Tolerance is a peace treaty, not a moral imperative

Yonatan Zunger discusses the tolerance red herring so frequently deployed by supremacists of various stripes. It’s a load of bunk.

The title of this essay should disturb you. We have been brought up to believe that tolerating other people is one of the things you do if you’re a nice person — whether we learned this in kindergarten or from Biblical maxims like “love your neighbor as yourself” and “do unto others.”

But if you have ever tried to live your life this way, you will have seen it fail: “Why won’t you tolerate my intolerance?” This comes in all sorts of forms: accepting a person’s actively antisocial behavior because it’s just part of being an accepting group of friends; being told that prejudice against Nazis is the same as prejudice against Black people; watching people try to give “equal time” to a religious (or irreligious) group whose guiding principle is that everyone must join them or else.

Every one of these examples should raise your suspicions that something isn’t right; that tolerance be damned, one of these things is not like the other. But if you were raised with an intense version of “tolerance is a moral requirement,” then you may feel that this is a thought you should fight off.

It isn’t.

Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business. But the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms. It is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact.

I am sadly unaware of any tool to get rid of the Medium users’ highlighting (they’ve effectively highlighted the entire article which is just SO MUCH SIGH) but try to tolerate it here. (see what i did therr)

-Shiv

 

Autogynephilia: A method of character assassination, not a scientific theory

Content Notice: Trans-antagonistic nonsense of many varieties.

Miranda Yardley has, much to my despair, started clogging the “transgender” tag on Medium, which is one of many ways I try to track what is being discussed about gender variance. For those of you who don’t know her–congratulations, count yourself lucky–she’s a self-described “transsexual male” who has politically aligned herself with a group of people who gleefully argue for her own subordination. She gallivants about the United Kingdom, coasting in on the benefits hard won for her by trans activism, all while arguing how harmful trans activism is. It’s the sort of hypocritical blinkered nonsense you typically see from the forced-birther movement, who often access the very services they protest. She is, basically, a British Blaire White, carving out a niche in profiting from telling the trans-suspicious what they want to hear while being simultaneously trans. This includes her latest invocation of one of the anti-trans types’ favourite cudgel: Autogynephilia, an idea (calling it a “theory” would be an insult to science) promoted by Dr. Ray “transsexuals will sort themselves out later” Blanchard.

[Read more…]

Yep, transmisogyny: Still misogyny.

I googled the author of the piece I signal boosted yesterday, and to my delight found that she has also discussed the misogyny invoked in transmisogyny, highlighting one of the fundamental hypocrisies of trans exclusionary “radical feminism.”

Once I had an argument with a cis dude acquaintance about whether trans women should be allowed to compete in women’s sports. Out of nowhere, he burst out with, “I want a family someday!”

He continued, apparently unaware of how non he was sequituring. “How am I supposed to feel about the fact that there are all these women walking around, and maybe they look just like everyone else, but they don’t have uteruses? Why is it transphobic to say I want a woman who can have children?”

My response was, “It’s not transphobic to want children, but it’s misogynistic as hell to say that anyone who can’t give birth is not a woman.” The idea that a woman’s value, or her gender, is determined by her reproductive function is so deeply objectifying that to call it transphobic is to miss the entire point. Note that in his hypothetical there was no question of whether the woman wanted to give birth; he was only interested in whether she was physically capable of fulfilling hisparental desires. The problem with this guy isn’t that he doesn’t want to date trans women. It’s that he sees all women as vessels for his own dreams.

In just this way, whenever you scratch the surface of transmisogyny (even in the guise of “trans-critical feminism”), you find that it’s just one facet of a deeper hatred and distrust of women. Here are four tenets of transmisogyny that are profoundly dangerous to all women:

You can read more about Lindsay King-Miller’s stupendous take on the issue here, or read my previous post on the same topic here.

-Shiv

Women aren’t people, apparently

Five years ago if you had told me feminists would object to the statement “women are people” I would’ve told you you were off your rocker.

I am wiser now. I understand that there’s a branch of feminists who prioritize their anti-trans animus above all else, and will gleefully enact harm on other women if it means they can bash (or direct an institution to bash) teh trans.

Last month, The Colorado Doula Project (CDP), a grassroots organization that provides “free emotional, physical, and informational support through the spectrum of reproductive experiences,” held the first formal abortion doula training in the state of Colorado. Nearly 50 women and nonbinary people gathered to learn how to accompany clients or friends through the process of terminating a pregnancy.

Sitting in on the training to write about it for Vice, I wasn’t shocked to hear murmurs of a disturbance going-on outside. Of course, I figured, an event with the word “abortion” right there in the name would attract attention from anti-choice zealots.

One of the organizers sighed. “I was expecting to have trouble with the anti-abortion people, but I didn’t think we were going to get attacked by feminists.”

I did a double take, and she filled me in.

Because the Colorado Doula Project strives for intersectionality and accessibility, they talk about their clients and potential clients in gender-neutral terms, referring to “pregnant people” and “birthing parents” so as to encompass DFAB (designated female at birth) transgender and nonbinary people who are not women, but still need pregnancy-related care.

A local self-described fourth-wave feminist attended the abortion doula training despite not agreeing with the CDP’s policy on gender-inclusive language. Early in the first day, she began posting comments on Facebook criticizing the policy, calling it “female erasure,” and saying “I can’t fucking stand third wave liberal feminism.” After being asked to leave, she exhorted a large group of her friends to post negative reviews on Colorado Doula Project’s Facebook page, many of them also accusing the group — which most of them had never had direct contact with — of “female erasure.”

Yes, if an abortion provider services trans men or AFAB enbies, it must be torn down.

Read more about this migraine-inducing blinkered nonsense here.

-Shiv

I know those gates, too

Heather McNamara discusses the political clusterfuck in which lesbians are positioned, having to deal with, all at once, patriarchs, theocrats, cishet feminists, TERFs, armchair psychologists and more assorted twits.

Welcome to lesbianism! And congratulations on your decision to give up dating men. They can be fun sometimes, but I can tell you from experience that lesbianism is way way more fun. For starters, there are boobs. More on that later.

You’ll want to get started right away so let’s get busy on the orientation. We have a lot of stereotypes to roll our eyes at, six seasons of The L Word to get through whether you like it or not – don’t look at me that way – and of course you’ll want to know how to answer all the stupid questions you get from straight friends and family. You’re also going to want to find yourself some lesbian gathering places, but please avoid the temptation to check Craigslist. We’re not as big on the bar scene as our queer brothers are, but you’ll find there are plenty of drum circles, softball teams, and Facebook groups.

Oh uh. There’s just one little snag.

You probably noticed all those people standing at the gates, didn’t you? Yeah, they’re uh… they’re a thing.

If you came over from female heterosexuality, you may never have seen anyone at the gates, flung wide open as they tend to be. It’s funny how ogling girls and making out with girls hardly gets anyone kicked out of female heterosexuality, isn’t it? Especially since, well, if you check to your right over there you can see that the great camo print gates of male heterosexuality are guarded by teams of NoHomo militia. If you came from female bisexuality, you might have a little more experience, mostly in the form of pushy relatives and mansplainers who love to tell you that it’s just a phase. Lucky you didn’t have to deal with the gates of male bisexuality, though! I don’t think anyone’s gotten through there except maybe David Bowie but not all of us can afford helicopters. I’m pretty sure there’s just a trap door out front and a slide that drops you into male homosexuality.

I identify as queer and I’ll be honest, a tiny sliver in the pie chart of “reasons for doing so” is an attempt to sidestep these tedious sexual politics. Read more here.

-Shiv

Oh look the deficit spending did exactly what it was supposed to do

It’s almost as if we have data on this or something.

While Conservatives busy themselves self-immolating over the government’s choice to deficit spend, the economy moved the fuck on and responded exactly as predicted:

Alberta’s economy is more than just back on its feet, it’s about to run faster than any other region in Canada.

Gross domestic product in the western province will rise by 2.9 percent this year, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists, up from an April estimate of 2.5 percent. That matches forecasts for neighbouring British Columbia, and in 2018 Alberta comes out on top with a 2.4 percent expansion that would be tops among Canada’s 10 provinces.

It’s a huge comeback from Alberta’s last place finish in each of the last two years when oil prices plummeted below $50 a barrel, triggering layoffs and an investment freeze that shrank GDP by about 4 percent. The rebound is another sign Canada may retain its top spot among Group of Seven nations as economic growth diversifies away from consumer spending.

Step two, of course, is the part that really gets the Conservatives excited–Keynesian spending requires taxation during the booms. It remains to be seen whether this will be the case. Conservatives tend to shriek “Greece!” the moment someone suggests 8 hours is not an adequate response time in the emergency room, but they do have a point. You have to balance the budget eventually, and a boom is the best time to do just that. Just running a deficit is the easy part, the real test will be whether Alberta’s NDP or the Canadian Liberals actually shear their capitalist sheep. The saying is “tax and spend,” not just “spend,” after all.

-Shiv