Fuck every single anti-trans defender, enabler, and hater. Parker, you are loved and needed and very much appreciated.
Of the many meaningful points you make, I'm holding onto this one particularly: "[Y]ou can think, "Oh wow, think these people are totally deluded!" and still understand that trans people, like all people, deserve legal protections and the ability to participate in the world for who they are."
Daily I am "forced" to interact, tolerate, and even humor the vast swath of humanity who are convinced that an all-loving, all-powerful deity not only exists, but is intimately concerned with where one's car keys got off to. They deserve legal protections (and even enjoy extra ones). But if I were to start advocating for the end of xtianism, it would rightly be construed as bigotry.
Trans people have the right to exist. You have the right to exist in peace.
Thanks for writing this Parker 💜 I’m so so sorry this is the way things are right now, that identities are being labeled an “ideology” how sickening that it seems to be taking root. My ideology is "I love and accept my kids" my activism is "please stop bullying my kids" that's it. They're the radical activist ideologues with a regressive agenda, I just want them to leave us alone. Please. Feel free to think in your heart of hearts that I am a “child abuser” who is taking advantage of my child’s “mental illness” to what win the woke awards or some shit?? But please stop leveraging the power of the state to make my child and my community less safe. The past year ramping up it doesn’t feel like genocide is an exaggeration, and Knowles has clinched it with the quiet part out loud.
Reading this after reading yesterday's article by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate, "Which Religion Counts in America," it is really scary how many right wing arguments are that some people don't deserve full rights because they are invalid as human beings. It is the evolution of the "I represent Real Americans" logic to the extreme.
I'm 60. I've had transgender friends and colleagues for _half of my life_ at this point! This B.S. that trans people are somehow a "recent" phenomena... it makes my blood boil. We can only hope that this is the desperate "last gasp" of these bigots as they increasingly find themselves in a minority and history rolls over and crushes them. The pendulum has to switch back to justice, and soon.
I think I have a better understanding of the outright bigots than I do of the "reasonable" commenters at the NY Times who are just really, really concerned about the effect of puberty blockers on bone density in teen girls like it's some kind of creepy hobby.
I think their lives must be going pretty OK if they've got time and mental bandwidth available for such an intense interest in purely imaginary "problems." What's the matter, do you really have no real problems to take your mind off the latest moral panic? Access to health care not a concern? Can afford to send the kids to college without worrying too much about the debt load? Secure job, no worries about making the mortgage payments on time? Must be nice.
The norming of transphobia by mainstream outlets and figures--like what the New York Times has been doing--is far more dangerous than it coming from the obvious right wing looney toons. These outlets have credibility and frame it all as asking reasonable questions. For whatever reason, the existence of trans people just seems to break a lot of people's brains.
American conservatism (and in fact conservatism throughout the world) is simply "I don't like people who are different than me, and I want to hurt them." That's it. Nothing more. And it is not ignorance, which would imply a knowledge deficit that could be resolved through education. It is hate.
I have the right to exist whether or not Michael Knowles's imaginary friend, White Jesus, says so.
I would argue that the fundamental ideal of conservatism has always been "Fuck you, I got mine." This is not really a tenable position if you say it to an actual person, so for the conservative political class they have to construct an "other" toward which their constituents can direct that ethos. Black folks, immigrants, feminists, gay folks, women, Muslims, trans folks, jews, etc it's all the same playbook.
They construct artificial barriers between communities so that we won't build the kind of solidarity that can break their fragile grasp on power and we don't have to fall for it anymore.
Joe Nocera's tweet brings Karl Popper's "Paradox of Intolerance" to mind:
Karl Popper's "Open society and its enemies" (1945). The paradox of tolerance: societies with unlimited tolerance are eventually seized/destroyed by the intolerant. In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.
Joe Nocera, Michael Knowles, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, etc need to take a long walk off a short pier.
I'm not foolish enough to think that Michael Knowles is speaking in good faith, but I would like to hear what his requirements for a "real ontological category" are and why. Bonus points(to me) if he says "post-modern" while laying those out.
Just like abortion, they're using a metaphysical argument to cover up their biases. The party of anti-intellectualism and anti-science suddenly becomes the party of reason when the result of that "reason" is preserving traditional hierarchies. But all that ultimately comes from a lot of religious fundamentalism. It's not like they have metaphysical ground to stand on. They just make these assertions without proof.. because there is no proof lol.
It's just a rhetorical trick that they use to insert a subtle appeal to authority while still maintaining an "anti-elitist" position. Sprinkle in a bit of confident jargon and you can bullshit a surprising number of people.
It's disgusting bad faith, and what is disturbing to me is that AFAICT this started in academia! Of course one needs no 'theory ' to be a thing but academics do try to understand human beings. (Most of the quest for knowledge, maybe all of it, centers around human beings.) So they--partly perhaps to understand transphobia wrote some things about transgender people. And these other, very ignorant and lazy bigots in academia decided to take these explanations of various aspects of transgender experiences as somehow constructing transgender experiences. Just the absurdity of that makes me NUTS.
But a very similar thing is being done with Critical Race Theory and decolonization discussions. As if critical race theories invented the idea of race! No, this idea was invented by racists. Colonization wasn't invented by theorists of colonialism. Decolonization is, in fact, a set of historical events. Yes, historians do discuss historical events.
It's the most absurd tactic in the world to take an intellectual investigation into a thing as the origin OF the thing. However, I believe it works because the point of these fascist responses is to erase and rewrite knowledge and to remove historical understanding. So one inanity is to claim that somehow transgender people just popped up out of nowhere. The point of making such a claim is to deny the legitimacy of the existence of transgender people, which is certainly in keeping with an eliminativist project.
It's alarming on all fronts and though it's uniquely obsessive and cruel in its targeting is in keeping with the larger goal of attacking people as an attempt to re-shape reality. Of course we know one cannot reshape reality of human beings. You can't erase 500 years of slavery and colonialism, you can't erase LGBT people, you can't erase transgender people. They will always exist, they exist in very conservative societies (as both Turkey and Iran show, as all the transgender refugees show, as history shows),
I was so recently idealistic, believing many forms of prejudice and stupidity and injustice would fade, as people became more knowledgeable. And now I see educated people in various humanities and social science fields (a minority) jump into the fascist mix to hype their ignorance. They don't have the right character for scholarship as they are incurious and dogmatic and narrow minded but it is disheartening to see the use of education turned into an ugly weapon for ignorance--and violence and repression and genocide. And to see the collusion by many sectors of society.
Ultimately liars cannot win but when you worry about people 's lives it's not much comfort because lies do destroy people. We have the truth and the defensible moral values and ultimately we have the tools for a society everyone can live in but it's going to be a long road to victory over this mass movement of charlatans, demagogues and hysterics.
Fuck every single anti-trans defender, enabler, and hater. Parker, you are loved and needed and very much appreciated.
Of the many meaningful points you make, I'm holding onto this one particularly: "[Y]ou can think, "Oh wow, think these people are totally deluded!" and still understand that trans people, like all people, deserve legal protections and the ability to participate in the world for who they are."
Daily I am "forced" to interact, tolerate, and even humor the vast swath of humanity who are convinced that an all-loving, all-powerful deity not only exists, but is intimately concerned with where one's car keys got off to. They deserve legal protections (and even enjoy extra ones). But if I were to start advocating for the end of xtianism, it would rightly be construed as bigotry.
Trans people have the right to exist. You have the right to exist in peace.
Thanks for writing this Parker 💜 I’m so so sorry this is the way things are right now, that identities are being labeled an “ideology” how sickening that it seems to be taking root. My ideology is "I love and accept my kids" my activism is "please stop bullying my kids" that's it. They're the radical activist ideologues with a regressive agenda, I just want them to leave us alone. Please. Feel free to think in your heart of hearts that I am a “child abuser” who is taking advantage of my child’s “mental illness” to what win the woke awards or some shit?? But please stop leveraging the power of the state to make my child and my community less safe. The past year ramping up it doesn’t feel like genocide is an exaggeration, and Knowles has clinched it with the quiet part out loud.
Reading this after reading yesterday's article by Dahlia Lithwick in Slate, "Which Religion Counts in America," it is really scary how many right wing arguments are that some people don't deserve full rights because they are invalid as human beings. It is the evolution of the "I represent Real Americans" logic to the extreme.
I'm 60. I've had transgender friends and colleagues for _half of my life_ at this point! This B.S. that trans people are somehow a "recent" phenomena... it makes my blood boil. We can only hope that this is the desperate "last gasp" of these bigots as they increasingly find themselves in a minority and history rolls over and crushes them. The pendulum has to switch back to justice, and soon.
Thanks Parker, we can't let this shit continue.
I think I have a better understanding of the outright bigots than I do of the "reasonable" commenters at the NY Times who are just really, really concerned about the effect of puberty blockers on bone density in teen girls like it's some kind of creepy hobby.
I think their lives must be going pretty OK if they've got time and mental bandwidth available for such an intense interest in purely imaginary "problems." What's the matter, do you really have no real problems to take your mind off the latest moral panic? Access to health care not a concern? Can afford to send the kids to college without worrying too much about the debt load? Secure job, no worries about making the mortgage payments on time? Must be nice.
"No, I'm not a bigot, I'm just an amateur Endocrinologist!"
The norming of transphobia by mainstream outlets and figures--like what the New York Times has been doing--is far more dangerous than it coming from the obvious right wing looney toons. These outlets have credibility and frame it all as asking reasonable questions. For whatever reason, the existence of trans people just seems to break a lot of people's brains.
Very, very, very well-said, Parker. You’re appreciated. Please keep using your voice.
American conservatism (and in fact conservatism throughout the world) is simply "I don't like people who are different than me, and I want to hurt them." That's it. Nothing more. And it is not ignorance, which would imply a knowledge deficit that could be resolved through education. It is hate.
I have the right to exist whether or not Michael Knowles's imaginary friend, White Jesus, says so.
I would argue that the fundamental ideal of conservatism has always been "Fuck you, I got mine." This is not really a tenable position if you say it to an actual person, so for the conservative political class they have to construct an "other" toward which their constituents can direct that ethos. Black folks, immigrants, feminists, gay folks, women, Muslims, trans folks, jews, etc it's all the same playbook.
They construct artificial barriers between communities so that we won't build the kind of solidarity that can break their fragile grasp on power and we don't have to fall for it anymore.
Joe Nocera's tweet brings Karl Popper's "Paradox of Intolerance" to mind:
Karl Popper's "Open society and its enemies" (1945). The paradox of tolerance: societies with unlimited tolerance are eventually seized/destroyed by the intolerant. In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.
Joe Nocera, Michael Knowles, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, etc need to take a long walk off a short pier.
I'm not foolish enough to think that Michael Knowles is speaking in good faith, but I would like to hear what his requirements for a "real ontological category" are and why. Bonus points(to me) if he says "post-modern" while laying those out.
Just like abortion, they're using a metaphysical argument to cover up their biases. The party of anti-intellectualism and anti-science suddenly becomes the party of reason when the result of that "reason" is preserving traditional hierarchies. But all that ultimately comes from a lot of religious fundamentalism. It's not like they have metaphysical ground to stand on. They just make these assertions without proof.. because there is no proof lol.
It's just a rhetorical trick that they use to insert a subtle appeal to authority while still maintaining an "anti-elitist" position. Sprinkle in a bit of confident jargon and you can bullshit a surprising number of people.
It's disgusting bad faith, and what is disturbing to me is that AFAICT this started in academia! Of course one needs no 'theory ' to be a thing but academics do try to understand human beings. (Most of the quest for knowledge, maybe all of it, centers around human beings.) So they--partly perhaps to understand transphobia wrote some things about transgender people. And these other, very ignorant and lazy bigots in academia decided to take these explanations of various aspects of transgender experiences as somehow constructing transgender experiences. Just the absurdity of that makes me NUTS.
But a very similar thing is being done with Critical Race Theory and decolonization discussions. As if critical race theories invented the idea of race! No, this idea was invented by racists. Colonization wasn't invented by theorists of colonialism. Decolonization is, in fact, a set of historical events. Yes, historians do discuss historical events.
It's the most absurd tactic in the world to take an intellectual investigation into a thing as the origin OF the thing. However, I believe it works because the point of these fascist responses is to erase and rewrite knowledge and to remove historical understanding. So one inanity is to claim that somehow transgender people just popped up out of nowhere. The point of making such a claim is to deny the legitimacy of the existence of transgender people, which is certainly in keeping with an eliminativist project.
It's alarming on all fronts and though it's uniquely obsessive and cruel in its targeting is in keeping with the larger goal of attacking people as an attempt to re-shape reality. Of course we know one cannot reshape reality of human beings. You can't erase 500 years of slavery and colonialism, you can't erase LGBT people, you can't erase transgender people. They will always exist, they exist in very conservative societies (as both Turkey and Iran show, as all the transgender refugees show, as history shows),
I was so recently idealistic, believing many forms of prejudice and stupidity and injustice would fade, as people became more knowledgeable. And now I see educated people in various humanities and social science fields (a minority) jump into the fascist mix to hype their ignorance. They don't have the right character for scholarship as they are incurious and dogmatic and narrow minded but it is disheartening to see the use of education turned into an ugly weapon for ignorance--and violence and repression and genocide. And to see the collusion by many sectors of society.
Ultimately liars cannot win but when you worry about people 's lives it's not much comfort because lies do destroy people. We have the truth and the defensible moral values and ultimately we have the tools for a society everyone can live in but it's going to be a long road to victory over this mass movement of charlatans, demagogues and hysterics.
Eradicate Michael Knowles. He's not an ontological category.