Helen Joyce & Peter Boghossian - Reality vs Trans Ideology

[meowgender]

Helen Joyce in discussion with philosopher-skeptic Peter Boghossian on trans ideology:

Video description:

Helen Joyce is causing a lot of trouble. YouTube recently removed her conversation with Jordan Peterson (due to vague accusations of “hate speech” and “inciting violence”) and the BBC doesn’t invite her on air anymore. Among her heresies, she is guilty of believing there are two sexes and saying it out loud.

Helen, an Irish journalist, bestselling author, and director of advocacy at Sex Matters, spoke to Peter Boghossian about the differences between men and women. In many arenas, the differences don’t matter, but they are a matter of consequence regarding women’s privacy, vulnerability, and physical competition.

Peter and Helen discuss the definition of sex, why trans men should be allowed in women’s spaces, the tragedy of the commons, fa’afafine, evolution, the “thought-terminating cliché,” the tribal fear of rejection, the cultivation of mental illness, why institutions are losing their North Stars, and much more.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Helen's views on transgenderism
7:45 "Transphobia"
9:45 Discussing the beliefs around "changing sex"
20:20 Trans women in women's sports
23:30 The cost of speaking out
28:00 Was the New Athiest movement wrong?
31:20 How people believe obviously wrong things
39:15 Society is encouraging mental health crises
42:35 Is trans a culture-bound syndrome?
47:13 Why people can't engage a simple claim
57:04 Helen and Peter react to a pro-trans clip
1:03:35 Conversation wrap up

I found this interesting, PB talks about the New Atheists in relation to where we are near the end of the interview.

One of the things the interviewer asks him is whether the metaphysics of a religion like Christianity doesn't underpin the value system that keep people from believing the whole woke ideology.

PB says yes, absolutely, the death of the previous value system left a vacuum, which is something the new atheists didn't anticipate. He still believes that it could be possible for people to have good, rational values without a metaphysics though.

What I found odd was his understanding of the word metaphysics - he seems to interpret it as being the same as belief in "supernatural" things like miracles. So he understands the belief in say, the miracles of Jesus as the metaphysics that makes people believe in Christian ethics, because probably a guy who walks on water has some kind o supernatural authority.

I am a bit shocked actually to hear that from someone who is supposedly a professional philosopher in a university, that has no relation to the meaning of the word metaphysics as I've ever heard it used in philosophy, and if it's typical it explains why the New Atheists didn't anticipate the unmooring of people's rooted values systems.

What struck me was how he talked about 'the truth' as being his guide, and I thought this felt like a religious belief.

I think that's entirely because you are coming from a religious point of view.

Working out what is true is incredibly complex, and life/the universe is fascinating and it's a task that will never be finished. But that doesn't make it religious.

The idea that there is truth is a belief.
The idea that you can find truth is faith.
The idea that truth is good is a belief.

The feeling of awe described by Dawkins at understanding the world is a deep response to the truth we only occasionally glimpse. That's a religious feeling.

I really think the way he talks about science is religious. I just think he doesn't recognise that as he uses different language.

I think Dawkins rejects religious teaching, dogma and institutions and instead has dedicated himself to science as a religion.

In Triggernometry he admits people probably need religion, but suggests most people could find it in science (they suggest this isn't open to most people) again he is saying: this is the way, the truth....a bit like someone else did.

I think science as religion has much to offer because I think truth is good.
But I think it fails at the point of there being some truths that are beyond science, such as there is good, which require faith.

I actually found listening to Dawkins very reassuring. He came across as a man really trying to live a good and true life.

The idea that there is truth is a belief.

What does this mean?

Just watched, totally brilliant. I’ll add my name to the list who would love a pub night with Helen! What a powerhouse!

The thing that stuck with me was the line about parents doing this to their children, selling a lie and making everybody else responsible for upholding it. I’m not a mother, and I mostly tuned out the trans nonsense as I just didn’t agree with it and it didn’t affect me. But one day I idly wondered if I’d been wrong all along and looked up Jazz Jennings, to see if the first generation of “trans children” were doing alright, and he was the only one I knew by name. His story (the surgeries, the depression, the many medical indignities) made me cry and I don’t cry easy. How anyone couldn’t see the plain, obvious child abuse was beyond me. And he seems such a sweet character too - he could be happily living as a healthy young man right now, if his mother had been able to lovingly parent what was once an effeminate boy. Immediately signed up for Team TERF.

That seems quite a standard use of the word metaphysics, in the sense of "aspects of reality beyond the reach of physical science".

No, that's not what metaphysics is. Though that does seem to be how PB was using it.

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy which deals specifically with the nature of being, what is the nature of substance, what is knowing. Traditionally most philosophical systems are based on a metaphysics and epistemology at their base - the rest, like ethics, are built up from those beginnings.What is the nature of reality and how can we know it.

So when someone says, if you rip the metaphysics out of a system like Christianity, you destroy anything built on top of it, they are talking about the basic principles of the system, including even the question of how knowledge is possible at all (which is epistemology but metaphysics and epistemology are closely related/intertwined.)

Some strains of modern philosophy have, in the late 19th and especially 20th century, been characterized by the repudiation of the possibility of a metaphysics. They feel that there is in fact no way to say or know anything about these topics - and under that way of thinking, philosophy was largely reduced to playing around with language. (Which should feel familiar to those dealing with gender ideology and what is going on in universities now.)

Some felt, and PB seems to be in this camp, that it was possible to build some kind of system based on pure observation - so science and reason. The problem with that is that, as someone said above, is that truth is a belief. Science does not emerge from a system that has no metaphysics, quite the opposite, it requires an underpinning of ideas about the nature of reality - the nature of nature, if you like - that is neither itself scientific, nor is it provable based on pure observation. You need to believe that the material world is real, that it is knowable, that it is ordered, among other things.

The New Atheists try and use science to replace metaphysics, but it's a house of cards in the end because they are simply behaving as if empirical observation and the kind of reasoning used in science is self-evidently true and does not imply any kind of deeper ordering of reality, and beliefs about that ordering. It does, and refusing to look at that just makes your system weak and subject to failures.

I have heard or thought of much of what was discussed, but as pp have noted, Joyce gets clearer with each interview.

The only bit that really hit home was her discussion at the end of how the parents who have transed their children will simply never be able to accept they are wrong and will become destructive in the need to justify themselves. Sunk cost fallacy plus epic levels of guilt and shame for their actions. Unfortunately for us, they are embedded at high levels in many institutions, and it will take years to get their Herculean efforts to deny reality out of the public sphere.

@RealityFan I listen to Sam Harris' podcast; in the JK Rowling episode it was pretty clear he wasn't buying the TWAW thing at all. Not sure what he's said in the past though.

I agree, this bit really stuck with me as well. It explains some of the batshittery around people like Susie Green etc. They absolutely have to believe this is the right thing for their child - and everyone else be damned - as the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

Meanwhile the collateral damage keeps piling up.

And yes, Jazz Jennings case is horrific, their child abuse was televised for everyone to see. The level of exploitation that Jazz has been subjected to is disgraceful.

Watching now. First time I have heard her speak. Brilliant.

I agree, she's so clear and confident and makes so much sense.

Her interview from a few years ago with Brendan O'Neill on the Spiked podcast is another brilliant one - it really helped me formulate coherent arguments in my head against gender ideology when I was struggling to articulate why it bothered me so much...

This is brilliant. I also thought the part on new atheists was interesting. I used to be into the movement too and it’s a point of reflection that you might be in a group and think people are there for the same reason but they might not be. Community and belief is important for people and they can find it in all kinds of places.

I’m with Helen in that I first started to have issues as things didn’t add up. I wasn’t happy with circular arguments.

Agreed. However there's a lot going on, as the New Atheists seem split on trans. Dawkins views it as anti science hokum, Ben Goldacre seems signed up to it.

Dawkins sees trans along with all other decolonising and anti imperial movements in the new woke SJW worldview as profoundly anti science and anti knowledge.

Others like the majority of US humanist organisations conflate GC criticism of TRA as the analogue of old school Christian moralising.

Ergo Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock, JKR must go, as much as Christianity must go.

One of the weak points of the new atheist movement was their lack of class analysis, and thats why they failed to see the conflicts around sex based rights.

I think they assumed it was a petty squabble that was beneath them, and now their egos wont let them be wrong, so they either 'both sides' the argument or pretend it isnt happening.

I was reading Carl Sagan recently and this section made me think of what Helen has said about parents of 'trans kids'...

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to knowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken."

I've reverted from some herd mentality positions that I'd doubled down on in the past. However at no point even at my most evangelical did I ever say to an opponent, "no, that's off limits, I'm not gonna start to engage", always happy to argue as the night was long. And rarely totally fall out, and even if I did, not for long.

Even in my New Atheist days when I literally harrassed religious people for answers, boldly sticking to my reductionist view, did I ever get blow back from the other side.

They were happy, eager even to engage.

None of that with trans and TRA proponents, the labels, definitions and openings are all controlled to suffocating levels.

What I also find is that many New Atheists who've fallen for trans also don't want discourse on their non belief. Whether they've absorbed the TRA playbook, or they were this way all along and trans coopted their tactics, I'm not sure.

And now I concur with Joyce, many of these were just alpha males rejecting their very personal early indoctrinating experiences as Christians, rebelling and rejecting in later life.

Not so much rejecting religion, but the moralising and judging aspects...sex outside marriage bad, gay is a sin, don't idolise etc.

But now seeing the GCs like Joyce etc as the New Moralists...you can't change sex, these IDs are false, it's a scandal to medicalise youth.

The New Atheists weren't just anti religion, they were anti anything where behaviour and choices would be judged, especially as wrong or inferior, where any moral compass would be employed.

But that's not where the vast majority of people are, even those that call themselves atheists.

We still believe that there are societal norms and phenomena that provoke instant disgust, and that we're right to have opinions and judgements. We know encouraging kids they can change sex is morally wrong, we are repelled by the disfiguring and sterility once the doctors are let loose on kids, we are disgusted by men breastfeeding their kids (whether TikTok weirdos or TUC activists).

I believe this is independent of atheism or God, this is societal norms and mores that are part of our societal development, and part of why we've so successfully advanced as a civilisation.

The New Atheists who've given a free pass to TRA are so off the mark here.

Yes agree about social norms and mores. A good example is most people, the vast majority, agree that paedophilia (or Maps as they're trying to rebrand themselves) is just plain wrong and it doesn't actually matter what the paedophile feels. They give up their right to sympathy as soon as they harm children (looking at abusive images harms children).

The flip side is that most people think protecting children is important. I suspect this instinct will increase as birth rates drop too.

I agree with Tallisker. I saw his street epistemology experiment (probably via a link on here) asking students if 'there were only two genders'

https://twitter.com/peterboghossian/status/1526327779435991041?s=61&t=ONvRKaVGQGpQEV6-b6Z5EQ

He likes using questions to generate ideas and clearly admires the tactic of asking an innocent little question to open up a huge can of worms.

Are there two genders?
Shut the fuck up, you transphobe!

Are there two genders?
Ummm, hmmm, let me think, wellll...(Pandoras Box opens up)

I agree, it's a bit like 'there are none so blind as those that will not see'...people don't want to admit that they were fooled by something. I guess we all think we're smarter than that.

I remember reading and article about scam artists and conmen, and that one of the big issues police have when trying to prosecute them is actually getting people to come forward, as many victims are too embarrassed to admit they were scammed.

The New Atheists weren't just anti religion, they were anti anything where behaviour and choices would be judged, especially as wrong or inferior, where any moral compass would be employed.

I had an interesting discussion with a college about this very strong desire to appear non-judgmental, in relation in that instance to some of the more recent approaches to addiction involving basically giving out drugs and drug paraphernalia to people. The success of this kind of approach is not nearly as clear as many people seem to believe, from a purely emperical perspective, and then there are deeper questions about this approach that probably can't be assessed empirically with any great accuracy.

But there seem to be an attitude from many supporters of this approach, if you question it, that it means you are being judgmental of addicts.

It's a theme that seems to run through a lot of the identarian left discourse, for some reason - making judgments seems to be seen as problematic in itself, despite the judgmental nature of id pol being pretty high.