Getting Out of the Culture War Mentality on Trans Issues

Both sides need to do it.

As my regular readers would know, what I want most out of talking about trans issues is for there to be an open, rational and productive discourse on trans issues. I want the polarization and tribalism to end. I want people to be able to come up with good solutions to the stalemate we have now. Ultimately, I want the conflicts to be resolved so we can all live in peace.

This, I believe, will require everyone to step out of the culture war mindset first. People on both sides need to do this. Everyone needs to truly hear what others are saying, no matter which side they seem to be coming from. People shouldn't automatically trust the things their side is saying, and ignore voices on the other side. As someone who has been trying to sincerely listen to both sides, I know for certain that both sides are very biased right now, so anyone who predominantly listens to only one side is certainly going to have a biased view of things. And a biased view of things can only lead to the embrace of unsound ideas and policies, that will have harmful consequences one way or another. This is why we need to listen to all sides and understand the whole picture.

The other thing people need to do is to stop being too emotional. Again, from what I see, both sides are clearly guilty of this right now. Both sides can't discuss trans issues without getting emotional, and that is not good. Emotions get in the way of being objective and rational, and make us unable to think clearly. Getting emotional can also lead to dehumanizing the other side, which is dangerous territory when in comes to debating things that will affect real people in the real world. This is why we need to keep calm, despite the best efforts of extremists on both sides trying to rile up our emotions. We need to keep in mind that vested interests with their own agendas want us to get emotional so we end up blindly supporting their agendas, and we should not let them get us crazy. Again, this applies equally to both sides.

The fact is, we can't have a truly productive debate without first getting rational and objective. This is why we need to actively aim to be rational and objective. We need to brush all the culture war noise aside, and focus on what's real.

The Trans Discourse is Missing Compassion

Too many people want their views to prevail at the expense of real lives

Over the past 3-5 years, I've been talking a lot about what has gone wrong with the trans discourse. While trans activists who won't compromise, postmodernists who keep arguing that gender is a social construct, extreme gender critical activists who are opposed to any recognition of trans people at all, and right-wing culture warriors who want to defeat trans rights to 'own the libs' are all major problems, they essentially represent variations of the same theme: people missing compassion. Specifically, people who hold other goals, i.e. the triumph of their philosophical worldview, as more important than real lives in the real world. And that is a basically immoral position.

If only people would treat real lives in the real world as worthy of compassion, rather than as pawns in an abstract philosophical battle, then the aforementioned extreme positions wouldn't even exist. Non-trans people would not want to 'eradicate transgenderism from public life', if they were only a bit more decent and compassionate. Likewise, trans people would be willing to listen to genuine, good faith concerns and criticism regarding trans activism, because they would also have more compassion for the concerned parties. The culture wars are making people mistrust each other, see each other in the most negative way, and ultimately lack compassion for each other. That is perhaps the real problem here.

Therefore, next time you look at trans controversies, or indeed any kind of controversy, perhaps it is useful to look at it from the compassion angle. It is definitely a refreshing way to see things. Perhaps the compassion angle can even help break some long-standing stalemates.

One Thing to Remember About the Trans Discourse

A lot of it is fake, or at least in bad faith

One thing I think people need to remember about the current state of the trans discourse is that it is being flooded with misrepresentations of the truth, and bad faith talking points, as a result of the politicized culture wars. This is being done by people on both sides with an agenda. This, in turn, is why we should never just accept what we read or hear when it comes to trans issues. I hope people think harder, and investigate at least a bit, about the various claims they come across.

Over the years, it has been noticed by many people that certain trans activists, especially those aligned with the postmodern left, have tried to shut down good faith concerns on various issues. Any deviation from their dogmatic point of view is treated with suspicion at best, and reflexively shut down as 'transphobic' at worst. The many trans people who are willing to listen to concerns and are willing to compromise are effectively left out of the debate, either because they are too afraid to speak up, or simply because they are not even invited to the table. This, in turn, has made some people think that trans people make unreasonable demands all the time, severely damaging our credibility.

On the other hand, culture warriors on the right have not been willing to work with moderate, good faith trans people who actually want to find a workable compromise to the various issues being raised either. I have been voicing my frustrations about this for over a year now, and the situation has only worsened, probably due to the need for the US Republican Party to score political points ahead of the 2024 elections. Everything that is pro-trans in any way is reflexively dismissed as 'woke', even though there are clearly a lot of trans people out there who aren't 'woke', who just want to be left alone to live their lives. Blatantly anti-trans figures like Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh are treated as 'anti-woke' heroes, notwithstanding the cruel and unreasonable approach they have to their fellow human beings. The most outrageous examples of trans activism are presented in right-wing media as representative of trans people, which has made their audience turn against the whole trans community over time. This is not only a distortion of reality, it is also very unfair to those trans people, like myself, who want to find a peaceful compromise to move forward.

All this means that, a lot of what is in the media about trans issues is actually such a misrepresentations of the truth that it is no better than outright lies, pushed in bad faith by people with an organized political agenda. The truth is, they don't want there to be good solutions to the conflicts between trans people and other parties. They want you to get outraged, so you support their outrageous politics, and stop being a caring and compassionate human being. Their propaganda is designed to turn decent, moderate people with reasonable concerns into hardened, inhumane extremists. Again, this applies to both sides. Don't let them succeed.

Is the Trans Backlash Really Inevitable?

I don't think so. And we can still fix it.

Recently, there has been a very vocal backlash to the LGBT community. I've been predicting that this could happen as far as five years ago, when LGBT activists chose to go for confrontation rather than consensus on almost every issue. I reasoned that an LGBT backlash at this time would be particularly bad for trans people, because there was still a lot of misunderstanding about trans issues in the mainstream. What I was mainly worried about was that, if a backlash happened, and attitudes on both sides became hardened, it would be much more difficult to get a healthy discussion going on trans issues.

Nowadays, many LGBT activists say that the backlash is an inevitable part of advancing LGBT rights. In particular, the trans visibility of the past ten years was bound to cause some backlash. Besides the fact that most trans people never asked for visibility, I think this is a lazy and unethical answer. It is lazy because there's always a better way to do things. You've just got to think harder. It is ethically unacceptable, because it affects real lives in the real world. In particular, we are talking about trans people already suffering from gender dysphoria. The current backlash is very bad for their mental health, and I think good people should at least be able to agree that it should have been avoided at all costs in hindsight.

Could the current backlash have been avoided? I think the honest answer is yes. The trans acceptance movement could have opted for a more consensus based approach. The activists could have been more willing to give people the chance to understand and be allies. They could have dealt with controversies in a more mature way. It would have required a lot of discipline, and refusal to give into emotional frustration, but it could have been done. There would still have been people who are inherently vehemently anti-trans who are not changeable, but we would only have to win over people in the middle anyway, so we could safely ignore the vehemently anti-trans crowd. Trans acceptance would have been advanced a lot quicker that way.

Rather than arguing about the past, I think the most important thing to do now is to get things back on track. It is not too late to aim for the future that we might have had. Public attitudes towards trans people are still fluid, and we can still fix things. It is therefore not too late to adopt the aforementioned more mature approach. Let's start doing it today.
 

How the Culture Wars are Poisoning the Trans Conversation

They hamper free speech and productive discussion. And both sides are responsible.

I think one thing really needs to happen before we can truly have a rational and productive discussion about trans issues: the culture wars surrounding the trans conversation must be brought to an end. There's been endless argument about who is responsible for the culture wars, but I think the mutual finger pointing needs to end. I think both sides are responsible, and we need to push back on them both.

The first reason why the culture war must end is that it is hampering free speech itself. Without free speech and a healthy and functional marketplace of ideas, there can be no fair consideration of the issues, and no development of sound consensus and good policy. From left-wing activists attempting to de-platform and marginalize voices like Dave Chappelle and JK Rowling, to right-wing activists going after Disney, Bud Light and Target, the trans culture wars have made speaking out on trans issues more and more risky every year. No matter who is doing it, and what the target is, there is an overall effect from all these actions: it makes people less willing to speak what they truly think, when it comes to trans issues. Most people would rather stay silent than suffer the social punishment both sides are very willing to inflict. This leads to the trans discourse being increasingly dominated by more and more extreme voices on both sides. These players are not interested in compromise or productive solutions, and their dominance will only make the conversation more and more toxic, driving even more reasonable people away. Something has to change. There needs to be a circuit breaker of some kind, just to restore free speech and rational debate on this topic.

Besides securing free speech itself, the quality of the conversation is also important. Right now, both sides have been emotionally worked up by the culture wars and driven into ever more extreme positions. The heavy anti-trans bias from right-wing media outlets and the overly defensive, 'everything is transphobic' attitude of certain trans activists represent the two unhelpful extremes of this emotional spiral. Together, they reinforce each other in a vicious cycle, making the discourse more and more toxic, and rational discussion less and less feasible over time.

Take the issue of medical intervention in trans-identified young people, for example. I have long supported taking a very cautious approach in the management of such patients. However, I have also long argued against a culture war approach to this issue. In several European countries, there are now expert-led, consensus-driven, evidence-based guidelines supporting a more cautious approach, which I think is the ideal way to address this issue. However, in America, the whole thing has been turned into a partisan political football. In state after state, blanket bans on medical treatment in trans minors, some which might also affect non-medical talk therapy (and hence counterproductive from a health point of view), have passed with almost unanimous support of the Republicans, inevitably against the unanimous opposition of the Democrats. In some cases (e.g. Montana), it has even led to open displays of Republican vs Democratic hostility. This dynamic has effectively turned the whole issue into a partisan topic, meaning that compromise has become very difficult. In particular, many Democrats are now reluctant to visit the issue at all, lest they be seen as supporting the Republican culture war agenda. Moreover, those pushing for bans on medical treatment in teenagers almost always have very negative attitudes towards trans people in general, and in some cases their legislation have even impacted the medical treatment of trans adults (which I think just shows how culture wars lead to bad policy). This inevitably leads to the trans community putting up an even more defensive attitude, with many now refusing to even entertain the idea that there might need to be more restrictions on younger patients with gender dysphoria. I'm frustrated with this attitude, but I don't think it's fair to blame it all on trans activism either, given how anti-trans forces have been operating lately. The whole thing has become highly dysfunctional, and I don't think we can actually have a healthy discussion on this serious topic without shutting down the culture wars first.

In conclusion, to get over this madness, and to come up with truly productive solutions, we must actively try to put an end to the culture war around trans issues. To do this effectively, we must take a stand not with the left or the right, but against the culture war mentality itself. We should also not allow either side to avoid responsibility. To the left-wing activists, we need to insist that it is not OK to label everything transphobic, shut down inconvenient viewpoints or de-platform people more generally. We need to insist that it is OK to disagree, and to have reasonable concerns about proposals for change. Also, philosophical disagreement is a normal part of life, and trans issues are no exception here. To those on the right, we need to insist that the current deliberate bias in reporting on trans issues, and the moral panic it has generated, must come to an end. Objectivity and fairness should be the first requirement in journalism, and individuals and media outlets that fail in this regard should be strongly criticized. Finally, it should be OK to debate how trans people are to be accommodated. What is not OK is the wholesale dehumanization of trans people. This means that, whatever differences we have on specific issues, we should all be able to agree that ideas like 'eradicating transgenderism from public life' are totally beyond the pale.

Let's Focus on the Practical Side of Trans Issues (Summary)

This is a summary of the article What is a Woman: the Non-Woke Trans View by TaraElla.

The 'what is a woman' question is often raised in the context of how to accommodate trans people. However, the emphasis on this point of abstract philosophical disagreement has turned what should be a practical issue into a political football. In reality, questions around the practical accommodation of trans people do not depend on agreement on this matter of abstract philosophy.

Even if you believe trans women are women (like I do, at least to some extent), you can still acknowledge that there are very real biological differences between trans women and biological women, and this needs to be taken into account when it comes to how best to accommodate trans people. And even if you don't agree that trans women are women (which I totally respect), you could still agree that trans people deserve the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness just like everyone else, and hence society should provide reasonable accommodations for trans people. Indeed, polls suggest that, even though a narrow majority of people disagree with the 'trans women are women' philosophy, a strong majority still support the principle that trans people should not face discrimination in their lives.

We should focus on the practical common ground here, i.e. the need to find good solutions to accommodate trans people while respecting the rights of other stakeholders, rather than focus on abstract philosophical disagreements, like the culture warriors on both sides want us to.

Make Trans Normal Again: the Non-Woke Trans View

Let's face it: trans people were able to live more normally 20 years ago compared with today, which means things are actually worse than 20 years ago. I often point this out to well-meaning progressives who like to say how far we've come on trans acceptance. Well, we've indeed gone far, but in the backwards way. Obviously, something needs to change.

I think people with political agenda, on both the left and the right, are responsible for this mess. Most of them aren't even trans, but they use trans people and trans issues like a political football. The postmodern left in particular likes to use trans people to attack existing social norms around sex and gender, with no clear benefit to actual trans people's lives. Their aim is to deconstruct, and ultimately 'abolish' gender, which is not what most trans people want. I'm certainly staunchly against this deconstructionist agenda myself. It has made the trans discourse weird, by introducing both language and ideas that only serve to confuse people, and ultimately bring on a backlash against trans people. The results of this backlash are now clear to see, especially in the American South, were trans people are seriously thinking about fleeing their states due to a tsunami of anti-trans laws. (Meanwhile, the postmodernists aren't even apologizing for the damage that they have done to us. Trans frustration against postmodernism is very well justified indeed.)

On the other side, we have the reactionary right, who have been particularly angered by recent developments like the legalization of gay marriage across the West. They want nothing more than to wage a culture war to reclaim their 'lost ground', to ideally force all LGBT people back into the closet if possible. They are now very open about their aim of 'eradicating' LGBT representation and ideas from public life. They also like to give a big platform to postmodern left activists, because their words and actions tend to portray us in the weirdest, most uncomfortable light. This is why, in documentary after documentary, in talk show after talk show, right wing culture warriors would only feature the most outrageous far-left activists, with reasonable trans people entirely ignored. The biased reporting from the right thus is also a major contributor to a very skewed perception of trans people in the media, where the majority of trans people are seen as politicized activists, and not as people who just want to quietly live their lives. This is extremely unfair to the silent majority of the trans community.

To get out of this mess, we need a new perspective on trans issues. One that is geared to normality. This would have to mean thinking about trans issues in a way that is consistent with the long-standing values and consensus of our society. Up until now, the postmodern left has been using trans people to challenge society's norms, and the reactionary right has happily used this to demonstrate that trans people are supposedly harmful to society.

What we need is a trans discourse that is aimed at assimilating trans people into the norms of society, so that the two are in harmony rather than in opposition. Moreover, to advance trans acceptance and get basic trans rights secured, the most important thing we need is a consensus on how trans people should be accommodated. A consensus can only be built along the lines of the values that are already accepted by the majority of a given society. This is another reason why proposals for trans integration need to be aligned with existing values and practices as much as possible.

I believe the best thing we can do for trans people is to 'make trans normal again'. We owe it to the silent majority of trans people out there to make it happen.