Personal anecdote time, speaking as a generally male-socialized trans woman: When people slip up on shit like pronouns or other terminology and then catch themselves and apologize, my response tends to be "It's okay, I'm a Cool Girl."
I remember seeing an article released by an Anglican organization about a trans clergy member, which started "[Clergy member] is a biological male who identifies as a woman", and then proceeded to be respectful and use the correct pronouns for the rest of the article.
But people in the comments were incensed about the use of the phrase "biological male". I really feel like the author of the article was acting with respect and good faith, maybe didn't know the phrase "amab", or thought it would be confusing to readers, but got lambasted for not knowing the lingo anyway
It could be an honest mistake, or it could be a firm but polite refusal to acknowledge the individual's identity. "Biological male who identifies as a woman" is a long phrase whose only purpose is to signify that the author is talking about a trans woman without also signaling agreement with the existence of trans women, or the validity of the subject's identity. Setting aside the whole awkward "assigned gender at birth" construct, they could just say trans woman. imo the comments section would be the place to discuss that.
Pedantically, the phrase may not even be accurate if the person in question has undergone any kind of medical transition; HRT and other procedures would make the facts on the ground something more like biologically intersex at least. "Platonically ontological male, phenomenologically a woman" doesn't have the same punch though.
I genuinely think if they just wrote "trans woman", some readers would have been unclear about whether that was a trans woman or a trans man, so the author did their best to clarify (while remaining utterly respectful and validating throughout the rest of the article.)
I do think the phrase "biological male" is most often used by people that are being nasty and trying to discredit trans women, but given that the alternative was to say "platonically ontological male", I'm very willing to believe that it was a good faith effort to explain a complex situation succinctly.
I guess my point is that if people are willing to be gracious with folks that aren't immersed in the discourse and don't know what words are okay to say and what words have been poisoned by bad actors, you end up with more allies
Honest question: what happened to FTM and MTF? They're short and unambiguous terms that are very hard for bigots to hijack (have read many a yeesh!-inducing comment on this website about "trans-identified males"). I don't *think* anyone thinks the terms are offensive or anything like that. Seems like they'd be the perfect terms for an article like on the aforementioned Anglican blog; respectful but clear.
Definitely feels like I looked away for two seconds and then suddenly everyone started saying "transmasc / transfemme," which strike me as a very weird conflation of gender and aesthetic. Surely there are trans women out there who aren't femmes!
I'm torn on this, because trans people do have a lot of specific issues where it really helps to have specific activist organizing on our side.
-Trans people rely on getting certain kinds of specific legal acknowledgement. Things like "Being able to update your gender on your passport" are important for a bunch of reasons.
-Trans people need our medical care supported by insurance where possible.
-Trans people who are transitioning often need access to specific resources and education. It really helps to have local organizations who can help you train your voice, help you find specialists, and so on, and all of these things benefit from trans-specific activism and awareness.
-Trans people need laws protecting us from certain kinds of discrimination, as this discrimination is rampant.
And so on. Justifying any of these things to the public does require some level of general knowledge about trans.
I don't think you need to convince people to read a 300-page treatise on gender theory or to agree with you on every particular point. People in the liberal coalition don't need to agree on how many genders there are, or even all agree with transition in their heart of hearts. But it does seem important to offer the public at least general knowledge we can of what trans people are actually like what our lives are like, so that space doesn't get taken up with a bunch of bizarre right-wing caricatures and fetish porn.
I think the answer here is probably something like: "Elevate positive trans role models normies can understand with minimal effort. Rely primarily on liberal norms and values in places where we're politically weak, and push for more specific trans advocacy where we have the power to do so."
“It is polite to try to use the pronoun that people tell you they should use.”
This is a very reasonable statement. I agree with it. It’s what I do in my normal life.
It’s not the norm in many places. In some contexts and places, not using the pronouns some people want you to use is literarily a criminal offence (eg if you work in a nursing home in California). Less extremely, there are many areas where using the wrong pronouns can get you fired or socially ostracized.
‘Just leave us alone and mind your own business’ is a very powerful message. It’s not the message in lots of places.
I don't know anything about nursing home laws, but it is pretty reasonable for there to be social consequences to being rude to people, including being fired for being rude to your coworkers if it's bad enough. If your coworker was a little person, and you kept calling them insulting names and refused to stop, it is fair for you to get fired over this.
If Rabbi John complains that his coworkers refused to call him a rabbi, who is being rude? The coworkers for refusing to call him what he wants to be called, or the person trying to compel other people to participate in his identity?
I mean, I call the Dalai Lama the Dalai Lama and not Lhamo Thondup. The primary reason not to call John Rabbi John is that in general Jewish people don't want you to do that.
Fine, serious answer. "Rabbi" is a title, and titles aren't often used or considered mandatory, so it would be weird to ask his coworkers to call him "Rabbi". However, if he changed his name for religious reasons, even to a name that's obviously religious in nature, his coworkers would be rude for not calling him by his name.
You participate in people's identities by talking to them, that's just how social interaction works.
If a major religious organization tried to lobby for civil rights laws demanding that others use their clerical titles, would you have more sympathy for the people who felt slighted by their titles being ignored, or by the people who felt their free speech was being violated by compulsion?
The use of religious titles may be rare outside a religious context, but the same could be said about preferred pronouns 10-15 years ago. They were rare outside of explicitly queer spaces. The difference, frankly, is that religion bowed to liberal Enlightenment norms about free speech, but some (not all) trans advocates are backsliding against such norms.
Is that reasonable? Maybe. But that's not the claim that was made.
Ozy's original claim was: "Here is a *complete* list of *everything* that the average cis person needs to know about trans people:
1. It is *polite* to *try* to use the pronoun that people tell you they should use."
Ozy liked your comment. So we have moved from 'the only thing you need to know is that it's polite (etiquette) to try (i.e. attempt, maybe you get it wrong) to use the right pronoun' to 'it's reasonable for get fired if you don't use the right pronoun.'
That's why I said it's gaslighting. The ask is not as a matter of etiquette to try, it's about harsh consequences.
It is not gaslighting because I am not psychologically manipulating you into questioning your own memory, sanity, or powers of reasoning. Indeed, if you can be brought to that state by a stranger's blog you really ought to stop being on the open Internet.
People in many jobs are in fact fired for persistent rudeness.
Merriam-Webster gives another meaning of the term "to grossly mislead or deceive (someone) especially for one's own advantage". But, of course, you know what I meant. The entire thesis of your article is "Mind your own business". After all, the "complete list of everything" people need to know about trans people is you don't need to understand everything, trans rights are under attack and "It is *polite* to *try* to use the pronoun that people tell you they should use."
But you know that's not actually the dynamic (hence the gaslighting). Even putting aside the criminally liability issue - which is a pretty big issue and one that you should address - 'You will be fired for persistent rudeness if you do not use the pronouns that we tell you they should use" is a very different standard then what you were setting out.
This might be a semantic disagreement. To my understanding, there are many situations where being deliberately impolite is sufficient to warrant harsh consequences.
Would it have been non-gaslighting to say "It is rude not to use the right pronouns"?
I think it's a bit more than a semantic disagreement, but yes, I think something along the lines of "It is rude not to use the right pronouns and you should be aware that being deliberately impolite is sufficient to warrant harsh consequences" would not have been gaslighting.
No, the basic logic here is that not being polite is the sort of thing that should carry social consequences, regardless of whether trans people are involved. This is a very common belief that even a lot of conservative people have in different contexts. When you combine this with the idea that the polite thing is to use, the pronouns that the person wishes should be used, it follows that there should be social consequences for not doing that because it is rude. Obviously, if you agree with the things in the list, but don’t share basic normative commitments that are common in the human population. You will not agree with the conclusions but that’s because you need a lot of basic knowledge to understand stuff. The same way you couldn’t use this knowledge if you didn’t know basic rules of logic. It’s simply the case that all knowledge has to assume a lot of common background knowledge that is shared in the human population for things to be understood, which is why the post does not include an explanation of how to use English words, even though you need to know that to understand it.
I agree with extending cis people some grace for being clueless about trans people. I run in social circles in the SF Bay Area with lots of trans people, and occasionally I meet a cis person who's showing up in those spaces for the first time and is very confused, and I mostly just find it amusing.
That said, I think this is conflating a couple different things when it talks about trans people becoming "the subject of the culture war". To the extent there was a big spike in awareness of trans people tenish years ago, I suspect it had more to do with, like, TIME putting Laverne Cox on the cover in 2014 than it does with trans people getting angry about cis cluelessness online. To the the extent that you can blame the original "bathroom bill" (North Carolina's, passed in 2016) on greater awareness of trans people, it's extremely anodyne stuff like "a hit TV show has a trans character played by a transgender actress".
But also I don't think it's a coincidence that trans people became a big culture war fight shortly after the gay rights movement decisively won on marriage equality. Conservatives had spent over a decade hyping themselves up on proper gender relations being an issue of the upmost importance, which probably primed them to freak out when suddenly a trans woman is on the cover of TIME. And more cynically, fear-mongering about gay marriage had been a key piece of George W. Bush's 2004 re-election strategy, so once being anti-gay became an electoral liability, Republicans needed a new boogeyman.
It's tempting to think that the things you and I find annoying as people who hang out in trans-heavy spaces are also big drivers of trends in American politics, but I don't think it really has much to do with anything normies are getting up to.
I have a contrasting view on a certain amount of this: I think a lot of the culture war fight about trans people is a result of the decisive win on the gay rights movement leading to a huge amount of activist energy and *ideological conventions* being shifted instantly over to the trans movement -- often in ways that didn't line up with the material differences between these kinds of people and their interests. The result was that the trans movement became wildly overextended.
> I think a lot of the culture war fight about trans people is a result of the decisive win on the gay rights movement leading to a huge amount of activist energy and *ideological conventions* being shifted instantly over to the trans movement
This, but from the other side. As a long time observer of US electoral politics, my (oversimplified) mental model is that every two years the consultants and leaders guiding the Republican Party sit down and figure out what culture war strategy promotes their electoral success in the next election cycle. Occasionally, this will be a topical issue like Ebola, which was hyped 24x7 right up until the election and then dropped almost immediately.
But historically, the more popular choice was to choose a group of people to demonize as the source of all that's wrong and degenerate about society. Popular choices included gay people asking for marriage, black people for (insert racist bullshit), etc. Trickier choices included demonizing Latinos, which tends not to work out for Republicans, because there are a lot of Latino voters who swing between parties.
I actually think the "choose an enemy every two years" process was more structured in the W Bush and Obama eras, and it has become more organic with the rise of MAGA influencer culture. This would explain the decision to go all-in against Latino Americans with a reign of terror and racist profiling, which will likely backfire. The experts, had anyone asked them, might have suggested targets with less blowback.
So nothing about this is really the fault of the trans movement. Gay marriage had stopped working especially well as a political issue. Anti-trans attacks were working well for the right wing in England, and trans people could be given sufficient salience in US culture to work as the basis of an attack. If trans people had done zero activism, then sure, the political consultants would just have chosen an easier target. But they were going to choose *someone*.
For an interesting contrast, consider bi people. All the survey data I've seen suggests that bi people are the dark matter of the LGBT community. There are a hell of a lot Kinsey 2-4s just quietly keeping their head down, and that's not even counting the Kinsey 1s. (I'm going by attraction here, not partners.) If they actually became culturally salient, they would become a very tempting target for the "designated enemies of the election cycle." But bi activism is largely limited to donating to and volunteering for lesbian and gay activism, and to running occasional online communities that say, "Sure, if you're attracted to more then one gender, you're allowed to call yourself bi, and no, it doesn't need to be exactly equal and there's no 14-page form to fill out." This kind of low-key activism works out for bi people because gay marriage benefits bi people tremendously, and because the politics of gay marriage are simpler when bi people are low salience in the culture. This is basically the weaponization of bi erasure to prevent becoming Public Enemy Number One.
So perhaps an alternative version of Ozy's argument would be something like, "Trans people have been a visible political target for too long, and this is hurting their goals. Would it work better to somewhat reduce the cultural salience of trans people and focus on essential legal rights?" That's definitely not my call to make. But I don't think trans people have an actual moral obligation to be so visible that they remain Public Enemy Number One, either.
I disagree pretty strongly, and OFC a certain amount of that is somewhat self-interested. You can probably imagine that I categorically don't see "right-wing backlash is a series of centrally planned astroturf" as very convincing.
More to the point, it wouldn't have taken if there wasn't a great deal of organic frustration / opposition. It just wouldn't have seemed like a big deal and nobody would have listened unless they already cared somewhat. (It's definitely possible that deliberate focus from centrally planned astroturf makes something a bigger controversy than it would be otherwise).
You are probably right that, with Trump, the bus is not really being driven by anything centralized. However, I don't think that there is any reason for Latino people to be targeted other than that they're (perceived as) the vast majority of illegal immigrants, and a lot of people are upset about illegal immigration, as well as threats related to narco-cartels. The backlash there is basically about immigration.
(the far right does some really hardcore "good latino, evil latino" stuff. I don't like it.)
(Were black people ever the target of a two-year-astroturf? I don't think so.)
I don't think there would ever be a mass anti-bi backlash, because bi people haven't done much to antagonize anyone and don't have much of a reason to do so (now that homosexuality has been normalized, and they are under that umbrella). It's hard to even imagine what the nexus of conflict would even be.
This is what an astroturf campaign linked to an election cycle looks like: Massive ad spend on a specific culture war issue, which is often disproportionate to the voters' underlying interest in the issue. This is historically backed up through multiple channels, including AM talk radio, Fox News and Internet blogs/social media/Substacks (depending on the era). And these channels tend to move together as block. And historically, they frequently lost interest in the issue after the November election.
As for the anti-immigration issue, the last time (before Trump) that this was focused on was in 2005/2006, with the "Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act", which would have made undocumented immigrants felons. This led to an enormous nationwide series of protests in March through May 2026, including in many swing states with large numbers of Latino voters. When the Republicans got clobbered in the 2006 Democratic wave, they seemed to largely drop the issue. But for a while there, the 2005-2006 anti-inmigrant political push looked a lot like the 2024 anti-trans push.
Another interesting case is Ebola, where the first US cases occurred in the months leading up to the 2014 election. The pre-election media was almost feverish on the subject. But then, there was a sharp drop after the election:
> Outlets Air Nearly 1,000 Ebola Segments In 4 Weeks Before Midterms, Only 50 Segments In 2 Weeks After Elections
Coincidence? Maybe. But if you pay close attention to electoral politics and ad spend data, I think there is substantial evidence for the idea that political consultants pick a Public Enemy Number One for each two-year cycle, and hammer the topic with massive ad spend and suspiciously coordinated messaging.
So my argument is that the anti-trans hysteria of 2024 was an engineered astroturf campaign that tried to massively boost an organic trend that started years before and that had significant roots in the UK. But importantly, anti-trans ads don't seem to swing a particularly huge number of votes: https://goodauthority.org/news/the-gop-spent-millions-on-anti-trans-ads-did-it-work/
So my guess is that the more professional Republican consultants are probably ready to move on from anti-trans issues, although it still excites the MAGA base. This creates a situation where lowering the cultural salience of trans issues might cause them to pick a different Public Enemy Number One in 2026 and 2028. Which, yes, is a classic case of "I don't need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun whoever the bear is going to catch." Which absolutely sucks for whoever the bear is going to chase, but trans people already did their turn.
It's not my place to support or oppose Ozy's recommendation, to be clear. I just wanted to sketch out a model of why I thought much of the heat around this issue came from Republican electoral strategy after they lost gay marriage as an effective issue.
> I also think that, right now, less trans energy should go towards specifically explaining why trans people are valid, and more trans energy should go to general support for the liberal project.
This would require the average trans person to actually *want* to support the liberal project, which is... not a given! (To be clear, this is because society in general soured on liberalism during the Obama years, not some bullshit "oh the LGB are just good normal liberals, it's the TQ that are evul drag Stalinists" thing a la Andrew Sullivan.) It doesn't matter that the small-l liberal case for trans rights is extremely obvious if there are no trans liberals exist to make it!
But isn’t this just begging the question? Maybe we should second guess the whole fashionable “souring on liberalism” of the past decade and a half?
I get the frustration, but I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand just how wiling “progressives” have been to throw liberalism under the bus so gleefully. Liberalism can be a fantastic vehicle for genuine social progress, provided we have a little more patience than Veruca Salt in the chocolate factory in dealing with the intersecting social tensions in a wide culture.
To be clear, I am very much a normie lib, and I would be thrilled if everyone got onboard with the basic tenets of liberalism! But -- and someone with more knowledge of the dynamics within trans communities can and should correct me here -- I can't think of any high-profile trans people who seem interested in being standard-bearers for liberalism. I guess there's Sarah McBride? But I'm pretty sure she's unpopular among trans people precisely *because* she's a boring liberal with boring liberal opinions.
Certainly the gay rights movement got a lot of mileage from "just don't bother us while we're not bothering you" and it seems like the trans movement is trying to pivot to this after recent political losses. I don't fully disagree with this, but I think it's a bigger ask for the trans movement than it seems.
The difference between the two movements is that being trans is fundamentally centered on caring about how you are perceived by society. If the average reaction a trans person receives is "I don't know if you're really what you say, but I'll play along at the minimum level required by etiquette" will that feel like a successful "social transition" for the trans person?
I think at some point the movement needs to acknowledge that what is asked of others is not average or low maintenance. I'm worried that this "just let us mind our own" rebrand won't stick, because I'm not sure if that's really all is really wanted from people
Gay people wanted their marriages to be seen as real marriages! This was very much a subject of dispute twenty years ago! It's true that gender is more pervasive than whether someone is married, but I think the analogy does hold.
"I don't know if you're really what you say, but I'll play along at the minimum level required by etiquette" isn't really a successful social transition but, like, you can't reasonably ask people to change what gender they see you as. You can ask them not to draw attention to it.
Not the point, but in case any trans people want reassurance about how oblivious the average cis person is: I'm in a friend group with a lot of trans people, I met a guy with a round face who was about 5'0", and it literally never even crossed my mind that he might be trans until a mutual friend mentioned it.
My actual thought process on meeting him: "Huh, I guess he must have a hormone disorder, that must have been tough for him as a teen."
Edit: Okay, in case this makes me sound like a complete idiot, in my defense, most of the trans people in my friend group are women, and the guy was dressed extremely normie-cis-male with a normie short haircut. He wasn't very clockable!
While it is historically understood as rude to refer to someone in a way they do not identify with, it was also considered very historically rude to refuse a gift, but no one here would object to a vegan refusing a gift of bacon. This is because people acknowledge veganism as a valid ideology that needs accommodations and exceptions, just as some small religious sects are accommodated in court by being excused from formal oaths. I think this is what the modern trans movement is really missing: A policy of toleration for principled disagreement. Perhaps instead of “it is always rude to misgender” it would be better to say “it is rude to misgender unless you have a good faith philosophical disagreement with preferred pronouns or some other conviction of conscience against them.”
I get your point, but would this not amount to holding in practice that there is no need to be polite if you have a good faith, philosophical belief that you should be rude instead, which s looks like it would be unworkable? For example, if I have a good faith, philosophical belief that I should call out religion as a delusion any time I encounter somebody in its grip, is it really okay for society to decide that my good faith philosophical view means that this isn’t extremely rude. What if I have a good faith philosophical opinion that politeness norms are stupid and should not be followed? I think these thought experiments make it obvious that we would not be willing to support this principal in the cases of rules about politeness about more normal cases. In which case I’m not sure there is any specific reason to specifically exempt politeness norms about dealing with trans people.
While society can’t accommodate every conceivable philosophical position, the norm we have developed in all other cases is that the person demanding that others affirm their identity is the rude one, and not the person who is simply speaking sincerely from their own beliefs. For example, a clergyman working a 9 to 5 can’t demand that his coworkers address him by his clerical title, even if he sincerely identifies as “Father Rob.”
There is a difference between aggressive and deliberately rude misgendering, like calling a transwoman Mr Lastname when you normally just say Lastname, and a simple refusal to use preferred pronouns when pronouns are unavoidable. I think the fundamental question here is whether some people have a right to demand that others verbally affirm their identity. Prohibitions against talking about religion or politics in the workplace can be content neutral, but when the English language demands gendered language we have a direct conflict between “rudeness” as trans people understand it and “compelled speech” as their critics do.
Your analogy does not work because the hypothetical priest is insisting on people specifically using his title instead of just not commenting on whether he has such a title, but in the case of trance people, the demand is that people should not insist that they are of different gender to the one they prefer to identify as. Your analogy would be appropriate. If trans people were insisting that it is not a legitimate strategy to just avoid using pronouns when talking to them. I also don’t think the rule you’re imagining where the burden of proof is on the person who wants you to affirm something is actually correct as a description of existing social practice. If a religious person asks for grace before you start eating, it might be okay not to say anything, but definitely would not be considered okay to assert your philosophical view that there is no God and the religious person is in the grip of a delusional system of belief, even though the religious person is asserting their own world view. I think the social rule is basically that you shouldn’t cause offence when not causing offence is pretty easy. I also think you are suggested rule that the burden of proof is on the person insisting that you assert a viewpoint would be unworkable because lots of commonly accepted rules about politeness in fact require you to assert a viewpoint.
In theory it’s fine to say that we can avoid pronouns entirely, but in reality there are many situations when the English language demands gendered language. Students address their teacher as Mr. or Miss, and this carries over into other formal contexts like court cases. This is where you have a direct and unavoidable conflict over compelled speech. Can a priest who also teaches public school demand his students call him Father Johnson instead of Mr. Johnson? Most priests would not demand this, but this is because, ironically, most western religious organizations are more dedicated to traditional liberal norms than the fringe of the trans movement.
Again, that analogy does not work because calling that priest by something other than father does not imply that he is not a priest, so you are not suggesting that his identification as a priest is not legitimate. If you happen to believe in a different religion and use the term that is specifically for a priest of a false God that would be equivalent to asserting through your choice of pronoun that the person is actually of a different gender to the one, they identify as. I’m not sure why you’re bringing compare speech into this is in fact, social rules about politeness are not subject to constitutional rules about free speech, and in fact, I think if you had an inflexible judge and a law that made rules of politeness, legal rules, they would have to be struck down, although in practice, no judge is actually that much of a legalist. I was not necessarily suggesting that you not use any pronoun, although in fact, although inconvenient this can often be done, for example, you can simply call your professor professor because thankfully, that is a gender neutral term.
If you think a transwoman who introduces herself to the class as Ms Lastname would be cool with a student deciding she was “Teacher Lastname” instead, then I think we agree in principle, but have different empirical understandings of the goals of many trans rights organizations. I like politeness, but it has been my personal experience that it is the trans side that is hostile to norms of neutrality. I would be happy to realize one day that you are empirically correct about their goals.
Additionally, even people who supposedly object to preferred pronouns agree that misgendering is rude if it happens to cis people. I’ve had people profusely apologize to me after calling me sir or he/him and then perceiving me as a butch woman later in the interaction. Misgendering is recognized as a more severe infraction than omitting a religious title in this case.
If my coworker had a sincere belief that he couldn’t use male pronouns for me when I was clean shaven, because his culture said that a man capable of growing a beard must always grow one, I would have no problem respecting this as a sincere accommodation to philosophical/cultural/religious difference.
In practice, in environments like the workplace, people with philosophical disagreements with transition will still end up calling stealth passing trans people by their preferred pronouns. Misgendering non-passing trans people then becomes a comment on physical features the trans person likely deeply dislikes having. It is perceived as a rude dig at someone’s failure to pass without even consistently protecting someone’s philosophical self-expression.
People always speak within the limits of their knowledge. I don’t think that being mistaken about one case obligates a person to hide or falsify their beliefs in the next case.
> At schools, the existence of transgender children should be addressed in a sensitive and age-appropriate way when a child actually transitions; we don’t need to cover transness routinely in sex education
I think we do because it helps trans children figure out they're trans.
I don't think the analogy with little people works perfectly because I think there's something like a 200x difference in frequency -- I kinda expect that most people will interact with trans people in their lives at least occasionally, so it seems reasonable to me to teach everyone, instead of on an as-needed basis. But maybe I nevertheless agree that we should be compromising more on how much cis people understand gender than we currently seem to.
Maybe there's also a subtext of "is it enough to be tolerated, or do we want to also be understood and celebrated?" -- I can see shooting for the former because the latter seems too hard at the moment, but it feels a little sad.
That said, I do generally like the idea of prioritising trans people's rights and needs over and above the philosophical issues, and I think it's worth noting the ways in which visibility has been harmful as well as helpful.
*That* said, I'm not sure that trans people still control the visibility of trans people (if they ever did). It feels to me if we stopped talking about the definition of a woman or whatever, the reactionary right would not stop, because it's useful for them. The choice we face then is whether to reply to what they say (and risk amplifying it) or not to reply (and risk allowing it to dominate). Both options hurt, but my guess would be that the second is now worse, even if it would have been better to never bring the issue up in the first place.
There is also the third option of specifying *why* "what is a woman?" is such a useful question for the reactionary right -- because it erodes support for legal equality between the sexes, a.k.a. the most popular, unambiguously good victory of feminism.
(Whenever a blogger I like makes a post on this subject, I wait for his comment section to fill up and then say, "Curious how for a post about an alleged schism within feminism, I don't see any other women around here...")
When someone is emphasizing the ""inherent biological differences"" or whatever between sexes, they're almost always doing so to justify sex discrimination of some form. Not always -- Ozy's did a good post earlier this year called "In Defense of Trans-Inclusive Importance of Biological Sex" -- but more often than not, yes, I would say "what is a woman" is the cri de coeur of people actively hostile towards feminism.
Do you have a definition of "sex discrimination" that would mainly be accepted by people who have accepted a pretty significant level of feminist ideology (arguably an ideological approach that I don't think Ozy usually follows in a doctrinaire way)?
Um... no? I'm not particularly doctrinaire about feminism, and I *think* I'm using the phrase "sex discrimination" in a pretty straightforward way (e.g., Pete Hegseth obviously wants sex discrimination in the military). Maybe we should try a different tack here?
Imagine a guy who's reeeally into IQ. Specifically, he's reeeally into constantly talking up the IQ differences between different races. Would you expect this guy to be in favor of *any* of the movements or policies instituted in the name of racial equality since, ah, 1950? Why would anyone dedicate so much time to promoting ideas about racial difference if not to justify policies of racial discrimination?
I don't necessarily take Ozy's point as "We should all shut up about transness," but rather as "The shortest route between here and trans people having rights is not convincing cis people of the validity of trans people on the merits; it's an appeal to a general commitment to privacy, self-determination, and mutual respect, with an understanding that convincing people of the validity of trans people on the merits is better done in the context of a personal conversation with someone you know than via political discourse." Which is to say, I think the correct response to the reactionary right talking about the definition of a woman is, "Why do you care so much about what trans people call themselves or have between their legs, you absolute fucking creep losers???" I think this is why one of the most politically effective arguments against anti-trans policies like bathroom bills and stuff has been the point that, in practice, enforcement of these policies essentially opens the door to genital inspections of young children. Similarly I think "Let doctors and parents decide what the appropriate care for a trans kid is; let sports organizations decide what the appropriate inclusion criteria for trans kids in gendered sports is; etc" is also an easier sell, and education on the actual merits of a given position is better done through people you are actually in community with. That being said, I am sympathetic to the point that gender education in school might be important so that trans kids can recognize their own identity and its validity. I think that's a tough question that probably merits more discussion.
Yeah it's like, 1 in 300 right? And it's very easy to self-diagnose if you know a lot about what being trans is like, and basically impossible if you've never heard of it. Seems very sensible for schools to mention it.
I mean, big chunks of the population are deeply committed to not celebrating transness. I’m not sure why the movement would ever have imagined being celebrated (if by this you mean in most places in the West, as opposed to in particularly liberal enclaves) is actually an option that’s available.
I feel on the continuum between tolerance ("mere" tolerance of privately hidden/at least slightly shameful existence) and celebration by others there are also points of "acceptance" (what Arendt called "the right to have rights" and exist openly in public without hiding, but not necessarily actively validated or celebrated by others) or "recognition" (as per Charles Taylor) that's needed for proper dignity of social creatures. The need for the latter can perhaps quite easily blur into a desire/requirement for active "celebration" or "validation".
“The more salient trans people are, the more likely it is that it will occur to someone that that 5’4” man with a round face might not be cis.”
Bizarre sentence. There are large swaths of the human population who are simultaneously cis male, short, and round-faced. Especially if you look beyond white people, ie the majority of the world. Probably wasn’t intentional, but I think you might be hurting your own ‘reasonable decency’ point here (which I generally agree with) by way of a sloppy example.
Personal anecdote time, speaking as a generally male-socialized trans woman: When people slip up on shit like pronouns or other terminology and then catch themselves and apologize, my response tends to be "It's okay, I'm a Cool Girl."
I remember seeing an article released by an Anglican organization about a trans clergy member, which started "[Clergy member] is a biological male who identifies as a woman", and then proceeded to be respectful and use the correct pronouns for the rest of the article.
But people in the comments were incensed about the use of the phrase "biological male". I really feel like the author of the article was acting with respect and good faith, maybe didn't know the phrase "amab", or thought it would be confusing to readers, but got lambasted for not knowing the lingo anyway
It could be an honest mistake, or it could be a firm but polite refusal to acknowledge the individual's identity. "Biological male who identifies as a woman" is a long phrase whose only purpose is to signify that the author is talking about a trans woman without also signaling agreement with the existence of trans women, or the validity of the subject's identity. Setting aside the whole awkward "assigned gender at birth" construct, they could just say trans woman. imo the comments section would be the place to discuss that.
Pedantically, the phrase may not even be accurate if the person in question has undergone any kind of medical transition; HRT and other procedures would make the facts on the ground something more like biologically intersex at least. "Platonically ontological male, phenomenologically a woman" doesn't have the same punch though.
I genuinely think if they just wrote "trans woman", some readers would have been unclear about whether that was a trans woman or a trans man, so the author did their best to clarify (while remaining utterly respectful and validating throughout the rest of the article.)
I do think the phrase "biological male" is most often used by people that are being nasty and trying to discredit trans women, but given that the alternative was to say "platonically ontological male", I'm very willing to believe that it was a good faith effort to explain a complex situation succinctly.
I guess my point is that if people are willing to be gracious with folks that aren't immersed in the discourse and don't know what words are okay to say and what words have been poisoned by bad actors, you end up with more allies
Honest question: what happened to FTM and MTF? They're short and unambiguous terms that are very hard for bigots to hijack (have read many a yeesh!-inducing comment on this website about "trans-identified males"). I don't *think* anyone thinks the terms are offensive or anything like that. Seems like they'd be the perfect terms for an article like on the aforementioned Anglican blog; respectful but clear.
Definitely feels like I looked away for two seconds and then suddenly everyone started saying "transmasc / transfemme," which strike me as a very weird conflation of gender and aesthetic. Surely there are trans women out there who aren't femmes!
I'm torn on this, because trans people do have a lot of specific issues where it really helps to have specific activist organizing on our side.
-Trans people rely on getting certain kinds of specific legal acknowledgement. Things like "Being able to update your gender on your passport" are important for a bunch of reasons.
-Trans people need our medical care supported by insurance where possible.
-Trans people who are transitioning often need access to specific resources and education. It really helps to have local organizations who can help you train your voice, help you find specialists, and so on, and all of these things benefit from trans-specific activism and awareness.
-Trans people need laws protecting us from certain kinds of discrimination, as this discrimination is rampant.
And so on. Justifying any of these things to the public does require some level of general knowledge about trans.
I don't think you need to convince people to read a 300-page treatise on gender theory or to agree with you on every particular point. People in the liberal coalition don't need to agree on how many genders there are, or even all agree with transition in their heart of hearts. But it does seem important to offer the public at least general knowledge we can of what trans people are actually like what our lives are like, so that space doesn't get taken up with a bunch of bizarre right-wing caricatures and fetish porn.
I think the answer here is probably something like: "Elevate positive trans role models normies can understand with minimal effort. Rely primarily on liberal norms and values in places where we're politically weak, and push for more specific trans advocacy where we have the power to do so."
TBC I agree with that! I don't think we should do zero trans-specific advocacy-- just a shift in emphasis right now.
> Things like "Being able to update your gender on your passport" are important for a bunch of reasons.
Passports IIRC used to not have gender markers. I think we should go back to this sort of policy.
>Trans people need laws protecting us from certain kinds of discrimination, as this discrimination is rampant.
The extent of those laws is inevitably going to be the root of political conflict if it goes beyond the very most basic kind of nondiscrimination law.
I've said it before, but the trans community is in desperate need of a "Will & Grace" normie friendly type of show.
This is gaslighting.
“It is polite to try to use the pronoun that people tell you they should use.”
This is a very reasonable statement. I agree with it. It’s what I do in my normal life.
It’s not the norm in many places. In some contexts and places, not using the pronouns some people want you to use is literarily a criminal offence (eg if you work in a nursing home in California). Less extremely, there are many areas where using the wrong pronouns can get you fired or socially ostracized.
‘Just leave us alone and mind your own business’ is a very powerful message. It’s not the message in lots of places.
I don't know anything about nursing home laws, but it is pretty reasonable for there to be social consequences to being rude to people, including being fired for being rude to your coworkers if it's bad enough. If your coworker was a little person, and you kept calling them insulting names and refused to stop, it is fair for you to get fired over this.
If Rabbi John complains that his coworkers refused to call him a rabbi, who is being rude? The coworkers for refusing to call him what he wants to be called, or the person trying to compel other people to participate in his identity?
I mean, I call the Dalai Lama the Dalai Lama and not Lhamo Thondup. The primary reason not to call John Rabbi John is that in general Jewish people don't want you to do that.
Presumably Rabbi John works in a synagogue.
Not in this example. Many clergy students have second jobs.
Fine, serious answer. "Rabbi" is a title, and titles aren't often used or considered mandatory, so it would be weird to ask his coworkers to call him "Rabbi". However, if he changed his name for religious reasons, even to a name that's obviously religious in nature, his coworkers would be rude for not calling him by his name.
You participate in people's identities by talking to them, that's just how social interaction works.
If a major religious organization tried to lobby for civil rights laws demanding that others use their clerical titles, would you have more sympathy for the people who felt slighted by their titles being ignored, or by the people who felt their free speech was being violated by compulsion?
The use of religious titles may be rare outside a religious context, but the same could be said about preferred pronouns 10-15 years ago. They were rare outside of explicitly queer spaces. The difference, frankly, is that religion bowed to liberal Enlightenment norms about free speech, but some (not all) trans advocates are backsliding against such norms.
Is that reasonable? Maybe. But that's not the claim that was made.
Ozy's original claim was: "Here is a *complete* list of *everything* that the average cis person needs to know about trans people:
1. It is *polite* to *try* to use the pronoun that people tell you they should use."
Ozy liked your comment. So we have moved from 'the only thing you need to know is that it's polite (etiquette) to try (i.e. attempt, maybe you get it wrong) to use the right pronoun' to 'it's reasonable for get fired if you don't use the right pronoun.'
That's why I said it's gaslighting. The ask is not as a matter of etiquette to try, it's about harsh consequences.
It is not gaslighting because I am not psychologically manipulating you into questioning your own memory, sanity, or powers of reasoning. Indeed, if you can be brought to that state by a stranger's blog you really ought to stop being on the open Internet.
People in many jobs are in fact fired for persistent rudeness.
Merriam-Webster gives another meaning of the term "to grossly mislead or deceive (someone) especially for one's own advantage". But, of course, you know what I meant. The entire thesis of your article is "Mind your own business". After all, the "complete list of everything" people need to know about trans people is you don't need to understand everything, trans rights are under attack and "It is *polite* to *try* to use the pronoun that people tell you they should use."
But you know that's not actually the dynamic (hence the gaslighting). Even putting aside the criminally liability issue - which is a pretty big issue and one that you should address - 'You will be fired for persistent rudeness if you do not use the pronouns that we tell you they should use" is a very different standard then what you were setting out.
Well, feel free to update your model of my understanding of etiquette to include "people are often fired from their jobs for persistent rudeness."
It is interesting to me that you refuse to engage with the criminal liability point.
This might be a semantic disagreement. To my understanding, there are many situations where being deliberately impolite is sufficient to warrant harsh consequences.
Would it have been non-gaslighting to say "It is rude not to use the right pronouns"?
I think it's a bit more than a semantic disagreement, but yes, I think something along the lines of "It is rude not to use the right pronouns and you should be aware that being deliberately impolite is sufficient to warrant harsh consequences" would not have been gaslighting.
No, the basic logic here is that not being polite is the sort of thing that should carry social consequences, regardless of whether trans people are involved. This is a very common belief that even a lot of conservative people have in different contexts. When you combine this with the idea that the polite thing is to use, the pronouns that the person wishes should be used, it follows that there should be social consequences for not doing that because it is rude. Obviously, if you agree with the things in the list, but don’t share basic normative commitments that are common in the human population. You will not agree with the conclusions but that’s because you need a lot of basic knowledge to understand stuff. The same way you couldn’t use this knowledge if you didn’t know basic rules of logic. It’s simply the case that all knowledge has to assume a lot of common background knowledge that is shared in the human population for things to be understood, which is why the post does not include an explanation of how to use English words, even though you need to know that to understand it.
Suspended for 30 days because this is a safe space for porn-obsessed pot-addicted incels in thigh stockings
I agree with extending cis people some grace for being clueless about trans people. I run in social circles in the SF Bay Area with lots of trans people, and occasionally I meet a cis person who's showing up in those spaces for the first time and is very confused, and I mostly just find it amusing.
That said, I think this is conflating a couple different things when it talks about trans people becoming "the subject of the culture war". To the extent there was a big spike in awareness of trans people tenish years ago, I suspect it had more to do with, like, TIME putting Laverne Cox on the cover in 2014 than it does with trans people getting angry about cis cluelessness online. To the the extent that you can blame the original "bathroom bill" (North Carolina's, passed in 2016) on greater awareness of trans people, it's extremely anodyne stuff like "a hit TV show has a trans character played by a transgender actress".
But also I don't think it's a coincidence that trans people became a big culture war fight shortly after the gay rights movement decisively won on marriage equality. Conservatives had spent over a decade hyping themselves up on proper gender relations being an issue of the upmost importance, which probably primed them to freak out when suddenly a trans woman is on the cover of TIME. And more cynically, fear-mongering about gay marriage had been a key piece of George W. Bush's 2004 re-election strategy, so once being anti-gay became an electoral liability, Republicans needed a new boogeyman.
It's tempting to think that the things you and I find annoying as people who hang out in trans-heavy spaces are also big drivers of trends in American politics, but I don't think it really has much to do with anything normies are getting up to.
I have a contrasting view on a certain amount of this: I think a lot of the culture war fight about trans people is a result of the decisive win on the gay rights movement leading to a huge amount of activist energy and *ideological conventions* being shifted instantly over to the trans movement -- often in ways that didn't line up with the material differences between these kinds of people and their interests. The result was that the trans movement became wildly overextended.
> I think a lot of the culture war fight about trans people is a result of the decisive win on the gay rights movement leading to a huge amount of activist energy and *ideological conventions* being shifted instantly over to the trans movement
This, but from the other side. As a long time observer of US electoral politics, my (oversimplified) mental model is that every two years the consultants and leaders guiding the Republican Party sit down and figure out what culture war strategy promotes their electoral success in the next election cycle. Occasionally, this will be a topical issue like Ebola, which was hyped 24x7 right up until the election and then dropped almost immediately.
But historically, the more popular choice was to choose a group of people to demonize as the source of all that's wrong and degenerate about society. Popular choices included gay people asking for marriage, black people for (insert racist bullshit), etc. Trickier choices included demonizing Latinos, which tends not to work out for Republicans, because there are a lot of Latino voters who swing between parties.
I actually think the "choose an enemy every two years" process was more structured in the W Bush and Obama eras, and it has become more organic with the rise of MAGA influencer culture. This would explain the decision to go all-in against Latino Americans with a reign of terror and racist profiling, which will likely backfire. The experts, had anyone asked them, might have suggested targets with less blowback.
So nothing about this is really the fault of the trans movement. Gay marriage had stopped working especially well as a political issue. Anti-trans attacks were working well for the right wing in England, and trans people could be given sufficient salience in US culture to work as the basis of an attack. If trans people had done zero activism, then sure, the political consultants would just have chosen an easier target. But they were going to choose *someone*.
For an interesting contrast, consider bi people. All the survey data I've seen suggests that bi people are the dark matter of the LGBT community. There are a hell of a lot Kinsey 2-4s just quietly keeping their head down, and that's not even counting the Kinsey 1s. (I'm going by attraction here, not partners.) If they actually became culturally salient, they would become a very tempting target for the "designated enemies of the election cycle." But bi activism is largely limited to donating to and volunteering for lesbian and gay activism, and to running occasional online communities that say, "Sure, if you're attracted to more then one gender, you're allowed to call yourself bi, and no, it doesn't need to be exactly equal and there's no 14-page form to fill out." This kind of low-key activism works out for bi people because gay marriage benefits bi people tremendously, and because the politics of gay marriage are simpler when bi people are low salience in the culture. This is basically the weaponization of bi erasure to prevent becoming Public Enemy Number One.
So perhaps an alternative version of Ozy's argument would be something like, "Trans people have been a visible political target for too long, and this is hurting their goals. Would it work better to somewhat reduce the cultural salience of trans people and focus on essential legal rights?" That's definitely not my call to make. But I don't think trans people have an actual moral obligation to be so visible that they remain Public Enemy Number One, either.
I disagree pretty strongly, and OFC a certain amount of that is somewhat self-interested. You can probably imagine that I categorically don't see "right-wing backlash is a series of centrally planned astroturf" as very convincing.
More to the point, it wouldn't have taken if there wasn't a great deal of organic frustration / opposition. It just wouldn't have seemed like a big deal and nobody would have listened unless they already cared somewhat. (It's definitely possible that deliberate focus from centrally planned astroturf makes something a bigger controversy than it would be otherwise).
You are probably right that, with Trump, the bus is not really being driven by anything centralized. However, I don't think that there is any reason for Latino people to be targeted other than that they're (perceived as) the vast majority of illegal immigrants, and a lot of people are upset about illegal immigration, as well as threats related to narco-cartels. The backlash there is basically about immigration.
(the far right does some really hardcore "good latino, evil latino" stuff. I don't like it.)
(Were black people ever the target of a two-year-astroturf? I don't think so.)
I don't think there would ever be a mass anti-bi backlash, because bi people haven't done much to antagonize anyone and don't have much of a reason to do so (now that homosexuality has been normalized, and they are under that umbrella). It's hard to even imagine what the nexus of conflict would even be.
(My apologies to the spam filter and Ozy; this comment contains a lot of links to supporting information.)
OK, first, let me back up the "anti-trans attacks as centrally planned astroturf" hypothesis.
- Anti-trans ad spending during the 2024 election on network TV alone (excluding cable, Internet, etc) was $215 million, or $134 per trans person. This included many high profile slots, including the Superbowl: https://truthout.org/articles/republicans-spent-nearly-215m-on-tv-ads-attacking-trans-rights-this-election/
- The Trump campaign's anti-trans ads were at least 41% of their total ad spending: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-anti-transgender-political-ads-are-dominating-the-airwaves-this-election
- However, voter surveys suggested that trans issues were of relatively low importance to voters: https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-spends-millions-anti-trans-ads-despite-polls/story?id=115001816
This is what an astroturf campaign linked to an election cycle looks like: Massive ad spend on a specific culture war issue, which is often disproportionate to the voters' underlying interest in the issue. This is historically backed up through multiple channels, including AM talk radio, Fox News and Internet blogs/social media/Substacks (depending on the era). And these channels tend to move together as block. And historically, they frequently lost interest in the issue after the November election.
As for the anti-immigration issue, the last time (before Trump) that this was focused on was in 2005/2006, with the "Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act", which would have made undocumented immigrants felons. This led to an enormous nationwide series of protests in March through May 2026, including in many swing states with large numbers of Latino voters. When the Republicans got clobbered in the 2006 Democratic wave, they seemed to largely drop the issue. But for a while there, the 2005-2006 anti-inmigrant political push looked a lot like the 2024 anti-trans push.
Another interesting case is Ebola, where the first US cases occurred in the months leading up to the 2014 election. The pre-election media was almost feverish on the subject. But then, there was a sharp drop after the election:
> Outlets Air Nearly 1,000 Ebola Segments In 4 Weeks Before Midterms, Only 50 Segments In 2 Weeks After Elections
https://www.mediamatters.org/msnbc/report-ebola-coverage-tv-news-plummeted-after-midterms
Coincidence? Maybe. But if you pay close attention to electoral politics and ad spend data, I think there is substantial evidence for the idea that political consultants pick a Public Enemy Number One for each two-year cycle, and hammer the topic with massive ad spend and suspiciously coordinated messaging.
So my argument is that the anti-trans hysteria of 2024 was an engineered astroturf campaign that tried to massively boost an organic trend that started years before and that had significant roots in the UK. But importantly, anti-trans ads don't seem to swing a particularly huge number of votes: https://goodauthority.org/news/the-gop-spent-millions-on-anti-trans-ads-did-it-work/
So my guess is that the more professional Republican consultants are probably ready to move on from anti-trans issues, although it still excites the MAGA base. This creates a situation where lowering the cultural salience of trans issues might cause them to pick a different Public Enemy Number One in 2026 and 2028. Which, yes, is a classic case of "I don't need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun whoever the bear is going to catch." Which absolutely sucks for whoever the bear is going to chase, but trans people already did their turn.
It's not my place to support or oppose Ozy's recommendation, to be clear. I just wanted to sketch out a model of why I thought much of the heat around this issue came from Republican electoral strategy after they lost gay marriage as an effective issue.
> I also think that, right now, less trans energy should go towards specifically explaining why trans people are valid, and more trans energy should go to general support for the liberal project.
This would require the average trans person to actually *want* to support the liberal project, which is... not a given! (To be clear, this is because society in general soured on liberalism during the Obama years, not some bullshit "oh the LGB are just good normal liberals, it's the TQ that are evul drag Stalinists" thing a la Andrew Sullivan.) It doesn't matter that the small-l liberal case for trans rights is extremely obvious if there are no trans liberals exist to make it!
But isn’t this just begging the question? Maybe we should second guess the whole fashionable “souring on liberalism” of the past decade and a half?
I get the frustration, but I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand just how wiling “progressives” have been to throw liberalism under the bus so gleefully. Liberalism can be a fantastic vehicle for genuine social progress, provided we have a little more patience than Veruca Salt in the chocolate factory in dealing with the intersecting social tensions in a wide culture.
To be clear, I am very much a normie lib, and I would be thrilled if everyone got onboard with the basic tenets of liberalism! But -- and someone with more knowledge of the dynamics within trans communities can and should correct me here -- I can't think of any high-profile trans people who seem interested in being standard-bearers for liberalism. I guess there's Sarah McBride? But I'm pretty sure she's unpopular among trans people precisely *because* she's a boring liberal with boring liberal opinions.
"This [the quoted statement above] would require the average trans person to actually *want* to support the liberal project, which is... not a given!"
No. An equally compatible way to interpret the statement is that Ozy thinks trans people should want to support the liberal project.
Certainly the gay rights movement got a lot of mileage from "just don't bother us while we're not bothering you" and it seems like the trans movement is trying to pivot to this after recent political losses. I don't fully disagree with this, but I think it's a bigger ask for the trans movement than it seems.
The difference between the two movements is that being trans is fundamentally centered on caring about how you are perceived by society. If the average reaction a trans person receives is "I don't know if you're really what you say, but I'll play along at the minimum level required by etiquette" will that feel like a successful "social transition" for the trans person?
I think at some point the movement needs to acknowledge that what is asked of others is not average or low maintenance. I'm worried that this "just let us mind our own" rebrand won't stick, because I'm not sure if that's really all is really wanted from people
Gay people wanted their marriages to be seen as real marriages! This was very much a subject of dispute twenty years ago! It's true that gender is more pervasive than whether someone is married, but I think the analogy does hold.
"I don't know if you're really what you say, but I'll play along at the minimum level required by etiquette" isn't really a successful social transition but, like, you can't reasonably ask people to change what gender they see you as. You can ask them not to draw attention to it.
Not the point, but in case any trans people want reassurance about how oblivious the average cis person is: I'm in a friend group with a lot of trans people, I met a guy with a round face who was about 5'0", and it literally never even crossed my mind that he might be trans until a mutual friend mentioned it.
My actual thought process on meeting him: "Huh, I guess he must have a hormone disorder, that must have been tough for him as a teen."
Edit: Okay, in case this makes me sound like a complete idiot, in my defense, most of the trans people in my friend group are women, and the guy was dressed extremely normie-cis-male with a normie short haircut. He wasn't very clockable!
(In retrospect I guess the hormone disorder thing is in some sense actually true.)
While it is historically understood as rude to refer to someone in a way they do not identify with, it was also considered very historically rude to refuse a gift, but no one here would object to a vegan refusing a gift of bacon. This is because people acknowledge veganism as a valid ideology that needs accommodations and exceptions, just as some small religious sects are accommodated in court by being excused from formal oaths. I think this is what the modern trans movement is really missing: A policy of toleration for principled disagreement. Perhaps instead of “it is always rude to misgender” it would be better to say “it is rude to misgender unless you have a good faith philosophical disagreement with preferred pronouns or some other conviction of conscience against them.”
I get your point, but would this not amount to holding in practice that there is no need to be polite if you have a good faith, philosophical belief that you should be rude instead, which s looks like it would be unworkable? For example, if I have a good faith, philosophical belief that I should call out religion as a delusion any time I encounter somebody in its grip, is it really okay for society to decide that my good faith philosophical view means that this isn’t extremely rude. What if I have a good faith philosophical opinion that politeness norms are stupid and should not be followed? I think these thought experiments make it obvious that we would not be willing to support this principal in the cases of rules about politeness about more normal cases. In which case I’m not sure there is any specific reason to specifically exempt politeness norms about dealing with trans people.
While society can’t accommodate every conceivable philosophical position, the norm we have developed in all other cases is that the person demanding that others affirm their identity is the rude one, and not the person who is simply speaking sincerely from their own beliefs. For example, a clergyman working a 9 to 5 can’t demand that his coworkers address him by his clerical title, even if he sincerely identifies as “Father Rob.”
There is a difference between aggressive and deliberately rude misgendering, like calling a transwoman Mr Lastname when you normally just say Lastname, and a simple refusal to use preferred pronouns when pronouns are unavoidable. I think the fundamental question here is whether some people have a right to demand that others verbally affirm their identity. Prohibitions against talking about religion or politics in the workplace can be content neutral, but when the English language demands gendered language we have a direct conflict between “rudeness” as trans people understand it and “compelled speech” as their critics do.
Your analogy does not work because the hypothetical priest is insisting on people specifically using his title instead of just not commenting on whether he has such a title, but in the case of trance people, the demand is that people should not insist that they are of different gender to the one they prefer to identify as. Your analogy would be appropriate. If trans people were insisting that it is not a legitimate strategy to just avoid using pronouns when talking to them. I also don’t think the rule you’re imagining where the burden of proof is on the person who wants you to affirm something is actually correct as a description of existing social practice. If a religious person asks for grace before you start eating, it might be okay not to say anything, but definitely would not be considered okay to assert your philosophical view that there is no God and the religious person is in the grip of a delusional system of belief, even though the religious person is asserting their own world view. I think the social rule is basically that you shouldn’t cause offence when not causing offence is pretty easy. I also think you are suggested rule that the burden of proof is on the person insisting that you assert a viewpoint would be unworkable because lots of commonly accepted rules about politeness in fact require you to assert a viewpoint.
In theory it’s fine to say that we can avoid pronouns entirely, but in reality there are many situations when the English language demands gendered language. Students address their teacher as Mr. or Miss, and this carries over into other formal contexts like court cases. This is where you have a direct and unavoidable conflict over compelled speech. Can a priest who also teaches public school demand his students call him Father Johnson instead of Mr. Johnson? Most priests would not demand this, but this is because, ironically, most western religious organizations are more dedicated to traditional liberal norms than the fringe of the trans movement.
Again, that analogy does not work because calling that priest by something other than father does not imply that he is not a priest, so you are not suggesting that his identification as a priest is not legitimate. If you happen to believe in a different religion and use the term that is specifically for a priest of a false God that would be equivalent to asserting through your choice of pronoun that the person is actually of a different gender to the one, they identify as. I’m not sure why you’re bringing compare speech into this is in fact, social rules about politeness are not subject to constitutional rules about free speech, and in fact, I think if you had an inflexible judge and a law that made rules of politeness, legal rules, they would have to be struck down, although in practice, no judge is actually that much of a legalist. I was not necessarily suggesting that you not use any pronoun, although in fact, although inconvenient this can often be done, for example, you can simply call your professor professor because thankfully, that is a gender neutral term.
If you think a transwoman who introduces herself to the class as Ms Lastname would be cool with a student deciding she was “Teacher Lastname” instead, then I think we agree in principle, but have different empirical understandings of the goals of many trans rights organizations. I like politeness, but it has been my personal experience that it is the trans side that is hostile to norms of neutrality. I would be happy to realize one day that you are empirically correct about their goals.
Additionally, even people who supposedly object to preferred pronouns agree that misgendering is rude if it happens to cis people. I’ve had people profusely apologize to me after calling me sir or he/him and then perceiving me as a butch woman later in the interaction. Misgendering is recognized as a more severe infraction than omitting a religious title in this case.
If my coworker had a sincere belief that he couldn’t use male pronouns for me when I was clean shaven, because his culture said that a man capable of growing a beard must always grow one, I would have no problem respecting this as a sincere accommodation to philosophical/cultural/religious difference.
In practice, in environments like the workplace, people with philosophical disagreements with transition will still end up calling stealth passing trans people by their preferred pronouns. Misgendering non-passing trans people then becomes a comment on physical features the trans person likely deeply dislikes having. It is perceived as a rude dig at someone’s failure to pass without even consistently protecting someone’s philosophical self-expression.
People always speak within the limits of their knowledge. I don’t think that being mistaken about one case obligates a person to hide or falsify their beliefs in the next case.
> At schools, the existence of transgender children should be addressed in a sensitive and age-appropriate way when a child actually transitions; we don’t need to cover transness routinely in sex education
I think we do because it helps trans children figure out they're trans.
I don't think the analogy with little people works perfectly because I think there's something like a 200x difference in frequency -- I kinda expect that most people will interact with trans people in their lives at least occasionally, so it seems reasonable to me to teach everyone, instead of on an as-needed basis. But maybe I nevertheless agree that we should be compromising more on how much cis people understand gender than we currently seem to.
Maybe there's also a subtext of "is it enough to be tolerated, or do we want to also be understood and celebrated?" -- I can see shooting for the former because the latter seems too hard at the moment, but it feels a little sad.
That said, I do generally like the idea of prioritising trans people's rights and needs over and above the philosophical issues, and I think it's worth noting the ways in which visibility has been harmful as well as helpful.
*That* said, I'm not sure that trans people still control the visibility of trans people (if they ever did). It feels to me if we stopped talking about the definition of a woman or whatever, the reactionary right would not stop, because it's useful for them. The choice we face then is whether to reply to what they say (and risk amplifying it) or not to reply (and risk allowing it to dominate). Both options hurt, but my guess would be that the second is now worse, even if it would have been better to never bring the issue up in the first place.
There is also the third option of specifying *why* "what is a woman?" is such a useful question for the reactionary right -- because it erodes support for legal equality between the sexes, a.k.a. the most popular, unambiguously good victory of feminism.
(Whenever a blogger I like makes a post on this subject, I wait for his comment section to fill up and then say, "Curious how for a post about an alleged schism within feminism, I don't see any other women around here...")
Does it actually do that? I don't really see how.
When someone is emphasizing the ""inherent biological differences"" or whatever between sexes, they're almost always doing so to justify sex discrimination of some form. Not always -- Ozy's did a good post earlier this year called "In Defense of Trans-Inclusive Importance of Biological Sex" -- but more often than not, yes, I would say "what is a woman" is the cri de coeur of people actively hostile towards feminism.
Do you have a definition of "sex discrimination" that would mainly be accepted by people who have accepted a pretty significant level of feminist ideology (arguably an ideological approach that I don't think Ozy usually follows in a doctrinaire way)?
I'm really not seeing what you mean, otherwise.
Um... no? I'm not particularly doctrinaire about feminism, and I *think* I'm using the phrase "sex discrimination" in a pretty straightforward way (e.g., Pete Hegseth obviously wants sex discrimination in the military). Maybe we should try a different tack here?
Imagine a guy who's reeeally into IQ. Specifically, he's reeeally into constantly talking up the IQ differences between different races. Would you expect this guy to be in favor of *any* of the movements or policies instituted in the name of racial equality since, ah, 1950? Why would anyone dedicate so much time to promoting ideas about racial difference if not to justify policies of racial discrimination?
I don't necessarily take Ozy's point as "We should all shut up about transness," but rather as "The shortest route between here and trans people having rights is not convincing cis people of the validity of trans people on the merits; it's an appeal to a general commitment to privacy, self-determination, and mutual respect, with an understanding that convincing people of the validity of trans people on the merits is better done in the context of a personal conversation with someone you know than via political discourse." Which is to say, I think the correct response to the reactionary right talking about the definition of a woman is, "Why do you care so much about what trans people call themselves or have between their legs, you absolute fucking creep losers???" I think this is why one of the most politically effective arguments against anti-trans policies like bathroom bills and stuff has been the point that, in practice, enforcement of these policies essentially opens the door to genital inspections of young children. Similarly I think "Let doctors and parents decide what the appropriate care for a trans kid is; let sports organizations decide what the appropriate inclusion criteria for trans kids in gendered sports is; etc" is also an easier sell, and education on the actual merits of a given position is better done through people you are actually in community with. That being said, I am sympathetic to the point that gender education in school might be important so that trans kids can recognize their own identity and its validity. I think that's a tough question that probably merits more discussion.
Yeah it's like, 1 in 300 right? And it's very easy to self-diagnose if you know a lot about what being trans is like, and basically impossible if you've never heard of it. Seems very sensible for schools to mention it.
I mean, big chunks of the population are deeply committed to not celebrating transness. I’m not sure why the movement would ever have imagined being celebrated (if by this you mean in most places in the West, as opposed to in particularly liberal enclaves) is actually an option that’s available.
I feel on the continuum between tolerance ("mere" tolerance of privately hidden/at least slightly shameful existence) and celebration by others there are also points of "acceptance" (what Arendt called "the right to have rights" and exist openly in public without hiding, but not necessarily actively validated or celebrated by others) or "recognition" (as per Charles Taylor) that's needed for proper dignity of social creatures. The need for the latter can perhaps quite easily blur into a desire/requirement for active "celebration" or "validation".
Ah, yes, those are very helpful distinctions.
Suspended for 30 days for deep confusion about the nature of this Substack.
Thank you for this. After a long period of painful soul-searching I'm joining the other side and this will help me minimize the damage I do.
“The more salient trans people are, the more likely it is that it will occur to someone that that 5’4” man with a round face might not be cis.”
Bizarre sentence. There are large swaths of the human population who are simultaneously cis male, short, and round-faced. Especially if you look beyond white people, ie the majority of the world. Probably wasn’t intentional, but I think you might be hurting your own ‘reasonable decency’ point here (which I generally agree with) by way of a sloppy example.
I think if trans people are very salient then you do in fact get a ton of cis people misread as trans people.
Ah…got it. Thanks for the clarification!
No worries-- I probably ought to have been clearer. :)