Elizabeth Mondegreen and Ophelia Benson shared info on a new statement by a Genocide Think-Tank on the genocidal nature of gender criticals, and it’s an example of the failure of opposition research to actually research one’s opposition.
This is a claim that gender criticals are fascists equivalent to Nazis, and we demonize trans people because they threaten the natural order of the nuclear family. Here’s an example of their rhetoric:
Focusing primarily on the imagined threat posed by transgender women, gender critical ideologues believe that transgender women are in fact men who are seeking to dominate cisgender women (women whose sense of self corresponds with their birth sex) by impersonating them and thereby gaining access to women’s bathrooms, women’s locker rooms, women’s sports teams, and other women’s spaces. They routinely accuse transgender people of being mentally ill and believe that the parents, family members, and medical professionals who support transgender people are commiting morally reprehensible acts against the transgender individuals (by nurturing their ‘illness’) and against society at large (by permitting dangerous people and ideas to take root).
This is the Lemkin Institute, and they seem to be a fairly legitimate group committed to justice for genocide victims, and also research strategies to prevent future genocides. But, this statement is a broadside, with little factual basis and multiple lies as well as misrepresentations. Again, for those of you who are new to the transgender issue, gender critical people include femininists who have demonstrated that gender is a social structure which restricts women and girls from being fully realized members of society due to their sex. This is quite the opposite of a fascist position, but transactivists interpret fascism as “not getting my way because of those meanies.”
The essay also includes severe, yet popular, misreprepresentations of science. Misrepresenting science is easy to do, because people seem to have basic misunderstandings of what science is, and how it works.
It must be said that the reality of transgender identity cannot be challenged. Transgender people have existed throughout history. In many societies, particularly before Western colonial domination, social institutions existed to make room for trans people. Scientific research on sexual development has demonstrated the complexity of biological sex and the biological basis for gender diversity. Furthermore, gender identity is a very private and subjective matter that engages with deeply felt realities and the social constructions that exist in society. It is a part of the process of human expression that is protected by universal human rights and the US Constitution, such as the right to life, liberty and security of person; equal protection of the law; the right to privacy; and the freedom of expression. Like other identities, gender identities outside of the narrow binary are legitimate and protected.
This is such a mess, I find it very difficult to construct a logical argument against it. The terminology is purposely confusing, as we are to believe that gender is held to be a binary and that this is what they reject. But, honestly, no one who is a gender skeptic or gender critical, teaches that gender is a binary. Sex is binary, and not just in humans, but in all of our primate cousins. In all of our mammal cousins, for that matter.
Gender is a description of roles that limit people due to their sex. This was once easily understood. Now it’s confused with sex, and gender identity is claimed to be a unique property of an individual that is more important to recognizing male or female than actual sexual reproductive systems and our respective organs. The language is deliberately obfuscated to obscure the purpose of gender ideology.
Like the suicide threat thrown at parents to get them to agree to affirmation treatment of children, we are faced with the choice of death or conversion to trans ideology. Resistance is funeral (or multiple plurals thereof, in this case:)
The ideological constructions of transgender women promoted by gender critical ideologues are particularly genocidal. They share many features in common with other, better known, genocidal ideologies. Transgender women are represented as stealth border crossers who seek to defile the purity of cisgender women, much as Tutsi women were viewed in Hutu Power ideology and Jewish men in Nazi antisemitism. Trans people in general are framed as figures that threaten the wholeness of the patriarchal nuclear family as well as the strength and vitality of national communities, much in the way that ethnic and national targets of genocide are viewed as cosmic enemies of the perpetrator group. Like the religious targets of genocidal violence, trans people are often described as somehow polluted, sinful, or against God. They are blamed for a host of social problems that have nothing to do with them or with the free expression of their identities.
The statement is an example of a Gish Gallop. In order to counter the claims in these few paragraphs, one would need a book. A Gish Gallop is the practice of fitting as many inaccuracies into an alloted timeframe in a debate as possible, so that in order to counter it, the opponent would go over time just to correct the lies. It was made famous by Duane Gish, a creationist, as he debated evolutionary scientists.
It’s easy to spread lies and propaganda in this manner, by setting up an emotional response of alarm and then flooding people with statements that seem kind of true and fit their preconceived notions. In order to correct them, one needs to examine the subject critically and calmly, and that puts gender skeptics in a very difficult position because we (rightly) are angered by such preposterous, hateful, and dangerous claims.
They are trying to back us into a corner, to force us to be defensive and lash out nastily in response so that they can point out how nasty TERFs are, and they deserve to be ostracized and threatened.
There is no debate allowed, and any such attempt is hateful, dangerous rhetoric that leads to dead children, dead athletes, dead hordes of men who are not allowed in women’s private spaces.
“It must be said that the reality of transgender identity cannot be challenged.”
No debate.
Resistance is funeral.
Once again, they have used the core fallacy that’s at the heart of every argument against gender critical ideas - they assume as a premise that everyone is born with an internal “gender” that can’t be observed or measured by in any way except by the feelings of the person who has it, can’t even be defined, and that this is an immutable trait. If that were true, everything else they believe follows. They cleverly present that as an unarguable fact, and then all the points that follow from it are difficult to refute. If a gender identity is something you’re born with, like a skin color, then of course anyone who opposes you is a bigot. But if you don’t accept their premise the entire argument falls apart. I have absolutely no issue with people dressing and appearing however they want. I do have an issue with activists recruiting teenagers, telling them that normal teenage experiences like feeling awkward mean that they’re transgender and must change their bodies. I have a problem with the definitions of words being changed so that people born female no longer have a way to refer to themselves, compete with others in their class on sports teams, and change in locker rooms in peace.