Let’s talk about a group of people: columnists and opinion writers. They’re a small group but they get a lot of attention. What they say and do doesn’t necessarily impact me directly, but sometimes it challenges what I believe, offends me, or even makes me upset. I feel their beliefs and ideas have become the orthodoxy that everyone just goes along with. It’s not that I’m anti-columnist or anti-opinion writer. I just think it’s reasonable to scrutinise their claims. I’ll probably face blowback for even just saying I don’t entirely agree with their views.
If this feels unfair to single out a group like this in a published article in Crikey, imagine how it feels if you replace “columnists and opinion writers” with “trans people”. Voila! I just gave you the outline of an article that appears in Australian media every week or so.
Consider the difference between the two groups. Regular columnists and opinion writers are by definition cultural elites. They have access to enormous audiences that others don’t, which they can use to shape the way the public thinks and feels. Australia’s media are whiter than the general public. In short, they’re a powerful group.
Trans people suicide and self-harm at elevated rates. They’re more likely to be subject to violence and live in poverty. They’re generally excluded from the media — I can think of a single trans journalist with a full-time job at a mainstream Australian news publication. I can’t think of one regular trans columnist. It’s not really a fair fight between the two groups.
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Back to columnists and opinion writers. I feel for them. Like scavengers surveying the savannah, their livelihood depends on their ability to spot things that others don’t. They’re constantly on the lookout for an interesting or controversial take on something. And what is hotter right now than “the trans issue”? And shouldn’t they be able to have their say on it?
Yes, they should. I truly believe the media should be able to write about anything that’s interesting and newsworthy. We get nowhere by completely censoring debate. The issue is that historically the media has systematically excluded the voices of marginalised groups while we have the same confected discussions over and over again, often badly. Since 2019, there have been 12 adjudications about Australian media being inaccurate, offensive or harmful about trans people.
Even as we, the media, have come to accept our issues with diversity, we promise to do better — yet then we continue to make the same mistakes. For example, I would bet my house that there are more articles written or interview segments in the last year complaining about trans people — which are more or less the same stuff over and over again — than there have been written by or featuring trans people about any topic.
You want something newsworthy and interesting? Imagine if we used this rare and privileged platform to go and speak to five trans people about what it’s like when both candidates for prime minister of Australia denied that trans women are women in a televised leadership debate. No one wrote that article (including me).
But a lot of people have written about how using genderless pronouns or terminology denies women’s existence. It’s boring to publish that again. In fact, writing that using “birthing person” rather than “woman” is hurting the feminist movement both misdiagnoses the problem and punches down. Who’s restricting reproductive rights access in America? It’s not trans people. In fact, the same people who fought to overturn abortion access are the same ones who are also rolling back access to trans health care. Plus, trans people want access to abortion too. If you knowingly choose to exclude trans people by incorrectly saying that only women access abortion — at best a falsehood — you’re actually cutting out your allies in the fight for the right to choose against a common foe.
Why do I care about this? I’m a white, straight, cis male in a comfy media job who taps out words about the internet a couple of times a week. Writing about this stuff isn’t really my beat (although the crossover between internet radicalisation, politics and transphobia has become troublingly common). I’m not an LGBTQIA+ activist. I’m not signed up to whichever secret mailing list distributes the gay and trans agenda.
The reason is that I got into journalism because I wanted to share information with audiences that helps them to live good lives. This often involves elevating the voices of those who don’t already have a platform so audiences can understand their plight.
I am writing this because it’s not a fair fight. On one hand, we’ve got an influential and privileged group of people whose world view is being challenged. On the other hand, we’ve got a group who are killing themselves in large numbers because of the stigma they face for trying to live life as they choose. As I wrote this article, the Labor government rolled back a change on a Medicare form that used “birthing parent” rather than “mother”, a change that literally erases the existence of trans men who give birth.
Journalism should be balanced, but that doesn’t mean we need to present both sides as equal. When we present topics as if it’s an even trade-off between someone’s discomfort with someone’s fight to merely exist, we’re doing a disservice to trans people, columnists and opinion writers, and our audience.
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Fantastic to see this in here after yesterday’s rot – thanks for writing it, Cam.
Anyone who thinks it’s the fault of trans people that women’s rights are being eroded: what planet are you on?! Is there some hitherto undocumented underground trans-led movement to dominate the US Supreme Court and roll back women’s rights, or are you maybe just picking an easy target – a constant target – instead of organising to fight your real, determined, and powerful enemies? Don’t try to weasel out of the battle by saying how unfair it is that some people in very limited circumstances say “people who give birth” or “people who menstruate”.
If you think that people who care about pronouns are your enemies, then you’re taking the side of your oppressors. And they will come for you as surely as they came for homosexuals and trans people in 1933. Choose your enemies more wisely and grow up.
Trans people do erode women’s rights though – they intrude in women’s same sex spaces (prisons, toilets, rape crisis centres) and get very angry about language (we actually want to be called mothers, breast feeding, etc). Pronouns – who cares – but why be so aggressive about language that embraces 50%+ of the human population?
The only people that are aggressive about language are people like Bill Shorten. Wake up to yourself and accept that women can sometimes be born in the bodies of men. It isn’t that difficult.
Rape crisis centres aren’t just for women. The toilet problem is easily solved and prisons should be places for all sexes together, not separated and creating an unnatural and unsafe environment.
You have no sane argument.
Speaking, as you were not, of sane arguments – “women can sometimes be born in the bodies of men. It isn’t that difficult.” Not difficult, try impossible – unless you want to adopt the Abrahamic dictum that “Man did not come from woman but woman from Man” 1Corinthians 11:8
Accept that women can be born in men’s bodies? What a load of absolutely nonsensical rubbish. It’s the body that makes the person a man or a woman. Only someone with a truly warped view of reality can think otherwise.
I am a trans woman, I have never once asked for language to be changed, exact opposite all I ask is to be respected and included. In fact I have been a significant advocate for all women’s right as are a great majority of trans women. We do not want to diminish women at all.
Well said, Cam.
The problem is not “trans people” . The problem is the philosophy of gender
Gender identities don’t exist. They’re not real. As long as you keep equating trans people’s ‘right to exist’ with the acceptance of a philosophy that says that humans are categorised by “genders” rather than sex, we’re going to keep having this problem.
Genders are a social construct.
Sex is real.
You cannot organise a society by legislating “gender”
There are many things that ‘don’t exist’ which are still very important.
These are all social constructs. Every one of them. Just like gender.
None of your listed ‘social constructs’ are artificial, created solely by humans. Every single one of them have equivalents in non-human species. Private property, for example, shown by the aggressive reaction to encroachment into the personal space of territorial species. Do you really think that non-human species don’t experience love, and don’t feel remorse at the death of a partner? Or that other species don’t have some form of language to communicate information? Or laws determining interactions between individuals? Or some way accounting for favours to be repaid later? Or rights of individuals in social species?
Wayne you’ll be delighted to hear that there are trans animals, then. https://www.vice.com/en/article/8x8bez/yes-there-are-trans-animals
Very much the exception rather than the rule. Nevertheless hardly surprising that some animals have the reproductive organs of both sexes. Some animals are born with 2 heads, some with extra toes or even limbs. Apart from a very small number of animals with useful “bisexual” organs, the majority are genetic mistakes.
You’ve actually just proved my point – all the examples you give are of social behaviours among some animals (including human animals). Not all animals have them.
But there are salient differences as well. Territoriality is not the same as private property. Many societies do not practice private property (the kind enforced by laws, deeds and police) but rather some forms of community ownership, which is a very different thing. What’s the difference? It’s socially defined.
Similarly with money – the examples you give are all of social relations. Or language, the meaning of which is all socially defined. Don’t believe me? Go to a country where few people speak English, and you don’t speak the local tongue.
Love is not attraction (yes, that has a biological reality). Love is also not social affinity or fondness (perfect examples of socially defined constructs). Love in its modern, Western concept – romantic love – has no reality apart from a social definition, which can be dated back to the courtly love ballads of the early French troubadours, and possibly back to Persian verse novels.
you forgot “race”
You don’t think race exists?
Race is 100%, absolutely, guaranteed a social construct. As is tribe, clan, nation, etc.
Skin pigmentation is real, but that’s quite separate from ‘race’ as it has been defined variously over the last few hundred years. ‘Race’ studies were obsessed with phrenology, skull dimensions, weird pseudoscience and sheer bunkum.
Absolute denial of reality in the name of ideology. Because acknowledging difference may possibly lead to claims of superiority/inferiority in various respects, you deny the reality that race exists and racial differences exist. Do Africans not have black skin? Do Asians not have less bodily hair than Caucasians. Deny reality if you like, but you’re the one that needs help, not me.
Only if Blueys are a race – all those freckles!
Yeah but not sex – sex is real
Do you realise that some people are born intersex? They aren’t one or the other and the doctor and parents make the decision to operate and turn the baby into one or the other sex.
THAT is real. Sex can be a grey area. What if the doctor chose the wrong sex at birth? Do you think the parents of these children would admit what they chose to do?
Things aren’t so binary as you assume.
Hi Emma! Thanks for taking the time to engage. I’m not sure I agree with you that you can’t organise a society around something that doesn’t “exist” (as in, something that’s outside of a social construct). A simple example is that we decided that 18 year old is the cut off for being a child. That’s totally socially determined, but something that we legislate. There’s a plethora of other examples of things aren’t ‘real’ but are enshrined in law (see Gwyntaglaw beloe). Hope this helps!
Well, I appreciate the opportunity to actually have a civilised discussion as opposed to, say, being banned forever as would happen on Twitter. But the thing about social constructs is they’re fine as long as they’re not trying to replace an embodied reality. Sex is an embodied (binary) reality. You cannot have man/woman meaning male gender feelings/female gender feelings at the same time as it means male sex/female sex. Words can only mean one thing at a time. Sex is the embodied reality and gender is the social construct so gender must give way.
Age is also an embodied reality but not a binary one – that’s why we can define the cutoff of adulthood as 14 or 18 or 21 as we see fit – but your age isn’t just the age you “feel like” you are. You can’t rock up to Centrelink and say ‘hey, I feel like I’m 70 now give me an old age pension’
If the embodied reality of sex were still permitted to do the stuff that the embodied reality of sex has always done – defined the categories man/woman, been enshrined in law as a known categorisation of two types of human – then everything would be fine. But it’s not.
This site is notorious for banning people, topics & opinions – eg look at the last two articles on this subject last month which had all comments cleansed and further discussion shut down.
Nothing to touch Twitter though. Or FB. Low bar I know. It’s hard to get as ruthlessly manipulative as big social media.
Free speech is sooo last century.
I wonder how long before all the comments here will be disappeared into the memory hole?
Words frequently mean multiple things at the same time.
Only to people with limited vocabulary.
Were that true, communication would be impossible – as with script, A cannot sometimes mean Z or Q depending on someone’s opinion.
Many aspects of reality (look it up!) are not subjective.
How do you feel about gravity – do you sometimes float off into the stratosphere?
If so, NASA would be interested.
Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? It’s both, because one is a biological definition and one is a culinary definition.
I’m sorry if you feel like two categories should always 100% correlate despite evidence to the contrary but the science is against you.
Well I’ll join in here and ask exactly what a “social construct” is and how it possibly applies to whether a person is a man or a woman. It’s not society that says that men have certain physical characteristics (chromosomes, reproductive organs, skeletal structure, etc.) and women have others. They are just biological facts.
And what difference does it make to a person’s sex, or even gender, if a person who happens to be male likes dolls and dressing in women’s clothes? How does that make the man have the “gender” of a woman? He’s still a man and the fact that he does or likes certain things that are more commonly liked by women makes absolutely no difference to that fact.
Society is what decides that some particular range of physical appearance is masculine, and some other range of physical appearance is feminine. Those ranges aren’t biologically determined – there’s an enormous overlap between even stereotypical “male” and “female” appearance, let alone the actual real world range of appearances (otherwise the word “androgynous” wouldn’t exist, and no one would ever talk about “butch” women or “girly” men).
Biology obviously impacts the way that individuals develop, and individual genetic makeup obviously drives that, but even there it’s not a simple binary. The actual realities of human biology are complex, and the more scientists dig into it with increasingly sophisticated tools the more they realise just how messy it all is. Trying to draw simple binaries really doesn’t work, even when it comes to something as apparently obvious as sex chromosomes and how they determine “biological gender”. You can probably get away with saying things like “the majority of people who appear biologically male have XY chromosomes, and the majority of people who appear biologically female have XX chromosomes”, but as we do broader and broader population studies the number of people who /don’t/ fit cleanly in that binary just keeps increasing. To the point where in biology classes they often explicitly /don’t/ do that kind of genetic testing of students, because of what might accidentally be revealed.
As for “liking dolls and dressing in women’s clothing” . . . your understanding of gender dysphoria is beyond superficial. I know a trans girl who dresses in jeans and t-shirts, plays video games, likes maths and science, rockets and engineering, and would really like to go to Mars – none of that has any impact on the fact that being male feels /wrong/ to her. Presenting as male was uncomfortable for her, and became increasingly distressing over time; once she started presenting as female she became vastly more comfortable and happy, even though she was wearing the same clothes for the most part, playing the same games, and interested in the same things. I’m not trans and have never experienced gender dysphoria so I’m reluctant to say more about the experience – I’ll leave that to actual trans people – but it’s very clear to me that it’s something a lot deeper than just appearances or liking one or other kind of social role.
And as a final note, if someone feels discomfort and distress presenting one way to the world, but comfortable and happy presenting a different way, why on /earth/ should anyone else have anything to say about that? Why should /you/ get to insist that they can’t consider themselves a woman or a man, if that makes it possible for them to live a healthy and happy life?
The answer to your final question is simple. We can have something to say about it because it impinges on OUR reality. I don’t care how individuals want to live or “present” to the world. I truly believe in the adage “live and let live” . I truly believe that discriminating against individuals in a negative way for virtually any reason is a bad thing. But stop twisting and warping truth and reality to suit some unscientific social theory.
You are no doubt correct that gender dysphoria is “something a lot deeper than just appearances or liking one or other kind of social role.”
The discussion becomes an issue worth debate when an idea is promulgated that gender is a social construct and “sex” is presented as something outside of “simple binaries”. On the contrary, it does work because a very, very large majority of human beings identify as falling within that binary definition – in fact over 99% of a population. That number is sufficient to label that 99% plus as “normal”. By definition anything outside of that is “abnormal”.
Much of the current furore around gender and sex determination is a direct result of feminist claims and teachings over the last few decades. It does not suit feminists to regard gender – and in some cases even sex – as anything but a “social construct” because any other viewpoint weakens their entire (fabricated) argument.
I don’t agree at all the ‘much of the furore around gender and sex is a ‘direct result of feminist claims and teachings.’ The furore has been driven by a systematic and deliberate socially engineered attempt to change the way the world views sex and gender. the idea that people can self ID as a different gender is not the problem, The idea that self ID can change sex totally is. This has let a lot of problems such as males in females prisons (documented rape has occurred), males in female hospital wards (documented rape has occurred) males in female toilets (documented rape has occurred) males in rape crisis centres (trauma has occurred to women who have been raped ad do not want males in their environment as they try to deal with this.
There are people out there who experience significant dysphoria regarding both their gender presentation (yes, a social construct, but one that is a real part of people’s lives and experiences), and their actual physical bodies. In some cases changing their gender presentation can relieve that dysphoria; in other cases medical procedures to change their physical appearance is necessary to achieve that relief. These experiences are strong, persistent, and in most cases are something which dates back to quite early in childhood. These experiences are /real/, regardless of anyone’s “philosophy of gender”.
How exactly do you think you can explain these people’s experiences with “sex is real” and “gender identities don’t exist”? What do you propose as a model that would actually support these people living healthy and happy lives? How would /you/ organise society to make these people’s lives as good as your own?
That’s what any discussion about trans people should come down to – real people, real experiences, real lives. This isn’t a philosophical discussion, it’s a discussion about actual individual human beings and their needs.
And yet it should be a discussion on scientific theories and appraisals.
The truth is not intended to “support” anyone in being “healthy and happy” in anything. The truth is truth. How you use it is a separate thing entirely.
I never knew my penis is a social construct.
No, but the meaning assigned to it is.
It’s even referred to in some contexts as one’s ‘manhood’, ie the essence of what it is to be a man.
In some societies, eunuchs were defined as ‘not men’, meaning they had access to some spaces where men were forbidden.
Yet in this society and elsewhere in the west there are men demanding to access spaces where men were forbidden.
There’s no meaning assigned to it. It’s a penis, and its possessor is a man. Nothing to do with being “assigned”, whatever that means.
‘Assigned’ is one of the NewSpeak words used to confuse and obscure simple reality.
Anyone who uses terf/cis etc is trying normlise untruth, as did BigBrother “Newspeak follows most of the rules of English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary; complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning,nice sounding and easily pronounceable, their purpose is to mask all ideological content from the speaker.”
Eunuchs tended to have access to those spaces, e.g., because they still had male physical aspects for defence but would not inseminate the harem.
The harem guards were usually captive warriors who had only their testes removed as adults so that they retained their physiques – it kept the women amused and stopped them becoming too restive if neglected by their owners.
Full excision pre puberty produced an entirely different body type and those who became scribes used their quills as catheters.
Thanks Cam, appreciate you writing this.
Simply…thank you Cam.