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songs about buildings and fooddiscussion of trans matters, this time courtesy of Freddie deBoer. First of, let me say I appreciate Freddie's writing. I think he often has sensible things to say, particularly in his own field of education, and offers necessary criticism as a leftist who is on the left.That being said, he is just as prone to the shibboleths of his side as we on the right are to the shibboleths of our side. Having seen how the progressive agenda around education is a steaming pile of what makes the roses grow, because he's been there and he's seen how the theory does not correspond with reality, I don't understand how he then falls into line with the rest of the progressive activism around other matters. But then, we all have our blind spots.
He wants to compare transgenderism with transracialism, and how one is real and valid and the other is a fake, but then he comes out with lines like this:
Well then eff me, Freddie, if it's not genetics and it's not physiology and biology not real, what is gender identity tied to?
Maybe... feelings? I feel like a woman?
Then why isn't it possible to feel like a black woman? To have that same yearning about identity and conviction that what you are "assigned at birth" is not the truth of what you really are?
He does not seem to have seen the arguments in some quarters that the term "trans woman" should not be used, that it should simply be "woman". After all, trans women are women. Maybe he hasn't encountered the nuttier fringes of the "trans movement" as yet.
Yeah, I absolutely don't disagree there. He sings along to the chorus like a good right-thinking person on the right side of history. But maybe those who don't hold the conventional progressive position aren't all dishonest or activated by unthinking bigotry and prejudice? Something to think about.
Anyway, this is mostly to present a reasonable leftist and what they think the trans movement is all about, and how their experience may or may not line up with what other people have experienced. In the middle of the screeching harpies, it's hard to remember that on both sides of this question are people who are genuinely trying to do their best.
It's weird. Gender seems obviously more tied to biology than race, which is, in large part (oc not fully) mediated by cultural association.
A black man is more like a white man than a black women. Yet the progressive thinks he is more capable to become the latter than the former because reasons.
A middle class African American is more like his middle class American white neighbor than he is like a rural African farmer. Not just culturally, possibly genetically too through racial mixing. Yet we are to believe that their dominant skin tone represent an impenetrable, immutable, objective racial feature of more import and gravity, than the separation between males and females.
Oh well, freddy has always seemed like a joke to me. I even think his 'education' takes are quite lacking. It's just that the right leaners here are already don't apply any critical eye to those takes because they're too busy clapping.
Isn't the idea that gender is more biological than race an argument in favor of transgender being acceptable and transracial not being acceptable? Biology can be altered by taking hormones that have a variety of physiological and psychological effects. Get a dark spray tan and dreadlocks doesn't have the same sort of effect on the transitioning person's physiology and psychology.
That's something of a 'trans-medicalist' perspective, most trans activists wouldn't endorse the idea that you have to take HRT to be legitimately trans. I think that's mostly for 'big tent' solidarity reasons, most trans people won't shut up about how much hormone therapy changed them.
This stance is generally labelled "truscum" by the trans activist community. No prizes for guessing how positively it was received.
I'm aware. I think there's a coherent idea of transness right there for the taking, but the actual trans community has strong strategic reasons not to take it. If they admit that transness is 'gatekeepable' in any way they won't be the ones who get to decide who is legitimately trans and who isn't. Hence, they have adopted a 'no gatekeeping' stance which is obviously incoherent but that doesn't mean that there is no coherent account of transness.
It'd be like if the Ukrainians declared anyone who fought on their side in the war a Ukrainian. Obviously it's logically incoherent to put some American guy who died in his first month in Ukraine in the same category as someone who lived there all their life, but you understand the strategic rhetoric and it doesn't mean there's no coherent account of Ukranian identity.
I don't think the people who don't really want to change anything about their bodies or lives except wear dresses and have female pronouns belong in the same category as people who have crippling genital dysphoria, but I understand the strategic logic of them all coming together under the same label.
Fair enough, that's a consistent position.
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