There's nothing harmless about denying the truth
When people say things like “transwomen are women”, “transmen are men”,
and “nonbinary people are neither women nor men”, what do they mean? In my
book Material Girls, I suggested that many of them are
immersed in a fiction.
Getting immersed in fiction is a familiar state for most of us. Nearly
all of us do it, and some of us do it several times a day. When you dip into a
novel, binge on a box set, or even just daydream furiously about succeeding
romantically or seeing your enemies fail, you’re doing it.
When immersed in a fiction, your direct aim isn’t to recognise and
respond to the world as it actually is. To borrow a phrase from philosophy,
your thoughts and behaviour aren’t directly “truth-tracking”. That’s usually
ok, because fictions are supposed to be harmless bits of fun, or interesting
encounters with possible-but-not-actual scenarios. But what they are not supposed
to be are accurate reports of reality as you personally find it now. When
immersed, it’s as if many of your thoughts are flying parallel to earth without
touching it.
As a trans person, there are different possible motives for immersing
yourself in fictions of changing or escaping your sex, such as strong feelings
of dysphoria. If you’re highly uncomfortable about the sexed aspects of your
body — say, because they fail to fit prevalent bodily norms, or you think they
do — you might experience relief to act as if you are of the opposite sex, or
of no-sex.
It’s reasonable to analyse the worryingly high rise of girls and young
women in this position in the context of the invention of the smartphone, the
related spread of social media and pornography, and the over-sexualisation and
objectification of young women in our culture generally. A less well-known
motive for immersion, specific to some but not all within the male trans
demographic and also likely to be influenced by pornography, is the presence of
a fetish known as autogynephilia (or “AGP”).
In plain language: AGP is a sexual turn-on for some males to enter into
the fiction of being a woman. There’s a huge effort made by trans activists to
deny this. And it seems particularly hard for people without much experience of
the adult world of sexuality — idealistic young people, say, or university
lecturers — to believe it. But numerous sources attest to it, and it’s
important we recognise it clearly when it comes to discussing incursions into
women’s rights.
See, for instance, this Vice article from 2016, published before
progressive media started to pretend autogynephilia could never happen, that
frankly describes a club night where men cross-dress as women for sexual
pleasure, sometimes also role-playing that they are being “forced” into
“feminisation” by a dominatrix. Residual doubters should also read Deirdre
McCloskey’s transition memoir Crossing, where the sexual element is
cheerfully admitted. Or just look closely at this picture of a transwoman addressing the New York
State Democratic Party.
When it comes to people who aren’t trans, the typical motivations for
immersion in trans activism’s foundational fictions seem of four main sorts.
First, there’s a desire to be kind to trans people, without a lot of further
thought about what that might look like. Second, there’s those who want
to seem kind because of the social capital it brings these
days. Third, there’s a desire to avoid ostracisation, since you know you will
be socially punished if you don’t. And fourth, there’s a desire to undo human
sexed categories with the power of words, because you heard from some whackjob
academic that this was a coherent and politically desirable thing to aim for.
Now many of the fictions in which we immerse ourselves are harmless. But
that isn’t the case with trans fictions, when disseminated at industrial scale
and coercively maintained by the progressive establishment. At the other end of
this particular story arc are unhappily infertile young adults; women prisoners
made to share facilities with male rapists; sportswomen crowded out of
competition by men they can’t hope to beat; young lesbians guilted into dating
males; wives being coerced into participation in the cross-dressing fantasies
of their husbands; and trans people with wholly inadequate healthcare relative
to their well-being.
Horrific as those plot twists are, though, I want to take a more oblique
look at the story leading up to them. For it seems to me that trans activism
provides a fascinating case study of what can happen when a political movement
abandons truth as a direct aim and pursues fiction instead. Maybe all movements
pursue fiction some of the time, but few have truth-denial so firmly built into
their foundational axioms. So here are four instructive features.
1) Providing a convincing back story
What does a fiction need in order to seem vivid and realistic — to grip
your attention and draw you in emotionally? Partly, it needs background detail
that looks compelling to the average reader, and is distracting enough that she
doesn’t question any plot holes. And what more convincing-looking detail could
you find than that supplied by people whose day job it is to be clever and to
know things? On this basis, parts of academia have been enlisted,
enthusiastically, to furnish surrounding details for the foundational fictions
of the trans industry.
A just-published article by philosopher Dan Williams describes a
related phenomenon. In today’s world, he argues, “pundits and
opinion-producers” provide apparently supportive arguments and other
justifications for conclusions that people were already motivated to believe
anyway — and they do so “in exchange for money and social rewards”. A
marketplace for the rationalisations of desired beliefs has developed, he
suggests.
In the domain of trans activism, I think that the rationalisations
offered by academics tend to support immersion in fiction rather than
full-blooded belief. After all, when deciding who to bully first, the trans
activists still seem to know who the women and who the men are. But otherwise
the process is similar to that described by Williams.
The game for some academics is to provide convincing-looking backgrounds
for predetermined fictional conclusions such as “transwomen are women”,
“transmen are men”, and “nonbinary people are neither women nor men”. Since the
system currently rewards them for doing this, I think their unconscious motive
is often career advancement and social recognition from peers, though it’s
inevitably dressed up as something moral.
In the area I’m most familiar with, academic Philosophy, a dedicated
band of thinkers seeks to provide complex and technical post-hoc
rationalisations for mantras first expressed by adolescents on Tumblr in 2011.
The fact that truth in its traditional sense is not their object of inquiry
could not be made plainer. See, for instance, philosopher Katharine Jenkins,
who starts her 2016 article on the nature of womanhood, published in
prestigious philosophy journal Ethics, by declaring: “The
proposition that trans gender identities are entirely valid — that trans women
are women and trans men are men — is a foundational premise of my argument,
which I will not discuss further.” (It’s telling that “valid” is used here
in the Tumblr sense of identities being validated like
passports or parking tickets, and not in the sense of logical validity more
traditional for academic philosophy). The conclusion of Jenkins’s paper, not
enormously surprisingly under the circumstances, is that we should use the term
“woman” to refer to all and only people who have a female gender identity, whether
they are actually female or male.
Another example of this peculiar genre is a 2020 article by Elizabeth Barnes, who like Jenkins, makes
explicit that her reasoning has been constrained in advance by a desire to fit
with the conclusion that anyone who wants to be classified as a woman should be
counted as a woman, and anyone who doesn’t want to be classified as a woman should
not be. Barnes then advances a hilariously tortured rationalisation for claims
like “transwomen are women”, arguing that there aren’t any “deep,
language-independent facts about which people are women, which people are
genderqueer, etc”.
She justifies this partly by making an extremely involved analogy with
metaphysical discussions of tables. In a nutshell: she argues that in
metaphysical terms, there aren’t any tables, strictly speaking, though perhaps
there are “simples arranged table-wise”. Nonetheless we can still utter the
true sentence “there are tables”. Similarly, though for somewhat different
reasons, the metaphysical facts about womanhood and other “gendered” groups
come apart from the truth conditions of sentences involving … oh I give up, I
don’t have to pretend to take this stuff seriously anymore. (I confess, though,
that I remain disappointed Barnes didn’t try to argue that women are “simples
arranged woman-wise”.)
In the social sciences, meanwhile, things don’t seem much better. Here
the aim of research often seems to be to rationalise certain background
beliefs. These beliefs are designed to make immersion in the original fictions
appear beneficial or at least cost-free; or else to make refusal look costly in
moral and social terms. For instance: “there is an extremely low prevalence of regret in transgender patients
after surgery” (i.e. medically-assisted immersion is harmless); “administering cross-sex hormones to gender dysphoric
adolescence lowers suicidal ideation” (i.e. medically-assisted immersion is
beneficial); “questioning the ‘ontological reality’ of transgender identities leads to transphobic harassment” (i.e. as a non-trans
person, refusing to immerse yourself in the fictions of trans people causes
trans people to be harassed); “non-suicidal self-injury is common in trans youth and
emphasises the need for interventions that reduce transphobia” (i.e. as a
non-trans person, refusing to immerse yourself in the fictions of trans people
causes trans youth to self-harm); and so on.
The main point of such articles seems to be to operate as a giant
guilt-trip for the reader. As with the philosophers earlier, the ultimate aim
here isn’t a relatively neutral pursuit of truth but rather a simulacrum of
academic discourse which will bring the reader to accept certain predetermined
conclusions. This is suggested, partly by the fact that many of the people who
produce these sorts of articles seem to have vested interests, economic or
personal, for keeping the whole fiction on the road; but also partly because
what they produce is so often full of sloppy mistakes, and failures to observe
even basic methodological norms. Others are more qualified to illustrate these
flaws but, with respect to the research articles I linked to just now, this piece, this one, this one, this one, and this one seem revealing.
A charitable explanation of this unusual level of incompetence is that
the goal was never truth in the first place. If motivating others to become
immersed in fictions is your aim, then the actual use of reliable
truth-tracking methodologies is bound to be less important than the
superficially convincing appearance of their use.
2) Exploring a parallel universe
A compelling fiction can give us a snapshot of what life might be like
if our starting point was different to the world we know: what else might be
true, say, if British people lived under a totalitarian dictatorship with
powers of mass surveillance (1984); or if there was a species of
otherwise human-like beings that had no fixed sex (The Left Hand of Darkness);
or if Germany and Japan had won WWII (The Man in the High Castle), and
so on. Filling in the fictional consequences of an initial made-up scenario is
another way that authors make certain stories vivid and interesting.
Kids immersed in make-believe stories do something more basic but still
similar, using toys and other household props they have around them. So for
instance, a kid’s make-believe game might go: if this doll is a “explorer”, and
this chair is an “elephant”, then, if I put the doll on top of the chair, “an
explorer is riding an elephant”.
So too does trans activism, with the help of the media and the academy,
work to fill in the consequences of the original fiction that transwomen are
“women”. Partly this is a matter of working out what would follow logically,
given the way the concepts “woman” and “man” usually work. For instance, if
transwomen are “women”, then transwomen are a sub-set of women generally, so we
also need a special word for the sub-set of women that aren’t trans: “cis
women”. If transwomen are “women”, then, since women before the age of sexual
maturity are “girls”, transwomen before the age of sexual maturity are “girls”
too. Since women who have children are “mothers”, transwomen with children are
also “mothers”. Since women exclusively sexually attracted to other women are
“lesbians”, transwomen exclusively sexually attracted to other women are
“lesbians” as well (and so on and so on).
And then there’s the practice of extending the entitlements and
resources of women to transwomen, because transwomen are “women”, so they are
imagined to share precisely those entitlements and need exactly those resources
too. As we now know to women’s cost, being immersed in the fiction that
transwomen are “women” has led to the dismantling of single-sex services and
resources built painstakingly over years, largely in the pursuit of aesthetic
verisimilitude for males.
Meanwhile, if transwomen are “women”, and certain events and experiences
characteristically happen to women, then the logic of the fiction dictates that
transwomen must undergo these too. So for instance, transwomen are supposed to
suffer from “misogyny”, because women suffer from misogyny (a fiction
given further oomph by the fact that experiencing misogyny or even sexual
violence is a common sexual fantasy of autogynephilic males).
Transwomen have period symptoms, menopause symptoms, and so on.
This working out of fictional consequences goes on at the particular as
well as the general level. Martine Rothblatt is a transwoman, and transwomen
are female; Martine Rothblatt is paid more than any woman CEO in America; so
this makes Rothblatt the “the highest paid female executive in America” according
to New York magazine. Lia Thomas is a transwoman, and
transwomen are women; Lia Thomas is a faster swimmer than any woman at the
University of Pennsylvania; this means Lia Thomas has broken “women’s records” for swimming. Novelist Torrey Peters
is a transwoman, and transwomen are women: this means Peters’ novel Detransition
Baby is eligible for longlisting in the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022.
In this story-world, women’s achievements are gradually reduced, to be
replaced with altogether grimmer kinds of headline involving “women” engaged in
characteristically male crimes such as paedophilia, violent assault, and
indecent exposure. Last week, the Scottish Daily Record reported that Shay Sims, “a female” in court who had
“pleaded guilty to three charges of assault by beating, criminal damage and
outraging public decency”, had “raised her dress up and lowered her pants to reveal
a penis and continued to walk 40 feet with the penis exposed”. And last
Wednesday, the New York Times reported that an “83-year-old woman”, already guilty
of killing two other women, had been discovered carrying the torso of a
dismembered woman out of an apartment building.
What, meanwhile, of the consequences of the original fictions that
transmen are “men”? In the contrasting case of the fiction that transmen
are “men”, given the centrality of the concept “man” to so many discourses, in
theory there should be ample material for campaigners to get stuck into. To
some extent they have: for instance, in the ongoing campaign in the UK to have a transman registered as a
legal “father” on a birth certificate. But curiously, in most other areas men’s
spaces, resources, entitlements, and achievements are being left untouched.
3) Retconning the past
Some story-makers engage in “retconning” — making new stories continuous
with old ones by changing elements of the old one retrospectively. Famously —
at least, for people my age and older — in the soap opera Dallas, the
character Bobby, previously killed off, was brought back a whole series later,
alive, with the explanation that it had all been a dream while he was in the
shower.
In trans activism, a form of retconning takes place all the time, as a
further means of producing convincing back stories for current fictions. So
much of the trans activist story-world depends on trans people having been a
permanent feature of human life throughout history, no matter what the
surrounding cultural or historical context. And so we find the retrospective
fictional transing of notable sex-non-conforming figures from history: for
instance, Marsha P. Johnson; Ewan Forbes; James Barry; Joan of Arc; Queen Hatshepsut; Kurt Cobain. We also get the creative reinterpretation of
other cultural traditions, with the Hijra, Fa’afafine, Fakaleitī, and Kathoey
people all anomalously represented under the essentially Western, relatively
modern concept of “trans”.
And then, of course, we also get the fiction of the “trans” child — the
most audacious retcon of them all. Transwomen who are “women” must once have
been “girls”, and transmen who are “men” must once have been “boys” — which, by
extrapolation, means that there must be “girls” in the population of male
children, and “boys” in the population of female children, right now. “Trans”
children (so often female, but never mind about that) “know who they are”, and should have the “freedom to be
themselves”, we are told. Yet this “freedom” may well involve a child’s taking
drugs that will make her infertile; or give her premature osteoporosis; or
bring about the surgical removal of her breasts, ovaries, and womb before she’s
had any chance to reflect on the implications.
Thousands of children and teens worldwide have been encouraged by adults
to thoroughly immerse themselves in this fiction – indeed, to start believing
in it, full stop — instead of treating it as one make-believe game among many,
as part of a healthy development. Children’s bodies are being used as props in
adult dramas they have no way of properly understanding until it’s too late for
them.
4) Remembering to turn off your phone
When you go to the cinema, you’re sometimes reminded to switch off your
phone. Annoying ringtones can grab the attention of someone immersed in a
fiction and return them unpleasantly to consciousness of the real world.
Reminders of reality are also lurking out there, ready to distract those
currently immersed in trans activist fictions. There’s the annoying fact that
biological sex in humans is immutable. Remembering this can be a real buzzkill
when you’re trying to persuade yourself that Lia Thomas is just an ordinary
woman unusually good at swimming. This, I think, is why trans activists
systematically object to statements that biological sex in humans can’t be
transcended.
In a recent case, several student editors of the academic journal Law
and Contemporary Problems publicly resigned when they found out their journal would be
publishing an article of mine entitled: “The Importance of
Referring to Human Sex in Language”. (Please do read it to annoy them.) There
are several precedents for this, of course — most obviously, the anomalously
severe treatment of Lisa Littman’s paper on rapid onset gender
dysphoria a few years back.
A fear of breaking the fourth wall is also, I think, what makes trans
activists panic so much about J.K. Rowling’s forthright interventions on the
harms of modern trans activism to women and girls. Rowling has the courage to
describe the reality of male behaviours that harm women and girls, regardless
of the identities of either. Perhaps precisely because she understands so well
the difference between fiction and reality, the creator of
“He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” is both willing and able to name things that others
dare not. She also has the communicative power and cultural clout to get her
message out to millions. To those emotionally or indeed financially invested in
trans fictions, and who desire others to remain immersed too, this must be
terrifying.
And then there’s the Detrans Subreddit. It has 27K members, mostly young, and
many of whom talk frankly about the harms to their bodies and minds caused by
premature transition. Some of those who post on this subreddit are desperate
for help, and their testimonies are truly shocking. You might well wonder: why
don’t those in the progressive media report on the phenomenon more
unambiguously? For this is a medical scandal unfolding in plain sight.
The answer is that the existence of detransitioners reminds people that
psychological identifications can be temporary, especially in adolescence, and
that there’s no inevitability about transitioning on the basis of feelings of
dysphoria. The idea that someone is “born trans” or has no choice but to
transition, given “who they really are inside”, is a myth. Detransitioners
establish this. Now, not all trans people are committed to ignoring this fact —
far from it. But many do seem to be, as do large numbers of self-styled trans
allies. And collectively they seem motivated to exert pressure on others to
ignore it too, no matter what the public cost.
Even more painfully, perhaps, the phenomenon of detransitioners reminds
parents of transitioned children that they might well be making a terrible
mistake in allowing their child to be medicated — a mistake that may later
cause grave and irrevocable problems for their child’s well-being. I hear that
some of the prominent figures publicly engaged in trying to shut down balanced
discussion about the welfare of trans children in the UK are privately in this
position, and often wonder how it can be that such vested interests go
undeclared.
These people remind me of Christof, the Creator-character in The Truman Show —
desperate to stop their child from reaching the artificial horizon of the
little world that has, unbeknown, been shaped just for them.
This is adapted from a post originally published on Kathleen
Stock’s Substack.
The
fictional world of trans activism - UnHerd
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