A Pluralism of Engagement - A thought experiment on trans rights using the analogy of Trans Disablism

[KnottyAuty]

Saw this on another thread and it is so good that I thought it deserved a place of its own:

https://www.womensrights.network/post/a-pluralism-of-engagement

A Pluralism of Engagement

by Charlotte Revely
(Published 5 days ago on the WRN website)

^I was recently in an on-line discussion with a few hundred largely progressive left environmental campaigners and activists from across the world. Some of the UK cohort were celebrating the recent Green party win in Gorton and Denton. I shared my concerns about the Green Party with regard to their stance on women’s rights and pointed them to this excellent analysis by Paul Knaggs. https://labourheartlands.com/the-green-partys-war-on-reality/^

After a bit of to and fro in the discussion, I was told that a feature of the trans debate is that both ends feel they can define womanhood on behalf of everyone, and impose that on everyone. What was required was a ‘pluralism of engagement’ that would accept that there are different people with different definitions of being a woman. The question becomes one of how we deliberate and listen together, and find a way of living forward.

I had a very strong reaction to this even though I knew it was written from a place of good intent. Fury would not be an exaggeration but I knew that wouldn’t help. There are many good people in this group and I am at least grateful that they are open to debate and haven’t silenced or cancelled me.

I responded with a thought experiment. I’ve expanded on my initial thoughts but I asked the question whether, in the scenario below, a pluralism of engagement should accept that different people have different definitions of being disabled? Or would it be reasonable to protect the legal and social accommodations provided to enable wheelchair users to function in society for those with an inability to walk?

If the latter, why are the legal accommodations for women not equally worthy of protection? To date I’ve had no response.

A Thought Experiment on Disability

Let’s take a specific disabled category of wheelchair user. Imagine you are someone unable to walk who needs a wheelchair, an adapted vehicle and accommodation to enable you to participate in society. You get a special parking permit and your employer ensures your workplace is accessible and gives you time off for essential medical appointments.

Let’s say there is another category of people who have fully functioning legs but identify as disabled. They feel their healthy bodies are wrong and they long to be wheelchair users. Let’s call them transdisabled.

• The transdisabled group declare they are no different to you. ‘Transdisabled people are disabled’ becomes the new mantra. Politicians across the spectrum start repeating it with monotonous regularity when asked about the impact on things like escalating levels of disability benefits. Students chant it at demos, schoolchildren are taught it as a basic truth. You feel a bit confused but get on with your life.
• You write a novel and enter a competition specifically for disabled writers only to find that the winner is someone transdisabled. They write about the hardships of their life as a disabled person, and how much tougher it is for them than for ‘cis’ disabled people because people accuse them of faking it.
• The Equalities Minister says in a TV interview that it is offensive to say transdisabled people are not disabled. No-one would ever pretend to be disabled for nefarious purposes.
• You turn on the radio to hear that crimes committed by disabled people are soaring, suddenly wheelchair users are committing serious sex crimes and even murders at percentages much higher than previous years. The presenter is puzzled, what possible explanation could there be for this?
• When the Paralympic medals are handed out, many of the gold medallists turn out to have functioning legs and run a victory lap around the stadium. When disabled people and others protest they are told not to be so hateful. Disability can be fluid.
• You get thrown off Facebook for using the term ‘able bodied.’ This is now classified as hate speech if referring to transdisabled people.
• Your local council gives out disability parking permits to anyone who identifies as disabled.
• The International Olympic Committee says that possession of a disability parking permit is now the qualifying criteria for the Paralympics.
• The Government Statistical Service decides it is transdisphobic to differentiate between disabled and transdisabled so government data on disability becomes meaningless.
• The NHS announces new data saying that there has been an increase in the number of wheelchair users but celebrates that there have been significantly improved health outcomes for disabled people as a result of far fewer co-morbidities within that category.
• The disability pay gap closes as more employees at senior level choose to identify as disabled.
• Some transdisabled people decide it is not enough to simply use a wheelchair, they insist the NHS should remove or surgically damage their functional limbs. The NHS sets up a series of clinics to perform such surgeries.
• There is a sudden increase of children who identify as transdisabled. NHS policy is that they should be affirmed and given drugs to stop their bones forming properly to ensure they will grow into disabled adults. No data is kept on the long term impact of this.
• Parents who resist their children being given these drugs have their children taken into care.
• When disabled people decide they’ve had enough of this and start protesting about able bodied people trampling on their rights, they are accused of being far right or fascist. They are labelled Trans Exclusionary Radically Disabled or TERDs.
• Transdisabled people and their allies start carrying signs saying things like ‘Decapitate TERDs’ and ‘The only good TERD is a dead one.’ Speakers at Transdisabled Pride, attended by thousands, tell the crowd that if they see a TERD they should punch them in the f**king face. Politicians and commentators wring their hands about the toxicity on both sides.
• You seek help from your Disability Rights group only to find your membership terminated because of your hateful views. You look elsewhere and find that only disability organisations that support the transdisabled community are given public funding.
• A plethora of transdisability charities and lobby groups are set up across the world. It is lauded as the new frontier in disability rights. A charity called Walking Wounded is established for those who identify as transdisabled but don’t want to use a wheelchair because it is inconvenient when going about their daily lives.
• You find other disabled people who feel as angry as you and join a voluntary network with no funding. You spend your evenings and weekends writing, talking, organising events, lobbying politicians, raising FOI requests, poring over policy documents, reading in depth consultations. Your contributions are unwelcome or ignored by politicians and you have to keep your involvement secret from your employer.
• A disabled person is sacked from their job at a disability support charity for saying that the transdisabled movement is actively harming disabled people.’ You donate to her legal costs. She loses.
• You get arrested and held in a police cell for 12 hours because you put stickers on a lamp post saying ‘No such thing as transdisabled’ and ‘Wheelz not Feelz.’ The police release you and send you home in your wheelchair alone at 3am.
• You rely on social media for information because the mainstream media channels do not report on the issue and when they do it is generally hostile to the ‘TERDs’.
• You realise the general public are largely unaware of what has been happening to disability rights so you organise street stalls and protests. Transdisabled people and their allies like Antifa turn up to silence you. They drown out disabled voices and sometimes even assault them. The police say there is nothing to be done and politicians wring their hands again about the toxicity on both sides.
• You watch aghast on a livestream as a brave disability rights activist travels the world talking about this global social contagion. She is violently attacked, tipped out of her wheelchair and almost crushed underfoot in New Zealand. Antipodean politicians call her a Nazi.
• Your neighbour’s child starts identifying as transdisabled and demands surgery to remove her legs. The NHS won’t provide this surgery for those under eighteen but a private doctor in Spain agrees to go ahead on her 16th birthday.
• Her parents are interviewed about their journey by Lorraine on national TV and an award winning TV drama called Salamander is made about the difficulties she faced in her quest to be her true self.
• Libraries are full of books about transdisability for children with advice on different types of limb surgery and growth blocking drugs.
• Schools start encouraging children to consider whether or not they might be transdisabled. They are taught that they are probably transdisabled if they’ve ever felt any discomfort about their bodies, if they enjoy being on wheels such as cycling, skateboarding or go karting, or if they have ever thought about skiving off PE.
• There is a 3000% increase in the number of children identifying as transdisabled.
• Following concerns about the impact of NHS interventions, a medical trial is set up to see if children who are given drugs to stunt their bone growth are happier than those who are not.
• The CEO of the Walking Wounded charity is appointed as Disability Tsar by the government.
• Welfare spending on disability benefits and support more than trebles. The government cuts back on health spending saying that hip and knee replacements are transdisphobic interventions and no longer necessary.
• You give as much as you can afford to a group taking the government to court to protect disability rights. Disabled people raise millions in crowdfunding despite being one of the most economically disadvantaged demographics in society.
• You celebrate when, after many years of legal wrangling, the Supreme Court says that it makes no sense for able bodied people to claim disability rights and that it is perfectly lawful to refer to transdisabled people as able bodied and healthy.
• The government, and most of the opposition parties, ignore the Supreme Court ruling and bemoan the impact of the judgment on the transdisabled community.
• The government proposes to shut down selected social media sites, including X, for spreading hate speech on transdisability and votes through an amendment to the Equality Act to include a new protected characteristic of Disability Reassignment.
• You are still unable to walk.

This is not an entirely imaginary scenario. The charity Inclusion Scotland facilitates internship opportunities specifically for disabled people, often using the phrase "self-define" to encourage applicants who might not have a formal diagnosis but experience barriers. Is transdisability going to become the new frontier in trans rights? ^Here is a notable example of a man who identifies as a disabled woman. _https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/23101806.issue-day-able-bodied-norwegian-identifies-disabled-woman/_^ If there is a sexual component involved e.g an amputation fetish it is known as apotemnophilia.There have been numerous cases in the press of people (usually men) practising self amputation so strong is their desire. Here are some fairly recent examples. ^_https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yvpx20le2o_^ ^_https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/12/man-disability-benefits-leg-amputated-court-marius-gustavson-eunuch-maker_^ Everything imagined here for disabled wheelchair users has a direct parallel with what women and children have experienced. However this doesn’t even touch on issues like privacy and dignity in single sex spaces and services. The cruel and unusual punishment of housing violent sex offenders and murderers with vulnerable women or forcing women to undress in front of male colleagues as a condition of employment. It doesn’t cover the impact on children of trans parents, the hell endured by so many transwidows or the shock of seeing BBC News informing the nation that the galactorrhea produced by male lactation fetishists is even better for babies than their mother’s breastmilk. Although it touches on compelled speech it doesn’t go as far as the reality of women being forced to refer to their male attackers or rapists as she/her in court.

We are living through insane times and must never ever lose sight of just quite how insane this ideology is.

We should also apply all the same arguments and scenarios to 'transblackness' and see how comfortable that makes anyone feel.

Quite - ive never understand how this is different to cultural appropriation or “woman face” which would not be tolerated in relation to ethnicity

I mean, the police literally did release a woman at 3am after arresting her for stickering, 3am, in her wheelchair. To make her way home, alone.

Thanks for starting this thread @KnottyAuty I originally posted it on a thread of mine yesterday.

Really glad you picked it up as I think it possibly got lost in the discussion.

It is a really brilliant take on how we accepted the whole transgender agenda and takes steps to address what could become a reality which for me is a red flag for people who are disabled.

It also is a heads up for the boundaries being pushed in society where we seem to be expected to accept anything and if we do not we are considered bigoted.

This is a cautionary tale.

As a disabled person It is interesting that this is the very first response to this magnificent piece of writing.

You are quite correct.

People care more about racism than disabled people so it is more likely to gain attention and outrage.

See also The end of the world is flat by Simon Edge.

Oh wow I thought that was a dramatic touch - I should have realised!

@GloiredeDijon I would like to hear your take on the piece and agree the racism issue does seem to have trumped disability over recent times.

Is there a world where you as a disabled person could see the trans disabled idea happening? There is a small part of me that feels it already has, especially in the workplace and schools.

My experience pre retirement working in education was that colleagues were identifying their anxiety as a reason they could not perform certain tasks for example.

Also in education parents were colluding with their children to get them excused from lessons such as PE with vague reasons or students pushing boundaries for deadlines on work assignments because of mental health issues.

Interestingly most disabled people I have worked with have been fiercely independent and definitely gone the extra mile to make it clear they have deservedly earned a place at the table. In my experience they are people who have overcome challenges and have an innate sense of resilience - they are my experiences and I would hate for an ideology would take any rights away as the thought experiment alludes to in the article.

@BlueLegume Well I can give a recent example which I think has some relevance.

I am mostly housebound due to my disability and if I do go out I need someone with me and I have to use a rollator to walk. I get very little warning if my “good” leg will give out meaning I will fall over and if I fall I am unable to get up unaided plus am quite likely to break something due to my osteoporosis.

(Btw, the bad leg gave up the ghost years ago and is now permanently on the naughty step)

A friend took me to a shopping centre a few months ago and we wanted to buy some henna from Lush. (Not a shop I like but that was the only place which sold red henna where we were.)

We go into the shop and wander about and two young girls are there with brightly coloured walking sticks and they are not using them to lean on for any support at all.

I have subsequently learned that young people are now using decorative walking sticks as a type of badge to declare their invisible disabilities which may, or of course may not, be genuine.

One asked an assistant if they could sit somewhere quiet and someone could bring them what they were looking for because they were finding the environment too overwhelming.

The assistant happily agreed and sat them on the only seat at the back of the shop and trotted back and forth with products.

In the meanwhile I am there, very obviously disabled dragging myself around, struggling to fit my rollator past promotional displays crowding the walkways trying to find this blimmin red henna with no seat available and nobody to ask where it might be hiding. It turned out to be right at the back of a very low shelf which I couldn’t reach.

In the end I gave up because my pain levels were getting too much and we left.

I also have autism, chronic depression and anxiety plus stage 4 cancer on top of my visible physical disability. I really have won the health Bingo!

As a disabled person I insist on being as independent as possible at all times.

This does not appear to be the case for some people with much lesser issues, and yes, having experienced the variety of conditions which I have I do feel qualified to judge.

There also seems to be a hierarchy of fashionable ailments for maximum attention.

A boring old middle aged woman who can’t walk just isn’t interesting enough.

Far more cutting edge to focus on feelings than actual physical barriers.

God forbid I question this because then I am a “hater” who should know better.

@BlueLegume theres already a lot of “self ID” around autism and ADHD. People without diagnosis and seemingly no communication problems are joining groups for people with diagnoses. They are able to communicate well and then take over the discussion and skew it towards their perspective, marginalising the original group members inside their own support group. It’s just weird and selfish

It’s a very good analogy and well argued. The trouble is there are none so deaf as those that will not hear and the progressive left is determined not to hear. They are deliberately not listening because they know their arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny.

The quote at the beginning is a classic example of the sort of bad faith argument the progressive left uses to justify not listening i.e. that both sides think they can define womanhood on behalf of everyone. But we on the GC side are not defining womanhood to suit ourselves. We are talking about observable biological reality and its real world consequences.

The reason the progressive left won’t listen is that they are not willing to give up the benefits of progressive posturing and risk being called bigots. Justice, fairness and protections for women and girls? They just don’t care.

The discussion above between PP makes it even clearer to me what is so infuriating about this whole thing.

There is clearly a spectrum of disability. I'm also inclined to think there is a spectrum of race. Therefore there is a grey area and a discussion to be had about where the line is for provision entitlement in different circumstances

The one thing which is not a spectrum is sex, it is literally binary. I know DSD but a) numbers where there is any real discussion about which sex they are are miniscule and b) everyone is actually, at base, one sex or the other

This is one of the things I find most gaslighty about the whole discussion.

@GloiredeDijon what a fantastic post. Particularly love your very succinct

There also seems to be a hierarchy of fashionable ailments for maximum attention.
A boring old middle aged woman who can’t walk just isn’t interesting enough.

I feel similarly about girls seeming to want to opt out of womanhood and identify as men. All along the way everyone affirming this is complicit in lies.

I feel the same seeing people you described. It is so wrong that disabled people are being used to this extent to buy into something I suspect you would love to not have to deal with.

I am in awe of you and your post was brilliant.

I don't know if it was all verified, but I saw something on my Twitter feed about an able-bodied man who 'identifies' as a disabled woman who uses a wheelchair.

It's bonkers that a lot of people would be outraged about him appropriating disability but see nothing wrong whatsoever in 'her' being a (special kind of) 'woman'.

I'm reminded yet again of the Victoria Derbyshire interview featuring Emile Ratelband and Jane Fae - where Jane, a man pretending to be a woman, was open-mouthed and furious about the utter ridiculousness of Emile, a 69yo man, wanting to identify as the 49yo man whom he 'felt like' and for this to be officially and socially recognised as 'truth'.

I agree there’s a new ‘trend’ I’ve seen for ehlers danos to be added into the pot. Of thirteen types just one cannot be identified by genetic testing. Guess which one they have ? A girl I know who now ‘has this’ on getting her ( private and paid for ) diagnosis got all the trinkets within a month. Bath hoist / wheelchair/assistance dog ( ie a Labrador) leg braces ( unused). They seem mainly to be female and on the spectrum. It’s quite frightening. It’s a get out of jail free diagnosis for what used to be called munchausen and must infuriate the genuine ehlers danos sufferers. I fully expect a furious response to me saying this and would point out that I too am disabled with a condition you cannot fake and I am concerned about this rise in very young girls who seem to think the attention they get as a disabled person is in some way an attractive thing ?

@lifeisgoodrightnow no fury from me just sagely nodding along with you. During my career in education both the trans and anxiety issues sky rocketed around 2010 -2016 in my experience. I felt like a seismic shift where the adults left the room and we let the kids dictate. I also recognised several parents in the settings I worked in with Munchausens by proxy. Mothers of daughters particularly. They didn’t build resilience in their children they enabled them to pick and chose what they fancied doing such as evading sports classes.

When I reflect I also saw the parenting skills shift from being the adults in charge of guiding to the kids guiding and manipulating their parents.

And look where we now are.

and an award winning TV drama called Salamander

😂😂😂

Interestingly, transdisablism is a theme in one of JK Rowling’s Cormoran Strike books. I think she was drawing this parallel long ago. Very thought-provoking.

For goodness sake- if these people were disabled for real, they might not be so happy.
Or maybe they would
Seeing how hard life is for the disabled people that I know, who would want to appropriate this?
I think it perfectly illustrates how wanting to be something else has to be a mental health problem, in need of therapy.
The world has gone mad

A hilarious read.

She invents a lurid fake category (“transdisabled”), loads it with every scary thing she can think of, then says that because her made-up scenario is grotesque, trans people must be grotesque too.

The absolute peak of “I made something up, got mad at it, and decided that proves I was right all along”, real smelling-her-own-farts stuff.

@AidaP all
she has done is list exactly what happened with trans gender ideology but put forward it in terms of disability. If the scenario had actually happened we as a society wouldn’t have accepted it because for the most part we know life is tough for disabled people.

@GloiredeDijon posted at 9am her experience as an disabled person. Perhaps have a read and comment that she’s somehow fabricated things. There are plenty of girls identifying as non binary or male who display disabled traits. Take a walk past any college at the beginning or end of the day. Scoffing is not the best approach.

All of those things happened to actual women because of gender ideology. But you know that. You just don't give a shiny sh1t. But we are taking it all back mate. One court case at a time until you are back in your box.

By that logic, I could invent “transphobe-identification disorder”, say it mostly affects people who mistake control for “boundaries”, treat disagreement from their adult children as coercion, and interpret being challenged by younger people as proof of a dangerous social contagion.

I could add that one of its clearest symptoms is the belief that if a child dares to say “you don’t get to define my relationship for me”, that itself is evidence of ideological capture and civilisational decline.

Would that prove anything? No. It would just mean I had made up a category, packed it with behaviours I already resent, and then pretended my disgust counted as evidence.

Which is exactly what that article does.

@AidaP you have totally missed the point. Got mad at the comparison and chucked your toys out of your pram. @GloiredeDijon made a great post explaining this very thing you scoff at is already happening. But hey let’s ignore the experience of an actual disabled person because you saw the comparison with the whole trans gender debate and didn’t like it. @Apollo441 well said.

Before I fall over laughing completely, I am disabled, blue badge and everything :*