'Nuanced' discussion: dangerous?

[thatdamnwoman]

I've been involved in a long on-line conversation (lasting weeks) on an obscure public messageboard with a lawyer with more than 30 years experience who is very careful not to deny what she would call the 'potential' conflict of transgender and women's rights but seems to me to play them down. She is one of those cerebral women with a barrister's training who regards a lot of the material I link to from here as slightly hysterical and not necessarily reliable. She doesn't deny or refute it, just sees it as marginal to legal rights issues.

She seems to place a lot of emphasis on recognising and acknowledging the feelings of transgender people, while also showing due concern for the rights of women. She hasn't disclosed whether she has trans friends or family but I do wonder. Her constant carefully-worded criticism of me and my argument is that I lack nuance. She has taken the position that until the radical feminist position is able to be more flexible and nuanced, so as to be able to find some accommodation for some transgender people she cannot support it.

She isn't presenting as a trans supporter – and she acknowledges the issues involved – but her bottom line is that she/ we are a bit hysterical (not that she would use that word) and using a sledgehammer when we need tweezers and a magnifying glass.

We've been debating on a public messageboard and I've noticed that a number of other women who used to be close to my position have begun to back off and talk about how perhaps 'we' need to be a bit more understanding and 'give' a bit.

Has anyone else encountered this? I know someone who knows the woman concerned and I know she is who she says she is. I have no sense that she's actually supporting the transactivist viewpoint, but her underlying message, even if it's couched in legalese is 'we have to be kind'.

Is it best to end the conversation so that she doesn't convert the other women any further into being kind? How does one stand against 'be kind' when it's couched as showing nuance and flexibility and seeing the issue from all sides?

She hasn't disclosed whether she has trans friends or family but I do wonder.
Maybe this is a factor. I've noticed that when some people have young friends/family who are going through this, they feel it's terribly disloyal to say anything that might hurt their feelings. It's almost too painful to look at the logical arguments.

'respect for difference and ways to accommodate those differences'.

There's her hypocrisy.

If she wishes to be honest about respecting difference, she would respect that women are different from men, biologically, irrevocably. And she would argue that to respect women is to respect the factual truth about how we differ from men - all men, including the ones who imagine we share a magical personality type with them.
And the accomodating differences would be something akin to accepting that even men who hold some very offensive, sexist and dubious views about what women are, are worthy of their own protection under the law, but that it must in no way compromise the rights and definition of actual women.

She's a hypocrite.
She says 'acknowledge difference' but she means 'disregard difference' when it pertains to half of humanity differentiating themselves fairly and factually from men.

Sex is the difference between all males and all females.
Not personality, not identity, not empty labels devoid of meaning.
She needs to respect that real, meaningful difference, and accomodate that.

I can just see her saying that that's not a nuanced argument, Barracker!

Barracker has it.

Fact is, we currently have a ‘nuanced situation’ where women have already (without discussion) been pushed into accepting some men into our spaces.

Our situation is already a compromise and now we’re being told we’re unreasonable for refusing to budge over again.

“Transwomen are women” isn’t nuanced.

Remember, laws are social constructs, biology isn't.

'nuance' is the new 'shut up women'. See around a lot at the moment. Makes me laugh now.

She has taken the position that until the radical feminist position is able to be more flexible and nuanced, so as to be able to find some accommodation for some transgender people she cannot support it.

I reread your OP and found myself wondering what you hoped to achieve. Were you hoping to convert her?

My experience of this debate is that you are never going to convince anyone whose mind is already set.

The reality here is that women’s rights are already compromised. What you are arguing about is now how much further women’s rights should be compromised in order to help men with a mental health disorder.

There is no right and wrong. There is only ‘how kind should women be to help distressed men?’

Does she insist you use her language?

Your barrister friend is using her status to hide her cool girl misogyny.
If needs be , post factual accounts of incidences where trans “rights” have endangered women , and pose to her - respectfully - where’s there’s ever been law/legislation capable of being exploited by men , that men her not exploited.
Ask her if it’s remotely possible that a law allowing anyone to identify into anyone’s space , would be manna from heaven for anyone with the intent to do so ?
Ask her - thereafter - what is her numerical threshold of acceptable incidences whereby that might happen , before such is deemed inimical to the safeties and rights of women and girls?
Is it a few such incidences , or one?

Ask her for a straight answer and point out that[as a barrister] that’s something she insists on , and ask her to leave out the logical fallacies and tropes that - despite being a favourite gambit when bamboozling someone in the dock - will not cut any mustard , especially as hominem insinuations of hysteria and “not being nice”.

And ask her , as a barrister , where being nice ever got her ?

I've just returned to the forum I mentioned and we have a couple of newly engaged posters who are clearly enamoured of the 'we need to be reasonable and you're being inflexible and dogmatic' viewpoint. DEspite all saying what sense Dr Jessica Taylor talks. Damn. Why are women so quick to capitulate at any accusation that they're not being nice and kind? I've been identified as the mean girl and now some of them are backing away from me.

Beware these apparently moderate, reasonable people!

OP, I wouldn't waste my energy on trying to change her mind, personally. You've said your piece to her and she's not on board yet. It doesn't mean she won't be in the future, but I don't think there's one killer argument that's suddenly going to change everyone's minds immediately, especially if they've bought into the cognitive dissonance. The drip drip drip of news articles on different topics affected by the issue will have its effect over time for many.

You also have to bear in mind that as a lawyer she could lose her job for saying the wrong thing on the issue and if she's practising, the chances are that her firm or chambers has been touched by stonewall on trans issues (the more prominent the firm, the higher the chances).

Even if you could change her mind, it would likely be hugely risky for her to admit that publicly (you say her online identity is known IRL) anyway.

Nuanced is often another word for smug or patronising. Starmer wasn't at all nuanced. His starting point was TWAW.

Yes, I know what you meant, but not all trans people are male. I wouldn't want my hypothetical breast-bound, short-haired, enbie daughter using one of these third spaces

She could use the ladies, though, because she is female.....?

'nuance' is the new 'shut up women'. See around a lot at the moment. Makes me laugh now

As is 'complexity'....

Longines, she is retired from the bar – but yes, she is probably still involved with other lawyers or in projects/ voluntary work that may require her to toe the line. I guess if you have a job where you're required to argue black is white and day is night for a living perhaps you reach a stage where everything is relative.

but I don't think there's one killer argument that's suddenly going to change everyone's minds immediately, especially if they've bought into the cognitive dissonance. The drip drip drip of news articles on different topics affected by the issue will have its effect over time for many

Precisely! And why this is a longer term task. It is going to take many years, with mounting evidence; news reports; articles; push-back in other countries etc - as well as, of course, genuine, open public debate

I suspect she is being made uncomfortable by the unwillingness of other women to tell the lie she has chosen to tell. Your honesty contrasts uncomfortably with her own dishonesty.

Her arguments lack any reason. She isn't rationalising her stance that 2+2=5, because she can't. She knows she can't.
All she can do is praise those who make a 'concession' that 2+2=4.765, or even 2+2=
4.105, for being 'nuanced' and 'moderate' and condemn those who won't budge from 2+2=4 as being intransigent.

Don't let her sophistication fool you. She's no more able to rationalise her position than any twitter TRA can. She isn't even trying.

Do women have the right to be recognised as physically, biologically different from men?
Do we have the right to differentiate ourselves factually, truthfully?

She seems to have no difficulty granting some men a very questionable right to differentiate themselves from other men.

That she cannot extend that principle to the much more obvious right of women to distinguish themselves from men suggests to me that she's not in any way invested in what is fair, principled or reasonable.

Only in granting some select few people the fundamental right to declare who they are the same as, or different from, and forbidding all others from from doing the same.

Beware these apparently moderate, reasonable people!

Martin Luther King would agree with this position!

Martin Luther King was regularly asked to condemn some activists for their impatience, transgressions, and failure to conform to societal restrictions. He was instructed to condemn those who practised violence or rioted. He was told it would be better to compromise and negotiate.

MLK argued that we need a plurality of voices and approaches, see, Letter from a Birmingham Jail :

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth....we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue. ...

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

It’s very simple. You tell her that her demand for nuance is not a neutral objective position, but is a chosen political starting point which already demands the solution involves compromise and negotiation. Her requirement that you be nuanced is already asking you to give something up. Tell her you don’t want to be nuanced and you reject it as a biased starting point for the discussion. You cannot be nuanced about women and girl’s rights, dignity and safety, to which we have a legal right and protection enshrined in law. If she wants to try and give other women’s rights away that is her choice to try, but you are not prepared to.

So there is no point in further discussion as your initial starting points are incompatible.

I think you care way too much about what this one woman thinks!

Are you a bit intimidated by her credentials, op?

Don't be. Life is full of highly qualified fence sitters. They're not better than you.

Have you ever watched The Good Place? One of the main characters - Chidi - is a philosophy professor who only really ended up in hell because of his complete inability to come to any firm conclusions or make important decisions. Not sure why your op reminded me of him!

Are you sure this barrister is actually female?

As in, actually female. Not identifies as female, or has been granted the right to have a birth certificate changed from male to female.

There are lawyers and judges who are the opposite sex to me but consider themselves female. I'd say they too are incapable of treating women fairly or upholding the fundamental right of women to be recognised as a sex and exercise their sex based rights.

There's no nuance about the binary nature of biological sex.

It's pretty ironic that most of the useful idiots supporting this gaslighting are supposedly well educated people.

I guess I'd hoped to be able to influence others, if not her, and am distressed to see how easily accusations, however politely and moderately expressed, of being unreasonable or not nice or not subtle have resulted in other women backing away from expressing full-on GC views.

And yes, I'm not stupid but I don't think like lawyers and philosophers do. I don't have that kind of razor-sharp logical mind, so when debating with such people I do feel at a disadvantage.

I think WorkingItOut has it about right. What my messageboard interlocutor is saying with all this talk of nuance is that my radfem GC position is so far beyond what is acceptable that I will need to compromise if a satisfactory solution is to be found. So the nuance she requires of me is compromise.

To me the radfem GC view is simple, clear and uncluttered by feelings and legal fictions/ forced accommodations. It's based on biological fact, on statistics, on reality, not on feelings. The requirement for 'nuance' seems intended to complicate and cloud.