The Debate Club discussion
: ̗̀➛ Ethics and Education
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•✩• Does Objectivity Exist?
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ray :P wrote: "about the trans part, I will say there is a “craze” in a way. maybe not the way austin meant it but still a “craze”. people right now are obsessed with being either “woke” or “anti-woke” and such s..."it's pretty clear that's not what austin meant and while you do bring up some valid points, i would argue calling it a "craze" still has really harmful implications.
yes, the media (both conservative and liberal outlets) fixate on trans issues for clicks and outrage, but this doesn’t mean being trans itself is a trend or a "craze", it just means discourse about trans people is being weaponized. (e.g. gay rights were similarly hypervisible in the 2000s, that didn’t mean being gay was a "craze", it meant society was grappling with change.) once acceptance normalizes, media moves on (as with gay rights). the current frenzy will fade (though i say that tentatively), but trans people will still exist.
also i just want to point out that "cis people pretending to be trans" is a little overstated because while some may experiment with gender expression (especially online), this is so extremely rare in real life. transphobia is pervasive that no one casually "tries on" a trans identity long-term because the social costs (discrimination, violence, medical gatekeeping) are too high. most detransitioners aren’t doing it for trends. even among the tiny fraction who detransition (≈1-2%), most cite external pressure (bullying, lack of support) rather than "changing their mind." a lot of these "cis" people to begin with are also bad faith trolls who intentionally pretend to be trans in order to justify conservative talking points by engaging with sensationalist actions.
even if you don’t mean harm, framing trans visibility as a trend is directly erasing history esp. when trans people have existed for millennia and it undermines legitimacy by implying that trans identities are a "phase" that came with media sensationalism rather than an innate reality for many.
ray :P wrote: "look… I’m literally transgender I’m well aware what people are like towards my own community 🤦I don’t ever mention it much because I want to be able to argue for/against something without having t..."
Ugh you wrote a wital essay ray <\3
Okay wait you ate tho
ray :P wrote: "୨୧ ➶ ｡˚ ° Pierce Samuel ˋ°•*⁀➷ ୨୧ wrote: "ray :P wrote: "look… I’m literally transgender I’m well aware what people are like towards my own community 🤦I don’t ever mention it much because I want t..."
Nah you did good. I agree with all your points, esp the detransistioner part. Like do people understand that detransitioners are 8% of trans folk??
ray :P wrote: "୨୧ ➶ ｡˚ ° Pierce Samuel ˋ°•*⁀➷ ୨୧ wrote: "Okay wait you ate tho"okay well then maybe I should snap more often then 💀 (I AM JOKING)"
You didn't even snap, say it with me now:
You just got SPEECH & DEBATEDDD (I say that way too often)
ray :P wrote: "look… I’m literally transgender I’m well aware what people are like towards my own community 🤦I don’t ever mention it much because I want to be able to argue for/against something without having t..."
i appreciate you sharing your perspective as someone within the trans community, your lived experience carries weight, and i don’t want to dismiss your frustrations nor would i ever try to. that said, i’ll engage with your arguments in good faith while offering some counterpoints for discussion only.
1. on austin and the decision not to engage
you’re absolutely right that not every uninformed take deserves a response, especially when someone’s background (like a politicised education) may have shaped their views. choosing your battles is wise. however, the danger in not pushing back, even gently, is that uninformed opinions often go unchallenged in public discourse, letting misconceptions solidify. that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to educate everyone, but it’s worth considering whether silence might inadvertently let bad arguments gain traction. is it worth me telling every tom, dick and harry who says something that they're wrong? no but i do it anyway because challenging people's beliefs means that maybe there's one one more person who might try and grapple with their ideology.
2. the "craze" is about discourse, not trans identity
i agree with you here: the obsession with trans issues (both pro and anti) is absolutely a cultural phenomenon driven by media, politics, and performative activism. you’re right that public attention is cyclical, many allies are fair-weather, political opportunism is real and republicans hammer trans issues to rally their base, while some liberals use trans advocacy as a purity test without doing the hard work of material support.
where we might differ is that to me, calling it a "craze" risks conflating the exploitation of trans issues with trans existence itself. the problem isn’t that people are "trendy" it’s that identities are being used as political footballs.
3. on cis people appropriating trans labels (FTF/MTM, etc.)
this is a frustrating and legitimate issue. when cis people co-opt trans terminology for clout, irony, or to dodge accountability, it:
muddies the waters for actual trans people seeking understanding and feeds into right-wing caricatures ("see? they’re just making it up!") and it does trivialise the struggle, especially when those same people face none of the systemic discrimination trans people do.
however: how widespread is this really? in my experience (and most data), the vast majority of people using trans labels are either: genuinely questioning their gender (even if they later realize they’re cis), online edgelords whose influence rarely extends offline, or a tiny minority of bad-faith actors (who exist in every movement).
the right-wing media loves amplifying these edge cases to paint the entire community as delusional. we can criticize appropriation without overstating its prevalence.
4. on allyship and performative activism
you’re 100% correct that: many allies are conditional. they’ll post a trans flag in june but won’t show up when it’s inconvenient. even people part of the community don't want to do their part. the most heartbreaking quotes i ever read was from a trans activist saying "i gave them their pride, but they didn't give me mine."
backlash is real and scary. the bud light situation, target pulling pride merch, and politicians rolling back protections prove how fragile support can be. grassroots activism with corporate/media pandering. real progress comes from trans-led organizing, not viral hashtags. but I’d argue this isn’t a "craze", it’s the predictable backlash phase of civil rights progress. the exact same happened with:
desegregation (white moderates who supported it in theory fled when schools integrated).
gay marriage (companies slapped rainbows on products but still donated to anti-LGBTQ politicians).
feminism ("lean In" corporate feminism ignored working-class women).
my takeaway here is that visibility exposes hypocrisy. the fair-weather allies will fade, but the core movement remains.
you’re right to be angry about the commodification of trans struggles. but i'd caution against framing it as a "craze," because that language (even unintentionally) plays into the hands of those who want to dismiss trans identities as a "phase."
you’re clearly coming from a place of love and frustration for your community. i hope this response engages with that respectfully.
(and for what it’s worth, i’m sorry you have to deal with so much nonsense in real life. that’s exhausting, and you deserve better.)
ray :P wrote: "@sunny, this is not entirely about you so please don’t take it personally 🙏🥲"don't worry i get heated on this group too, i can understand being passionate about something you genuinely care about.
I can expand on this further if needed to. But i think western culture has and unhealthy obsession with the fringes at the moment. We are letting the minority discriminate against the majority and it looks and feels crazy. I think the shift rightward we are seeing and feeling has a lot to do with people looking at how the aristocracy of the west openly does nit have the best interests of the citizens in their rulings. And wondering why we gave them power. I had a friend who is not american and he told me the west looks like it is run by “traitors and cowards.” And if aliens showed up to kill humanity our current ruling elite would happily aid them.
So like for example gay people are like 1% of the US population? But we hear about gay stuff daily. Like if there was proportional representation then we would hear about it like 1% of the time. Not most of the time. I guess my main problem is that interest groups lead to corruption. It is only once you get past your own group and thing about the over all group can you actually run a society. Like it often happens in the city where i live in that black activists campaign in the facf they are black then get elected. Then years later they get found out that they were stealing funds to line their own wallet. They pay a fine that is a quarter of what they stole then leave the ghetto and live with white people in their own mansion. And it happens everywhere like that. Gay right judges found out to be letting a murderer out because he was gay and society pressured him to do it. Feminist principles taken in by the police because they abused their own son. Im not saying it doesnt happen on the right im just saying where im at it is a vicious cycle. Some blm guy gets elected to be sherif then people are surprised crime rises when the police stop showing up in low income neighborhoods.
this is what i was going to say. 1% of the pop. is trans yet we talk about them all the time8% of those who are trans detransition yet we dont talk about them?
there are so should it not be a legitimate thing to look at when we look into transgenderism
i think objective truth has become increasingy fluidas in the ideas of gender etc. have become more fluid, personal rather than a universally accepted idea
I mean in england and wales it is 0.5% is trans
and around 1% of america's adult population
In the United States, studies suggest that around 1.6 million people aged 13 and over identify as transgender, which is approximately 0.5% of the US adult population. https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.ed...
Nearly one in five people who identify as transgender are ages 13-17.
1.4% of 13-17 y/o
0.5% of 18+
ray :P wrote: "I will say we bring up trans people and queer people in general too much in this group. I feel like there are so many other discussions to be had that don’t require bringing up queer people."That's true. I suppose it is because we have a whole folder about it.
I do agree. Buto be fair we have an abnormally high amount of queer people in the group
Mod
that's fair and not just what ray said but actually most groups on gr aren't this queer i think it's just when barnette started it a lot of queer people joined and queer people tend to have more queer friends so it just turned out that way idk really tho
idk austin, at the risk of getting inflammatory, if you were a real historian maybe you would've done some research into trans history instead of labelling it a "craze". comparing transgender people to a passing fad ignores literal centuries (we can literally date them back to the bronze age) of gender diversity across cultures (e.g., two-spirit identities, hijras, fa’afafine, wakashu, hijras, the roman emperor elagabalus, galli priests, heck most gods were gender-fluid etc.). what’s new in the modern society is visibility, not the existence of trans people.
now in terms of this debate i think pure, unmediated objectivity probably doesn’t exist, but i also don't think that doesn’t mean all claims are equally valid. i mean if you look at life through the lens of scientific realism, the laws of physics and gravity operate independently of human perception. a rock falls the same way whether you believe in gravity or not.
also repeatable experiments (e.g. clinical trials, astronomical observations) suggest an objective reality beyond individual bias. and there are some ethical frameworks that (e.g. global human rights laws) claim universal truths, e.g. torturing innocent people is objectively wrong, regardless of culture or country (but that doesn't stop people from doing it obviously)
the main arguments i hear about pure objectivity is impossible or illusory is the typical observer effect which basically just states that at quantum levels, the act of observation changes outcomes (heisenberg’s uncertainty principle etc.)
of course there's cognitive bias in which human perception is filtered through language, culture, and neurology. two people can witness the same event and interpret it differently, two people can go through the same event and come out with different opinions, perceptions.
more recently i see the argument (philosophically) that knowledge is shaped by power structures (foucault), language games (wittgenstein), and social constructs (e.g. race, gender etc.). even science is influenced by funding, politics, and paradigm shifts (kuhn’s structure of scientific revolutions).
many argue that while absolute objectivity may be unattainable, we can approximate it through intersubjectivity (e.g. a peer review in science), falsifiability which just states that science progresses by disproving hypotheses, not claiming absolute truth and critical realism which is acknowledging that reality exists but our understanding of it is always partial and mediated.
wow to write all that and my answer to boil down to just a no-ish is a little funny to me.