Nice article. I've been annoyed that FdB doesn't get the bathroom thing as well. Agree or disagree with the argument, it is not hard to understand and plenty of people have made it loudly and explicitly. Not sure why he's so loudly ignorant of the steel-man version.
Late but I would argue race and gender things are different because race is socially constructed in a way that sex is not. Race is a way of describing collections of traits that fall onto many different spectrums, in which the reality is highly variable from person to person (in the past, you would have seen racial traits change slowly between locations as you traveled, we have chosen where to draw the lines based on historical factors.) Sex, otoh, is an inherent biological feature of all human beings which has much stronger implications on personal traits than does racial background, and its lines are not drawn arbitrarily, but reflect a natural distinction that exists in every human culture.
Because sex is inherent to humanity in a way race is not, I would argue it is much more likely to have a mental disorder related to sexual development than one related to racial development, and therefore that we should be much more skeptical of transracialism.
On the minors/parents/doctors thing, it's a complicated issue, but he's speaking out against outright bans that prevent transition even when it seems to everyone involved, incl. parents and doctors, to be the correct decision. The ban viewpoint is much more widely accepted, especially on substack, than the minors only viewpoint, and a proponent of minors/parents/doctors speaking out only against the minors only viewpoint. without noting that transition is not inherently wrong but is rather a complicated decision, runs the risk of adding to the widespread panic around the issue which has made nuanced discussion so hard.
On your first point, I think you're misunderstanding the analogy I'm drawing. Race is comparable to gender; sex is comparable to heritage. The former are both socially constructed. The latter are both biological.
On your second point, I understand the position that he's staking out. But again, compare his view to Jesse Singal's. Jesse has ALSO spoken out, repeatedly, against outright bans. But because he says the issue is complicated and transition might not be right for everyone and sometimes doctors and parents might be justified in overruling a minor's desire to transition, he's been labeled a bigot. There's even a page dedicated to smearing him on the GLAAD website. So if Freddie has exactly the same view on youth transition as Jesse Singal - and I've yet to see him say anything that Jesse would deny, or vice versa - Freddie doesn't have a totally boring uncontroversial left position. (His position should be boring and uncontroversial, but it's REALLY not!) So there are some very vicious intra-left debates over the best position on trans youth. It's ok to not want to get involved, but it's obnoxious to pretend they don't exist.
First point: My issue is specifically that while both heritage and sex are biological, one is a multivariate spectrum, and one is, with occasional exceptions, a binary set of categories. I think it makes significantly more logical sense that an inborn/largely inborn mental disorder related to a binary set which cuts across every population could exist than that the same thing could exist for ethnic heritage.
Second point: I understand your position, and I agree he oversimplified the issue, but I think that given the current hysteria, especially on places like Substack, and the audience he was directing the piece towards, the oversimplification he engaged in was a legitimate rhetorical move; he was not aiming his piece at the far left. Should the discussion end there? No, but it seems to me that his position is a reasonable baseline from which to work, he wants to tell people in his audience why it is not as insane as it is often made to sound, and that he is trying to communicate this by giving his view the airs of simplicity.
I wrote a response (https://firsttoilthenthegrave.substack.com/i/140348160/parental-input-into-their-childrens-transition-is-more-controversial-than-freddie-seems-to-think) to Freddie's recent articles about trans issues, and linked to this article. Thanks for the inspiration!
Nice article. I've been annoyed that FdB doesn't get the bathroom thing as well. Agree or disagree with the argument, it is not hard to understand and plenty of people have made it loudly and explicitly. Not sure why he's so loudly ignorant of the steel-man version.
Late but I would argue race and gender things are different because race is socially constructed in a way that sex is not. Race is a way of describing collections of traits that fall onto many different spectrums, in which the reality is highly variable from person to person (in the past, you would have seen racial traits change slowly between locations as you traveled, we have chosen where to draw the lines based on historical factors.) Sex, otoh, is an inherent biological feature of all human beings which has much stronger implications on personal traits than does racial background, and its lines are not drawn arbitrarily, but reflect a natural distinction that exists in every human culture.
Because sex is inherent to humanity in a way race is not, I would argue it is much more likely to have a mental disorder related to sexual development than one related to racial development, and therefore that we should be much more skeptical of transracialism.
On the minors/parents/doctors thing, it's a complicated issue, but he's speaking out against outright bans that prevent transition even when it seems to everyone involved, incl. parents and doctors, to be the correct decision. The ban viewpoint is much more widely accepted, especially on substack, than the minors only viewpoint, and a proponent of minors/parents/doctors speaking out only against the minors only viewpoint. without noting that transition is not inherently wrong but is rather a complicated decision, runs the risk of adding to the widespread panic around the issue which has made nuanced discussion so hard.
Sorry for the slow response.
On your first point, I think you're misunderstanding the analogy I'm drawing. Race is comparable to gender; sex is comparable to heritage. The former are both socially constructed. The latter are both biological.
On your second point, I understand the position that he's staking out. But again, compare his view to Jesse Singal's. Jesse has ALSO spoken out, repeatedly, against outright bans. But because he says the issue is complicated and transition might not be right for everyone and sometimes doctors and parents might be justified in overruling a minor's desire to transition, he's been labeled a bigot. There's even a page dedicated to smearing him on the GLAAD website. So if Freddie has exactly the same view on youth transition as Jesse Singal - and I've yet to see him say anything that Jesse would deny, or vice versa - Freddie doesn't have a totally boring uncontroversial left position. (His position should be boring and uncontroversial, but it's REALLY not!) So there are some very vicious intra-left debates over the best position on trans youth. It's ok to not want to get involved, but it's obnoxious to pretend they don't exist.
I'm pretty sure I was about a year late, lol.
First point: My issue is specifically that while both heritage and sex are biological, one is a multivariate spectrum, and one is, with occasional exceptions, a binary set of categories. I think it makes significantly more logical sense that an inborn/largely inborn mental disorder related to a binary set which cuts across every population could exist than that the same thing could exist for ethnic heritage.
Second point: I understand your position, and I agree he oversimplified the issue, but I think that given the current hysteria, especially on places like Substack, and the audience he was directing the piece towards, the oversimplification he engaged in was a legitimate rhetorical move; he was not aiming his piece at the far left. Should the discussion end there? No, but it seems to me that his position is a reasonable baseline from which to work, he wants to tell people in his audience why it is not as insane as it is often made to sound, and that he is trying to communicate this by giving his view the airs of simplicity.