I don't think it's transphobic to push back on trans activists. I have problematic issues (bipolar, recovering alcoholic) but I don't go around demanding the world accommodate me and calling people who won't listen to me haters.
You say you're part of several vulnerable populations, but you don't ask the world to "accommodate" you - but the complains trans people have about Chappelle are not about 'making their lives easier.'
Where transphobia (or any prejudicial viewpoint) comes into play is refusing to take vulnerable populations' viewpoints seriously. When trans people point out that they are at much greater risk of violence and also point out studies on how rhetoric contributes to dehumanization promotes violence - you need to take the idea that this isn't "what comedians do" because the impact of saying things about different groups will be different.
Transphobia isn't "disagreeing with trans people" - in this case it's not taking peoples' views seriously because they are trans. When you say "I have problems too but I don't bother people about it" - you suggest that your problems are similar to trans peoples'. It is explictly illegal to discriminate against you for your mental health conditions, but trans people have far fewer protections[1]. Considering that Texas just recently criminalized being trans under the age of 18, I would really ask you to consider if that view is correct and how it makes you look to say it.
Edit: I got a little ramble-y - in general: oppression is possible when vulnerable populations' descriptions of why and how they are treated worse are not taken seriously. People in vulnerable populations can be wrong (like all of us!) - but in order to point that out in a way that doesn't promote oppression you have to start your disagreement from a point where what you are disagreeing with is a position that the vulnerable population agrees they hold.
[1] https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/depression-ptsd-other-men...
Of course he isnt taking into account people who are both black and trans but in only this one case, you need to actually understand the joke first.
All that said, Netflix is also wrong because as employees of Netflix the people will be linked to this content weather they like it or not and it doesnt matter what content you are talking about weather its The Bodyguard(Islamophobic), Dave Chapelle(Transphobia), Squid Game(anti capatilist or anti communist depending on whi you ask) or probably the worst, Cuties(GOP and Qanon has diluted this word, but pedophilia). If you are an employee and this is original content, your name is forever linked to it and so you should be able to have a say in it. If it was purchased content, maybe you could say you weren't involved.
Overall this is a complex issue with multiple layers and I say this all as a hardcore leftist.
Like working for a tobacco company, your name and reputation will be tarnished by that association. The solution is obvious: don't work for that company.
Or maybe Netflix will start to implement solutions like those used by the pornography industry; hire sys admins, programmers etc under a shell company that doesn't share the name of the main business. So rather than putting "Software Developer at Pornhub.com" on your resume, you can put tell people you worked for "MindGeek".
The world won't stop saying negative things about people like me and I accept that. Just last night I was watching Amazon's Bosch and the lead character called someone a "worthless alcoholic." As Vonnegut used to write, "so it goes."
Again, my point is that trans people are not complaining about "people saying negative things" in a vacuum. They are complaining about a specific situation that is happening which goes beyond just the context of the Chapelle special. I don't believe you are actually responding to the most common trans critique of Chapelle and, in not doing that, you dismiss the actual critiques they are making.
Let me put it this way: we don't have to agree about if the Chapelle special is a problem (I don't happen to worry too much about it but I understand why people are angry). But, I want you to imagine that the loudest and most alarmist trans folks are correct - Chapelle is helping a trend of violence against trans people. If that were the case (which again, is not exactly my belief tho things are pretty bad out there) disagreeing with them would be supporting violence against them. The best way, in my view, to avoid accidentally supporting that kind of thing is to start your personal thoughts (and public arguments) from the POV of the vulnerable community. That's how we can all avoid accidentally erasing an important critique.
Side note: I have yet to see a satisfying definition for this sense of the word "erasing". As best I can tell, it's just an emphatic way of saying "disagreeing with a position of personal importance to X".
There are also very real statistics and accounts of violence against trans people. The numbers are shy in comparison to COVID deaths, but you have to account for the number of people who do transition and do not hide it.
Is this priority #1 in the world? No. But we could all show some more god damned humanity to people.
There are indeed very real statistics of violence against trans people. Also abhorrent and inhuman.
In what way would you say we are failing to show humanity to trans people that we _are_ showing to other groups of people whose identities cause them to be the subject of humor as well as the victim of deadly hate crimes?
I'd recommend these books to start off with - two classics, for the historical perspective, and two more recent ones, that discuss the modern transactivist movement that's so controversial right now:
* Janice Raymond, The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male
* Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism
* Julie Bindel, Feminism for Women: The Real Route To Liberation
* Kara Dansky, The Abolition of Sex
> All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves.
You mean that book by Janice Raymond?
> So, what I think is very fascinating is that there's a connection between the very jolly Blair government and their Gender Recognition Act and Iran. They love transgenderism because it does help to get rid of this serious problem of homosexuality and it enforces gender. Right? So we do need to be fighting, I think, transgenderism as a state 'project' in terms of gender.
That's uh, Sheila Jeffreys being delusional about how supportive the UK government is towards trans people because Iran's very exceptional asymmetry in how accepting they are of trans people and not gay people.
Counter suggestion: Read Gender Trouble.
This mis-represents what I said.
This thread started with "how to disagree without being accused of being bigoted."
You can form your beliefs however you like. That's a different situation than being in conversation with another person. If you "respond" to someone in a way that does not acknowledge the content of what they said, they may reasonably accuse you of not taking them seriously. There are many reasons to not take someone seriously - including having bigoted views. If you want to avoid being accused of being bigoted, I find it helps to acknowledge (even to just say you don't buy them) even the most extreme views of someone in a vulnerable population. It is polite and it keeps you in conversation with the other person.
If you don't want to be in conversation with someone then, of course, you don't need to acknowledge what they say - but they may be upset with you and accuse you of bias. That's just...life.
I think it's good practice to be skeptical of the views held by powerful people and give more slack to more marginal views I find less credible, but that's a personal belief and it has limits.
> I have yet to see a satisfying definition for this sense of the word "erasing". As best I can tell, it's just an emphatic way of saying "disagreeing with a position of personal importance to X".
It's choosing to make a public statement on an issue in a way that leaves out ('erases') something that an impacted group thinks. How big a deal that is depends on the groups involved and the seriousness of the topic.
For example, when okareaman said "[t]he world won't stop saying negative things about people like me and I accept that" they are implying that trans people are upset about people saying negative things. That is probably true - but that's not the complaint about Chapelle's jokes. By pretending that the complaint is simpler (and focused on personal preference rather than an environment of violence and criminalizing of trans identity) - they 'erase' those complaints in how they discuss it. Another example could be when people ignore the different economic conditions that Millennials and Baby Boomers face and complain that any lack of Millennial success is due to personal flaws. We could talk about more extreme examples, but I hope this makes what I mean clearer.
The point is, this is a very big if.
And it's clear (to me anyway) that if one believes speech leads to violence, and if less extreme measures don't achieve the results you want, one will eventually attempt to have speech such as Chapelle's comedy routine legally defined as incitement of violence.
It is decidedly not incitement, according to the current legal definition, which I endorse. What do you think?
I don't think this follows from the current jurisprudence on speech at all. I.e. we have a long a successful-ish tradition of sorting out speech that does or does not lead to violence without making blunt judgements like you describe. There's a long legal history of untangling legally censurable speech from speech that might incite violence but that incitement is not clear enough to use the law to restrict it.
I do not personally feel that Chapelle's comedy routine invokes violence (FWIW I have never spoken to anyone else before, it just did not seem like a big deal) - the root of this thread was "I feel like I can disagree with someone without being hateful" and I was just pointing out how they could do that (and also that the view they disagreed with wasn't generally held by the group they attributed it to). So...if you don't want to be viewed as transphobic, it's a bad strategy to claim staw-man the arguments trans people are making.
That said there's a lot to talk about here and clearly I haven't been fully successful in communicating what I want!
In general, I would say that the idea of "a solution" to bad speech is kind of questionable. Speech acts are part of a tapestry of ideology and rhetoric that can be engaged to all sorts of ends. Treating it as an isolated action feels out of sync with reality to me. Different kinds of bad speech will have different responses - often depending on how much power and influence the speaker has. For instance, there are many people who advocate pretty extreme reactions to Chapelle that I don't think are warranted - but the chance of them going into effect seem very small so I don't spend much time on it. It's not enough info to just look at the text - you have to also look at context.
P.s. sorry for the late response, I had a busy day yesterday.
If the mentally ill are so privileged, it's ironic that people have fought for generations to not be defined as such (e.g. in the DSM).
Which, disclaimer, I do think anyone should be free to do. But people who are offended must be free to share their thoughts as well, then.
It’s akin to saying alcohol addiction isn’t a real addiction. It’s not that you’re making fun of alcoholics, the idea of an alcohol addict, or the behavior and recovery of an alcohol addict — You’re instead devaluing the idea that someone can be addicted to alcohol, falsifying their reality.
Sure, many people can laugh at that, but it’s only going to be the people who can’t relate. The people who have never been familiar with or been victim to substance abuse can probably laugh at the idea that you can just “stop drinking right now, there, problem solved, now what was so hard about that?” because the idea is so foreign to them.
Humor will always be divisive, which means as a comedian you alone wield the responsibility for where that line will be drawn. Chapelle intentionally draws it on personal identity.
I think we can support better comedy than that. Anyone can make an in-crowd; A great comedian makes you the subject and makes you laugh about it too.
I understand the logic of that, but I don't think the industry should actually go through with that. Such well-meaning content restrictions would unduly restrict artistic expression. Content warnings about alcohol/drug use should be sufficient to warn away anybody who (understandably!) wants to avoid that sort of content.
Again, the only 'accommodation' that is asked is to just let them live. Seems like not a hard thing to do, and not something one would have to go out of their way of to 'push back against'.
If you don't like the thought of buttfucking, don't. If you don't like the thought of people who identify differently from their biological sex, don't. If you don't like the thought of eating kale, don't. It's simple, it costs you nothing. Nothing at all.
But OP is letting them live. Unless you are alleging OP is running around killing trans people??
"Again, the only 'accommodation' that is asked is to just let them live."
This isn't true as they are asking that comedians to not make jokes about them. Dave Chapelle nor any comedian that I know of go around saying trans people should not be allowed to live. Or have I missed something?
And yes, you are missing something. Go ahead and watch Chapelle. The issue isn't that he makes a joke about trans people. Sure, I'd assume people in general may not like having jokes made at their expense, but that's not the issue. The issue is that Chapelle dedicates a whole special to argue that their cause isn't worthy to be supported. As much as I like Chapelle and his amazing ability to do hour-long stand-ups where he doesn't even tell jokes and yet you're mesmerized, I'll have to side with the 'punching down' argument. This campaign of his will not age well.
I understand his frustration, and, in his words, jealousy, to see how far LGBTQ+ rights have come compared to the much older issue of Black rights, but that's a really poor justification to rant against the former.
Just imagine that same setup to watch someone rant for an hour against women suffrage, or gay or Black rights, etc. Sure, some will like this.
Why is that an issue?
Their cause is to enact a redefinition of "woman" and "man" (and in some contexts, "female" and "male") in terms of so-called gender identity, rather than sex.
This is a sweeping, fundamental change to how most people understand those terms, and there is growing evidence of some very negative outcomes of doing so.
Of course there will be pushback on this. And it's not a bad thing to do so.
Or is it only trans people you don't think people should be able to joke about?
Then again, it is 'unfair' that Simone Biles has the physique she has that fits to her chosen sport better than mine; Michael Phelps likewise; Alex Honnold processes fear differently from most of us, etc.
I don't know all the history of it so I won't make claims about how it started. But what you're saying does not describe the reality of highschool sports as I experienced it.
I was a competitive swimmer in highschool; the team was split 50/50 between boys and girls. We all swam in the same lanes of the same pools, swimming the same practice given by the same coaches. Virtually all of us were taught how to swim by the same woman. The only separation was the locker rooms, and the competitive events during meets. The events were the same, 100m, 500m, etc, but segregated by sex. The performance gap post-puberty was immense. The fastest girl on my team, an incredible outlier with Olympic ambitions, was slower than about 5 of the guys. If the sport were blind to sex, the team probably would have had a 90/10 ratio, rather than 50/50. This would be grossly unfair to women.
I am not saying any of this to discredit the hard work and skill these women have accomplished, but at the end of the day biology is biology.
As an avid hockey fan, I think that the two sexes play a similar, but slightly different styled game (male professional leagues allow contact unlike female leagues), but I think we should celebrate and enjoy the differences each style that hockey or any game has to offer.
It doesn't matter what they tell you about confidentiality. Just get the care you need through your insurance and avoid the potential honeypot.
Edit: This comment is heavily biased towards an American audience where at will employment, and health insurance rather than government benefit, are the norm.
[edit] Ok, got it. I don't mean to question anyone's personal experience, and sorry that this is what's happening to you.
Also, I don't want to 'rank' the degree of marginalization different groups experience, that's not at all what I'm after. Ideally, none of this would exist and everyone would just live happily ever after.
What I mean is that I don't see a national debate, through politicians or 'celebrities', that deny the existence of, say, alcoholism.
But again, I don't mean to imply that those groups don't suffer. Also, I can just be wrong.
Yes. According to the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), alcoholism, or alcohol use disorder (AUD), is a diagnosable mental illness.
It's a not a bad source, obviously, but being in a book does not make things diseases or not.
That said, in my (medical) opinion, alcoholism and other addictions are much better to be considered (and treated) as diseases.
"is a mental health condition" infers "is in the DSM"
Raster than:
"is in the DSM" infers "is a mental health condition"
That said, the DSM is a good reference for finding out what the APA consider to be a legitimate condition.
I'm not a psychiatrist. But I do diagnose and treat mental health conditions most days at work.
(e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush#Alcohol_abuse )
People would have said the same thing about the likelihood of having a gay president 15-20 years ago. Instead, we had an openly gay and married presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg, do quite well in the last election with his homosexuality not being a major point of the conversation.
The amount of progress on gay rights and the public's perspective on LGBTQ rights has been extremely fast. I think (and hope) that you are wrong and that society will be ready for a trans president much sooner than you anticipate.
It will be a while before a trans president is a realistic prospect. The U.S. have yet to elect a female leader of the country 40 years after that was a thing in the UK, and 20 years after Germany. The U.S. now have an openly gay secretary of transportation, hardly a key position in the administration. Germany had their openly gay vice-chancellor and secretary of state a decade ago.
I think society will be ready long before the statistical chance of an otherwise front-runner happening to also be transgender is likely to be satisfied.
as for bipolar disorder and other such things, at least it is acceptable to call them what they are - mental illnesses, and to suggest to get treatment
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dyspho...
> Gender dysphoria is the feeling of discomfort or distress that might occur in people whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth or sex-related physical characteristics.
Being transgender is not the same as having gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is the (sometimes) associated distress. It is effectively an administrated diagnosis, without it many trans people would not be able to access treatments they need.
The pages goes on with:
> The diagnosis was created to help people with gender dysphoria get access to necessary health care and effective treatment. The term focuses on discomfort as the problem, rather than identity.
Most people who think pointing out "gender disphoria" is a "mental illness" is a good point would be shocked and disappointed when they find out what the standard treatment for patients with gender disphoria is.
So if somebody's "pushing back" on that, I think it's pretty fair to call them transphobic.
But there is more to it. There are issues about women's sports, public education, the ethics of irreversible medical procedures on minors without an objective diagnosis, etc.
You explicitly avoided the controversy, and it's not really fair to do that.
Of course, "live our lives" includes trans kids being able to live their lives too, being safe at their school, etc. And trans people should be able to play sport if they like, it's a healthy thing to do.
As far as social sport goes, I personally prefer mixed sport, but I think that the excitement over trans people playing in women's leagues is unnecessary. At the professional level, I can understand a need for a bit more precision, but my understanding is that the international sporting bodies have regulations and they (the sporting bodies) don't seem to think there's a big issue.
As far as "irreversible medical procedures on minors" goes... (and this is the one that spurred me on to reply) ...it's just not a thing.
And again, I'm in Australia, but I'm pretty sure this applies globally. To my knowledge, we simply do not perform reassignment surgery on children.
The WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) guidelines (available here: https://www.wpath.org/media/cms/Documents/SOC%20v7/SOC%20V7_... ) clearly state that one of the criteria for surgery is being "the legal age of majority to give consent for medical procedures in a given country"
Even if not done much today, it's certainly an issue. For instance, see this doc from the US HHS (a federal department):
https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/gender-affir...
"May include medical, surgical... For children and adolescents...crucial to overall health".
Logically, it kind of has to be an issue, right? Current medicine isn't even close to being able to change the sex of an 18 year old. So some people will want to start a lot earlier in a lot more cases. And people will push the boundaries with hormones, which in kids absolutely will cause irreversible changes.
So I stand by my claim that you are unfairly dismissing the controversial aspects of the argument.
Prospective Supreme court justices have to delegate the definition of "woman" to a biologist.
And you'll be called transphobic at the slightest infraction of the ever growing set of rules.
The whole rainbow movement exists to gain positions, money and power and to have a free pass to yell at dissenters.
And then the online and it's allied that push for all sort of weirdness and political visibility and gains.
Many don't have much issues at least those to air in public about first one. The later one seems to aim in places also ruin things that they enjoy. Just for signalling and power.
I want him to stop doing trans jokes because he's not good at them. They aren't funny. As far as I can tell, they are attempts at cheap shock humor that might make sense for a new comedian to try to get some headlines, but not something someone with fame and talent should have to stoop to.
I think you'd feel very different about what this sentence really means if people maliciously assumed you were drunk driving or a pedofile just because you wore a budweiser shirt.
Or if there were plans for laws making bipolar specialists illegal, or outlawing non-christian addiction programs.
Or if there were laws forbidding teachers from mentioning that psychological disorders in general (but especially bipolar) exist and required them to snitch on you to your parents and the state if it were suspected that you were bipolar.
one thing that struck me is how different views on transgenderism are in the US, for example, than my country.
In my country, transgender actually FOUGHT for the right to NOT be counted as a man or a women, and finally won the right to be counted as a third gender, with the rights that follow it.
That mean that, the slogans here are NOT, for example, that "Transwomen are Women" but instead, "transwomen are TRANSwomen" (i.e. don't lump them with man/women, labels which are considered cis-specific.) or that they demanded SEPERATE bathrooms for their gender, and DON'T want to be forced to be use men/women bathrooms.
Such opinions would be considered extremely transphobic in the US, but are what trans-people actively fought for here.
I'm not saying my country is a beacon for LGBTQ+ rights, simply pointing out that issues that the western Transgender community face (Gender Identifications issues from TERFs, or bathroom related panics) would simply be a non-issue here because the clash simply doesn't arise in the first place!
Women wouldn't feel threatened by transwomen, because they would never want to step into each other's territories in anyway.
I am not sure what the ideal is, just that western trans community might need to look at a global view and realize that perhaps what they consider transphobic, are actually sought-for rights by members of their own community in the East, and how they can better move forwards in this regards.
----
also, I do need to highlight that rules do not translate into ground realities, which are often bleak regardless of legislation. Discrimination and violent attacks are rampant here, we are in no way a utopia.
but here are some links which might better explain what I was trying to convey:
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/pakistan-s-1st-trans...
https://www.reuters.com/article/Pakistan-transgender-census/...
https://www.npr.org/2012/09/03/160496712/pakistans-transgend...
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/pakistan-issues-land...
1 of the biggest issues now in the US is if trans youth should receive any affirming treatment. Even puberty blockers. Calling them a 3rd gender wouldn't change the sides.