Why This Trans Woman Opposes Canceling Joe Rogan | Skeptic TaraElla #3
Welcome again to Skeptic TaraElla, where we take a stand against biased beliefs that not only defy facts and logic, but also make effective political consensus and action difficult. Subscribe if you are interested.
Today, I will be looking at the recent drama surrounding Joe Rogan's announcement of his support for Bernie Sanders, the Bernie campaign's decision to publically acknowledge this, and the unexpected backlash it generated. I've already talked about the political aspects of this story elsewhere, but here I will focus on the role of trans politics in this story. Basically, one of the accusations leveled at Rogan is that he said some anti-trans things in the past.
Now, we all know that Rogan is very politically incorrect, to put it mildly. He doesn't plan or refine his speech, and he is certainly prone to be blunt. But then, from what I see, he generally doesn't mean harm. And this applies to trans people too. I haven't seen any evidence that Rogan wants to hurt any one of us. I think he's generally a live and let live guy. Of course, when he was talking about certain topics where he had passionate views, he may have used language that would hurt some trans people psychologically. You can say that he's not very sensitive. But overall, I can't see that he means to actually harm people. This is why, I think we shouldn't treat him as the enemy. In fact, I suspect he would be open to having a rational discussion about trans issues. I would certainly be happy to have this discussion with him, if I ever had the opportunity. I'm certain it would be constructive.
Of course, the trans community, as a minority, is often quite on-edge when it comes to what people out there say about us. And given that there is still so much misunderstanding about trans issues out there, some insensitive things are bound to be said from time to time. I think it's something that free speech, rational discourse, and patience will resolve eventually. All this shall pass, too. It will get better. For now, I recommend not caring too much about what people out there say, except to correct misconceptions where necessary. It's much healthier for us, at least.
What I'm most concerned about is that we are being used as political pawns. Right now, in this Bernie drama, we are already being used as a political pawn. I really miss the good old days, as recently as 2012 in fact, where trans people and trans issues simply didn't get used as political footballs. To bring that back, I think we should actively resist being used as political pawns. Especially by the postmodernist and postmodern-adjacent activists, who use us as a pawn to fight their culture wars. Postmodernists don't want to cancel people like Rogan because they care about us. They want to cancel Rogan because his tell-it-like-it-is attitude, even if he sometimes says outrageously wrong things, threatens to expose the lies of postmodern thought. Postmodernists are uncomfortable with such free speech for a very simple reason. If it can be shown that objective reality is not dependent on discourse, and in turn discourse is about discovering truth and not about power struggles, then it is conclusively proven that postmodernism, as well as postmodern-adjacent theories like Marcusian critical theory, are invalid and should have no place in our culture or politics. Of course, discrediting these theories can only be good for trans people, because we can return to the biomedical model of trans health, which focuses on improving the quality of life of people with gender dysphoria, and rejects our being used as political pawns.
