On Harry Potter vs Animorphs | An Asian Trans View

Today, I want to talk about something that's been on my mind for the past six months: the great Harry Potter vs Animorphs debate. Now, this is some cultural controversy around books people feel passionately about, so if that's not something you want to hear, then this episode is probably not for you. Also, there are several spoilers for both series, so don't listen if you don't want that.

Back in the middle of this year, when JK Rowling made her controversial comments regarding certain trans issues, some people were saying that we should all drop Harry Potter and read another book. Now, I don't support what's essentially cancel culture, so of course I didn't participate in any of that discussion. I strongly believe that people can disagree while not cancelling each other. Besides, the whole point I wanted to make was that Rowling and trans people weren't enemies, so of course I wouldn't be telling people to drop Harry Potter. However, what interested me was that one of the book series people suggested was Animorphs, my favorite books back when I was 13 or so. Back then, I decided to say nothing, because I don't want to be seen as yet another trans person participating in the mob cancellation of Rowling in any way. But since six months have passed, I think we can talk about this now without all that controversy.

The time was the late 1990s, or perhaps the year 2000, which felt like the 90s anyway. It was the golden era of tech, you know, when CPU speeds increased more than 10-fold in just a few years, and when many people began to have the internet at home, and perhaps a mobile phone. Back then, something like an iPad or a Kindle Reader couldn't even be imagined, and people still read paper books, and there was no shortage of young adult book series for middle school aged people like myself. Even back then, Harry Potter, which had only been out for a couple of years or so, was getting all the hype, but my favorite had to be Animorphs.

In fact, I didn't begin to like Harry Potter until 2003, when the fifth book came out, and I was already in college. Perhaps it was just my 13-year-old attitude, but back then I thought the first Harry Potter book must have been written for someone much younger than myself, and I was too old for that. I certainly didn't feel that way with Animorphs. I didn't understand why even some adults wanted to read Harry Potter back then. Back then, the Harry Potter books were released once a year, and Animorphs was released almost every month. That all came to an end in 2001. The last Animorphs book, the 54th in the series, was released in April 2001, and people soon stopped talking about it, while Harry Potter took a three year hiatus, and didn't appear again until 2003, when I was already in college. Of course, the world was a very different place by 2003, and I was in a very different phase of life by then. I went out and got the 5th Harry Potter book, the Order of the Phoenix, because of all the hype, even though I didn't particularly like the first four as a kid. And surprisingly, I really, really liked this one. The final two Harry Potter books were released in the next four years, and I also liked them so much that I finished them within a week of release. By the final Harry Potter book, I was almost 21, and I finally realized why adults like Harry Potter: in a world of disappointments, moral ambiguity and alliances of convenience, the Potterverse provided an antidote to all this, with its moral clarity, its clear-cut good vs evil, and the loyalty of its characters. Besides, wouldn't it be great to be in a house with people just like yourself? By the way, the official sorting hat decided that I was a Ravenclaw, and I generally agree with its assessment.

Anyway, this sums up my relationship with my two favorite young adult franchises of all time. And yes, both these series were special. But they are also very different. The fundamental difference is that, the Potterverse is actually much more of an idealistic world, while Animorphs operates much closer to real world conditions. You go to Harry Potter for emotional therapy, to feel like there are still good guys in this messed up world, that everything will be alright. On the other hand, Animorphs is much more honest about how the real world is. It is very clear that there ain't happy endings to wars, and the so-called good guys may still betray you in the end, if it suits them. You can't imagine, for example, Harry killing 17,000 of Voldemort's people and being accused of being a war criminal, struggling with his conscience for years afterwards, or that he would have to bargain with some of the so-called good guys to not destroy the whole wizarding world, just so they can defeat Voldemort cleanly. You certainly can't imagine Hermione dying in the last book, essentially condemned to that fate by Harry himself. Harry Potter wouldn't be Harry Potter if it ended like that, it would destroy the magic of Harry Potter. On the other hand, Animorphs wouldn't be conveying the deep anti-war message it has, if the main characters all survived, and just went on to live happy, normal lives afterwards.

I guess we need a bit of both. The emotional reassurance that there are still good guys out there, and the good guys will win in the end, is a powerful motivator to fight another day. However, we can't be all that naive when we are operating in the real world. It is, after all, a world full of imperfection, betrayal, and people with their own agendas, and if we don't operate with this in mind, we end up being used as a political football by others. We need to remember that, while the bad guys are out to get us, the seemingly good guys can also betray us at any minute like the Andalites planned to betray Earth, to satisfy their own agendas. Given that people with agendas on all sides want to use trans people as a political football, we really need to remember this at all times. While Voldemort's people in the Potterverse and the Yeerks in Animorphs clearly represent the bad guys, there is nothing like the Andalites in the Potterverse. Of course, in real life, especially in politics, it is much more likely that we are dealing with Yeerks vs Andalites rather than Voldemort vs Harry. In real life, to mistake the former for the latter is very dangerous indeed.

Abigail Shrier, Detransition & the Coming Trans Crisis | An Asian Trans View

Today, I want to talk about something I've become very worried about. This is a rather controversial topic, so I wish you could listen to the whole thing before jumping to conclusions.

Let's start with the recent drama surrounding journalist Abigail Shrier, and her book about the recent spike of teenagers presenting as trans, specifically who identify as trans men or transmasculine. Many trans people have accused it of being biased in its interpretation of the available research and data. Now, I haven't read the book, so I won't comment on it either way. However, from the interviews I've seen, it is clear that Shrier is not transphobic, that she doesn't have an agenda against trans people at all. Still, the trans community seems to be unable to have a productive conversation with her. It has again turned into an us-vs-them war, just like with JK Rowling, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson and most recently Tulsi Gabbard. It really isn't an exaggeration to say that the trans community is an epicenter of the cancel culture crisis, especially when actual trans people like ContraPoints have been targets of cancellation too.

Whether Shrier has been biased is another matter, but the increase in young people identifying as trans is very real. An associated phenomenon that is equally as real, is the increase in the number of young people who end up regretting their transition, and detransitioning. Where this phenomenon was once quite uncommon, it's not so uncommon anymore, especially among younger transitioners. The trans community has so far treated this topic as taboo, and we haven't had much of a conversation around it. This, in turn, means that the gender critical people and their ideas have become established, without much opposition, in the detrans community. This, as you may know, has started to come back to bite the trans community.

Let's be frank about what's happening here: the trans community has become unable to have difficult conversations. Instead, led by misguided activists, there is a default reaction of us-vs-them, to assume people who disagree in any way are acting in bad faith. This development is, I think, caused by another development: the trans conversation isn't as based in the facts, the science, and the empirical data, as much as it used to be. As I have said repeatedly in the past two years, this is the result of the shift of the balance of influence in the wider world out there, especially among progressive activists.

You see, the Western world is effectively in this long-standing philosophical battle between those who believe in empiricism, science, objective reason and positivism, descended from Enlightenment thinkers going all the way back to figures like John Locke on one hand, and those who believe that everything is socially constructed to serve the interests of the powerful and oppressive, that objectivity hides power dynamics, and radical subjectivity is liberating, descended from a particular strain of Western Marxism that turned to cultural explanations after their revolution failed to materialize in the West, as Marx had predicted. You could call this the Enlightenment liberals vs the postmodern criticalists. Since around 2009, as a result of a combination of factors, including the Global Financial Crisis, the postmodern criticalists have gradually gained an upper hand in progressive activist circles. Given the vast expansion of the trans activists sector during this time, it was inevitable that the postmodern criticalists would gain a foothold here, and even displace the original trans narrative, like a big tsunami crashing into a small town and almost wiping the whole town out.

As a result of the influx of postmodern criticalist views, the trans discussion has been increasingly moved away from the science and the clinical evidence, towards one based around power, oppression, social constructs, and so on. Less Harry Benjamin and more Michel Foucault, even though Foucault probably didn't understand trans people at all! The result is that, we have become unable to respond to people like Abigail Shrier, JK Rowling or Jordan Peterson with facts and logic, and instead have come to see everything as an attempt to oppress trans people. Hence everything became a struggle, and eventually became a stalemate. Meanwhile, anti-trans forces are certainly doing better to sound reasonable, which means that trans acceptance stands to be gradually rolled back, one drama at a time. The trans community is heading over a cliff, and our so-called leaders are only accelerating the process.

To save the trans conversation, I believe we need to turn back to the science and the facts. That's why I'm a transmedicalist: I base all my trans views on scientific and medical understandings, and not on postmodern philosophy. There's this myth that transmedicalists are gatekeepers, but we're not. At least I don't do any gatekeeping. Moreover, I am completely supportive of non-binary and gender non-conforming people. I believe they have as much of a case of medical and scientific validity as binary trans people. Indeed, I believe that non-binary acceptance could lead to fewer people jumping into full medical transition and regretting it, but that's a topic for another time. Anyway, I believe we should discuss the scientific view of trans people, non-binary people, and GNC people more, and that's what I'll be doing going forward. Sometimes, we should just focus on nothing but the science.

I believe that, once we regain the scientific grounding, we will be able to have a rational and productive conversation on many controversial trans related topics. The community won't need to revert to the us-vs-them drama every time. We will stop losing ground in terms of trans acceptance. And everyone, on all sides, will feel less angry and frustrated.

Reflections on Elliot Page | An Asian Trans View

Today, I want to offer some of my thoughts on actor Elliot Page coming out as trans, from the perspective of a trans person.

So far, there's all the predictable reactions. Hollywood has been as supportive as you would expect it to be, meanwhile people like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder have said what they would predictably say. There were also the trans-skeptical feminists who had their own, well, unusual views. And then, there were the socialists who used this occasion to reinforce the message that Page is a rich celebrity who has much more resources to deal with his transition than the average trans person, so class is still everything.

While I'm not a socialist, this last point is something I want to dwell on more. I remember how, back in 2015, when Caitlin Jenner came out, large sections of the trans community were worried that her perspective, as a rich trans person, would get the most airtime in the mainstream, and displace the voices of everyday trans people. I guess many of us are feeling something similar again right now. Thinking about it, the mainstream media likes to focus on trans people whose experiences are clearly very different from everyday trans people. You know, celebrities, sports people, beauty queens, politicians, and the like. It's not that I have anything against these people, it's that their issues are very different from everyday trans people.

With Elliot Page, I have one particular worry about the potential excessive weight being applied to his narrative. You see, Page is not only a rich celebrity, he has also been an activist with very strong political views for many years. Not that there is anything wrong with having strong political views; I do too. But I'm worried the way he sees the trans experience and the way he engages with the public as an ambassador for the trans community, whether he likes it or not, will be excessively colored by his activist beliefs. This, coupled with his lack of worry about the kind of financial matters that plague most trans people, means that his priorities could be very different from those of everyday trans people. I'm just worried that this would just further serve to paint a public image of trans people that is far removed from the struggles and priorities of everyday trans people. You know, it's time to return to the bread and butter issues, in this ongoing trans conversation.

Perhaps I'm just too worried. But trans people are already misunderstood enough as it is, with forces on both the Left and the Right wanting to use us as culture war political footballs. Just in the past year, everything from Trump vs Biden, to the Harper's free speech letter, to everything related to JK Rowling, had to have a trans angle to it. With the release of Jordan Peterson's new book next year, we are almost certain to get more unwarranted attention soon enough. All this builds up to a lot of misunderstanding about trans people in the world out there, with real trans people suffering all the consequences. We surely don't need yet more misunderstanding.