The entire system of thought around "gender" arises from the psychological makeup of the people who have "gender dysphoria," which I think is at least partly because those people predominate in the "gender medicine" specialty. In my clinical work with men who had "gender" conflicts, I found that many of them thought quite concretely abou…
The entire system of thought around "gender" arises from the psychological makeup of the people who have "gender dysphoria," which I think is at least partly because those people predominate in the "gender medicine" specialty. In my clinical work with men who had "gender" conflicts, I found that many of them thought quite concretely about their "gender" issues. Most if not all subjective experiences around their "gender" problem were converted to physical ones ("I feel like a woman, therefore I must be one"). Thus, the solutions to the person's emotional and cognitive conflicts were felt to require physical solutions. ("I need to get a new body to fit my feelings"). People with "gender" conflicts are very similar to people who have eating disorders ("I feel bad because certain foods make me feel that way when I eat them"), and "I will be happy when I have a different body." These are examples of thinking that is not only concrete but denies the internal sources of bad feeling and focuses instead on external sources. People who think like this are typically less open to psychotherapy, because their philosophy of life emphasizes external, uncontrollable causes for their unhappiness. Psychotherapy is based on the philosophy and evidence that people do better when they "have an internal locus of control."
It becomes very hard to dissuade people stuck in this line of thinking though, because if you use terms such as “truth,” “facts,” or “objective,” they write off the argument as being an expression of power/hierarchy/oppression. The undermining of the concept of truth or reality is, in my view, the deeper issue. If we can’t agree on a shared reality or facts, then disagreements become unresolvable. I’m not actually sure how you begin to reason with someone who embraces this worldview.
Making it even trickier are that some elements of this worldview have some truth to it. For example, a person’s understanding of the world will be mediated by the lens of their experience and “positioning.” As in, although objective reality exists, an individual can never claim to have experienced or understood it in its raw form. So any statement I make about “objective reality” can reflect my subjective experience and position.
I agree that the philosophical conflict we are facing is between realists and anti-realists.
One of the most amusing aspects of radical postmodern standpoint theory is that its adherents want to say that all truth claims are reducible to someone's individual standpoint or "lens," but they are unable to understand that standpoint theory itself is just a set of thoughts constructs developed by a group of white guys in Western Europe.
I agree with you that postmodern standpoint theory includes some interesting ideas about how we perceive and describe the realities we live within. Woke people are, however, generally unable to work with concepts like "some elements of this worldview have some truth to it." They convert nuanced statements into absolutist, overgeneralized, all or nothing claims, such as, "Racism exists, so all situations in which a black person is victimized are about racism." Some people call this type of thinking "social justice fundamentalism."
Totally agree. I think the framing as "social justice fundamentalism" is the correct framing. I grew up in a very conservative religious environment where I was not taught "how" to think, but rather "what" to think. The flavour of the critical social justice movement is extremely similar to the religious conservative environment in which I grew up. The answer to the question is assumed, so instead of curiousity, they lead with this sense of certainty. But underneath that pretense is fragility and fear, which is why they can't hold nuance, grey, or tension.
As an aside, the claim "all truth claims are reducible to someone's individual standpoint" is itself a truth claim. But the circular logic here is often lost on its adherents.
Years ago a friend of mine was talking to me about her deteriorating relationship. She and her partner argued a lot about a variety of things without being able to come to an understanding or a resolution. My friend said she had discovered that all of the arguments actually boiled down to a single dispute about whether there are shades of gray or only black and white.
How can society take a man's claim to "feel like a woman" seriously enough to respond to it with therapeutic interventions such as hormones and surgeries?
It may be facile to say that no man can possibly feel like a woman because only women can feel like women. Besides, any one woman, like any single man, is only an expert their experience of being a woman or man, respectively.
But isn't that true? Doesn't it take magical thinking or some other form of non-objective, unscientific reasoning to conclude that because a man says he feels like a woman he is one? And that making physical changes to a man's body alone can somehow complete what nature meant to do but never got around to?
We know that anyone who so much as whispers thoughts of being trans racial in the white-to-black direction will be roundly scolded; if they really insist, they will be ostracized without a second thought.
This question probably comes up so often that one might say sex realists have taken to perseverating over it. Sigh.
I personally have no experiences in which I am walking around and "I feel like a woman." Some women have told me that they have an experience of "feeling like a woman," but then I learn that this terminology meant they perceived themselves as pretty and were getting male attention that day. I believe that people who have psychiatric issues around "gender" are the only people who are preoccupied with the idea that they "feel like" either sex or neither. And yes, of course I agree with you that people who can't sort out which sex they are and deal with it are, at least in that sector, not functioning well within reality. (Many of them do function very well in sectors that don't require being realistic about sexual identity).
So, how do you respond if you are challenged with something like: “Well, of course you wouldn’t notice that you feel like a woman, because you are part of the cisheteronormative oppressor group, and as such society is set up for people like you to succeed and feel comfortable. Your privilege blinds you to your own experience.”
(I obviously don’t believe this, I just encounter this line of thinking and don’t know how to respond. Especially as a white, heterosexual male, I occupy the pinnacle of the “oppressor” group, so anything I say can be dismissed as a mere expression of my privilege and power.)
There is no opening at all to respond to attacks of this type. The woke cult is a religion, and mouthing the slogans and dogmas gives the members a feeling of power that is more important to them than anything else. The string of phrases “racist, male supremacist, cisheteronormative,” etc., is the equivalent of street corner preachers yelling that you are “under the influence of Satan.”
Focusing on the content of verbal abuse is not worth anyone’s time. It is admittedly easier to shrug it off when we are in fact not “heteronormative” or “white” or whatever, but none of that really matters to the social justice activists. Glenn Loury, John McWhorter and Coleman Hughes have all said that they have been characterized as “not black,” “race traitors,” and worse, because they disagree with a lot of “anti-racist” dogma.
What matters most is that you don’t allow social justice fundamentalists to rattle your sense of yourself. They are superficial thinkers with very limited life experience, being mostly young white women from affluent, sheltered backgrounds. They have a lot of difficulties getting along with other people because of their anger issues, hysterical emotionality, and abusiveness. Ultimately, they will end up with only their self-righteousness to keep them company, because they are at least as horrible to each other as they are to the rest of us.
I love the similarity you draw between street corner preachers and CSJ proponents, and I appreciate your statement about not focusing on the content of verbal abuse. It really is the same, in that their beliefs are unfalsifiable, and that engaging with these people is a waste of time. (The authors you mentioned are great examples that even occupying the “right” categories is insufficient for acceptance)
Perhaps I extend too much grace in trying to understand, or give their voices too much weight in my own thought processes (as in, I get rattled). I think I do this because I see the nuggets of truth in their worldview and statements. For example, when someone confidently states “I know I’m not a racist,” I admire that and would like to have that same level of confidence in making a statement like that about myself. I don’t think I am racist, and I certainly strive to treat everyone with dignity and respect, regardless of their superficial characteristics.
However, can I really state that I don’t have unconscious biases toward people who are different than me, and that those unconscious biases don’t impact my treatment of others in ways of which I am not aware? Isn’t the tendency to treat people as “other” so fundamental to being human that, despite my best efforts, it will always be possible that this shows up, even unconsciously, in my behaviour?
I use “racist” here as emblematic of the various types of discrimination which CSJ adherents purport to be targeting. I also see that “softer” versions of these ideas have really taken in the general culture (I live in an urban centre in Canada), and it’s just so challenging to speak against them, even in a group of moderate progressives, because there is a general acceptance of ideas like “if you’re white, you are inherently privileged” and the like.
I advise that we give no weight at all to accusations that are shaming, punitive and absolutist, as in "You are stained with the Original Sin of your ancestors and are beyond redemption. All you can do is eternally confess your sin and put yourself last in every line." People who want to join religions that teach the doctrine of hereditary sin are of course free to embrace that belief, but no one has the right to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us.
The idea that all of us might at times prejudge individuals incorrectly and unfairly because of their group identities, is realistic and reasonable. (At the same time, "stereotypes" of groups are the best predictors of behavior of randomly selected members of those groups. This has been known by psychologists at least since I was a grad student in the 1970's). Social justice activists who attack people for being "transphobes" and the like are not, however, talking about occasional mistakes made by well-intentioned people who might be unfamiliar with the norms of a domestic or foreign subculture. In fact, most social justice activists are completely unfamiliar with the subcultures of the minority groups they claim to speak for, and they frequently push policies that these groups do not like and which affect them adversely.
Decent, mature people should reflect on feedback they receive from individuals they may have inadvertently hurt, but there are limits to this. Arrogant accusers who present their own claims with absolute certainty, who seek to legislate how everyone else should behave, and even claim to know what other peoples' unstated feelings, thoughts and intentions were in a particular situation, are individuals whose commentary is not worth our attention.
Thanks so much for all your thoughtful replies here Sandra. You've clearly thought this all through, and your knowledge of the subject and the various nuances is abundantly clear.
I've only recently started to become willing to articulate any of my thoughts on this beyond my immediate close friends, in truth because I've feared being publicly attacked. And while I'm not likely to be the next strong public voice on this, conversations/exercises like these ones help grant me the confidence I'd need to speak more openly and be able to challenge people a step or two outside of that circle in a respectful, thoughtful manner without fear of their rebuttals or even attacks; as you say, being "confident in myself."
So thank you. And thanks to Colin for this space! The people here are really fantastic.
I too had a lot of fears about voicing online and in real life public settings opinions that are silenced and shamed in my locale. I am not free of those fears after a couple years of commenting on other peoples’ articles, but I have found ways to live with the heightened risk. Discovering that a lot of other people besides me see the social justice cult differently from how the SJ adherents present it has been empowering and made me feel much better than I did pre-Substack.
The link below is to a social psychology article on stereotypes and how to measure their accuracy relative to a criterion established as valid. It is a long, nerdy piece by a specialist in the field. He does bring in difficulties of doing this research and publishing it, due to censoring by peer reviewed journals and publishers of professional books. I thought of offering you this link even though it addresses only a piece of your very important questions about reflecting upon and measuring one’s own racism or other biases might be coming out in behaviors that are hurtful to minority groups.
Josh — In the US, at least, Indian Americans have double the median family income of whites. Most Asian American groups also exceed whites, as do Middle Easterners and North Africans.
So much for the “pinnacle of the ‘oppressor’ group”.
Very accurate. I haven’t looked at the numbers here in Canada, but they are likely similar.
Even just selecting two minority groups - Nigerian and Ethiopian immigrants - would likely reveal a stark contrast in median wealth and education. Putting both those groups into one category would be a huge mistake if trying to correct for inequities.
The entire system of thought around "gender" arises from the psychological makeup of the people who have "gender dysphoria," which I think is at least partly because those people predominate in the "gender medicine" specialty. In my clinical work with men who had "gender" conflicts, I found that many of them thought quite concretely about their "gender" issues. Most if not all subjective experiences around their "gender" problem were converted to physical ones ("I feel like a woman, therefore I must be one"). Thus, the solutions to the person's emotional and cognitive conflicts were felt to require physical solutions. ("I need to get a new body to fit my feelings"). People with "gender" conflicts are very similar to people who have eating disorders ("I feel bad because certain foods make me feel that way when I eat them"), and "I will be happy when I have a different body." These are examples of thinking that is not only concrete but denies the internal sources of bad feeling and focuses instead on external sources. People who think like this are typically less open to psychotherapy, because their philosophy of life emphasizes external, uncontrollable causes for their unhappiness. Psychotherapy is based on the philosophy and evidence that people do better when they "have an internal locus of control."
It becomes very hard to dissuade people stuck in this line of thinking though, because if you use terms such as “truth,” “facts,” or “objective,” they write off the argument as being an expression of power/hierarchy/oppression. The undermining of the concept of truth or reality is, in my view, the deeper issue. If we can’t agree on a shared reality or facts, then disagreements become unresolvable. I’m not actually sure how you begin to reason with someone who embraces this worldview.
Making it even trickier are that some elements of this worldview have some truth to it. For example, a person’s understanding of the world will be mediated by the lens of their experience and “positioning.” As in, although objective reality exists, an individual can never claim to have experienced or understood it in its raw form. So any statement I make about “objective reality” can reflect my subjective experience and position.
I agree that the philosophical conflict we are facing is between realists and anti-realists.
One of the most amusing aspects of radical postmodern standpoint theory is that its adherents want to say that all truth claims are reducible to someone's individual standpoint or "lens," but they are unable to understand that standpoint theory itself is just a set of thoughts constructs developed by a group of white guys in Western Europe.
I agree with you that postmodern standpoint theory includes some interesting ideas about how we perceive and describe the realities we live within. Woke people are, however, generally unable to work with concepts like "some elements of this worldview have some truth to it." They convert nuanced statements into absolutist, overgeneralized, all or nothing claims, such as, "Racism exists, so all situations in which a black person is victimized are about racism." Some people call this type of thinking "social justice fundamentalism."
Totally agree. I think the framing as "social justice fundamentalism" is the correct framing. I grew up in a very conservative religious environment where I was not taught "how" to think, but rather "what" to think. The flavour of the critical social justice movement is extremely similar to the religious conservative environment in which I grew up. The answer to the question is assumed, so instead of curiousity, they lead with this sense of certainty. But underneath that pretense is fragility and fear, which is why they can't hold nuance, grey, or tension.
As an aside, the claim "all truth claims are reducible to someone's individual standpoint" is itself a truth claim. But the circular logic here is often lost on its adherents.
Years ago a friend of mine was talking to me about her deteriorating relationship. She and her partner argued a lot about a variety of things without being able to come to an understanding or a resolution. My friend said she had discovered that all of the arguments actually boiled down to a single dispute about whether there are shades of gray or only black and white.
How can society take a man's claim to "feel like a woman" seriously enough to respond to it with therapeutic interventions such as hormones and surgeries?
It may be facile to say that no man can possibly feel like a woman because only women can feel like women. Besides, any one woman, like any single man, is only an expert their experience of being a woman or man, respectively.
But isn't that true? Doesn't it take magical thinking or some other form of non-objective, unscientific reasoning to conclude that because a man says he feels like a woman he is one? And that making physical changes to a man's body alone can somehow complete what nature meant to do but never got around to?
We know that anyone who so much as whispers thoughts of being trans racial in the white-to-black direction will be roundly scolded; if they really insist, they will be ostracized without a second thought.
This question probably comes up so often that one might say sex realists have taken to perseverating over it. Sigh.
I personally have no experiences in which I am walking around and "I feel like a woman." Some women have told me that they have an experience of "feeling like a woman," but then I learn that this terminology meant they perceived themselves as pretty and were getting male attention that day. I believe that people who have psychiatric issues around "gender" are the only people who are preoccupied with the idea that they "feel like" either sex or neither. And yes, of course I agree with you that people who can't sort out which sex they are and deal with it are, at least in that sector, not functioning well within reality. (Many of them do function very well in sectors that don't require being realistic about sexual identity).
So, how do you respond if you are challenged with something like: “Well, of course you wouldn’t notice that you feel like a woman, because you are part of the cisheteronormative oppressor group, and as such society is set up for people like you to succeed and feel comfortable. Your privilege blinds you to your own experience.”
(I obviously don’t believe this, I just encounter this line of thinking and don’t know how to respond. Especially as a white, heterosexual male, I occupy the pinnacle of the “oppressor” group, so anything I say can be dismissed as a mere expression of my privilege and power.)
There is no opening at all to respond to attacks of this type. The woke cult is a religion, and mouthing the slogans and dogmas gives the members a feeling of power that is more important to them than anything else. The string of phrases “racist, male supremacist, cisheteronormative,” etc., is the equivalent of street corner preachers yelling that you are “under the influence of Satan.”
Focusing on the content of verbal abuse is not worth anyone’s time. It is admittedly easier to shrug it off when we are in fact not “heteronormative” or “white” or whatever, but none of that really matters to the social justice activists. Glenn Loury, John McWhorter and Coleman Hughes have all said that they have been characterized as “not black,” “race traitors,” and worse, because they disagree with a lot of “anti-racist” dogma.
What matters most is that you don’t allow social justice fundamentalists to rattle your sense of yourself. They are superficial thinkers with very limited life experience, being mostly young white women from affluent, sheltered backgrounds. They have a lot of difficulties getting along with other people because of their anger issues, hysterical emotionality, and abusiveness. Ultimately, they will end up with only their self-righteousness to keep them company, because they are at least as horrible to each other as they are to the rest of us.
I love the similarity you draw between street corner preachers and CSJ proponents, and I appreciate your statement about not focusing on the content of verbal abuse. It really is the same, in that their beliefs are unfalsifiable, and that engaging with these people is a waste of time. (The authors you mentioned are great examples that even occupying the “right” categories is insufficient for acceptance)
Perhaps I extend too much grace in trying to understand, or give their voices too much weight in my own thought processes (as in, I get rattled). I think I do this because I see the nuggets of truth in their worldview and statements. For example, when someone confidently states “I know I’m not a racist,” I admire that and would like to have that same level of confidence in making a statement like that about myself. I don’t think I am racist, and I certainly strive to treat everyone with dignity and respect, regardless of their superficial characteristics.
However, can I really state that I don’t have unconscious biases toward people who are different than me, and that those unconscious biases don’t impact my treatment of others in ways of which I am not aware? Isn’t the tendency to treat people as “other” so fundamental to being human that, despite my best efforts, it will always be possible that this shows up, even unconsciously, in my behaviour?
I use “racist” here as emblematic of the various types of discrimination which CSJ adherents purport to be targeting. I also see that “softer” versions of these ideas have really taken in the general culture (I live in an urban centre in Canada), and it’s just so challenging to speak against them, even in a group of moderate progressives, because there is a general acceptance of ideas like “if you’re white, you are inherently privileged” and the like.
I advise that we give no weight at all to accusations that are shaming, punitive and absolutist, as in "You are stained with the Original Sin of your ancestors and are beyond redemption. All you can do is eternally confess your sin and put yourself last in every line." People who want to join religions that teach the doctrine of hereditary sin are of course free to embrace that belief, but no one has the right to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us.
The idea that all of us might at times prejudge individuals incorrectly and unfairly because of their group identities, is realistic and reasonable. (At the same time, "stereotypes" of groups are the best predictors of behavior of randomly selected members of those groups. This has been known by psychologists at least since I was a grad student in the 1970's). Social justice activists who attack people for being "transphobes" and the like are not, however, talking about occasional mistakes made by well-intentioned people who might be unfamiliar with the norms of a domestic or foreign subculture. In fact, most social justice activists are completely unfamiliar with the subcultures of the minority groups they claim to speak for, and they frequently push policies that these groups do not like and which affect them adversely.
Decent, mature people should reflect on feedback they receive from individuals they may have inadvertently hurt, but there are limits to this. Arrogant accusers who present their own claims with absolute certainty, who seek to legislate how everyone else should behave, and even claim to know what other peoples' unstated feelings, thoughts and intentions were in a particular situation, are individuals whose commentary is not worth our attention.
Thanks so much for all your thoughtful replies here Sandra. You've clearly thought this all through, and your knowledge of the subject and the various nuances is abundantly clear.
I've only recently started to become willing to articulate any of my thoughts on this beyond my immediate close friends, in truth because I've feared being publicly attacked. And while I'm not likely to be the next strong public voice on this, conversations/exercises like these ones help grant me the confidence I'd need to speak more openly and be able to challenge people a step or two outside of that circle in a respectful, thoughtful manner without fear of their rebuttals or even attacks; as you say, being "confident in myself."
So thank you. And thanks to Colin for this space! The people here are really fantastic.
I too had a lot of fears about voicing online and in real life public settings opinions that are silenced and shamed in my locale. I am not free of those fears after a couple years of commenting on other peoples’ articles, but I have found ways to live with the heightened risk. Discovering that a lot of other people besides me see the social justice cult differently from how the SJ adherents present it has been empowering and made me feel much better than I did pre-Substack.
The link below is to a social psychology article on stereotypes and how to measure their accuracy relative to a criterion established as valid. It is a long, nerdy piece by a specialist in the field. He does bring in difficulties of doing this research and publishing it, due to censoring by peer reviewed journals and publishers of professional books. I thought of offering you this link even though it addresses only a piece of your very important questions about reflecting upon and measuring one’s own racism or other biases might be coming out in behaviors that are hurtful to minority groups.
https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2018-63180-001.html
Thanks, I will check it out! Thanks for all your time and thoughtful responses Sandra, especially at this busy time of year.
Josh — In the US, at least, Indian Americans have double the median family income of whites. Most Asian American groups also exceed whites, as do Middle Easterners and North Africans.
So much for the “pinnacle of the ‘oppressor’ group”.
Very accurate. I haven’t looked at the numbers here in Canada, but they are likely similar.
Even just selecting two minority groups - Nigerian and Ethiopian immigrants - would likely reveal a stark contrast in median wealth and education. Putting both those groups into one category would be a huge mistake if trying to correct for inequities.