Kevin Williamson of the National Review wrote an article calling Laverne Cox a man. Here’s why he’s so very wrong.
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Update: After a swift backlash, the Chicago Sun-Times has retracted Williamson’s op-ed. However, the piece can still be found at its original home, The National Review.
Dear Kevin,
My first draft of this was all cuss words. The way you spend so much energy and so many words trying to discredit this woman’s life and experiences is disgusting. I’m going to try to be civil and show you the myriad ways in which you went wrong.
I mean, you went wrong with the title of your article. It’s pretty impressive to start in such an awful place and somehow make it worse. Laverne Cox is a woman. She’s a woman by her own definition and by U.S. society’s definitions of femininity as well. That aside, (add this question to every point I’m about to make) why do you care so much? She says she’s a woman and that should be all that matters. You are not doing her, or anyone else, some kind of service by dehumanizing her and delegitimizing her life. Let’s get into some of your points though.
You said:
“[she] rejected the question as invasive, though what counts as invasive when you are being interviewed by Katie Couric about features of your sexual identity is open to interpretation.”
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What counts as invasive? Well, asking someone a question about his/her genitals on national television is pretty much everyone’s definition of invasion of privacy. I’m imagining that if Katie Couric were to interview you about your “journalism”, then threw in a question about your penis, you’d probably be pretty pissed. Because it’s not relevant. Repeat with me: It. Does. Not. Matter.
Next, you said:
“God help [Katie Couric] if she had misdeployed a pronoun, which is now considered practically a hate crime.”
Misgendering someone isn’t a hate crime (yet), but let me show you some examples of hate crimes.
Two trans* women in Atlanta were attacked, beaten, and one of them was stripped naked on a public bus because some men didn’t think they were “real” women. No one tried to help the women. http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/trans-women-beaten-stripped-train-passengers-cheer300514
Jane Doe is a 16-year old trans* girl who was beaten, raped, and forced into prostitution for 10 years. She’s now in solitary confinement in an adult prison though she faces no criminal charges. The article states, “Those with the best intentions felt it was their duty to beat these notions out of her. Those with the worst intentions felt it their right to toy with someone they considered a freak of nature.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/17/opinion/what-is-this-child-doing-in-prison.html?_r=0
This Times article is problematic for its focus on the woman’s body, but still tells an important story: A trans* woman brought two men home with her. Her house caught fire and she died. The men were nowhere to be found.
I could go on for days. Trans* folks are 28% more likely to be victims of physical violence. And if you look through those links (I hope you do), you’ll notice a common thread: they all misgender the women. So, misgendering a trans* person isn’t a hate crime, but just like calling someone ‘nigger’ precedes a lynching, it almost always comes right before the actual hate crime.
“The phenomenon of the transgendered person is a thoroughly modern one […]”
You couldn’t be more wrong. (Also, ‘transgender’ is an adjective, not a noun or verb.) A quick perusal of Wikipedia would disavow you of that notion. Honestly, I don’t know as much as I should about the history of non-conforming gender roles. I do know that the idea of a third gender has been around since at least the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt (ca. 2000 BCE). So, unless you consider Tutankhamen to be “thoroughly modern” then you’re way off base. Hinduism, Buddhism, Maya cosmology, Greek and Roman mythology, and Incan cosmology all have some form of third (or fourth or fifth or sixth) gender.
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.
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Here, educate yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender#History . I don’t like to resort to Wikipedia, but when it’s something like basic history, maybe we should start with the third-grade stuff.
“The infinite malleability of the postmodern idea of “gender,” as opposed to the stubborn concreteness of sex, is precisely the reason the concept was invented.”
Stubborn concreteness, you say? I’m going to quote Amelia who wrote this amazing post on her blog, and kindly allowed me to reprint:
“Even moving beyond genitals, sex is still a problematic term to work with. Humans cannot be simply reduced to being either XX or XY chromosomes. There are a number of conditions which can lead to someone not having the chromosomes you would expect them to have. This actually begs a question that I’ll go right ahead and ask, what are your chromosomes? Have you had a karyotype done (which would be the only way in which you’d know your chromosomes)? […] Biology uses the size of gametes as the definition of male and female in the animal world. This works fine for animals, but, for humans, it’s a bit more muddy because we base so much on these assignments and our society practically revolves around the so-called distinctions between men and women. The thing is, not everyone actually produces gametes. I don’t. I mean, I did, but I don’t now. And cisgender (opposite of transgender) women eventually go through menopause. Do we get stripped of our genders when there are no more gametes or if there never were any? […]
Basically, we’re left with no physical way in which we can determine a person’s gender based on sex, perceived sex, or really anything physical. It just doesn’t work.”
“There are many possible therapeutic responses to that condition, but the offer to amputate healthy organs in the service of a delusional tendency is the moral equivalent of meeting a man who believes he is Jesus and inquiring as to whether his insurance plan covers crucifixion.”
I have no words for this. Perhaps someone in the comments would like to correct you, but I’m not touching that lunacy.
“(though, for the record, I believe that our neat little categories of sexual orientation are yet another substitution of the conceptual for the actual, human sexual behavior being more complex and varied than the rhetoric of sexual orientation can accommodate).”
Okay, so wait. You’re okay with believing that sexual behavior is “complex and varied’ but you cannot fathom that gender is also “complex and varied”? Why? If gender is largely a performance of certain roles in a society, then why can’t certain people be drawn towards differing roles?
“The mass delusion that we are inculcating on the question of transgendered people is a different sort of matter, to the extent that it would impose on society at large an obligation — possibly a legal obligation under civil-rights law, one that already is emerging — to treat delusion as fact, or at the very least to agree to make subjective impressions superordinate to biological fact in matters both public and private.”
No. No. No. A thousand times, no. The only “imposition” would be to treat people as human beings. This “possible legal obligation under civil-rights law” would be to protect every American citizen from people that want to hurt, discriminate against, or kill them. Martin Luther King once said, “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.” So, there. These possible laws, which can’t come soon enough, are not to force the people who agree with you to “treat delusion as fact”. At the end of the day, they will be to protect trans* folks from violent people who agree with you.
Further Reading:
Trans 101: A Trans Woman Schools The Internet
10 Things You Should Never Say To A Trans Person (That Have Been Said To Me)
Transgender 101: A “Trans-in-the-Workplace” Primer
“She’s a woman by her own definition and by U.S. society’s definitions of femininity as well .” “If gender is largely a performance of certain roles in a society…” If a woman or man is defined by society’s definition of femininity and masculinity than what’s all the talk on the Good Men Project about “eating stereotypes for lunch.” Almost every other article on the GMP attempts to expose gender roles as false social constructs and free men from the “man box.” But it seems that transgenderism reinforces the gender stereotypes that GMP claims to be trying to destroy. Someone please… Read more »
The biggest promoters of this idea are actually feminists. Here’s some good background info from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_views_on_transgenderism_and_transsexualism#Feminist_exclusion_of_transgender_and_transsexual_people
Feel free to write another article, picking a harder target that a single male writer at a right wing magazine.
#notallfeminists
“The biggest promoters of this idea are actually feminists” … ::links to article with most recent example being 20 years old.::
I believe you are referring to a very particular sect of feminism known as radical feminism. However, I don’t think I follow what you’re trying to say. Could you clarify?
I’ve written a great many articles. There’s a search bar at the top right of the page.
And he’s wrong about chickens, too.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/chickens-smarter-four-year-old-article-1.1428277
Agreed, a well written and compelling piece.
The article about Jane Doe, however, does not misgender her.
I meant that the perpetrators of the awful acts against her misgendered her. Sorry for being unclear.
As my first response to the original article was also a long, internal scream of unintelligible curse words, I have to commend you for this piece. Well done!