Comment by komali2
5 years ago
This doesn't read as "empathetic" to me:
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269382518362509313?s=...
And no, simply saying "I'm empathetic!" in a tweet doesn't make it true
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269406094595588096
Defending an avowed transphobe doesn't come off as very empathetic:
https://twitter.com/Carter_AndrewJ/status/127078794525190553...
Nor does calling the person who said the following (Magdalen), "immensely brave:"
> You are fucking blackface actors. You aren't women. You are men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women. fuck you and your dirty fucking perversions. our oppression isn't a fetish you pathetic, sick, fuck.
Typically when I try to empathize with people, I don't turn around and compliment someone calling those people "pathetic" and "sick."
EDIT: I guess I got downvoted enough to be rate limited. I only allow small windows of HN time so I'm going to post my reply to the below comment as an edit. Sorry that's annoying but, eh.
Why are you talking about sides? Why are you talking about "trans people" being absolutely right, claiming moral highground, or dismissing viewpoints?
I'm discussing an individual whose words I can point to. JK Rowling. Who are you talking about?
You're engaging in a method of rhetoric that is wide open for abuse by fallacies such as strawman.
If JK Rowling had mad a serious attempt to understand transgenderism, she wouldn't give credence to the idea that it's a fetish.
I won't defend those words/actions: I don't agree with them, and they're definitely hurtful. But I don't believe that being hurtful necessarily means that you haven't made a serious attempt to understand the other persons point of view. I guess whether that is sufficient to count as empathy will depend on your definition of empathy.
My wider point though is that both sides seem to be failing to sufficiently take into the other side's perspective. The point about same-sex attraction in the second tweet you link is a good one IMO. I can't describe my sexuality without referring people's physiological attributes. Doesn't that make them socially relevant? A view on gender that completely eliminates the physical components of sex/gender is denying people's realities just as much as one that doesn't account for people's "feeling of gender".
Trans people are absolutely right that people like JK Rowling are treating them poorly. But they can't claim the moral high ground until they stop completely dismissing the viewpoints of anyone who tries to tell them that the physical aspects of sex/gender are important to them, and labelling such people as transphobic. That's not very empathetic either.
I think this is a completely illogical thing you're arguing.
Trans person: I feel (this way).
a non-equivalent statement from an anti-transness-person: You are wrong to feel that way; your feeling is false and what you are doing is wrong.
An equivalent statement for the non-trans-person here would be: I feel (this other way).
This business about trans people "dismissing the viewpoints of anyone who tries to tell them that the physical aspects of sex/gender are important to them" is just bullshit. I've talked with and interacted with trans folks and really no one's gonna tell me that their experience growing up as a boy and transitioning into girlhood or womanhood is the same as my experience growing up as a girl. And none of them has ever said that my experience of my physical self is not important, or is transphobic. Like, what? Can you find me instances of this sort of behavior?
Ragging on "people who menstruate" instead of "woman" (pun intended) as Rowling does is not her saying "the physical aspects of sex/gender are important to me". Menstruation is not the definition of womanhood (you do know postmenopausal women exist, right?). If you want to talk about menstruation, talk about menstruation. Don't pretend it's equivalent to wearing nailpolish or getting catcalled or giving birth or trying to find pants with pockets that fit a cell phone. JK Rowling is trying to tell other people about how they should experience sex/gender, not just representing her experience. Beyond being not empathetic, it's intellectually lazy.
I see it more like this:
Trans man: I "feel like a man", and this makes me like you because "trans men are men".
Me (AMAB, uses label "man"): I don't "feel like a man". That's not what being a man means to me.
Trans man: Well that's what being a man means. It's transphobic to think anything else.
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I feel like trans people are assuming that cis people have the same gender feelings that they do. And while some cis people do seem to have those feeling, many (like myself) don't. I'm not saying that trans feelings are wrong or that they don't feel like they say they do. I'm saying that the feelings they describe don't correspond to gender as I experience it. And thus that a model of gender that defines gender exclusively in those terms doesn't represent my experience.
Whenever I express the above viewpoint I get shut down and told that I'm transphobic. In other words: I am told that my experience of gender is invalid.
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> If you want to talk about menstruation, talk about menstruation.
I kinda agree with this. But I feel like this ought to apply to aspects of gender as well as aspects of sex. If we should about "people who menstrate" rather than "women", shouldn't we also talk about "people who feel like women" and "people who present as women" rather than "women". Taking the "feeling" of being a man/woman as definitive is exclusive because not everyone who has other gendered traits has such feelings just as taking physiology as definitive is exclusive because not everyone who has other gendered traits has the same gendered physiology.
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