In my last meta-announcement about the blog, I had realized that my old beat was depressing me. I’ve since gained a bit of nuance – my old beat is still important to me, although the ways I engaged with it still posed a problem. At that time I hinted that I knew I wanted to do something different, but didn’t entirely know what. I’m committing to “being back,” and here’s what is changing:

Different Input

Social media is useful for bringing things to one’s attention, but at least in my case, both the volume and severity posed serious risks to my mental health. This by itself would be reason enough to change my engagement with sites like Twitter, but it’s also aggravated by social media’s tolerance for deeply abusive people and movements who say things to me that should frankly be unconscionable. What this means:

1. I will be intentionally avoiding commentating on current events on social media; and
2. I will frequently be unfollowing or muting users, key words, or hashtags pertaining to current events (it’s nothing personal, just controlling when and how I access distressing material)

It is already the case that I don’t promise active engagement on any of my outputs after they’re released, so I reiterate that again, I suppose.

Also no more journalism. Academia comes with many problems but they’re at least subjectively preferable to me compared to journalism’s problems.

Different Output

I’ve been giving in-person presentations and conferences on a variety of topics for the better part of 6 years, and at least one silver lining in the pandemic is that my remote delivery thereof helped me envision alternative formats in which to make them. Since I’m still receiving positive receptions for these, I thought I’d try my next project in video format.

I’ve wanted to do a more structured series that allows a reader (or viewer) to build a stronger foundation and apply it with increasing complexity and practicality as the series progresses – a bit like a course, albeit one without testing. And I think I can do it within a larger project I’ve had about rooting philosophy in practical applications. I do not dispute that philosophy as a discipline can be vulnerable to excessive abstraction, but I would object to the idea that this vulnerability means it never has meaningful applications in day-to-day life.

So the next year is going to be focused on the philosophy of human rights: How theories of their origins and properties can cultivate neo-liberalism as a self proclaimed “suprapolitical” (i.e. “moral”) position; whether such a “suprapolitical claim” is fair to make for neo-liberalism; what theories of human rights can explain about attitudes towards the rights of children and their implications for both youth and parents; how and why nascent neofascist movements deploy human rights-sounding rhetoric to advance their aims; the implications the current state of geopolitics has on human rights as a theory; and finally how human decency might be defined and societally practiced in contexts that do not rely on human rights. Or in plain language: Lots of folks know shit is fucked up and know they want change, maybe I can help you anticipate pitfalls in the things you’d like to change.

In some cases this will follow my academic work. I don’t intend to self-cite if I can avoid it, and it will be clear when I do finally indulge, but the main reason I don’t think this project threatens said work is because it’s going to try and be accessible to people outside the subject-matter expertise.

In academia I wouldn’t normally have to worry about this, but since this is the internet, I’ll post a boilerplate disclaimer: I am not arguing that the pursuit of human decency is not an important or worthwhile project; I am describing how the construction of rights as they are currently understood and implemented can promote or impede that pursuit.

Take care of yourselves and each other, and see you again soon. :)

-Shiv

 

As all two of you may have noticed, the blag went silent for a bit. There’s nothing wrong in my meatspace, thankfully, but I recently concluded that a lot of the discourse on gender variance hasn’t been rewarding for me. The same myths continue to be stubbornly peddled, even in respected media outlets, and the material I’ve written to debunk them remains relevant. There just isn’t much point in constantly re-litigating the same lies over and over. At this stage I can just link to the work that’s already done, and can likely continue to do so until there is some major development that shifts scientific consensus. The discourse is stale, and giving me nosebleeds.

The bottleneck for progress now isn’t typically that the research hasn’t been conducted–instead, it’s how willing you are to look for it. Dedicated antagonists to trans rights have an entire industry that creates the trappings of a scientific veneer while selling the same snake oil, and I know no amount of fact-checking will get through to them because it’s not the consensus they’re motivated by. As for the on-the-fencers, the only success I’ve had reaching them is in meatspace, where it is harder (possible, just harder) to dehumanize someone face to face. It seems to be a waste to try over the internet.

In combination with that, I’ve started to receive some traction getting non-fiction work published. This is partly the work I’ve figured out I want to pursue. While I don’t mean to disrespect FTB, it’s certainly nice to do the same work and get a fat cheque at the end. I can paint a picture of what pursuing this work full-time might look like, which makes it all the more tempting to set it as a goal. But it also means my blag has become superfluous as I originally conceived it.

It’s not that I’ll never discuss gender variance again, it just seems that there is more fertile ground on applying existing theory rather than further developing it. I’ve got some preliminary findings that suggest ways to marry labour organizing to minority liberation, for example, and that seems to me more interesting than rehashing Sarah Ditum’s repeated lies and also too niche for corporate media. Anti-authoritarianism has been the north star in my political activity for the past year, so it seems more fruitful to discuss prison abolition or widespread surveillance or questions about the sales pitch you received on law enforcement in your history class.

I’m under no illusions that these issues, too, will likely be subject to the same lies over and over. Perhaps when I’ve hit that point I’ll need to re-calibrate again. But for the time being it’s more interesting to me, and there’s no point to investing this much time in a blag covering a topic that has ceased to satisfy me. It doesn’t pay enough to do something that feels onerous.

Aside from that, I’ve had a fiction project I’ve been sitting on for too long, and publicly announcing it might nudge me into being accountable for finishing it. So look forward to that in the near future, too.

New content to come soon.

-Shiv

Howdy folks.

In the interest of fairness I decided to spruce up my comments policy to be a bit more detailed and explicit. Regulars have more or less already been following these conditions anyways, but I also decided to explicitly document the Points Refuted a Thousand Times. This is to help make more available the myth-busting information, and also to point out that I’m under no obligation to repeat myself when my previous work stands, a demand which has occasionally cropped up in the filtered comments.

Everything below is listed here.

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The first comment you post on Against the Grain is automatically sent into moderation. This is to bring your commentary to my attention. There are a number of things I have little patience for on this blag, detailed below, and if you run afoul of them your comment may be edited, filtered out, or your account banned altogether. Your participation is contingent on the following:

1. Stay on topic

If your first instinct is to change the subject, you’ll likely be called on it. If I start a conversation about the angles Jesse Singal employs in his trans-antagonistic journalism, braying on about this obscure murder committed 30 years ago by a trans woman is not relevant.

2. Make disagreements about the argument

Attack the argument. Question its premises, or question the logical construction. I am not generally fond of attacking the arguer as opposed to the argument. On a related note…

3. Definitely no hate speech

Ad hominems usually net you warnings, unless you employ language that singles out a person’s immutable characteristics as inherently inferior or undesirable, in which case I toss you out. This includes but is not limited to language demeaning gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, ability, sex, etc.

4. No Points Refuted a Thousand Times

My material on trans issues is occasionally repetitive because the opponents to trans rights offer repetitive discourse. If something was wrong six months ago, it remains wrong today unless new information has been produced. So no, I am not going to tailor-suit a refutation to something that has already been shown to be bunk nonsense, and reciting these points uncritically will not impress me.

Some PRATTs relevant to this blog include:

• Transition-related healthcare is specifically to resolve gender dysphoria. It is not a eugenicist conspiracy to eradicate gender nonconforming gay kids.
• Transition-related healthcare is specifically to resolve gender dysphoria. It has not claimed to be a cure-all, nor would it need to be a cure-all to be valid.
• We’ve already tried treating gender dysphoria with antipsychotics. It doesn’t work.
• 80% of children admitted to Dr. Zucker’s gender identity clinic were not gender dysphoric–this is by Dr. Zucker’s own admission. It is therefore not true that 80% of his subjects “desisted” from gender dysphoria, because they never had it to begin with.
• Dr. Zucker was discredited for publishing research that conflates gender nonconformity with gender dysphoria. He was discredited on an academic basis. This work may have been prompted by the complaints of trans activists, but we did not “fire him.”
• ___ trapped in a ___ body was a metaphor proposed by the first cisgender doctors charged with trans care. It was not our metaphor, nor does it serve as the basis of trans feminism.
• “Gender identity” is used in trans feminism as a short hand for a subjective experience of one’s sexed attributes. The external expectations placed upon you because of your assigned sex are a separate matter. Do not conflate the two. It is entirely possible to oppose the latter and not the former.
• There is little scientific consensus on why gender dysphoria occurs, but we’ve ruled out mommy issues, PTSD, OCD, and autism. Check the Freud at the door please.
• Formal research on gender variance dates to the early 20th century. It is not a Tumblr fad.
• The Canadian Criminal Code possesses no mechanisms to prosecute someone for not using proper titles. Thus, Bill C-16 cannot criminalize the act of misgendering a trans person, deliberately or otherwise.
• Cecilia Dhejne’s study shows a cohort of trans women from the 70s and 80s who are as likely to be charged for a “sex crime” as cis men. Selling sex was such a crime during that time. So no, her study does not prove that trans women are as violent as cis men.
• Autogynephilia is not falsifiable, making it shitty science. More importantly, some ~90% of cis women qualify is “autogynephilic.” It’s nothing more than an attempt to slut shame trans women.
• The only children receiving “irreversible” genital surgeries are intersex. Endosex trans kids don’t even qualify for surgery by WPATH standards. Arguments citing “irreversible changes” for children are therefore referencing something that doesn’t exist in the context of trans kids (though intersex folks would likely appreciate it if you could take your concern where it’s actually needed).
• Psychopathology is not inevitable in gender variant people. It is a product of discrimination, so if you could stop citing our psychopathology as a reason to discriminate against us, that’d be great.
• Criminalizing trans people’s ability to access public accommodations does nothing to make you safer. An overwhelming amount of sexualized violence is perpetrated by people the victim trusts. Stranger danger is vastly overstated.
• It is not commonly held, even by trans feminists, that trans and cis women are identical. What trans feminists often argue instead is that the distinction between the two is often/sometimes limited to theory, because we experience many manifestations of misogyny in practice.
• “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist” was actually coined by a cisgender radical feminist who found the sex essentialism in TERF arguments to be anathema to gender liberation. It could only be a slur in the same way that any other descriptive word spoken with enough venom counts as a slur–certainly “Muslim” and “liberal” carries implicit hostility when invoked by white supremacists, but the words themselves do not automatically have derogatory intent in common parlance, and neither does “TERF.”
• A binary model is inadequate to describe developmental biology. If your analysis is contingent on the notion of biological sex being fixed, unchanging, one characteristic (rather than a series of characteristics) and binary, you’re glossing over a lot of biology and genetics.
• A binary model of gender is specifically a euro-colonial one. Many cultures prior to colonial contact had more expansive models. “That’s the way I was taught in grade school” is not an adequate defense for the euro-colonial model.
• Gender affirmation provides constant opportunities for children to change their minds and does not prescribe one particular treatment plan. There is no inevitable conveyor belt locking kids into this process.
• GnRH is specifically a hormone agonist, preventing the production of hormones. It is thus fractally wrong to oppose transition healthcare for adolescents on the basis that they’re “being pumped full of hormones” when the treatment protocol is about stopping hormone production.
• Yes, trans people have already tried loving ourselves, no, transitioning doesn’t preclude that.
• Cathy Brennan might be a fake goth.

Yes, this tedious, fact-free nonsense tends to repeat itself.

Note that bringing up a PRATT doesn’t necessarily disqualify you from the comments, if and only if you can introduce new information that wasn’t discussed the first time.

5. Breaking these rules on other blogs on the network will also get you banned.

I regularly read the works of my colleagues, so even if you aren’t accountable to my conditions on their blog, you’re still subject to them when you come to mine. A history of violating the above conditions elsewhere will generally burn any goodwill I might otherwise assume when you pop up in moderation.

-Shiv

I’ve been preparing for Edmonton’s BECA conference for a couple weeks now, so I haven’t been keeping up the queue as diligently as I normally do. As a result, we’re back to business soon–just a few days to actually give my presentation, unwind, do things that are not rated PG-13–and the snark is on as usual.

Have some commercial break music:

[Read more…]

Happy blagaversary everyone. It’s officially been one year since I started on FtB. In that time we’ve fact-checked an irritatingly popular documentary, picked rhetorical fights with clueless media pundits, rebutted a histrionic U of T professor (several times), reviewed some really bizarre political theatre in Alberta, blasted shitty journalists, skewered Canadian Blood Services enough that they flew me in to consult on their LGBTQ donor policy, and got published in a genn-yoo-ine paper.

Here’s the good news: I still love doing this, and I still have a lot of will to continue the long-form fact checking, debunking, and essay writing.

Here’s the bad news: This shit takes time, and I need to make a living. To that end, I want to ask two things of readers who think they’d like to support me.

• Support The Establishment. They have smaller donation options as well as a store from which to buy swag! Although several publications have given me tentative acceptance for long-form work that I’ve taken to them, only The Establishment offered any kind of compensation. I’m not doing this shit for free, yo. (cough cough Huffington Post)
• Consider supporting me through Patreon. To be confirmed soon–I had hoped to navigate the financial bureaucracy before March 14th, but alas, bureaucracy takes its sweet time. Look out for my Patreon announcement and consider chipping in as little as $3 USD/month to help make my Serious Business writing a reality.

At any rate, thank you all for your participation and support. I look forward to doing it again another year!

Cheers.

-Shiv

 

The blag will have no updates for a few days as I follow through my bestest xmas present ever: an eviction notice.

Packing is the worst. Then there will be some anxiety about money. Then, eventually, unpacking.

See y’all in a while.

-Shiv

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Have some “we are currently experiencing some technical difficulties” waiting music: