In my case what may strongly resemble some hideous intellectual waffling is what comes out when I'm actually desperately trying to connect on a very human level with people regarding the detail of stuff that affects people hugely in their everyday lives, and the struggle to improve peoples circumstances. But I suspect there are some issues relating to neurodiversity in my case the often cause my approach, my use of language, to be at best misguided and at worst something that winds people up and gives the wrong impression of where I'm coming from. I'm unable to effectively bypass this problem, and perhaps maybe the closest I've come on occasions in the past was actually when I lost my cool and ranted loudly at people I thought were being bigoted. But I had to try harder to give that up in recent years for all sorts of reasons including my own health and the unsustainable nature of the clashes, in terms of how much of that sort of thing people and the community could be expected to take. And so we are left with this side of me that talks in maths and buzzes like a fridge
<post bouncing off your thoughts rather than a particular criticism>
I think what I'd say is not that there's anything wrong with taking an analytic approach, but that it's easy to rely on that and lose sight of a broader picture. It's easier for me, and I assume you; I'm not particularly comfortable talking to people at the best of times, and navigating complex and emotive social issues obviously layers a shitload on top of that. Reading up on stuff gives you a sense of objectivity and allows you to compartmentalise things more easily, but it is a limited approach and can lead you to weight certain opinions above others... May work well for some things, but can be a critical failure in others; e.g you could argue it's a major feature of the entire replication crisis. It's also at least somewhat vulnerable to gish-gallop tactics (or something similar); technique of presenting a whole bunch of poorly-sourced arguments that an interlocutor has to take vastly more effort to disprove. E.g think about the time you used to take pouring over research and trying to understand fields you don't have a background in relative to someone saying 'yeah, but x person said we'd get herd immunity', and even if you present that they'll then move onto something like 'but myocarditis'. In context for this thread a podcast I listen to from time to time (embrace the void) recently interviewed Helen Lewis... The host is a lecturer in philosophy and has generally immersed himself in left and progressive cultural shit - he's pretty good at pulling people up on things, and broadly well-informed. But he isn't UK based, and doesn't have the right knowledge of the very UK specific side of this argument, so Lewis is able to just confidently drop in stuff like prison stats that you need to have read a lot of specific stuff to rebut.
It's also an area you can't really research your way through; the research isn't there. In many ways it can't be, because a broader acceptance of trans people (inasmuch as there is one) is a relatively recent thing. Obviously not to diminish the work of pioneers in this field (it's not 'a' field of course, covering everything from the endocrine system, through neurology to sociology, forgive the simplification), but I expect it will be with Brianna's generation that we really start to see wider synthesis of research taking place. Even then the key point is that we are talking about
people and they are famously difficult to put into neat categories. This post has been about things you can put on a page and pin down. Trans people are not that; they have an immediate lived reality that can't wait on the pontifications of a largely cis media and academic community.
When I say 'the ciphers created by logic bros/GC types' I mean exactly that... I think they're imagining that someone could just wander into a woman's refuge and get a job. The reality is going to be the usual gamut of background checks and references, previous experience working in mental health, good communication skills, gelling well with other staff at interview etc etc... i.e that person will be
a person. And the same goes for people accessing services... As those of Brianna's generation who aren't taken from us get older, they will have lived their entire adult lives in their genders. What are they going to do? In their moment of crisis, are they going to be saying 'well actually I suppose I was technically AMAB, so I'll try and find an appropriate service'? Again, the messy lived reality doesn't conform to a neat set of rules. Same goes for bathrooms; trans women have been accessing them for years without any particular fuss. We get to the point where the metric is who can
pass, and that is shitty and unfair particularly for older trans people and those without resources. I mean even writing that out surely it's obvious that these issues are just being used by motivated parties to force positions focussed on trans erasure?
The vigil was as diverse a crowd as I've been in for a while. There's no way I could tell you who fit which 'category'. Because they weren't categories, they were just people, some of whom at some point realised that they didn't fit their assigned gender. Society will have to conform itself to their existence; as it did to POC, as it did to gay people. Those picking holes in their existence, slowing that process by creating abstracted bogeymen can, frankly, get to fuck.
