#Transphobia is anti-scientific nonsense

[thelindenpapers]

Video Weekend

Forrest Valkai | The Line -- Transphobic Liar Calls In

[c-h-stevens]

A couple of months ago radfems on Xitter were making some noise about readers of Booktok smut being "porn addicted". Tumblr didn't take them seriously, which is as it should be. However, I don't think many people know the real issue with this "porn addiction" thing: namely, that it's a fake disorder invented by religious conservatives to shame people.

See, the people who take porn addiction seriously don't mean it in a metaphorical way, as in "I'm addicted to potato chips" or whatever. They literally claim that watching too much internet porn will rewire your brain chemistry just like shooting heroin. If you think that sounds unlikely, scientists generally agree with you. There's no solid evidence for porn addiction. The Wikipedia page calls it "scientifically controversial" and "hotly contested". It's also peppered up with [citation needed]s from both sides. On the other hand, there's papers such as this one (paywalled) that link "religiosity and moral disapproval" with "perceived addiction to pornography". Unsurprisingly, the promoters of porn addiction tend to scaremonger about masturbation, first and foremost among them the NoFap movement, which is a hotbed of alt-right bullshit and all sorts of bigotries. (Want another paper?)

You might wonder, if a belief in porn addiction comes from the religious right instead of credible evidence, and one of its loudest proponents is a very anti-feminist group, why would radical feminists accuse anybody of being porn addicted? Well, that's because radfems are dumb as bricks. They've been holding hands with the religious right for decades on the anti-porn issue. This is a short and concise article on the "lesbian sex wars", where radfems burned lesbian BDSM books to defeat the patriarchy. (I meant it when I said they're dumb as bricks.)

In my own personal observation, radfems seem to have ramped up their anti-porn side lately, probably because blatant, in-your-face transphobia is less popular in progressive circles lately. On the other hand, the internet has gotten more puritanical lately, so it makes sense they'd emphasize their anti-porn side instead. With USAMerican Republicans trying to fuck the internet up even more, I wouldn't be surprised if radfems continued to support the Leopards Eating People's Faces with this nonsense. Hence why I wrote this whole essay.

Radfems have admitted to toning down their views to try and "recruit" people they see as women/more mainstream feminists, so if you get a comment mentioning porn addiction, especially anonymously, it's likely a radfem peddling nonsense. If I thought they were clever enough, I'd say they were pushing the whole "Booktok porn addicts" angle to make other takes on the idea seem more credible. Sure, it's silly to call a reader of romance novels porn addicted, but what about a fratboy who's always in PornHub? Surely he's porn addicted, right? Well, no. Because porn addiction isn't a thing, and the people taking it seriously are trying to make you buy into censorship and an overly strict control of the internet. Things that are going to harm marginalized people first, as anybody who isn't dumb as bricks can tell.

[tanadrin]

If we have to deny that AGP causes transness for trans rights to flourish this implies that either paraphilic reasons for transition are Heccin Invalid or that most people are too stupid to see it shouldn’t matter whether someone is transitioning to get off. The first of these is repugnant, the second of these insulting to most people’s moral intelligence.

This is why I concluded a long time ago that people who spend lots and lots of time arguing that it is offensive to say AGP motivated transition are untrustworthy.

I'm sorry, but this line of reasoning is nonsense. "X as a theory has a poor scientific basis and is based on a harmful stereotype" is a perfectly legitimate thing to point out. It makes the point that X is untrue, while also illustrating why it is nonetheless attractive to many people. Pointing these things out is not tantamount to saying "even if this theory is correct, we shouldn't talk about it;" it is in fact the exact opposite!

It puts me in mind of the rationalist failure mode around race and IQ--every time a rationalist figure gets criticized for believing HBD nonsense, someone points out that that stuff has a very shoddy empirical basis, and that nailing your colors to the mast in defense of a theory that has a poor empirical track record is poor epistemology; and doing so in favor of a theory that mainly gets air time among bigots because those are the main body of people willing to give the theory support despite its poor track record is bad strategy, because it makes it very hard for outside observers to tell the difference between you and a bigot. And they get shouted at for being politically correct and bowing to the SJW orthodoxy, despite good epistemology and strategic awareness supposedly being important rationalist virtues.

Denying AGP is a real construct is a matter of intellectual integrity, not political convenience. We could debate, as a counterfactual, whether adopting the AGP model would harm trans rights in a world where that model is correct, but that's not the debate I'm engaged in, nor is it on I find particularly interesting. There is so much evidence we would have to ignore, and so much shoddy research methodology we would have to overlook, to make that counterfactual world even begin to appear plausible that it would amount to its own kind of epistemological malpractice, by pretending that AGP as a construct isn't as on as shaky a foundation as phrenology or astrology.

(Although given the popularity of anti-trans bigotry even well before the widespread discussion of any etiology of sexuality in society, the political force behind currently-resurgent transphobia in the UK, and the character of anti-trans bigotry in the rest of Europe and North America, if you are going to seriously argue a significant amount of the opposition to transness isn't predicated on the idea that all trans people--nevermind most queer people--are deviant sex predators, you are either an idiot or deeply dishonest.)

[radthursdays]

#RadThursdays Roundup 06/20/2019

A woman laughs while sitting on a bed in a light-filled room, a machine gun in her hands. The juxtaposition between gun and bedroom is jarring. Source.

Bodies

Cultivating Joy: Dani McClain Faces Down the Fear of Maternal Mortality: "America is in the throes of a maternal healthcare crisis. Maternal deaths in the United States have been on the rise since 1990. Now, between 700 and 900 new and expectant mothers die every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The risk is even greater for pregnant Black and Indigenous people, who are dying at a rate of 3.3 times and 2.5 times greater than whites, respectively, and the majority of these deaths are preventable."

Stop Using Phony Science to Justify Transphobia: Actual research shows that sex is anything but binary. "Contrary to popular belief, scientific research helps us better understand the unique and real transgender experience. Specifically, through three subjects: (1) genetics, (2) neurobiology and (3) endocrinology. So, hold onto your parts, whatever they may be. It’s time for 'the talk.'"

A smiling woman holds a coffee cup to her mouth with one hand and a machine gun in her other hand. Branded coffee cups sit beside her on the counter. Source.

Current News

Who Can Adopt a Native American Child? A Texas Couple vs. 573 Tribes: "Forced removal and conversion of Native children continued for decades. Often, Native families were not told where the children had gone. From 1958 to 1967, the federally funded Indian Adoption Project placed nearly 400 Indian children from Western states with white families nationwide."

How the Upheaval in Khartoum Affects One of Sudan’s Longest-Running Crises: "When fighting began in 2011, Sudan’s government cut off all assistance to South Kordofan and Blue Nile. While the situation was bad, locals recall how some aid groups, operating discreetly, still distributed oil, seeds, and tools, making life slightly easier. Since the split in 2017, however, the few organisations present have ceased to operate."

A smiling woman sits with legs crossed on a plush armchair and a very large rifle perched on her lap. Source.

Issues

The hired guns of Instagram: Companies can’t advertise on social media — so they have female influencers do it for them. "When Kimberly Matte captions an Instagram post “suns out, guns out, buns out,” she mostly means it. The sun may be out, but she’s inside. Her buns are definitely out, because she’s wearing a lime-green thong. Technically, there’s only one gun out, but it’s an AR-10 battle rifle, so she’s still overdelivering."

I’ve Climbed Everest 21 Times. It’s not the Mountain It Used to Be: "I also want better opportunities for the Sherpa people. When people in America hear the word Sherpa, they automatically think of us as mountain guides. But the word Sherpa literally means people from the east: 'Sher = East,' and 'Pa = people.' We are an ethnic group believed to have immigrated from eastern Tibet roughly 500 years ago. Not all Sherpas guide on the mountains. Not all of them should have to."

Raytheon Said "Gay Rights!": "June is Pride month, and everywhere I turn, some organic wine company seems to be violently shaking me by the throat while yelling 'GAY RIGHTS!' As a certain kind of queer visibility — married! safe! — has become more palatable to the mainstream, each June we are confronted with the increasingly humiliating attempts of brands to cater to potential LGBTQ customers and virtue signal to well-meaning straights. Logos are rainbow-fied, heartwarming ad campaigns are launched, and nonsensical hashtags (#BeTrue!) are ruthlessly weaponized."

Two people wearing the same brand of shoes stand next to a geometrically arrayed collection of guns on the ground. In the center of the guns is a pair of tiny baby shoes. Source.

Activism

Why Juneteenth is America’s True Independence Day: "The Emancipation Proclamation was many things—a rallying cry for the nation, a means to bringing former slaves into the Union Army ranks—but it did not, on its own, free anyone. So imagine now if you can the effect of Granger’s words as news slowly spread across Texas to the state’s 250,000 former slaves. All at once they found out not only that the war was over, but that they were free. Their joyous, spontaneous celebration gave birth to Juneteenth."

How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean: "The Caribbean archipelago was ground zero for U.S. imperial banking. Wall Street’s first experiments in internationalism occurred in Cuba, Haiti, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua, often with disastrous results—for those countries and colonies, and often for the imperial banks themselves. Yet where there was expansion, there was also pushback. The internationalization of Wall Street was met with local resistance, refusal and revolt. And just as the history of imperialism has been excised from popular narratives, so too has this history of Caribbean anti-imperialism and autonomy."

Direct Action Item

Reparations.

If there’s something you’d like to see in next week’s #RT, please send us a message.

In solidarity!

What is direct action? Direct action means doing things yourself instead of petitioning authorities or relying on external institutions. It means taking matters into your own hands and not waiting to be empowered, because you are already powerful. A “direct action item” is a way to put your beliefs into practice every week.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Tbh op I think much of this is yr social circle, where I find the nostalgia unusually high

So, to point out the obvious: much of the movement was really, seriously imperialist in ways that went beyond bad optics about Islam during the apex of the war on terror. A couple of central examples from the “four horsemen”: Sam Harris (cursed be the name) went on record saying things like “The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists” and speculating about the reasonableness of torture and a nuclear first strike on an “Islamist” regime (as thought experiments, of course); Hitchens’ politics trended increasingly rightward/chud-y/edgelordy as he grew older (he had a notorious article, for example, speculating on why chicks are just so much less funny than guys, or the one about how Hanukkah is a celebration of unreason bc it commemorates triumph over Hellenistic imperialism) concluding in his support for the Iraq war.

As you might have guessed, there was a major antifeminist angle too, which I gather was particularly prominent among old new atheist youtubers like thunderf00t. Among at least some of the old guard (like jerry Coyne at whyevolutionistrue), this has turned in recent years towards transphobia

Was it as reactionary as many religious conservative factions? No, but that’s a pretty ridiculous standard by which to judge it. It was pretty tainted from the start with rightwing shit, and reached ppl on that front who might otherwise have been spared. (Don’t just take it from me btw! Super edgy old school new atheist blogger pz Myers said basically the same in his movement retrospective)

But aside from large scale errors by big players the movement was just. Kind of rife with grunts (and more-than-grunts) spouting a bunch of nonsense. A looooot of dunning Kruger misunderstanding of science and mathematics, a good deal of crackpottery, etc. (My favourite example is the old new atheist meme of “modal logic is a Christian conspiracy”.) Which is ofc, we now know, basically par for general internet culture, but that was more news at the time, and it was particularly grating watching someone explain how much more Rational and Scientific they were than you and proceed to say things like “Darwin taught us that species never have traits unless they are conducive to fitness” or Lawrence Krauss not able to wrap his head around the fact “nothing” is a quantifier rather than a common noun

What I think ppl mean by “the new atheists were right about everything” is mostly “god is fake and religion is pernicious and dumb” which, well, we can agree to disagree. But that also wasn’t really distinctive to them as opposed to the “old” atheists with whom they contrasted themselves. If they had a single major contribution to the Discourse around which they rallied it was that atheists should make no common cause with even “friendly” religious on issues like state secularism and anti-anti-evolution. Atheists are right and need to stop being polite about it!! Which, again, you can disagree on, but it’s hard to dispute that the public war on creationism in the US was won with the help of many liberal Christians and nonmilitant atheists, and my understanding from ppl who follow these things better is that in the UK where this NA fracturing from the broader secularist movement was more successful it has fed into e.g. a lot of terfish liberalism (derogatory). So, jury is out on this question I think

If you think—like a lot of ppl did and do—that religion is fake and evil and that this trumps basically any other question adjacent to the topic, ig it’s probably pretty easy to round a lot of this off to extraneous cringe attaching to a fundamentally correct core of the movement. But if you are willing to weight these other questions more seriously you start to get a bleaker picture

I think I missed the era in which new atheism was an actual rhetorical force on the internet but the way people talk about them now makes it sound like they got lambasted for being cringe despite basically being right about everything