A reader recently sent me a link to this essay, by science fiction writer, John Scalzi, and asked for my thoughts. She was very kind in her praise of my books and clear in assuring me that she had no intention of “cancelling” me, which was nice — although that can come across like a guy with a smile on his face and a gun in his hand saying, “Nobody needs to get hurt.” Both comforting and not. Nuanced, in other words.
Nuance is what I want to write about here. I hope to do it in a nuanced way and that you’ll do me the favor of reading it with a nuanced perspective. Here goes.
Scalzi begins with an attempt to banish nuance:
So, I’m going to preface this thing I’m about to write by being as clear as I can be about this, so there’s no confusion or ambiguity on this score:
Trans women are women, trans men are men, trans non-binary folks are non-binary folks, and trans rights are human rights. I’m non-squishy on this. I know, like and care for too many trans people to feel otherwise, but even if I didn’t know, like and care for any trans people, I would like to think I would say the same, because the validity of their lives should not be dependent on whether I know them.
From my perspective, Scalzi is already asking too much of the reader. Yes, “the validity of their lives” is fundamental — no matter who they refers to — and “trans rights are human rights” must be true, inasmuch as trans people are humans, which is indisputable. But to stomp-your-feet-and-insist that “trans women are women, trans men are men” is a statement that cannot be free of confusion and ambiguity, no matter how vehemently one insists it must be. If “trans women are women, and trans men are men,” then we’re gonna need bigger definitions of “woman” and “man” than those which are currently used by the vast majority of people around the world.
I’m not opposed to broadening these definitions. In fact, I’m in favor of it, and have argued for it for decades. They’re way too restrictive in many ways, but they don’t magically change simply because we insist they already have and everyone who doesn’t realize it is transphobic at worst, ignorant at best.
We can work our way through the confusion and ambiguity, but only if we accept that it exists. Insisting that there’s nothing nuanced about someone demanding to be included in a category contrary to what their chromosomes suggest is a non-starter. I mean that literally. It stops dialogue. It aborts growth. It precludes learning.
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