The Pointless, Dangerous Alliance of the Transphobic | Trans Sandwiched #3

Today, I want to talk about the unprincipled and pointless alliance of two groups: the gender critical feminists on the Left, and the reactionary anti-LGBT faction of the Right. Note that when I say 'gender critical', I mean the activist movement that is committed to that particular ideology, not just anyone who may be questioning certain trans issues.

First of all, let me make it clear: this alliance clearly doesn't make sense at all, except to oppose trans people and trans rights. Gender critical feminism is a very Left-wing revolutionary ideology that seeks to radically change society, while the reactionary faction of the Right are opposed to LGBT rights as part of their broad resistance to all social change. They literally belong on the extreme opposite ends of the political spectrum! On one hand, if the gender critical feminists win, there will be social changes much more radical than the longest and wildest trans rights wishlist. On the other hand, if the reactionary Right wins, they will turn the clock back so far for women that trans people would be the least of any feminist's worry. In other words, gender critical feminists and the reactionary Right are essentially willing to enter a de-facto alliance with their worst enemies, the people who would destroy everything they hold dear, just to oppose 0.3% of the population!

Now, before you say that there is no alliance, I will acknowledge that there is no formal alliance. But it is clear that there is substantial cooperation going on, and it is clearly not accidental or subconscious either. For example, intellectuals on the Right who otherwise consistently oppose critical theory somehow often make an exception for gender criticalism. The same people who go on and on about why critical race theory and queer theory are so problematic and even dangerous often won't speak a bad word about gender critical feminism, even though they clearly share the same roots. Some of them might even try to paint the gender criticalists in a sympathetic light, saying that they are more 'reasonable' than trans activists because they 'acknowledge biology'. What they forget is that the fundamental worldview of gender critical feminism is the idea that 'gender is a social construct', which wouldn't be 'acknowledging biology' at all if we stick to the standards of empirical and evolutionary science. Opposing all other forms of critical theory while being sympathetic to one specific form of it, just to oppose trans rights, is the height of hypocrisy! Many gender critical feminists have also actively supported anti-trans rights campaigns that are clearly started by, and funded by, the Right. Some of them have even spoken at events held by famous Right-wing organizations! It's really a good example of 'cutting off one's nose to spite one's face'.

As to why a clearly unprincipled alliance like this can exist, without much challenge to it, I think it's due to several reasons. Firstly, most people don't really expect or require others to act in good faith anymore. Perhaps we are all jaded by the dishonesty of our politicians and leaders. However, we must not let our disappointment turn into justification of the unjustifiable. No matter how bad the reality is, we must not give up on demanding that people act honestly and in good faith. Secondly, the rise of critical theory and postmodernism has put a major dent in the need to be righteous and truthful in public life. After all, if even some of the most respected philosophers and academics think that sometimes the ends justify the means, maybe there are times when the ends do justify the means, even if they are unscrupulous means? That's the problem with postmodern morality. For those of us who don't want to go down that rabbit hole, we must remember that, no ends can be justified by dishonest means. Finally, perhaps people are just too busy to think deeply anymore. Thinking deeply and clearly is required to expose the hypocrisy. I'm really worried that the world of social media, the world of 15 second videos and 280 character statuses, is making people superficial and dumb.

So what can we do about this? I think that, as people who are awake to this hypocrisy, and especially as trans people who are caught up by this hypocrisy, we have a unique opportunity to expose it, and hence to help restore the expectation of honesty and good faith. We just need to speak up. Be brave enough to speak the truth loud and clear. Speak the truth loud and clear until they hear us. There is no other way, really.

How Theory Harms Trans People and the LGBT Community | Trans Sandwiched #2

Welcome back to Trans Sandwiched by TaraElla, where we talk about how trans people are now sandwiched between political forces with their own agenda on all sides, and what it means for us. Today, I want to talk about how theory, specifically the various theories that can be largely grouped under the umbrella of postmodern critical theory, is harming trans people and the LGBT community, in more ways than one. I believe theory is the biggest obstacle we have in front of us right now, which is why we must discuss it.

Let's start here. In recent years, I have noticed a decline in the level of psychological wellbeing in the LGBT community. Despite things having objectively improved throughout the Western world for LGBT people in the past 20 years, I have never seen so much anger, frustration and pessimism among my fellow LGBT people. During the time I was in college, conservatives in most US states and several other countries like Australia actively moved to ban gay marriage, but even then LGBT people weren't so angry and frustrated. From my high school days to the present, gay marriage went from being legal in zero countries to being legal in most of the West; anti-discrimination laws have been gradually extended, you can no longer be fired for being LGBT, but LGBT people seem to be getting angrier all the time. And this doesn't make sense to me. Digging deeper, I came to the conclusion that postmodern theory was the culprit of this change.

Back in the 1950s, the psychologist Julian B. Rotter developed the idea that people could be placed on a spectrum of having an internal locus of control on one end, vs an external locus of control on the other end. People with an internal locus of control believed that they were in control of, and responsible for, the successes or failures in their lives, and Rotter observed that they had high achievement motivation. This, of course, is an essential ingredient for success in life, as well as a key factor in psychological health. On the other hand, postmodern critical theories teach women and various minorities, including ethnic minorities and LGBT people alike, that our fate is being determined by an oppressive system that won't let us succeed, and this doesn't really change even with the various aforementioned legal reforms, which I think is nonsense, but it's what they would have us believe. Postmodern criticalism is effectively encouraging us to develop an external locus of control, which is both bad for our mental health and make us less successful in our own lives. I therefore like to argue that these theories are actually more effective at oppressing minorities and keeping us down, than whatever the most bigoted reactionaries out there can dream of.

Similarly, another 20th century psychologist Abraham Maslow, most famous for his 'Maslow's hierarchy of needs', observed that self-actualizing individuals, people who were able to reach the highest level on his pyramid model of development, shared several important characteristics. Among them was being grounded in reality and being committed to the truth, things that are actively discouraged by postmodernism. Self-actualizing people were also spontaneous, creative, and not rigidly bound by social conventions, the opposite of what postmodern criticalism would impose on us in the form of making everything problematic, telling us to 'check our privilege' all the time, and forcing a whole new and unnatural way of speaking and relating onto all of us because they believe that language shapes reality. In other words, postmodern criticalism actively prevents us from reaching our full development according to the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which means that it is literally regressive!

Besides acting to harm our psychological health, theory also exerts a negative effect on the conversation around trans issues in the wider world, leading to fewer successes and more backlash when it comes to trans rights. This also happens in multiple ways. Firstly, postmodern theory essentially teaches us that we don't have to work with reality. As if reality itself is simply a social construct that can be altered at will, simply by changing our language, or forcing other people to change their language. However, human beings are just like any other living being on this planet, and are completely subject to the basic rules of biology, especially evolutionary biology. Certain things, like our sense of gender both in ourselves and in the outside world, or whether one is attracted to another person or not, are hardwired into all of us, because it would be evolutionarily adaptive to do so. No language games can change that. This is why, when it comes to nature vs nurture, I come down strongly on the nature side, and I believe there is plenty of empirical evidence supporting my stance. Anyway, the important thing to know is, life is full of inherent limitations, and effective solutions need to take these limitations into account. We need to take empirical reality as it is, and compromise with reality's limitations to reach effective solutions. The trans community of 10 years ago understood this, but today's trans activists seem not to.

Secondly, the very presence of theory, much of it unscientific, has served to confuse the fundamentals of the conversation on trans issues. For example, there has been a fixation on the question of whether gender is a social construct, which is a core belief of the postmodern criticalist worldview. I personally strongly disagree with the idea of gender being a social construct, because I think the empirical science says otherwise. However, that is not the important point. The important point is that, we shouldn't be focusing on these pointless philosophical debates. We should be focusing on the reality of trans lives, and what could be done to make those lives better. We should be focusing on the actual difficulties faced by people who are suffering from gender dysphoria, rather than the philosophy of what gender is. Trans lives are real lives, not some hypothetical academic question. We want practical solutions that work, not philosophy or theory that only works on paper.