From 55abe680764d6484d1b4a3c37ac80119b0dcc43f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2023 15:46:50 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] memoir: tone-policing Lawrence --- ...s-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md | 2 ++ 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+) diff --git a/content/drafts/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md b/content/drafts/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md index fc0d3d7..b195f09 100644 --- a/content/drafts/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md +++ b/content/drafts/blanchards-dangerous-idea-and-the-plight-of-the-lucid-crossdreamer.md @@ -237,6 +237,8 @@ Was it rude of me to confront her on the contradiction in her PMs? Yes, it was e She said that she had to deal with enough invalidation already, that she had her own doubts and concerns but would only discuss them with people who shared her views. Fair enough—I'm not entitled to talk to anyone who doesn't want to talk to me, even if I personally find it pathetic that grown adults need to protect themselves from "invalidation". +I gave someone else a copy of _Men Trapped in Men's Bodies_. She didn't like it—which I would have respected, if her complaint was just that Lawrence was overconfident and overgeneralizing, as a factual matter of science and probability. But my acquaintence seemed more preoccupied with how the book was (in her words) "seemingly deliberately hurtful and disrespectful", using "inherently invalidating language that is very often used in people's dismissal, abuse, and violence towards trans folk", such as calling MtF people "men", referring to straight trans women as "homosexual"—or using "transgendered" (with an _ed_) instead of "transgender". (I would have hoped that the fact that Lawrence is trans and (thinks she) is describing herself would have been enough to make it credible that she didn't mean any harm by saying "men" instead of "a.m.a.b."—and that it should have been obvious that if you reject authors for not speaking in your own ideology's shibboleths, you lose an important chance to discover if your ideology is getting something wrong.) + The privately-sane responses were more interesting. "People are crazy about metaphysics," one trans woman told me. "That's not new. Compare with transubstantiation and how much scholarly work went in to trying to square it with natural materialism. As for causality, I think it's likely that the true explanation will not take the shape of an easily understood narrative." Later, she told me, "It's kind of funny how the part where you're being annoying isn't where you're being all TERFy and socially unacceptable, but where you make very strong assumptions about truth due to being a total nerd and positivist—mind you, the vast majority of times people deviate from this the consequences are terrible." -- 2.17.1