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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
"Profound insights arise only in debate, with a possibility of counterargument, only when there is a possibility of expressing not only correct ideas but also dubious ideas." Andrei Sakharov
Regardless of what standard you hold your own ideas to, or which ideas in particular you consider "dubious", you should read this book. I listened to the audiobook which was just fine & dandy.
Regardless of what standard you hold your own ideas to, or which ideas in particular you consider "dubious", you should read this book. I listened to the audiobook which was just fine & dandy.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Every now and again I finish a book and wish there was a way I could compel my friends family and colleagues to read it. Books such as ‘Doing Good Better’ by William MacAskill and ‘Free Speech And Why It Matters’ by Andrew Doyle had that effect and this is the latest addition to that list.
Helen Joyce’s ‘Trans’ does to trans-ideology what Richard Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion‘ did to religion. Which is quite fitting really considering trans-ideology is a modern day secular religion.
This book will go a long way towards giving people the courage to stand against the damaging effects of denying reality. It will help all of us stands firm for the rights of women, children and trans people alike.
Helen Joyce’s ‘Trans’ does to trans-ideology what Richard Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion‘ did to religion. Which is quite fitting really considering trans-ideology is a modern day secular religion.
This book will go a long way towards giving people the courage to stand against the damaging effects of denying reality. It will help all of us stands firm for the rights of women, children and trans people alike.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
informative
fast-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
So, my mom mailed me this book and asked me to read it with an open-mind. I'd be lying if I said I did, but I did genuinely try to posture myself in that direction. As such, I want to give Joyce credit that she correctly identifies and articulates many of the best arguments against her positions in a way that is quite earnest. I also believe she makes a compelling argument for some spaces, particularly support groups, remaining exclusive to cisgender women; care and support is important and specific, and it seems that things have gone a step too far in their foreclosure. She is clearly writing this book on behalf of others rather than herself, and as such her tone comes across (in the beginning) not as condemnatory, but exploratory. That is about where my nice things to say end.
Joyce, first and foremost, misidentifies her central target of Gender SelfID as the crux of a trans ideology. To attempt to define any overriding message to a movement that's arguably incohesive is perhaps an error in and of itself, but I would be astonished to see any major contingent of trans people agree with her proposal that the movement's thesis is "trans woman = woman = cis woman". No one I know is saying this; biological reality is acknowledged, at times painfully for trans people, but a settled person is well aware of the differences between trans and cis. We just think both are contained within the broader category of 'woman'. As such, much of the book is an explication of the ways in which trans people differ from the 'sex' with which their gender identity more closely aligns, often with a 'gotcha!' tone that falls rather limp in its misreading.
The broader issue, and unfortunately where I think Joyce becomes not only mistaken but actively malicious, is in whom her books seems to target and what it reinforces. This, despite the introduction gesturing towards opening a dialogue with trans people, is distinctly a book for cis women with fear of the minority. I'm not going to claim that fear is inherently transphobic or that these anxieties don't deserve to be addressed with compassion, but Joyce does not offer the same towards the subjects she writes about, seemingly for the sole purpose of demonstrating "yes, your anxieties are not only right, they should be greater!". Her recent radio comments about how trans people are a "threat to any sane world" (shorturl.at/qvyLU) make her feelings more explicit than in the book, but her overall endgame of logically proving people's desires to be not only harmful to themselves, but you, the reader, personally is at best risible and at worst horrifying. She accomplishes this by either cherry-picking trans people who have genuinely done awful things and extending their actions to be a result of common belief among the minority or through flat-out obfuscation, which there is a loooot of in this book.
Joyce frequently does not cite her sources in this book. There are times when she clarifies who she is drawing her quotes and information from, especially when dealing with uncontroversial, factual recounting of certain events, but when things get heated her pull quotes become completely and totally unmoored. There is a Further Reading section in the book, but no bibliography and often no way of telling where she is quoting from. This tactic is perhaps most egregious in her section on British women's prisons, in which she identifies what would be quite a large problem if she had the evidential backing to support her claims of mass abuse of the selfID system. I would like to engage with those statistics if they are there, but where are they! For a mathematician, Joyce seems totally unoccupied with grounding her claims in survey, relying far more on anecdote, and selectively at that.
This book is, ultimately, genuinely hateful. I implore any reader to just read the last paragraph of the book and attempt to decontextualize it from the slow-burn Joyce leads the reader through to get there. Are there concerns about bathrooms? Yes. Are there concerns about sports? Yes. Are there concerns about the relative lack of longitudinal medical data? Yes. But none of these are attacks, these are problems that need to get solved through a dialogue she doesn't seem interested in. The solution is not the foreclosure of trans people from visible public life, nor the abandonment of any and all social/legal steps towards bettering the lives of trans people (which, yes, has actually happened. Please just ask us), but through just not being condemnatory. Which, is exactly what this is.
Joyce, first and foremost, misidentifies her central target of Gender SelfID as the crux of a trans ideology. To attempt to define any overriding message to a movement that's arguably incohesive is perhaps an error in and of itself, but I would be astonished to see any major contingent of trans people agree with her proposal that the movement's thesis is "trans woman = woman = cis woman". No one I know is saying this; biological reality is acknowledged, at times painfully for trans people, but a settled person is well aware of the differences between trans and cis. We just think both are contained within the broader category of 'woman'. As such, much of the book is an explication of the ways in which trans people differ from the 'sex' with which their gender identity more closely aligns, often with a 'gotcha!' tone that falls rather limp in its misreading.
The broader issue, and unfortunately where I think Joyce becomes not only mistaken but actively malicious, is in whom her books seems to target and what it reinforces. This, despite the introduction gesturing towards opening a dialogue with trans people, is distinctly a book for cis women with fear of the minority. I'm not going to claim that fear is inherently transphobic or that these anxieties don't deserve to be addressed with compassion, but Joyce does not offer the same towards the subjects she writes about, seemingly for the sole purpose of demonstrating "yes, your anxieties are not only right, they should be greater!". Her recent radio comments about how trans people are a "threat to any sane world" (shorturl.at/qvyLU) make her feelings more explicit than in the book, but her overall endgame of logically proving people's desires to be not only harmful to themselves, but you, the reader, personally is at best risible and at worst horrifying. She accomplishes this by either cherry-picking trans people who have genuinely done awful things and extending their actions to be a result of common belief among the minority or through flat-out obfuscation, which there is a loooot of in this book.
Joyce frequently does not cite her sources in this book. There are times when she clarifies who she is drawing her quotes and information from, especially when dealing with uncontroversial, factual recounting of certain events, but when things get heated her pull quotes become completely and totally unmoored. There is a Further Reading section in the book, but no bibliography and often no way of telling where she is quoting from. This tactic is perhaps most egregious in her section on British women's prisons, in which she identifies what would be quite a large problem if she had the evidential backing to support her claims of mass abuse of the selfID system. I would like to engage with those statistics if they are there, but where are they! For a mathematician, Joyce seems totally unoccupied with grounding her claims in survey, relying far more on anecdote, and selectively at that.
This book is, ultimately, genuinely hateful. I implore any reader to just read the last paragraph of the book and attempt to decontextualize it from the slow-burn Joyce leads the reader through to get there. Are there concerns about bathrooms? Yes. Are there concerns about sports? Yes. Are there concerns about the relative lack of longitudinal medical data? Yes. But none of these are attacks, these are problems that need to get solved through a dialogue she doesn't seem interested in. The solution is not the foreclosure of trans people from visible public life, nor the abandonment of any and all social/legal steps towards bettering the lives of trans people (which, yes, has actually happened. Please just ask us), but through just not being condemnatory. Which, is exactly what this is.
I went into this book expecting to disagree with everything, but trying to at least understand the beliefs and concerns of "gender-critical feminists" or "TERFs" (depending on your POV). I give it 2 stars (somewhat begrudgingly) because it did surface some of these concerns and helped me understand a different POV that I hadn't considered before. It made me at least more open to thinking about the complexities of multiple different perceived and real impacts of discussions and laws on the gender identity and inclusion, both on transgender people and cisgender women.
But I nearly gave this a one-star review anyway; Joyce undermines her own credibility in every single chapter. Several times there was a passage that made me have an "I Never Though of It That Way" moment (hat tip to Monica Guzman's book by the same name) where I wanted to dive deeper to understand the thought more thoroughly. But she would almost always immediately follow it with a demonstrably false statement, an unsubstantiated "slippery slope" argument that felt like fear-mongering, or citing a source that at first seemed to support her POV but (after even a quick Google search) proved to be clearly misrepresented. She claims in multiple passages to support trans people, and "truly" gender-dysmorphic minors. She even makes some possibly believable claims (if I had more information that I trusted) where certain extreme gender ideologies may distract and/or harm transgender people. But then she uses trans people's dead names (sometimes, not always). For those unfamiliar, using the person's current name that they identify by, rather than that they were given at birth, is considered one of the most basic ways of showing respect to a trans person.
I wanted a more clear statement of various POV with the best supporting arguments behind them. Instead, I got a book that intermixed pieces of those with a whole heap of inconsistent language, fear-mongering tactics, and poor quotation and data citing. I can't respect this author as a legitimate journalist after reading this. However, I leave the second star, because the text helped me get an overview of the level of discourse, and the book did navigate me to some of the feminists she did quote correctly for much better-written analyses of both gender-critical and gender-inclusive feminist beliefs.
But I nearly gave this a one-star review anyway; Joyce undermines her own credibility in every single chapter. Several times there was a passage that made me have an "I Never Though of It That Way" moment (hat tip to Monica Guzman's book by the same name) where I wanted to dive deeper to understand the thought more thoroughly. But she would almost always immediately follow it with a demonstrably false statement, an unsubstantiated "slippery slope" argument that felt like fear-mongering, or citing a source that at first seemed to support her POV but (after even a quick Google search) proved to be clearly misrepresented. She claims in multiple passages to support trans people, and "truly" gender-dysmorphic minors. She even makes some possibly believable claims (if I had more information that I trusted) where certain extreme gender ideologies may distract and/or harm transgender people. But then she uses trans people's dead names (sometimes, not always). For those unfamiliar, using the person's current name that they identify by, rather than that they were given at birth, is considered one of the most basic ways of showing respect to a trans person.
I wanted a more clear statement of various POV with the best supporting arguments behind them. Instead, I got a book that intermixed pieces of those with a whole heap of inconsistent language, fear-mongering tactics, and poor quotation and data citing. I can't respect this author as a legitimate journalist after reading this. However, I leave the second star, because the text helped me get an overview of the level of discourse, and the book did navigate me to some of the feminists she did quote correctly for much better-written analyses of both gender-critical and gender-inclusive feminist beliefs.