Against the Grain

How many intersections can you cram in one feminist?

Debates, duels, and disagreements

Remember the Good Old Days when disagreements were settled with a duel? When disparagement of character could be challenged by the superior marksman, or swordsman, whichever the case may be? It coasted on a perverse sense of honour, predicated in the belief that the only reason one would put their life on the line to defend an idea is if they thought that idea was true enough to risk it.

The actual matter of accuracy or lack thereof, however, was not investigated by these duels. They may have proven that the idea–whatever the idea actually was–was important to the dueling participants. That’s it.

Debates are no different.

I can’t help but roll my eyes to near fatal degree when I hear debate proposals being positioned as acts of truth and discovery. They’re not. Just like the duels of yore, they simply illustrate that two people care enough about a topic to make a public spectacle of their disagreement, and in the absence of a corpse the “winner” is simply whoever the audience liked more–an attitude influenced no doubt by whether or not either speaker pandered to their pre-conceived ideas and prejudices.

After all, if debates were about discovery, the questions would focus on actual research findings, and not reductive buzz words inevitably miring us in the swamplands of linguistic nihilism. It’s not a demonstration of acuity or accuracy of belief. It’s a pissing contest to see whose stream reaches farther. It’s a format that rewards theatrics and melodrama, not logical structure or thoroughness of fact-checking.

So here’s a prediction: Jordan Peterson will win his debate. He will win his debate because suspicion of trans people is the activity du jour of hand-wringing reactionaries. His premises will not be accurate and his conclusions will not be valid, but it won’t matter. His detractors already know he’s full of shit and all the debate is likely to do is contribute to his weeks long gish gallop, his supporters will accept his flawed reasoning because transphobia is the Soup of the Day (but only as long as you call it free speech rather than transphobia). No one will learn much except for whether or not their disdain for one idea or another is represented by one of the parties present. His supporters, confirmed in their prejudice by a fancy academic (hey I guess those fuckin’ nerds are good for something, as long as they agree with me), will carry on with their lives heads firmly planted up their asses. The addresses and phone numbers of his detractors will remain on the internet forever. Fact and reason will fall by the wayside, buried ironically by a man who claims to wear the very concepts as his banner.

Nothing will change. Not from this debate. Not from any debate. Educators will carry on educating despite the ditches Peterson tries to dig for us.

-Shiv

Transition Reactions p12: Well, *I* don’t talk like that

We return to my personal experiences and so require the should-be-obvious disclaimer that I am not a spokeswoman for the entirety of trans folk.

So obviously I am preoccupied with the extent of trans-antagonism even here in Canada, where the government is finally tackling institutional discrimination by mandating nondiscrimination policies. But par for the course, a lot of people don’t understand what discrimination actually is, and think that if something is made illegal it “stops happening,” and now that it might be illegal to discriminate against trans folk in a few more months we can all go home and stop complaining.

What this attitude overlooks are two things: structural discrimination and personal discrimination. I’ll cover structural discrimination another time but even with personal discrimination there’s a fair bit going on.

It’s been criminal to discriminate against cisgender gay people for years, yet cis gay Canadians still exhibit lower socioeconomic outcomes compared to cisgender heterosexuals (“cis het”). Now if you’re the type of person I can’t speak to politely, you blame cis gays for this. Unfortunately for you, all evidence points to cis het folk still enacting–and getting away with–homo-antagonistic discrimination.

Which creates a problem if I try to talk about homo- and trans-antagonism. This is a problem that starts with the actions of cis het people. That means it is impossible in a thorough analysis not to, at some point, examine the role of the majority in the socioeconomic outcomes of the minority.

Which also means, at some point, I have to talk about you. Yes, you, even the ones who take the time to read a trans voice (I’ve recommended many, hopefully I’m not the only one). While I am grateful that you put your money where your mouth is and remember to seek out information before forming an opinion, it is still necessary to discuss how suspicion and denigration of trans folk, especially trans women, is baked into the common understandings of gender itself, and that all of us (even me) may not be able to reach into the corners of our mind to root it out.

Let’s start with an example from a fellow critic of my favourite punching bag: The Roman Catholic Church. There are no shortage of odious reasons to dislike the Catholic institution: They exploit their publicly funded organizations to proselytize to vulnerable people; they lobby for religious exemptions from secular law so they can continue endangering and abusing women and queer folk; they are openly and unabashedly patriarchal and put an alarming amount of effort into conditioning their congregation to accept and propagate this; they shield the perpetrators of child sexual assault; they compare gender variance to nuclear weapons; they guilt-trip their congregation into financing these human rights abuses; and they make sure their church bells are obnoxiously fucking loud.

I could go on, but the point is that there are a few criticisms floating around where the most cutting criticism an atheist can muster against the Church is that its figurehead wears a “dress.” I think that reflects a very interesting system of values where all those other egregious crimes against humanity are somehow unworthy of mention. From a Humanist perspective, “patriarch” is an insult–or at least it ought to be. You needn’t bring in a morally neutral activity such as crossdressing to suggest the Pope is worthy of condemnation. I think you can reach a little higher for better fruit than that.

So it manifests among otherwise well-meaning atheists who are generally in favour of QUILTBAG rights & affirmation yet haven’t made the connection between mocking people like Trump because of statues depicting him as fat and ostensibly intersex; and how this message simultaneously denigrates fat & intersex people. As with the Pope, it’s not like there’s a shortage of reasons to really rag on Trump here.

Having written about these issues for a long time I won’t suggest we reduce our coverage trying to understand the impact of deliberate, willful trans-antagonism. I am all too happy to render individual Catholics uncomfortable when I suggest their institution advocates for my psychiatric abuse and that they are complicit in this. And the damage Catholic lobbyists have done to human rights issues is undeniable across the globe.

But supporting a community as embattled as the trans community means understanding that a broader body of accidental, unintentional bias still contributes to our difficulties, and in that respect I need myself and anyone who calls themselves a trans ally to not write ourselves off when we talk about trans-antagonism. That means when I say stuff like “cis het people do this,” don’t walk out of the room and count yourself out because you’re “one of the good ones.” It’s quite likely that you have and will do ‘this,’ even if by accident.

It’s okay, the same is true for me. I just hope we all have the patience and maturity to sit ourselves down and learn from it. What we don’t need is for you to tell us what a great ally you are, we need you to show us by contributing to the accountability of those advancing trans-antagonistic positions, even if unintentionally. Which includes yourself.

 

-Shiv

Breaking news: 9 out of 10 Canadians plan to spend American election day rocking back and forth

In a BREAKING exclusive from The Beaverton, we have received completely totally accurate data on Canadians’ plans for election day!

OTTAWA – A recent survey has revealed that 9 out of every 10 Canadians will spend the entirety of November 8 experiencing a moderate to severe panic attack, manifesting itself in curling into a ball and mumbling ‘this isn’t happening’ over and over again.

“In 2012 I got together with some friends and we had a lot of fun live tweeting Obama’s re-election,” said Shanique Balewa of Winnipeg. “But this year I think I’m just going to sit in a dark room with trembling hands as I constantly refresh CNN on my phone.”

“That or just take a bunch of ambien and hope my nightmares are not as bad as the real world nightmare we may be about to experience,” she added.

From coast to coast, millions of Canadians advised of similar “rocking/moaning” plans. There were variations – some planned to constantly call friends and repeatedly ask, “Trump can’t possibly win right?”, while others intended to never say the name, relying on the Macbeth/Voldemort principal. Still the central activity of holding yourself close to prevent thinking about the horrible, shockingly likely, possibility remained a constant.

“Huhhh, ohhhhh, huhhh, ohhhhh, ohhhh man, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, please no. Tell me this isn’t happening,” said Simon Donahue of Fredericton as he entered into his fifth straight hour of shaking.

The nation’s therapists have reported efforts to calm Canadian’s election , though many note that upon discussing the source of patients’ fears, the mental health professionals joined the 90% and commenced panicking.

Reached for comment, Prime Minister Trudeau admitted to Canadians that, like most of them, he also plans to spend “freaking the eff out”. Sources in the PMO say this stems not only from fears of actually having to work with a the former reality TV host, but frustration over how a Trump Presidency would derail the PM’s plans to break the internet again by posting a “#feminist selfie” with Hillary.

The survey also revealed that the remaining 10% of Canadians were offering to e-mail in some YouTube videos that showed Hillary was just as bad.

Thanks for this BREAKING NEWS, Beaverton.

[I laughed in a “haha too real” kind of way. In case it wasn’t obvious: The Beaverton is a satire site]

-Shiv

French Roman Catholics still beating a dead horse

We know that thanks to terrorist efforts, nationalist and fascist groups across the West are gaining momentum. We also know from history that nationalists have a tendency to draw arbitrary lines about what makes one a “true” countryman, and that the QUILTBAG community is always outside those lines. In fact the effect is so predictable that I debated investing stock in the baseball bat business, because we all know nationalists just love to beat dead horses.

So it can’t be a coincidence that French Roman Catholics are sensing a resurgency in homo-antagonism and so organized an anti gay-marriage rally despite the fact that the law passed three years ago.

Thousands of opponents of gay marriage took to the streets of Paris on Sunday to defend their vision of family values, hoping to revive the issue in political debates ahead of next year’s presidential election.

About 24,000 people took part in the demonstration, police said, far fewer than the several hundreds of thousands the group “Demo for All” mobilized in 2012 and 2013 in an unexpectedly strong show of opposition from conservatives, especially Roman Catholics.

The Socialist government legalized same-sex marriage, which it called “Marriage for All”, in 2013.

Police said 13 people were arrested after a scuffle at the protest, including six topless women from the activist group Femen. Some of them had words “Hate is not a family value” scrawled on their chests.

Organizers of Sunday’s protest aim to pressure politicians on the right, who face a presidential primary next month, to agree to repeal the law if they are elected president.

The protesters marched through prosperous western sections of Paris, waving French flags and the “Demo for All” movement’s blue and pink colors. Some held signs declaring “All together for the family” and “In 2017, I’ll vote for the family.”

Again, they seldom bother to explain how not shitting on Queer people somehow constitutes an assault on the family. Meanwhile QUILTBAG people wanting to, you know, start a family, still can’t thanks to the abusive Catholic lobby.

Let’s say I really like turkey sandwiches, so I go to a sub store to get a turkey sandwich. What the anti-gay lobbyists are doing is essentially shouting from the spot behind me in line that I shouldn’t be allowed to have a turkey sandwich because they prefer ham sandwiches. That the ham is still there for them to purchase seems to escape them.

I will never understand the rationale for this so-called “family values” rhetoric because they obviously are operating from a very twisted idea of what family is.

Needless to say, fuck off Christofascists. Those of us privy to history know better than to view you as anything but a menace.

-Shiv

Triggering Canadian Nationalists

Content Notice: Defacing the flag, I guess?

Let it never be said that sensitivity and the need for safe spaces is in any way monopolized by minorities or liberals. As it turns out, all you need to do to ‘offend’ a certain brand of Canadian Nationalists is add some colour to a piece of fucking fabric:

TRIGGERED

I got a rape threat on my Facebook for sharing this. Facebook says said threat “isn’t a community standards violation.”

According to internet trash basket Life Site News, this ‘distortion’ of the Canadian flag ‘disturbed’ the head of the Christian Heritage Party.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared at the Toronto Gay Pride Parade waving a Canadian flag with the vertical red bars replaced by the rainbow stripes of the LGBTQ movement.

“It’s disturbing to see the flag put to such a use,” Rod Taylor, head of the Christian Heritage Party, told LifeSiteNews. “He is showing disrespect for all the Canadians who disagree with him on the gay agenda. He is basically saying, ‘This is the new Canada, so get used to it.’”

Yes, Rod Taylor, that is the message. You can’t institutionalize second class status for (cis) queer citizens. Boo hoo. I’d drink your tears but I think my doctor would advise against it–that much salt is bad for my health.

Life Site News goes on to correctly point out:

Another site, Findlaw.ca, goes further, stating “the Canadian flag may be a symbol of pride, unity, honour, and sacrifice, but it’s not against the law to disrespect, deface, and destroy it.” In fact, “there are no laws against desecration, such as burning, shredding, stomping, or spitting on it. However objectionable, such acts are protected forms of expression under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Yes, this is the part that reactionaries always forget about their so-called freeze peach: Actual freedom of speech protects citizens criticizing the state, and that criticism can include ‘defacing’ the flag, if we were even to accept that this qualifies as defacing. But perhaps nationalists are too busy arbitrarily drawing lines on “true” Canadians to remember that. They’ll romantically say shit like “people died for that flag!” and then promptly ignore the part where the war the soldier died in was ostensibly to protect our freedoms.

Freedoms like defacing the flag.

-Shiv

Words matter: Trans woman murdered after father calls for her death on TV

Content Notice: transmisogynistic murder, misgendering

I want to show this to the “sticks and stones” crowd, the free speech absolutists whose whining about pushback to denigrating trans people remains blissfully unaware of the violence we actually face because of trans-antagonistic attitudes.

A Russian woman was brutally hacked to death mere days after her wedding after her father called for her death on TV because she is transgender:

A transgender Muslim woman in Russia was hacked to death only days after marrying the man of her dreams.

Raina Aliev’s own own father had gone on television publicly called for her murder.

‘Bring him here and kill him in front of my eyes,’ Alimshaikh Aliev had told a local TV station.

‘Let him be killed, I don’t want to see him. Bring him here and kill him in front of my eyes.’

Aliev, 25, had gender confirmation surgery in Moscow and married a man named Viktor, according to the Daily Mail.

The victim had informed law enforcement authorities about the threat but to no avail.

The circumstances of her murder and where the killing took place have not been revealed. But it is known that the body was cut up and unrecognizable.

It’s the deadliest year on record to be transgender, with every country that tracks demographic-specific hate crime reporting massive spikes in anti-queer and anti-trans violent crime.

And all you can get cis folk to talk about is fuck mothering pronouns.

-Shiv

Snark of the Month: October

We can’t have nice things because of assholes. That’s why the comments are subject to such a rigorous editorial control, but the downside is that people don’t like seeing their comments constantly put in moderation. I know it’s frustrating! But otherwise the comments would derail very quickly. To incentivize your participation despite the annoyance of constant moderation, we have monthly celebrations for snarky contributions!

 

Snark of the Month: Johnny Vector

In a post where McCrory discusses the social impact on himself of introducing HB2, in which he compares people exercising their right of association to disassociate with an odious bigot to the disappearing act of intelligence operatives in 1984, Vector replies:

Man, I still remember physically shaking after that scene in the 1984 film of 1984 where Winston gets disinvited from a charity event.

Word, Johnny.

Runner up: Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-

Giliell characterizes the fretful Dr. Peterson and his supporters perfectly:

Suggestion: Just go “lalalalalala”. Though even that will lead people to certain conclusions about you. We get it: You want to say whatever you want without anybody ever being allowed to criticise you, to point out the harm you’re causing, without anybody ever making the conclusion that you are, indeed, a bigot and an asshole and subsequently, oh the horrors, no longer invite you to their parties.
Fucking language, how does it work?

I don’t know Giliell, this is the same guy who used the singular they/their in a rant about how they/their wasn’t “grammatically correct.”

Snark on lovelies!

-Shiv

 

 

At least one trans-antagonistic lawsuit loses

With the largely patchwork approach to trans rights, we’re starting to see the United States split in twain along the exact same fault lines it does for every single other social issue.

Illinois is one of the many states in which a lawsuit was filed alleging that a trans girl’s existence constitutes a privacy violation (I’m not even exaggerating–that’s the argument) and thankfully, this lawsuit has suffered its first blow.

Throughout the recommendation, Gilbert laid out in detail why these students are not harmed by sharing a space with a transgender classmate. Indeed, they are not even required to share a space with her, as there are alternative restrooms that they may use. If they’re uncomfortable, they can voluntarily use a different facility or make use of a privacy stall withoutforcing transgender students to be ostracized to other spaces.

Though the plaintiffs — who insistently misgendered Student A throughout their briefs — would disagree, Gilbert agreed that “a transgender person’s gender identity is an important factor to be considered in determining whether his or her needs, as well as those of cisgender people, can be accommodated in the course of allocating or regulating the use of restrooms and locker rooms. So, to frame the constitutional question in the sense of sex assigned at birth while ignoring gender identity frames it too narrowly for the constitutional analysis.”

The student plaintiffs’ claim that a transgender student would violate their sense of privacy and safety was not convincing. “There is absolutely no evidence in this record that allowing transgender high school students to use restrooms or locker rooms consistent with their gender identity increases the risk of sexual assault,” Gilbert pointed out in a footnote. He also highlighted that the military now “allows transgender personnel to serve openly and fully integrated in all military services” and the NCAA “includes transgender student-athletes in collegiate sports consistent with their gender identity.”

“Neither the Restroom Policy nor the Locker Room Agreement shocks the conscience,” he wrote. Given the accommodations available, “put simply, this case does not involve any forced or involuntary exposure of a student’s body to or by a transgender person assigned a different sex at birth.”

What is refreshing to see is a legal professional actually using the same terms recommended by gender affirmative healthcare models. That makes it rather clear what the trans-antagonistic demands actually are: Stop existing.

-Shiv

Second free speech rally at U of T: Less violent, still wrong

Content Notice: More trans-antagonistic codswallop.

A second rally for “free speech” was recently hosted at the University of Toronto inspired by the events of Dr. Jordan Peterson’s hysterics, in which the protesters characterize Bill C-16 as being Orwellian, totalitarian, and Maoist. This event was considerably smaller–only 60 attendants versus several hundred–and it did not feature Dr. Peterson himself nor was Rebel Media there to foment a riot. When you don’t have avowedly dishonest demagogues whipping people into a frenzy, actual dialogue can occur.

Colour me surprised.

The protesters and the Facebook event are described as follows:

The event’s description on Facebook stated that “radical left wing activists are trying to impose censorship on our thoughts and speech, and declare a moratorium on any form of expression that THEY deem offensive.”

The rally’s organizers insisted their event was apolitical.Speaking to The Varsity, organizer Maria Morzc said that “Free speech is not a system of beliefs; it is a fundamental human right. And, also, free speech is, basically, I mean, all we want is to state our opinions without being silenced, without being labelled, without being assaulted, and we welcome members of the so-called ‘radical left.’”

Another organizer, Riley Moher, described the group as “not a libertarian group, we’re not an alt-right group, we’re not a liberal group, we just stand for the freedom of speech.”

Here we go, in the spirit of actual dialogue: Basically everything you said is still bullshit. Let’s walk through this one word at a time.

radical left wing activists

Man, isn’t it great how scary you can make something sound when you label it as “radical”? Respecting the pronouns of trans people is radical now. It really is illustrating the bias here. Bill C-16 would criminalize the advocacy of genocide against trans people as well as public incitements to violence, but apparently saying you shouldn’t do that is “radical.” 

Hypothesis: “Radical” here means, “people I don’t like.”

are trying to impose censorship on our thoughts and speech

Only the exact same censorship on your speech that has already existed for every other protected class in the Criminal Code for 40 odd years now. Are you seriously defending the right of people to advocate for genocide?

Also, how does one censor thoughts? No one has said you ought to be subjected to a frontal lobotomy for your inanity. Ridiculous.

and declare a moratorium on any form of expression that THEY deem offensive.

I’ll happily point out you’re trying to declare a moratorium on respecting trans people’s pronouns. It’s a knife that cuts both ways here.

The rally’s organizers insisted their event was apolitical

And I’m the Queen of England.

Free speech is not a system of beliefs; it is a fundamental human right.

Human rights are a system of beliefs. There is no objective system granting value to people’s lives. That is a social construct we more-or-less agree upon to facilitate stability and relative safety in our society. But we are, in the scheme of the universe itself, just a bunch of carbon bickering with itself on an irrelevant speck of sand on a miles long beach.

And, also, free speech is, basically, I mean, all we want is to state our opinions without being silenced

Okay but Bill C-16, again, is concerned with those opinions that think we should die for being who we are. If you aren’t calling for us to be put to death, you are more likely to be struck by lightning than charged with a hate crime.

It is also free speech for people to criticize you. Nobody is silencing you when we say you’re full of shit, or factually wrong, or blind to your own biases. I suspect what you actually want is to say a bunch of bullshit and go unchallenged for it.

without being labelled

CALLED IT.

What do you want me to do? “Transphobic” or “trans-antagonistic” are just words attempting to condense “suspicion or denigration of trans identities” into fewer syllables. Do you want to censor me for pointing out these patterns of belief as expressed by you and your freeze peach lobby?

without being assaulted

Okay sure, but that at least applies to both sides here. More generally, trans people are many many many many times more likely to be assaulted than you are, so maybe you should be directing your anti-assault efforts to cis people? Just a suggestion.

and we welcome members of the so-called ‘radical left.’

For the record, that was Dr. Peterson’s framing of the issue. I do not consider myself radical because I expect the correct name and pronouns to be used in reference to me as is the case with all cis people.

(I consider myself radical because I would see the means of production in the hands of the proletariat).

not a libertarian group

Free Speech Absolutism is certainly compatible with Libertarianism though.

we’re not an alt-right group

Your particular rally doesn’t set off those bells of mine, no. Your rally is a babbling mess but it reminds me more of naive freshmen still railing against “The Man” than it does of reactionary dickheads who want to deliberately restore second-class citizenship for anyone not cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, white and male.

we’re not a liberal group

I promise you the last thing I was going to accuse you of was being liberal.

we just stand for the freedom of speech

Just freedom for thee and none for me, apparently. Remember, you want to express your bullshit without me criticizing you for expressing bullshit. That’s not how this works.

 

Next statement:

A number of the speakers made comparisons between the university’s request that Peterson stop making public statements and totalitarianism. One speaker compared their struggle to the struggles of Chinese citizens decades ago in having to adopt the ideology of Maoism or face execution. “We’re faced [with] the idea of political correctness, with the social ostracization of us, of people who speak out against such mediocrity, against such cruelty, against such an affront to human rationality and the liberal values that Canada and America and the rest of the civilized world has been based on,” he said.

This is rich.

One speaker compared their struggle to the struggles of Chinese citizens decades ago in having to adopt the ideology of Maoism or face execution

We don’t have the death penalty in Canada.

We’re faced [with] the idea of political correctness

As I’ve said before, the freeze peach crowd wants to install political correctness too: It wants to elevate ignorance about gender variance to be politically correct despite the mountain of evidence contradicting their statements. We all want political correctness, and you need to stop pretending otherwise.

with the social ostracization of us

I’m sorry, none of the free speech protesters have been doxxed and are receiving death threats. It’s the trans protesters who cannot return to class until the RCMP has contained or discredited the threats. You’re trying to tell me that saying you’re full of shit is “ostracization”? You whiny fucking child.

of people who speak out against such mediocrity, against such cruelty

Expecting you to use the correct pronoun is “cruelty” now. I suppose the 90+% of us who have been, you know, actually assaulted is–what–mercy?

against such an affront to human rationality

Ahhh the old “my opponent is crazy” rhetorical tactic.

the liberal values that Canada and America and the rest of the civilized world has been based on

Liberal values like my right to say you’re full of shit? I am happily exercising that, right now.

 

Next statement:

Jacob Ritchie was walking by the event when he decided to participate, and he expressed an opposing view. Speaking of Bill C-16 — a piece of legislation aimed at protecting individuals from discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression that Peterson criticizes in one of his lectures — Ritchie said to the crowd, “There’s nothing saying, like, if you go up to a guy and talk to them and you don’t use their pronouns you go to jail or you’re sectioned under the human rights law. It’s if you discriminate against them and you can go and prove that they’ve suffered a harm. And really I think there’s a much higher bar for that than you guys think there is. I think this whole thing is misguided.”

Guess what the freeze peach attenders did?

Ritchie was heckled by some attendees during his statements

“Freedom for me and none for thee” indeed. The organizer of the rally hushed the hecklers, to their credit, but it really punches holes in the whole “freedom of speech” banner they claim to fly.

Again, the high bar Ritchie is referring to is “advocacy for genocide” and “public incitement of hatred.” Are you seriously having to check yourself constantly lest you accidentally let slip “death to all trans”? These fears raised by the freeze peach crowd just do not connect with any reasonable sense of risk. It would be like objecting to the criminalization of attempted murder because every time you walk past someone you have to steel yourself to not randomly stab them to death. Seriously?

 

Next statement:

Morzc said that her cause supports marginalized groups and stressed the importance of free expression to address the issues that these groups face.“Please clear up the confusion. Because, you know, we support the LGBTQ rights and the Black rights, the rights of Black students, the rights of Black individuals in society, in general, and we recognize that they face unique challenges, and we recognize that they need to address those challenges,” she explained. “However, we believe that actually promoting freedom of speech and freedom of expression would go a long way towards actually addressing these existing problems, and stifling free speech will do the opposite.”

I love the “I’m not prejudiced, but” line. It never works.

The former half of Morzc’s statement is just peachy keen, but I fail to see how you can reconcile the intention to promote the safety and well-being of QUILTBAG citizens when there are other citizens who have no intentions of interrogating their prejudices, no intentions of listening or learning, no intentions of fact checking, and every intention of avowedly and self-admittedly antagonizing the safety and well-being of those QUILTBAG citizens. It’s just not compatible to claim reactionary dickheads who want to hurt us deserve the platform to express those sentiments whilst also claiming to care about the QUILTBAG people targeted by this prejudice.

Peterson is a professor. Now that he has gone on record to publicly state he has every intention of discriminating against the trans students who enter his class, he has explicitly erected a barrier to trans folk at the U of T. If any of his classes are core classes for a degree, then trans folk trying to get that degree now have to enter Dr. Peterson’s class trusting that his prejudice won’t unfairly affect his ability to grade them. Alternatively, if they can pretend to not be trans, they might be able to avoid that prejudice–but then, Dr. Peterson forcing trans students to make that choice in the first place (if it’s even an option) clearly demonstrates that he has disregarded the rights of the trans students, specifically the right to access education. This isn’t an issue of two peers in disagreement. This is an issue of a person in a position of authority openly admitting he will abuse that authority to single out certain students.

This is what the U of T faculty were referring to in their letter, that as an educator he has a “responsibility to follow the law and follow U of T policies.” If the U of T doesn’t want to be known as a school that deliberately creates barriers for a certain class of students, it is compelled to repudiate Dr. Peterson. Dr. Peterson has admitted he knows this. He’s tapping into the martyr complex of the far-right by throwing himself on the sword, proving that the “SJWs” and “radical-leftists” are out to get him, when in reality we recognize that he is compromising a number of rights that trans people theoretically have, which have less to do with pronouns and more to do with accessing the same education everybody else can get. They will blame us for the target he painted on his own back.

There’s no guarantee how this will go. Being tenured, it will be next to impossible to actually turf Peterson. But the U of T also has the right to recognize the effect his spastic, howling, attention-seeking episode has had on trans students.

Ultimately what the freeze peach crowd wants is freedom from consequences, as evidenced by their obsession with Peterson. They want their prejudice against trans people to go unchallenged. Peterson is just a convenient screen onto which these anxieties are projected. That’s why it’s not about the legalities of Bill C-16: If they could be bothered to do their homework on Canada’s hate crime legislation, they’d see the threshold you have to cross to be charged. Since I doubt so many of them are publicly posting plans for school shootings, I also doubt any of them will ever face legal consequences for their actions.

And so we resort to social consequences. You know, the things like “that isn’t corroborated by the evidence,” “that’s not true,” “the study doesn’t say that,” “citation needed,” “that’s incredibly rude,” “there’s no reason to believe that,” that sort of thing?

Hardly the disappearing act of the KGB these freeze peachers so fearfully anticipate.

-Shiv

Signal boosting: When your existence is up for debate

I will one day try to articulate what it feels like to know an overwhelming majority of mainstream media that an overwhelming majority of voting people access are determined to accept the most dangerous trans-antagonistic premises as simply given when debating our rights. This was the case with Judith Shulevitz’s predictably inaccurate contribution to trans rights discourse, an article I could generously describe as a hit piece rather than a think piece: Is It Time to Desegregate the Sexes?

I struggled with how to formulate a response without repeating myself, as many of the assumptions made by Jesse Singal during his defamatory works on trans people have already been challenged by me, and many of those same assumptions are here. It feels a bit like I’m Hercules fighting the hydra–cut off one head and two more take its place. And chances are the only way I will avoid reproducing the same refutations to the same bullshit peddled by strange bedfellows (religious biological essentialists and radical feminists? ableist hippies and the alt right? under one banner? wtf?) is to eventually collect the bullshit in one place to deal with it all at once.

Thankfully, this time, Chase Stangio stepped into the ring for me, sparing me another grueling analysis and hours of research that trans-antagonists won’t even bother to access.

Whether appearing in the New Yorker, New York Magazine, or the New York Times, these pieces follow the same formula — a non-transgender writer poses a question about the impact of respecting transgender people’s bodies and identities framing it as a “debate”, “culture war” or “clash of values” then interviews a lot of non-transgender people, and concludes that the issue is difficult because unlike other civil rights struggles, transgender people’s demand for humanity infringes the rights of others. Or, as Elinor Burkett put it in a June, 2015 Sunday New York Times op-ed, “the trans movement isn’t simply echoing African-Americans, Chicanos, gays or women by demanding an end to the violence and discrimination, and to be treated with a full measure of respect. It’s demanding that women reconceptualize ourselves.”

…

What Burkett and Shulevitz do is normalize the idea that demands by trans people to, as Burkett says, “be treated with a full measure of respect” necessarily hurt others. For Burkett this is by “demanding” that “women reconcentualize” themselves and for Shulevitz it is by implicating/upsetting the privacy and modesty rights of others — mostly cisgender girls. Though their frame takes these tensions as a given, they are anything but given. Instead, this framing reflects the authors’ ideological views about transgender people disguised by the sanitizing language of clashing values. It is dangerous to accept the premise of these pieces without interrogating those underlying views.

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Lacking the voices of any transgender people or advocates, Shulevitz’s “debate” is set-up to reinforce all the assumptions about transgender people that many people share — the view that transgender girls and boys are not real girls and boys, the view that the bodies of transgender people infringe the rights of others, the view that inclusion of transgender people would disrupt educational and extracurricular settings.

She systemically introduces voices to reinforce each of these assumptions and never offers the expertise of individuals who can show that none of these assumptions is correct. She quotes Alliance Defending Freedom, a libertarian law professor, a so-called “radical feminist” organization defined by their belief that women who are trans are actually men, and a select group of educators to ostensibly highlight the challenges that transgender people pose in educational settings. Absent from her piece are the voices of transgender people, advocates, medical associations, pediatric associations, school administrators, and others who could clearly explain based on concrete experience that none of these assumptions comports with reality.

If she is going to deem protecting transgender people “a revolution” of notable “magnitude” then it might be useful to include the many school administrators who have testified to the exact opposite of her provocative warning — that such protections caused no disruption at school and were implemented seamlessly. This hyperbolic suggestion that merely allowing transgender people to be present in the locker room with their peers — most of whom love and respect them for who they are — is a revolution is offensive to both the concept of revolution and to the humanity of trans people. All Shulevitz has accomplished through this framing is to reinforce the talking points advanced by anti-trans groups like Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

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When I challenged Shulevitz about this on Twitter, she responded dismissively and defensively and then deleted her tweets and ended the conversation. My intention was never to demonize her but to draw attention to the risks of what she did on a platform as powerful as the Sunday Times.

As writer Imogen Binnie explained on Twitter, when reading pieces like Shulevitz’s, one must ask “what does this article propose trans people should do”

“[I]f the answer is something like ‘not be trans,’ please consider that most trans people have tried that and it didn’t work,” Binnie tweeted.

And the effect of Shulevitz’s piece is no better demonstrated than the comments over on the NYT. Self-professed Butlerians high-fiving evangelicals interspersed with calls to arms to “protect America’s women.”

Guys, I’m tired of fighting. Jesus Christ.

-Shiv

Zack Ford has also taken Shulevitz to task.