Feminist Or Fallacy? VENUS VALLEY Critiques The “Gender Critics”

I'll start wrapping up these first draft chapters, with a debate chapter! If you’re a newcomer, this will be a great catch-up as I peek back at old points I’ve made, and point out what’s right or wrong about their opposites. This is a chapter-by-chapter release of my LGBTQIA+ centred philosophy book, so you queerly beloveds can debate, discuss, question, contribute, making your inputs and insights my edits, until the finished book has your voices and views in it alongside mine. This one’s full of views and voices against mine and my answers back to theirs - never let it be said there’s no listening or learning done by VENUS VALLEY: Queer Philosophers’ Forum!

Just so you know before you start, this is a long one; I wanted to make sure I quoted everyone in full and spoke crystally clear back. Of course I'm biased - literally everyone is, whatever anyone says. But it's still useful trying to know both sides properly! On the one hand, this chapter makes me look at views opposite mine; on the other hand, I think they're all great examples of LOGICAL FALLACIES - wrong turns in reasoning (mistaken or malicious), ending with conclusions either not VALID (there's a fault in the thought process between one step and the next) or not SOUND (ending with wrong conclusions by starting with wrong information). This chapter is for anyone wanting to learn to "do" philosophy, to teach you what not to do!

Right, on with the interesting bit: Let's play "FEMINIST OR FALLACY"!

I've said plenty of times, transgender and nonbinary identities exist worldwide throughout history; but here's psychology professor Paul Vasey, on gender-nonconforming Samoan FA'AFAFINE:

"If a Fa'afafine went to New Zealand or Australia, had a sex-change operation & returned to Samoa, no one in Samoa would say that individual's now a woman. But traditional, non-western frameworks for understanding masculine women or feminine men as "third genders" are often warped when viewed through a western lens, which reinterprets them as trans women or trans men. It's a type of colonialism."

Is this FEMINIST OR FALLACY? He APPEALS TO TRADITION: Just because it's always been, doesn't mean it always has to be!

"Your framework for understanding these things depends on cultural context. If you're growing up in Samoa they don't mean you change your body, whereas if you grow up in Canada or England the pool of possible interpretations you draw on includes, 'I'm transsexual & have to undergo medical intervention & pretty radical surgery'."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? It's FALLACY OF DIVISION: Just because it's true on the whole, doesn't mean it's true of every part! Yes Fa'afafine's different from "transsexual" as a rule; that doesn't mean no Fa'afafine is ever trans.

Here's Ray Blanchard, clinical psychologist, coining the term AUTOGYNEPHILIA, for a man's "fetish" of fancying himself as his own fantasy woman:

"If a guy decides he's coming to work as a woman from now on, it's one thing for him to say: 'I'm coming to terms with the fact I've always been a woman inside', quite another to say: 'I've moved on from just masturbating in women's clothes to wearing them all the time'."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? It's FALSE DICHOTOMY: Those aren't the only two reasons, nor the only two options!

Alice Dreger, bioethicist, medical historian, agreed in ‘Galileo's Middle Finger’:

"There's a critical difference between autogynephilia & most other sexual orientations: most other orientations aren't erotically disrupted simply by being labelled. When you call a typical gay man homosexual, you're not disturbing his sexual hopes & desires. By contrast, autogynephilia's perhaps best understood as a love that would really rather we didn't speak its name."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? It's FALSE EQUIVALENCE: One's not comparable to the other, as neither's a kink or fetish!

Public health specialist Lisa Littman started the trend of calling it "SOCIAL CONTAGION" of "RAPID ONSET GENDER DYSPHORIA", saying: "The first couple, I thought, 'that's great, I'm so glad they're comfortable & can express this'. Then the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, all from the same group... I thought, this isn't making sense statistically. My inner epidemiologist said: 'hmmm'."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? It's either ARGUMENT FROM IGNORANCE - I don't understand, so won't accept - ARGUMENT FROM INCREDULITY - I can't believe it myself, so it's unbelievable for anyone - or both!

"...horrific environment of teenagers giving each other terrible advice. Saying, 'your parents & doctors are idiots'. They were reinforcing & validating talking points to shut down the conversation."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? Here's APPEAL TO AUTHORITY: automatically assuming parents/doctors know better than you, because they're adults & you're kids.

"Naturally, I thought this was something that needed to be studied & recorded."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? Lastly, GENETIC FALLACY: This must be wrong, it's from sources I don't recognise/respect. Can't just accept kids' own beliefs about their own behaviour, can we!

If you've read my chapter where Helen Joyce, writer for The Economist, was my example of misusing SOPHISTRY and RHETORIC, in ‘Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality’, you'll remember it made me sick to read autism used as an excuse for discounting/discrediting genderqueerness as divorced from reality! (If you haven't, click HERE). So, I'd really rather not, but let's hear Susan Bradley, ex-head of Toronto's first pediatric gender clinic:

"I now think all, or nearly all, have some autistic traits."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? Here, CORRELATION DOESN'T IMPLY CAUSATION - just because both happen together, doesn't mean one causes/effects another!

"They don't like to be asked to self-reflect, because from their perspective you're trying to dissuade them."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? She's BEGGING THE QUESTION - starting by assuming what isn't proven; Are autistic viewpoints unreliable? Why?

Speaking of Helen Joyce, in her book she defends another - journalist Abigail Shrier’s 'Irreversible Damage' - against boycotts and walkouts protesting its publication: "There is, however, clearly an appetite for a non-airbrushed take on paediatric transitioning. Shrier's book's sold extremely well."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? She APPEALS TO POPULARITY - just because something's widespread, doesn't mean it deserves it - and SPECIAL PLEADING - one rule for you, another for me; the take agreeing with her, is "non-airbrushed", implying the take disagreeing with her is "airbrushed" .

What about philosopher Martha Nussbaum, criticising LIBERAL FEMINIST Judith Butler, in her essay 'The Professor of Parody':

"Something more insidious than provincialism's come to prominence in the American academy. It's the virtually complete turning from the material side of life, toward a type of verbal & symbolic politics that makes only the flimsiest connections with the real situation of real women... Feminist thinkers of the new symbolic type would appear to believe the way to do feminist politics is to use words in a subversive way, in academic publications of lofty obscurity and disdainful abstractness. These symbolic gestures, it's believed, are themselves a form of political resistance; so one needn't engage with messy things such as legislatures & movements in order to act daringly."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? It's SLIPPERY SLOPE argument; stoking fear of change, claiming change leads somewhere bad. And AD HOMINEM attack - quality of character doesn't make arguments true or false; they're true or false on their own merits, regardless if good or bad people say it.

We've talked about the goods/bads of C.G. Jung's ideas of psychological/physiological sex/gender. Jungian therapist Lisa Marchiano says:

"The idea teenagers were playing with this seemed wonderful to me." [But girls getting mastectomies] "...completely changed the way I saw it. Jungians know to concretise something symbolic is a very bad idea... Mental health syndromes are always a kind of fiction, shaped by culture and expectations... Our emotional lives, & the way they can become disrupted, are protean." (The old chaos before cosmic order)

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? GENERALISATION assumes each case conforms to broad-brush ideas about classes/categories; and it's ANECDOTAL, using second-hand stories not first-hand facts.

I've admitted, for fairness in sports it's still worth debating ways to include trans, nonbinary and intersex people. But olympian Sharron Davies said:

"I can't tell you the number of parents, the number of athletes, who've told me privately they agree with me 100%... It's not that people disagree with me, it's that they're frightened of the activists."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? She APPEALS TO EMOTION. Some folks like saying "facts over feelings." At the same time, arguments aren't debunked by being disliked.

"Twenty years swimming against East Germans who'd been pumped full of male hormones... It's obvious in the same way now, allowing people with male physiques & the benefits of male puberty into a female race is categorically unfair."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? Another FALSE EQUIVALENCE - both things have totally different methods, motives, and meanings.

But I'm still happy constructively conversing about this. How about tennis champ Martina Navratilova?

"You can't just proclaim yourself a female & be able to compete against women... there must be some standards, & having a penis & competing as a woman wouldn't fit the standard."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? It's a STRAW MAN: a weak imitation easier to sweep aside than the actual argument; like showing off your fighting skills by knocking over dummies instead of knocking out actual opponents.

"However you see yourself, this is how I’ll speak to you, & about you to other people. But when it comes to sport, that's about biology, not feelings."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? The technical term for this one's TU QUOQUE; Who're you to talk? What makes you any better? She's claiming to know better than us whether our own identity claims are valid. Which also makes it a RED HERRING - how nicely she says it, distracts from whether it's right or wrong to say.

She said about Renee Richards, her transgender trainer: "Renee was in her forties, not training particularly hard. I was number one in the world, & I had my hands full to beat her. I think that tells you everything you need to know."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? That last sentence is FALLACY OF COMPOSITION: even if it's true of one part, doesn't make it true of the whole. She's also AFFIRMING THE CONSEQUENT: Males have advantage; Renee had advantage; must be because Renee's male!

Moving on. Besides sports, most of "THE DISCOURSE" is on social media - let's meet some big names in the online game.

Maya Forstater was sacked from the Center for Global Development, a THINK TANK (organisations whose research decides government policy) in Washington:

"All hell broke loose... It was in the papers in Australia; it was in Variety; I had the Daily Mail on my doorstep."

"The judge concluded by using the definition of 'woman' in the Equality Act I'd said something that was 'not worthy of respect in a democratic society' [the clause in the law on protected beliefs, singling out beliefs harmful to society & democracy] It's KAFKAESQUE to say when you quote the law that protects your rights you're being offensive, and therefore have no rights." (Franz Kafka, by the way, wrote surreal nightmarish stories about lives defeated or destroyed by overpowering bureaucracy - put on trial or treated as an animal with no idea why).

Celebrity author J.K. Rowling leapt to her defence: "Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who'll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating sex is real?"

Doubled down when called out: "'People who menstruate'. I'm sure there used to be a word for these people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?"

And tripled down in her blog: "I refuse to bow down to a movement I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode 'woman' as a political & biological class & offering cover to predators like few before it."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? Here's MIDDLE GROUND FALLACY - Yes there's sometimes helpful/healthy compromise/common ground; that doesn't mean each side's equally right, or truth lies exactly halfway. Earth is flat says one, Earth is round says another; one's worth my time, one's wasting my time - saying it's a semicircle to please everyone, helps no one!

Plus, MISPLACED BURDEN OF PROOF - As Maya sued them for mistreatment, it's on her to prove them guilty, not the other way round.

And finally ETYMOLOGICAL FALLACY (or simply DICTIONARY FALLACY) - dictionaries are records of where words like "Women" came from, and how they're used today (their ETYMOLOGY); but they're not rule books about how words may/may not, or must/must not, ever be used.

Posie Parker (Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull) used “ADULT HUMAN FEMALE" as her slogan for public rallies to gatekeep "what is a woman". Despite proudly proclaiming, "I'm not a feminist"; despite "Adult Female" having roots in white slave owners using it for black slaves, denying them social status of women; still she's called a "women's rights campaigner":

"I asked, does my eleven-year-old daughter have the right to go into a women's space & not see a penis? ...I heard I was a bigot, pervert, disgusting, transphobic, obsessed with genitals."

FEMINIST OR FALLACY? She's MOVING THE GOALPOSTS - taking fair answers to one thing, acting like it's unfair response to another - and asking LOADED QUESTIONS - assuming the base of her question goes without saying. She seems to assume, and expect us to accept, what she says about her daughter is true of what's been said to her; and that what she was called, was for nothing more than that. Neither thing can be taken on faith. It's MOTTE & BAILEY arguing: switching from one point to another, depending what's easier to answer - named after the most and least defensible parts of castles, retreating as invaders climb your hill.

There's so much more I could name, but it's well past time I started wrapping up before I start running out of space!

When Allison Bailey left the anti-homophobia activist charity Stonewall after they supported trans rights, forming the breakaway LGB Alliance; then accused them of pushing her employers to victimise her in retaliation - FEMINIST OR FALLACY? Sounds like CIRCULAR ARGUING - Did she leave & form LGBA because Stonewall met her views with hostility? Or did Stonewall meet her views with hostility because she left and formed LGBA? (Forgive me being cynical and skeptical of LGBA: they're declared a hate group in two countries, and occupy offices in Tufton Street notorious for hosting climate-change deniers and conspiracy theorists!)

When failed Prime Minister Liz Truss, as Minister for Women & Equalities, blocked plans for self-ID'ing trans adults or teaching gender identity to children; and instead accelerated plans for medical treatment of trans people: FEMINIST OR FALLACY? NATURALISTIC FALLACY of assumes "what nature intended" is always best, what’s artificial always worse. (Tell that to victims of natural toxins treated by lab-developed medication!)

When comedy writer Graham Linehan’s social media accounts were suspended for HATE SPEECH, after he was called out over a TV episode where the lady love interest "used to be a man": FEMINIST OR FALLACY? SEALIONING is continuously answering a question with a question; questioning the answers to a question; or accusations and assumptions, phrased as questions, to sound innocently curious. From an online cartoon strip where sea lions follow a girl home to ask her why she doesn't want them to follow her home!

Transphobia, homophobia, sexism, racism, are always FALLACY, even when disguised as FEMINISM. But maybe now you'll spot their flaws and failures when they try baiting you into debate. For example: How is it feminist to reject women who don't meet standards of womanhood, as if that makes them "men"? Or rejecting anyone raised masculine, who instead expresses, explores and experiences their femininity?

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Next time we’ll have a look at what feminism is, now we’re clear what it isn’t. And I’m open to being called out if I fall into any of these logical fallacy traps myself, so keep your eyes peeled and don’t go easy on me!

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