Let's Talk | Diary of a Trans Popstar

To all the people out there who don't like me, who don't like what I represent, who don't like what I say, I say, let's talk. Let's talk to see if we can resolve our differences. After all, disagreements often turn out to be misunderstandings, and opposing viewpoints can often be combined to form a new whole.

Besides, it's often interesting and productive to talk with people who fundamentally disagree with you. You learn how to argue your own views, you learn new things, and you get to see a problem from different angles. Moreover, sometimes you get to make lifelong memories this way.

So, I guess, let's talk!

Tribalism | Diary of a Trans Popstar

Anywhere you go, there's just too much tribalism out there these days. It turns everything into an us-vs-them fight, and makes people unable to rationally discuss anything. This means, ultimately, nothing gets resolved, and nothing gets done.

I think the best antidote to tribalism is a healthy dose of independent thinking. Don't just believe what your peers say, or your supposed heroes tell you to believe. Follow your own conscience, and think about every issue carefully. You might come to some surprising conclusions.

Haters | Diary of a Trans Popstar

As the saying goes, the haters are going to hate. And I really don't care, to be honest. Life is too short to care about them, you know.

The thing is, people have different opinions about things all the time, and there are always going to be people who don't like you. The important thing is, to cherish the people who love you, and the people who might one day come to be your friends.

Instead of caring about the haters, I think we should win over as many friends and supporters as possible. For every person who has decided that they don't like you, there are many other people out there that you can potentially win over as new friends. Why dwell on the haters, when you can focus on potential friends?

The Key to Winning Trans Rights | An Asian Trans View

Today, I want to talk about an ugly truth: there is a trans moral panic out there. People are scared that trans people and trans issues are going to upset the order of society. It's like how there was a major moral panic around gay marriage back when I was in college, which saw the majority of US states, as well as other Western countries like Australia, moving swiftly to ban gay marriage. Luckily, the gay marriage movement was able to overcome this moral panic relatively quickly, which ultimately led to the vast majority of Western countries legalizing gay marriage over the next 15 years.

So how do we deal with the trans moral panic? I think it's important to look at what causes moral panics. I believe that, at a basic level, all moral panics are caused by a fear about damage to social institutions, commonly held values, and ultimately what keeps the social consensus going. In sociology, the theories that examine social consensus are called 'consensus theory'. They used to be dominant, before the rise of conflict theory in the 1970s. I believe the neglect of consensus theory in Western sociology in recent decades has contributed to an inability to examine and overcome moral panics.

There are many forms of consensus theory, but the most famous and influential school of consensus theory has to be Talcott Parsons's functionalism. Indeed, back in the post-war era, sociology and Parsonian functionalism were almost synonymous. Parsonian functionalism examines society using a functional lens. It is based on the idea that society needs to fulfill certain functions, namely adaptation, goal attainment, integration, and pattern maintenance. Parsons showed how institutions and social norms allowed society to fulfill these functions. Although Parson's analyses were criticized for being too focused on the 1950s middle class, I think we can apply a similar analysis to today's problems and learn a lot from it. The thing I like most about functionalism is how it understands that every society needs to fulfill certain functions, how complex systems are required to make it all work, and how important it is to appreciate things when they work well.

I know it's unfair that we have to face this current moment of backlash, but if we want to advance trans acceptance and trans rights, it's up to us to find a way out. I think if we want to overcome the trans moral panic, we need to show that we are able to work with society, and the complex components that maintain it. We need to show that trans rights will not damage things people hold dear. And it's true: trans rights do not pose a threat at all to these things. Postmodern ideology might pose a threat to these things, but it's actually completely separate from trans issues, and we need to make that clear. At the end of the day, the marriage equality movement was able to convince the public that gay marriage wouldn't harm families and marriages. I guess, now, it's up to us to show that trans rights, similarly, wouldn't harm things people hold dear. And learning a bit of consensus theory could help us a lot in this regard.

Why The Trans Echo Chamber is Unhealthy | An Asian Trans View

Today, I want to talk about why the trans echo chamber is so unhealthy for trans people. I think it comes down to the fact that the trans echo chamber is saturated with ideas from the trans activist establishment, and their thinking can cause a pattern of negativity, especially when combined with our inherent cognitive biases.

Let's start with this. One thing I often criticize the trans activist establishment about is that their thinking is full of critical theory, particularly postmodern critical theory. If you study the history of critical theory, you will know that it is heavily influenced by the old-school psychoanalysis of Freud, and perhaps others like Lacan. That's why there is so much emphasis on unconscious thoughts and beliefs. It's why people can be said to be unconsciously transphobic even when they don't mean to be transphobic at all. It's why even well meaning compliments could be seen as a 'microaggression' instead. This deeply negative attitude towards everything, is not helpful for anyone.

The problem with the Freudian influence is, old-school psychoanalysis was very much not evidence-based. It is therefore considered questionable in modern psychology. Instead, we may want to draw on a more modern approach to psychology, one that has a much more empirical, evidence-based, and hence scientifically sound, approach. And from modern psychology, particularly from cognitive psychology and cognitive science, we know that our brains are prone to particular cognitive biases. That is, we are all prone to seeing things in biased ways, due to the ways our brains are programmed. The cognitive biases I'm talking about are many, and they can often interact with each other too.

The trans echo chamber amplifies our inherent cognitive biases because it encourages us to see transphobia everywhere, and because it reinforces the idea that transphobia is everywhere. And from what we know about cognitive biases like congruence bias, confirmation bias, the framing effect, and the bizarreness effect, this can certainly lead us to seeing transphobia where there is none. And this is not helpful for anyone. Most of all, it is not helpful for trans people, who end up with lots of negative thought patterns, which they seek, and shall surely find, confirmation of in the world around them. We all know that positive thinking breeds success, and negative thinking does the opposite. This is why the trans echo chamber is so harmful for trans people and the trans community.