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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44948 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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I've written an article in which I discuss a somewhat common idea regarding the idea of trans people "existing" [1]. Some trans rights activists (TRAs) refer to denying the statement "transwomen are women" as denying the existence of trans people. Another manifestation of this is when people argue that denying that transwomen are women is threatening to transwomen's existence. The same applies to transmen of course. I argue that these arguments rely on ambiguity in language about "existence." Denying the existence of transwomen seems very silly because that is an unusual way to describe rejecting that a transwoman actually is a woman. Phrasing this as a threat to existence evokes thoughts of genocide. I think this is another case of language being used in an unusual way that is misleading, although perhaps not intentionally. This description of "anti-trans" attitudes should be avoided as it is not accurate and morally charged in a misleading way.

[1] https://parrhesia.substack.com/p/do-transgender-people-exist

My first exposure to this type of argument was actually with tumblr's fat acceptance crowd, way way back in the mists of TiA. I witnessed one of them claiming that the existence of diets, and the fact that doctors, among other people, encourage fat people to go on them, and therefore become no longer fat, meant that a genocide was being perpetrated against fat people by society itself. All of society. I can't recall the date, but this has to have been more than 5 years ago at this point.

This torture of language does become very tiresome. Any good ideas on how to call out and shut down this particular dis-ingenuity, perhaps?

This argument is also made against genetic enhancement and cochlear implants. From my article:

Singer (2003) excellently critiques these sorts of arguments:

If the use of cochlear implants means that there are fewer Deaf people, is this ‘genocide’? Does our acceptance of prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion mean that we are ‘drifting toward a eugenic resurgence that differs only superficially from earlier patterns’. If the use of the term ‘genocide’ is intended to suggest a comparison with the Holocaust, or Rwanda, it overlooks the crucial fact that cochlear implants do not have victims. On balance, it seems that they benefit the people who have them; if this judgment is contestable, it is at least not clear that they are worse off for having the implant. Imagine a minority ethnic group in which all the parents reach separate decisions that their children will be better off if they marry a member of the majority group, and hence urge them to do so. Is this encouraging ‘genocide’? If so, it is genocide of such a harmless form that the term should be divorced from all its usual moral associations.

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