Amrou Al-Kadhi writing in the Independent:
What the white supremacist roots of biological sex reveal about today’s transphobic feminism
Thomas Chatterton Williams writing in the Guardian:
Edit 11 June: The Independent, perhaps stung by mockery in the readers’ comments, has changed the headline of the article by Amrou Al-Kadhi to “How Britain’s colonial past can be traced through to the transphobic feminism of today”.
That leads me to muse on what the Guardian has lost by the decision of its editor, Katharine Viner, to guard its writers from abuse by not permitting its readers to debate those of its articles they are most likely to want to debate. The Independent was able to see that the original headline to the Amrou Al-Kadhi article was not going down well even among its notably “progressive” readers. The Guardian can see from the number of clicks and shares that the Thomas Chatterton Williams article is getting a reaction – but what? I think it is favourable. I see comments from left wingers who are relieved to hear someone finally articulate their sense of unease and embarrassment at the speed with which the “party line” on social distancing was reversed. But that’s going by the comments of the writers I read and the websites I visit. The Guardian is no less hampered than I am.
I can imagine the squirrels running madly in their wheels as they try to decide if ol’ Amrou is politically correct.
Trans people are above women and blacks are above trans people on the progressive stack, so Al-Kadhi isn’t taking any risks.
We’re firmly in green grocer territory here, with biological sex being labeled “white supremacist”.
“We’re firmly in green grocer territory here, with biological sex being labeled “white supremacist”.”
No, you’re missing his point. Both white supremacism and transphobia are being identified as both Authoritarian. They’re both about the tendency of society to impose its rules and norms about how to live and what to believe on its members.
The progressive stack is, of course, exactly the same phenomenon. The victimhood hierarchy has replaced the racial hierarchy. The different rules that you had to follow if you were black/white or male/female, on pain of social ostracism if you broke them, have been replaced by new rules of behaviour/belief that you must follow or be cancelled. It’s the same thing.
The progressive stack is *also* white supremacism, and sexist segregation. They’re all examples of the Authoritarian mindset.
Biology has become transphobia?
Isn’t that ologyphobia?
“Biology has become transphobia?”
The pre-1980s understanding of biology, maintained now long after it was found to be an incomplete and misleading simplification, has become transphobia, yes.
I mean, scientific/medical opinion used to be that masturbation caused insanity and blindness. Biology has moved on since the 1950s.
Is Amrou following Adolf’s advice in Mein Kampf that propagandists should always claim to be facing a single enemy and never let their propaganda suggest they are opposed by multiple separate enemies?
Did you mean the 1890’s understanding of biology ?
In the 1890s, the “Boys Own Paper”, between adventure stories, did sometimes assure its juvenile readers that such habits would have dire effects on their health – but I was not wont to think of the BOP as a ‘scientific’ publication, though it certainly indicates one opinion of the time. AFAIK, a relative of mine, who did a lot of work sorting out the Edinburgh Medical Society archives for the late 1800s and writing papers on it, never came across an actual presented paper purporting to relate teenage onanism to statistical likelihood of later sight loss – but, to be fair, they were not looking for such papers (nor I asking 🙂 ) so who knows what we missed. (They have passed on, so I cannot ask them now.) A background opinion that being ‘immoral’ could also be unhealthy coexisted with genuine science that later science has cancelled or evolved. Not that long into the 1900s, boys papers ceased to carry such warnings – so I wonder if erudite scientific papers asserting them were none too common either.
Indeed it has. In Oxford decades back, I chanced to read old biology textbooks published in the mid-1950s. I remember being rather shocked at one that took time out from its subject to used carefully selected quotes from Sigmund Freud to make a strong pro-gay statement while (obviously intentionally) concealing that old Sickmind Fraud thought it a disease one should treat (as he would, given his silly theory). The weighty tome’s aim in this brief diversion was obviously to persuade and I still recall all these years later how I both laughed at the folly of their using Sickmind Fraud as an authority to support their argument and was contemptuous of their dishonesty in spinning their quotes.
The habitual dishonesty with which the PC present any argument hasn’t changed, but of course they no longer try to persuade. As climate science stopped being science when ‘denialist’ came in to silence debate and drive out doubters, so the relevant medical/biological science was gravely damaged when “transphobia” came in to replace research (and researchers) with an externally-derived ideology. Science is not science without a culture that allows challenging it.
“Is Amrou following Adolf’s advice in Mein Kampf that propagandists should always claim to be facing a single enemy and never let their propaganda suggest they are opposed by multiple separate enemies?”
My issue with Amrou is not that he is wrongly conflating white supremacists and transphobes as both authoritarians, but that he fails to identify progressives as the same phenomenon in the same way. Of course, everyone can see the mote in his neighbour’s eye while being blind to the plank in his own.
“Did you mean the 1890’s understanding of biology?”
I’m not sure exactly when the scientific understanding changed, but I first came across it in Matt Ridley’s book “The Red Queen”, where he discusses research on sex differences in brain anatomy done in the early 1980s. Matt Ridley was no leftist, and the biology of sex determination had no interest in transphobia or the political opposition to it.
The scientific view on onanism changed somewhat earlier, around 1900, although it was only removed from DSM II as a diagnosable condition in 1968. Is that what you mean?
A rare moment of sanity from the Guardian – I am surprised.