Thread by @Katja_Thieme

A few thoughts & questions on Debbie Hayton's piece "Trans Activists Are Making Life Harder for Trans People" published in the Spectator. Some of article's points mirror claims made anti-trans public figures; there's a general dimension to my questions. 1/
spectator.co.uk/2019/12/trans-…

Hayton insists on the strict division between "sex" as biological and "gender" as psychological: "Our sex relates to our role--or potential role--in the reproduction of our species." 2/

When has *one* general classification from the research field of biology--a natural science field that studies all life and living organism--ever mattered in this way, let alone dictated, how to make laws within human society and its political systems?

Serious question.

3/

Why should one piece of classification from general biology--in extremely flattened form, insisted upon not by all but by some biologists, who might not even even study humans--be used in this way to determine how the state keeps information of its citizens?

Why?

4/

This is a political arena we're in. Not a biological one (which, I hasten to add, many biologists would not recognize in the image that's drawn). It's a democratic arena. Where those who are classified should be supported in making their views on the classification known. 5/

We also have the wedge that some like to draw between previous history of LGBTQ+ activism and contemporary trans rights activism. The arguments used to support that wedge are flimsy. 6/

"The new generation of LGBTQ+ activists may claim that the rush for transgender & non-binary rights mirrors the gay rights activism of 30 years ago, but those campaigners only ever fought for equal rights. They never campaigned for the right to change how other people think." 7/

I don't have time to count the ways in which LGBTQ+ activism of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s tried, tried, tried, and tried again to change how other people think.

Neither activism claims a *right* to changed minds. They do want to change minds tho. It's what activism is.

8/

There's a sad moment in the article: "Sympathy for trans people is replaced with exasperation, suspicion and exclusion. At a time when populism is on the ascendency around the world, this is a very scary development facing transsexuals." 9/

You don't beat back hatred by acquiescing to it. You're helping yourself, not others, when cultivating a persona of being the nice one of your kind, a demeanour that sets you apart from the others, leaving them open for attack. Sometimes you need to help yourself. 10/

That's all right. But in doing so you are protecting yourself and not "everyone's right to defy gender norms and express their personalities." 11/

@threadreaderapp unroll