Report: Die-In Against a Bathroom Bill on Thursday, June 18 [Archive]

Lacrimi de Chiciură

22nd June 2016, 23:05

Nice protest. Strange bedfellows indeed, but not so unique. I am reminded of Western volunteers, conservative Baptists and "anti-imperialist" Stalinists, gone to stand side by side on a mutual crusade against fascism and "Gayropa" in Ukraine.

But the wording here does make me wonder: "While the speakers inside hawk the conspiracy theory of the nonexistent trans bathroom rapist, a cop approaches us. "

How is "the nonexistent trans bathroom rapist" a "conspiracy theory"? Like maybe just calling it a "myth" or "unsubstantiated fear-mongering" would be sufficient? As it is, this feels like a cheap appeal to the conventional wisdom that conspiracy theories "should be neither believed nor investigated" (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/228150) simply because they are conspiracy theories, which, as an epistemological postulate, is deeply problematic.

Another problematic thing is deploying denialist discourse; by flat out negating the feasibility of even one trans person committing sexual violence (whether it would occur in a bathroom is pretty incidental), you are essentially sanctifying an entire demographic category, which in and of itself seems suspect. I think trans-phobic feminists pick up on this; for example I found one trans-exclusive feminist blogger on Tumblr linking to this (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885#pone.0016885.s002) scientific paper that found that trans women retain male patterns of violent crime after transitioning, while trans men acquire male patterns of violent crime after transitioning. But this kind of demographic/statistics-based fear-mongering against trans people is no different than bigots using statistics on violent crime and race to argue for segregationist or eugenicist policies. Similar to the way in which most of the victims of homicidal individuals identified as members of the African disapora in the USA were also of the same diaspora contradicts the argument that these are "super predators" out to prey on "white" yuppies and suburbanites, it might be telling to know more about who the victims of aggressions committed by trans women are, and of course keep in mind that trans women are disproportionately the ones facing violent crime.

It's not only that though; you're also putting yourself in a bad position for when just such a case might finally come to light, to be the "smoking gun" that would prove you wrong, and them right. I remember there was someone on this forum who, when refugees were accused of sexual violence in Germany at the beginning of this year, seemed to be trying to use this as a kind of "Aha, gotchya!" moment, accusing leftists of having their heads stuck in the sand of political correctness about the reality of "dangerous refugees". Slavoj Zizek essentially did the same with the controversial remarks he made recently at the "Left Forum": "Terrorists, rapists, and criminals among refugees, but who cares?" (https://www.rt.com/usa/344148-zizek-left-forum-refugees/). The "who cares?" caveat could be interpreted to mean either that Western leftists don't care that they are defending awful people because their liberal sense of political correctness doesn't allow them to see refugees (or, here, trans people) as anything other than some kind of idealized figure capable of no evil, or that not fretting about the "bad apples" among the refugee population is precisely the correct attitude because allowing paranoia over the presence of small time criminality among waves of migration set in motion by the big time crimes of imperialism to cause us to tolerate our governments' denial of rights to asylum and freedom of movement is itself criminal. Although that's being generous, because this last interpretation is considerably more esoteric than the former and the statement contradicts itself in that Zizek does fret over the criminality of refugees, as well as, notably, in the past, Rromani people.