Academic transphobia and The Media: The persistence of the “activists vs science” false dichotomy

Content Notice: Transphobia

Introduction to the False Dichotomy of Scientist or Activist

The rise of visibility of transgender people correlates with an increase in the sheer and committed dishonesty of many media outlets any time they cover trans issues. There are the usual suspects: budding radfem academics penning unsubstantiated diatribes riddled with fallacies; established academics angrily penning burning letters to the editor any time their pet pseudoscience is called out for being pseudoscience; religious fundamentalists who can’t decide if they’re sticking to noninformation or disinformation; and the many ignorant journalists caught in between this shitstorm. Many of these trans-antagonistic figures are represented by said ignorant journalists as “martyrs for an inconvenient truth,” where trans-affirmative opponents to these figures are engaging in “pointless witch hunts” that result in these brave champions being “suddenly and unceremoniously fired” while repudiating Real Science™.

Jesse Singal is at the centre of this “activist versus Real Science™” narrative by implying both that activists were the ones that had Galileo’s Middle Finger pulled from Lambda and that said activists are uninterested in “truth, accuracy, or fairness in argument,” having shared on Twitter:

“Lambda Literary has withdrawn Alice Dreger’s book from consideration for its nonfiction literary award. The (very strongly) implied message here is that you can’t be an advocate for social justice and care about the principles of truth, accuracy, and fairness in argument.”

He also penned an article about Dr. Zucker, a notorious conversion “therapy” advocate who was finally discredited and shut down in Ontario after decades of abusing gender nonconforming kids. In this piece, Singal pushes the narrative that anti-science activists are at fault for the clinic’s closure: (emphasis mine)

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Self care Saturday, August 6 — ADORABLE OWLS

Reminder: Self care Saturday is scheduled in advance, and I will not be visiting the site today. This is a “feel good” space to help us manage burn-out and return to our activism with renewed vigour.

My goal this Self care Saturday is to make sure my expression looks something like this:

-Shiv

What do you do when your abuser is part of the whisper network?

Women in any special interest community have a network to vet potential sexual & romantic partners. This network is entirely informal. It has no administrators or moderators, no leaders to hold accountable, no hierarchy to organize behind or against. It seems to just happen inevitably, a product of the deadly clusterfuck that constitutes patriarchy–its implicit belief that women are unreliable combined with the rationalizations for victim blaming. Since the police and most organizations are completely inept at actually doing anything about allegations of sexualized violence, women often depend on this whisper network to help keep them away from serial harassers and rapists who’ve never been held accountable. Even if an organization takes an allegation seriously and finds it to be meritorious, the public almost always engages in a metaphorical witch-hunt to brand the victim a liar, still resulting in further loss for the victim. And then, if all this does not deter a victim from reporting, there is always libel bullying, where the entire ordeal of reporting objectionable behaviour has to be repeated, in a court room, in front of amoral attack dogs masquerading as humans who wear suits.

Given what the “proper official” channels put you through, it’s no surprise whisper networks pop up everywhere you go. It’s a shitty system borne out of necessity to avoid an even shittier system that punishes you for being a victim.

One other characteristic you’ll notice is that it is primarily, sometimes exclusively, populated by women. This makes sense in the broader context of gendered patterns in relationship & dating violence–women are more vulnerable as a demographic and so we work together to address that disproportionate risk.

There are many problems with the whisper network regardless. Perhaps the problem most salient to my experience is my relationships with other women.

In other words, if I have a violent encounter with a woman, the whisper network is at best no longer accessible–because my abuser is privy to it. At worst, my abuser persuades the network I am at fault, and then I am effectively ostracized from a community as keeping myself safe becomes increasingly difficult without access to the whisper network.

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Fuck your blue lives, #SayHerName

White privilege confession time: In my budding years as a soon-to-be social justice advocate, I was a bit wrapped up in my own problems to really step outside of my shell and listen to black activists as they described repeated patterns of police brutality. Then Ferguson happened. I didn’t quite hit #BLM mode right away, but I started to pay attention, and by now I have seen the absurd double standard enough to securely say “fuck you in your fucking idiotic skull” if you’re a Blue Lives Matter type.

A five year-old. Police shot a five year-old, while he was in his mother’s arms.

Three officers with the Baltimore County police arrived at Korryn Gaines’s apartment around 9:20 a.m. on Monday to serve warrants to her as well as a man who also resided there.

The man was wanted on an assault charge, while Gaines, 23, had an arrest warrant for failing to appear in court after a traffic violation in March.

According to police, no one responded to 10 minutes of door knocking, even though they could hear several people inside. When officers obtained a key to the apartment, they found Gaines sitting on the floor — her 5-year-old son was wrapped in one of her arms. In her other hand was a shotgun.

Seems like the endless patience police have for deescalation vanishes in a puff of smoke when the shooter is black.

If that kid were white, the negotiations would’ve lasted for days.

#BlackLivesMatter. #SayHerName.

-Shiv

 

“There was every reason that we would have been at Pulse that night”

Content Notice: Zinnia mentions some of the more morally bankrupt virulently transphobic comments she received, and they are nasty. She is also discussing the shooting in Orlando, Florida, where 49 Queers, mostly Latinx, were murdered.

Zinnia Jones recently shared a post about how she was planning to attend Pulse the night of the Orlando shooting, and only decided otherwise because of sheer dumb luck.

I wanted to share it, in part because I’ve experienced clueless cishets in my life who didn’t understand why Queers were so viscerally affected even if they lived on the other side of the world. Hopefully this helps them understand.

The next day, I accompanied Heather as she went downtown on writing assignments fromPlayboy and The Daily Beast. This is just what she and I do: when these things happen in our lives, we cover them for the world. We attended the vigil in a park surrounded by skyscrapers – helicopters circled overheard and we could clearly see a number of police snipers positioned on rooftops. We later attended a funeral service and listened to a man who was at Pulse break down sobbing as he eulogized his mother, who had helped him get to safety before she was killed. Everyone Heather spoke with had either lost someone at Pulse, or knew someone else who did. This is what those outside the queer community might not understand: we have only 2 or 3 degrees of separation. This was so imminent, so present, there was no way to turn away from it.

I want to point out that throughout this, there was no cessation in the constant stream of YouTube comments and tweets telling me that who I am is wrong, or that I’m in the grips of some sort of delusional illness, or that I’m somehow a threat to society. Instead, many more people now made sure to wish that I had been at Pulse that night.

I’d like them to know that I wouldn’t wish this experience on anyone. No one should have to feel what it’s like to wait out the seconds as you refresh a web page, knowing that you might be about to find out your friends are dead. No one should have to wake up crying from nightmares so close to reality that you can’t dismiss them as absurd. No one should have to bear the brutal knowledge that they are a target.

…

There are people in this country right now with the motivation to follow through on killing me and Heather and Penny, on slaughtering my community by the dozens. I look for the exits everywhere we go, whether it’s a club, a theater, or even a bookstore. I think about where we would take cover, and tell Heather and Penny that if anything happens, they need to run and not wait for me. I shouldn’t have to do this – I don’t want to be doing this. I don’t want to have to think of what they would do without me or what I would do without them, every day, everywhere I go. But I can’t wake up from this, because this is my reality.

“But I can’t wake up from this, because this is my reality.”

I fumble for words to describe this feeling. Nothing quite adequately captures it. “Rest in power” seems so vulgar, so inadequate, so incomplete, to truly capture the myriad of problems that led to this. And still, we cannot be left in silence to mourn and contemplate. Our grief is merely a political football for others to use as they see fit. Never valid on its own unless it justifies further acts of violence.

-Shiv

Thanks Pope Francis

Guys, the Pope has helped me come to an important conclusion.

See now, the problem with the trans rights movement is that we just don’t have snappy enough phrases. We’re trying to bring academic terms into common parlance, and that’s a tough battle when the general public views pesky things like evidence with suspicion. The Pope has it all figured out though. Gender transition is such a boring clinical term. Why not use something more memorable, more colourful? Something that speaks to the masses? Something with that certain je nais se quoi that captures the imagination of the ignorant, inspires the illiterate, and emboldens the craven?

Why not, “the annihilation of man“?

“We are living a moment of annihilation of man as image of God.”

Thanks Pope. That is much catchier than “gender transition.”

-Shiv, Annihilator of Man, Fashionable Communist

Impromptu self care: Fuck it edition

I need to unplug for a few days. In the past hour, I found on my news feed:

  • Another trans woman murdered; misgendered by police.
  • A tireless critic of police brutality and her five year-old child shot by police; said police wiping the data on her phone which probably caught the whole event on camera.
  • A youtuber coming out as trans with dozens of media outlets turning her into a punching bag.
  • A trans woman who robbed a bank and turned herself in, because no homeless shelter would take her and she was less likely to be beaten in prison than on the streets.
  • A trans woman who shared a story of how she was held pending charges in a men’s prison. She overheard the officers referring to her as a freak and that they expected the other prisoners to assault her as they denied her requests for solitary confinement.

I’m out. Unplugging for a few days. Fuck this shit.

-Shiv

Signal Boosting: I am a trans woman. I am in the closet. I am not coming out.

Yeah, I know, two in a row. But medium is on fire today. Another post that is 1000% recommended trans ally reading material.

I love everything my sister loves, but I will not admit it. I know she and her friends will make fun of me. I know my parents will chastise me and correct me. I am learning the rules, and I am learning that boys liking girl things is a very high stakes issue. I am learning that adults react the same way to my interest in makeup as they do to my interest in matches and lighters.

As if maybe, by being what I am, I might burn down something very important to them. Something that makes their life more comfortable and easy.

If you’re ever curious as to what it’s like being a young trans girl, that sentence, right there:

I am learning that adults react the same way to my interest in makeup as they do to my interest in matches and lighters.

Explains everything.

Some other choice quotes that summarize my childhood/teenagehood:

For the rest of my life, two days is the longest I can go without thinking about this. I read stories about powerful, adventurous girls late into the night so I don’t have to think about what my body looks like under the blankets.

…

When I help my dad build things, he calls me strong. I feel like I am winning something and losing something at the same time.

…

I think about being told I was not allowed to speak about femininity. I wonder what a person like me is allowed to speak about.

…

She also says I couldn’t possibly understand the standards of beauty imposed upon women. As if I didn’t spend years bent over a toilet, feeling miserably that even if I were thin enough I wouldn’t be girl enough.

…

You have the privilege of experimenting with your body hair because your status and your identity are otherwise secured in ways they are not for transwomen.

Of course she couldn’t know how often I cried after puberty when my leg hair started coming in—felt helpless because I couldn’t even shave it.

But my story is not what made true what I was saying.

They may call you names but they will not force you into the wrong bathroom. It will not collapse the trembling house of cards you’ve constructed to make people forget what they think you are. You are safe where some people are not.

When you are trans and you don’t shave your legs, it is taken as evidence to everyone — even to allies in their dark, unadjustable subconscious — that you are not a real woman. Sometimes even by yourself.

And if you want a demonstration of what cissexism looks like, look no further than the comments of said article.

-Shiv

Signal Boosting: Convert, Cure, Closet, or Kill — the Religious Right’s Plan for Trans Folk

Medium has a post up that is equal parts delightful in its thoroughness (so many citations, thank you!) and also… horrifying, in its thoroughness (egads, that’s so much hate being cited). It explains that the plan the Religious Right has for trans folk can be reduced to “Convert, Cure, Closet, or Kill:”

Almost 60 anti-transgender bills were introduced this year, most of which targeted transgender youth, restricting access to public accommodations, defining “sex” in non-discrimination laws to exclude transgender people, or permitting health care providers to refuse to treat transgender patients. Another six states introduced laws banning protections for LGBT people, which would join Tennessee and Arkansas in nullifying local non-discrimination ordinances. Twenty-two states introduced “Religious Freedom” laws making discrimination against LGBT people legal and consequence-free.

The vast majority of these laws did not pass, but HB2 in North Carolina did. It functionally accomplished two of the Family Research Council’s goals by nullifying all legal protections for transgender people, and effectively banning them from public bathrooms, while setting a nearly impossible bar for obtaining legal recognition of a gender change.

Also noteworthy is that while NC requires “sex change surgery” (the preferred term is gender confirmation surgery) to change a gender marker, they are adamantly opposed to state provided insurance from covering such procedures. Many transgender people do not want such surgery, or are physically unable to have it. Most simply cannot afford it.

This is why the transgender community has reacted so vehemently to HB 2: it is the realization of many of the goals of hate groups intended to legislate a community out of existence. This is something that has not been pointed out in the mainstream media, though it should be. How would the media react if North Carolina had passed a law targeting black people that was explicitly proposed and endorsed by the Klan?

I strongly recommend this post in its entirety, as it demonstrates the contradictions and inanity of religiously motivated positions to antagonize gender diversity. It also demonstrates why trans folk are generally suspicious of researchers, as so-called scientists have been well known to abuse us to further political agendas (see: Dr. Zucker, asshole extraordinaire, standing proud among the ranks of abusive anti-trans researchers like Alice Dreger, J Michael Bailey, and Ray Blanchard). It predicts that these strategies, tried and tested as routine failures against the LGB, will ultimately flop as they did before–but not before they’ve claimed a body count.

The authoritarian war machine needs lives to fuel it, after all.

-Shiv

The circular logic of the US Military

I was taught to never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence. I feel I have found a scenario where it is safe to call it malice. Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower revealing the criminal abuses by the Obama administration in a number of affairs, was threatened with solitary confinement over a tube of expired toothpaste and a magazine. Considering the effect solitary confinement has on prisoners (spoiler: it’s torture), it should come as no surprise that Manning, already stressed by her prison situation and denial of proper healthcare, has attempted suicide.

In a stunning feat of “missing the point so badly” I have to question where the fuck their humanity went, they decided the best thing to do to a mentally ill trans prisoner who they’ve been bullying relentlessly, was to threaten her with solitary confinement again.

I refuse to believe that someone is so dense as to think the solution to a prisoner attempting suicide because of solitary confinement is to indefinitely hold said prisoner in solitary confinement.

America: The solution to your civilian-killing, hospital-bombing problems is not more fucking bombs.

-Shiv