Comment by Beltalowda | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Beltalowda | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> her goofy opinions about trans women

I never heard of this person before today, and just checked her Wikipedia page[1] to see what the "goofy opinions" are.

Maybe the page is incomplete, but they don't seem all that "goofy"? What exactly a "woman" is is subject to quite a lot of disagreement, and I don't think there is an "easy" answer here. I think it's important this debate is being held, and this kind of "bruh huh goofy opinions" dismissive attitude is exactly what the author is complaining about.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie#LGBT_...

> As for people "just asking questions," it's sometimes really hard to tell if someone is "asking questions" in good faith or not

This is "just asking questions" about someone's motivation, and it's sometimes really hard to tell if that's in good faith or not, too.

We should all stop sowing FUD about people's motivation whenever someone expresses a view we disagree with. It's really toxic.

I don't typically question a person's motivation for asking questions! But the "great trans bathroom debate" has blown up far out of proportion, and its such a weird topic to wade into unprompted, that I have a hard time ascribing anything but bad intentions to anyone who does.

People have weird opinions all the time. I'm sure I have many myself. The difference is that she's an influential author with a wide reach who can reasonably be expected to think just a little more before she voices an opinion on something that affects a marginalized community.

You are tone policing. How do you know she didn't "think just a little bit more"? You assert that she didn't think enough because you don't like what she had to say.

Ascribing bad intentions off the bat to someone who wanders into a topic "unprompted" (how do you know? Do you talk to her daily?) is a poisonous attitude. Why are you the judge here? And the trans issue is not a "weird topic." It is highly topical. Many are talking and thinking about it. That just bothers you, apparently.

edit: s/off the bad/off the bat

You're right! I didn't like what she had to say because the thing she said was transphobic.

The "trans issue" itself is not a weird topic. But there are certain ideas that seem to have taken hold ("the MASSIVE risk of fentanyl candy", "the HUGE threat of trans women using the bathroom", etc) that are objectively weird and, in the grand scheme of things, non-issues. For a regular person off the street, I might ascribe having an idea like that to ignorance. For people like Rowling, Adichie, etc I can only attribute it to bad intentions.

So no person of prominence could hold such an opinion and still have good intentions? That's a pattern that I find rather disturbing. "We're so clearly right that anyone who disagrees is obviously either ignorant or evil!" No, you aren't actually that clearly right.

And when I say "no, you aren't that clearly right", I don't just mean you, great_tankard, on the subject of trans issues. I mean just about everybody who ever says that, or even feels that.

I don't see anything about "the great trans bathroom debate"? It seems extremely reductionists and dismissive to boil it down to that.

> The difference is that she's an influential author with a wide reach who can reasonably be expected to think just a little more before she voices an opinion on something that affects a marginalized community.

So basically it's fine for people to have any opinion they want, except if they actually have an audience? That is literally self-censorship.

"Affects a marginalized community" is one of those things that gets thrown around left and right, but it's not at all clear to me that people really are really all that affected by someone saying "saying 'trans' and 'cis' acknowledges that there is a distinction between women born female and women who transition". This is something you can disagree with, but I don't see how it really "affects" or "harms" anyone. You make it sound like she said something horrible, but this really isn't that, and it's also something a large number of people – probably a majority, including on the left – would agree with. Previous: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33379058

The alternative is to unquestionably accept any argument from the marginalized people, and that doesn't strike me as a good idea. We accepted MLK's arguments based on the merit of his arguments, but also rejected various arguments from the Nation of Islam and other more radical groups.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com