what they said that they came from a position where they weren't familiar with the jargon. That's not bad faith, which is a faux naivete. If you don't understand the phrase, or can't recognise when it is and isn't being deployed, I'm not going to trust that you can recognise if someone is arguing "in good faith" (which anyway tends to be in the eye of the beholder).
Sex is not bimodal ("having two separate popular values, or modes, and a spread of lesser values in between and outwith the modes"). It's binary. Please do not make me tap the biologist.
"these discussions, when not purely academic, can only influence policy in ways that serve to legitimise the state's claim to own the bodies of its subjects"
I'm just a humble journalist used to writing for the people on the Clapham omnibus, so you'd need to translate this into language they and I can understand. An example would be helpful, because that phrase I quoted means absolutely nothing concrete to me.
the comment you're alluding to said that someone appeared to be either arguing in bad faith or be uninformed on the subject. both possibilities were posited. it appears to have been the latter
sex is a vast and messy collection of properties. the state of a person's genitals at the time of their birth (the property from which we derive the definitions of the terms 'cisgender' and 'transgender') is but one that demonstrates bimodality. performing surgery on intersex children's genitals to make them conform to a constructed binary does not make that binary the truth. there are cisgender women with xy chromosomes and malfunctioning hormone receptors. chromosomes have more than two configurations. biology doesn't end in primary school
an attempt to rephrase my final quoted point: i believe that human bodies belong to the people who live in them, and that you have to reject that position if you're willing to accept that debates on the nature of gender can influence policy
In my experience, the majority of trans people, including activists, agree with the statement: “There are some cases where it should be legal to provide services and spaces that are only for women who were female at birth, even if that means excluding transgender women”
A more illuminating question might be "There are some cases where a service or space that is only for women should be accessible to transgender women"
I suspect that would reveal that many of the "moderates" are not so moderate.
That would be a great polling question - would be fascinated to see the response to that!
More broadly agree with your point to - that’s why I wish this debate would focus more on specific policy questions (“what about women’s prisons?”, etc), as I suspect it would be easier to find compromises when not arguing in big, abstract terms.
The women's prison issue is one where there are so few cases that really a big picture inflexible policy is not needed. It's absolutely fine to have some areas of public policy that are decided on a case by case basis by people directly briefed on the facts.
We need Joey Lucas!
Respect for sticking your head above the parapet on this, you make reasonable points and present them eloquently.
"Heckler's veto". Wow. They gave in to precisely the people they shouldn't have given into. (I may employ this term myself in my writings in the future).
To inject a further note of pessimism into this attempted debate, I don't see that pieces like this – slightly ashamedly reasonable – are likely to convert censors on the trans rights side. As you've noted, they see discussions on this subject as offensive, at minimum, and at maximum harmful. That's what justifies social stigma and even violence as a response (as evinced by those who want to "punch a terf").
I can't see that we should pay any mind to people who think like this on trans rights or any other topic. If they aren't willing to talk that's fine: the rest of us shouldn't listen. That may mean we've excluded some people from the conversation, but it's a reasonable consequence for their behaviour. And the option is always open to them to stop censoring others and participate.
"If they aren't willing to talk that's fine: the rest of us shouldn't listen."
That's totally sensible, but the problem - as James points out - is that *they* don't want other people to talk, and use social stigma and implied threats of violence as leverage. It's good that the Helen Lewis event is going ahead at a location TBA, but the fact that it had to go through one iteration is bad. I don't know what the simple answer is; "don't give in to implied threats" is hardly useful, and some of the protests are truly ugly even when they don't succeed.
My main point that I don't believe the censors can be reasoned with, because their views on what it's acceptable to debate are so far removed from concepts of open debate and normal public opinion. There is a cohort that has stretched definitions of harm and safety to such an extent that many commonly-held ideas are difficult to express.
I agree with what you said, and I don't claim to have a simple solution to the pressures affecting event organisers. The only thing I can suggest is a concerted effort to keep having these discussions until censors concede that they cannot shut this debate down.
I'll post here for anyone who hasn't yet read it, but this is the granddaddy of essays examining/theorising why scepticism/new atheism died so completely: its adherents found a new organising theory of sin:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godlessness-that-failed/
Excellent article and a good pointer as to why the Skeptic ‘movement’ is not what it was. I speak as someone who, up until a few years back, was highly enthusiastic about the Skeptic movement, a regular at my local Skeptics In The Pub and also QED. I now feel I would not be welcomed because I have questions about this subject and no pro nouns. Ironically James you were one of the people who got me into that world with your, much missed, Pod Delusion podcast.
You do have pronouns though, don't you, Trevor? If we're going to have these arguments in good faith, there's no need to be intentionally obtuse.
Is your reply, perhaps, not also a little obtuse? I would say I don't 'have' pronouns, because I don't think pronouns are something one can 'have'. That the phrase is a non sequitur. There are pronouns that are standard in our language to refer to someone (male) like me. But I don't make any pretensions to control the speech of others.
So the claim to 'have' pronouns is one more attempt to beg the question in favour of a very particular belief system around gender. And it's a belief system I don't share or wish to participate in.
I'm not sure I really grasp what you're getting at, sorry. You seemingly do have preferred pronouns (he/him). What you seem to be opposed to is people saying they have different pronouns than those that would indicate the sex they were born as (i.e. the 'standard'). It seems to me a rather banal and arbitrary thing to be opposed to, unless I've got the wrong end of the stick?
If you're not grasping it, this may be a case of the fish not being aware of the water it's swimming in.
I take seriously the post-structuralist critique of language common on the SJ left. That forms of language can have embedded in them assumptions that affect how we think about things when using that language. But I note that instead of using that critique to move to more neutral ways of speaking, they've instead turned it into a an arms race. So there's a very deliberate attempt to force language use that embeds within it the assumptions of their own ideology.
Consider the difference between: "My pronouns are ..." - expected to be said by all present, and "I'd really appreciate if you could call me Miss/Sir and refer to me by male/female pronouns" - said by the one person who's gendered expression is radically different from that typical of their sex.
The first contains the assumption that we all 'have' pronouns, because we all 'have' a 'gender' (using a highly contentious notion of gender as some sort of personal property, quintessence, or soul - a further embedded assumption). The other does not.
What I'm saying, is that to even use the phrase 'have pronouns' is, whether you're aware of it or not, to align yourself with a set of ideological beliefs about gender that are the very ones in dispute when it comes to trans issues.
Yes your right, I do have pro nouns but I don’t, unlike a lot of people, I don’t feel the compulsion to announce them to the world to prove I’m a good person.
See, I'd like to discuss this because I think you're simultaneously right but also not really taking it in the best faith. Full disclosure: I put my pronouns (he/him) in my social media profiles and in my work email signature. I do this for a number of reasons. The work email signature is, to be frank, me bowing to corporate culture more than anything else. Why they're in my social media profiles, however, is, well, three reasons:
1) To signal where I lie ideologically - similar to someone putting #FBPE or #Antivax or whatever in their profile.
2) To signal my virtue - so people think I'm a good person and I receive an imaginary pat on the head; like why someone might wear a poppy or one of these neat Marie Curie flowers.
3) To provide cover to trans and nonbinary people - to help make it usual to freely offer one's pronouns. This is similar to why straight people might use 'partner' instead of 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend' - to make it stand out less when someone with a same sex partner isn't comfortable in outing themselves.
I don't think this is without caveats (one trans friend pointed out having to offer their pronouns at work would basically be forcing them to out themselves in what they feel is a hostile environment). But can you at least sympathise with the third point?
It's really good for you to be transparent in this way. I think there is a lot of motte and bailey switching between the propositions out there (or indeed just presenting it as 'just what you do', ie points 1+2 but in a way that implies dissent is sketchy)
Point 3 is clearly the most sympathetic to liberal-minded people - but I think it's to some extent an empirical question whether it's *actually* an effective way to do it, versus a bit of a rationalisation (with 1+2 as underlying motivation). And I've seen dissents both from trans-affirming / trans people and gendercrits on its merits in this respect; putting aside the open objections to the politics of it (many essays elsewhere). In some organisations it's going to be forcing dissenters to 'out' themselves, potentially to hostility (depending on the extent of formal or informal compulsion), so you can flip the argument the other way too, depending on your priors of course.
Re: your example with "partner" - I'm sceptical (!) That the growth in this usage relates to that motivation (even unconsciously) so much as i) more long-term hetero couples remaining unmarried, 'bf/gf' not sounding very grown up and ii) general preference for gender-neutral terms across the board, they sound more 'modern'.
Cf. liberal norms on race/cultural identity - we accept that it's an issue of variable importance to different people, it's considered polite to be non-dismissive when someone *does* bring it up but not to be intrusive if they don't, some people are obviously 'read' but others are ambiguous, it's impolite to make assumptions based on your own preconceptions, if you're unsure allowing maximal leeway is the way to go. And actively drawing attention to / strengthening divisions along those lines (except where wholly relevant) is generally to be uncomfortable or worse to all involved including the marginalised party.
All fair points, and I tend to agree with you re the partner thing - I was just grasping for an analogue and it's the best I could find at short notice!
It's actually kind of useful to specify the pronouns you prefer to be referred by if your gender is ambiguous (because your outward appearance doesn't match your gender) or obfuscated (for instance, the fairly anonymous nature of online interactions).
Some (okay, probably many) people may adopt them for social clout in the circles they want that clout in, sure. But for those who've been misgendered and would rather not be, it's valuable
…”if your gender is ambiguous (because your outward appearance doesn't match your gender)”
This forces women to look feminine or not be regarded as women anymore.
It is a historic trap that we have been trying to get out of forever, because it limits our potential.
I don't really understand how you reached that conclusion from what I posted
“but they should not be deciding on healthcare matters any more than evangelical church-goers should decide on abortion.”
I don’t think Lewis or Barnes is “deciding” healthcare. Barnes has *reported* on the disquiet *among staff* at the Tavistock, where the Cass report separately found lots to be disquieted about. Sure, treat gender dysphoria; but the question AIUI is about diagnosis, not treatment.
And in a democracy, evangelicals (should) get the chance to vote on abortion terms along with atheists, agnostics and everyone in between. (I think abortion limits are one of the trickiest questions we face in medical treatment. But this is OT enough.)