What we call people
what they call theselves
Virgil guided Dante through the many levels of hell. People will tell you that “Angels In America” is a very long play about aids. I would argue that “Angels In America” is Tony Kurshner’s tour of the twentieth century, with men dying of aids and an angel as his Virgil.
All the characters in the play are fictitious except for one. Roy Cohn was very real. I write about him fairly often. In a century full of evil men, Cohn was near the top. He was the yin to James Baldwin’s yang. Part of my dislike of Cohn is that, even when he knew he was dying, he never asked for forgiveness. He never asked for absolution. He never asked for understanding. He just said, “fuck you,” and died.
Paraphrased in “Angels in America,” Cohn said in real life that he was not Gay. Gay men, he said, were the weakest political group in America. He was a straight man who had sex with other men. He was not gay because he was not weak.
As much as I hated Cohn, and as much as I hated him for saying this, I couldn’t refute him. At that moment in the twentieth century, gay men were struggling to have even basic rights, and Cohn was one of the least politically weak people in the world.
When it comes to social constructs like, “Queer,” “Gay,” “Straight,” and so on, I believe people have a right to describe themselves. That’s why I try not to ever describe somebody as gay who didn’t describe themselves as gay. I think you have a right to describe yourself, no matter how the rest of the world describes you.
Richard Dawkins would describe himself as an Evolutionary Biologist, which he is. I would argue that Dawkins is also one of the most important philosophers since Aristotle and maybe more important than Aristotle. When I was a young man, Dawkins developed a theory explaining how ideas are constructed and translated from one being to another. He called it “Memology,” and Memology changed how the world sees the world.
In a growing philosophy where thought creates reality, what constructs and constitutes thoughts becomes fundamentally important. At the very least, Memes change everything about how we understand and think of words, where they come from, and what they mean.
On Twitter today (yes, I still use Twitter even though it’s gone to hell), Dawkins said:
“Others have been elected in spite of being obnoxious. It’s quite a feat to get elected BECAUSE you’re obnoxious.
But there’s another, better reason. Voters fed up with being told they must be racist just because they’re white. And patronised if they deny women can have penises.”
Because it comes from Dawkins, I can’t dismiss this off-hand. I also can’t dismiss it because I think he’s right.
The issue of how we as a culture deal with transgender people has become a “front-of-mind” political issue despite transgender people making up a remarkably small percentage of the human population. As an example, there are more people with ALS in America than there are Trans people in America. ALS is fatal. Transgenderism isn’t.
I tend to use the words “Cis Women” and “Trans Women " because this helps me understand the different journeys these groups take. These are the words I use from my perspective, though. For people living through this, I recognize that they have both a need and a right to describe themselves however they see fit. Whether the world sees you as a “Woman” or as a “Trans Woman” doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. There’s been a huge kerfuffle about who uses what bathroom, but I honestly believe that’s constructed to take advantage of the issue for political purposes. Nobody is watching anybody pee. If they are, that’s another issue.
What Dawkins is saying, and a lot of people agree, is that people are pretty tired of being told what words they should use to describe other people. I get that. The words you chose to use describe how you think. If someone demands that you use other words, then that’s basically attempted mind control and a thinking person will resist that. People don’t like to be told how to think. I get that. They want the right to describe trans people however they see fit. I get that, too. I think I just wish they were more willing to try and see the issue from the trans person’s perspective, but trying to force them to is having a pretty serious political backlash.
Trying to force people not to hate or to use kind words might actually be worse than hating people or being unkind. It can have the effect of making people actually hate more, which is what happened during this election cycle, I think. People recognized this resistance to being told how to think and exploited it, with the effect of making things actually worse for trans people than better.
I predict there will be a push to start calling gay marriages “civil unions” again. This was one of the principal issues that led to the break up of the United Methodist Church. To me, it’s just a word. If you want to say you’re “married,” I don’t care. If you want to say you’re “welded-together,” “Pair-bonded,” or “Laminated,” I just don’t give a fuck, but some people do, and they’re going to force us to acknowledge their point of view whether we want to or not.
Empathy would solve a lot of this. I have tremendous empathy for trans people. Their journey in life is so very different from mine, and from the outside, it sure seems like the world is beating the crap out of them for no reason. I can’t change how other people think, though. I think it’s reasonable to change the law so that you can’t violate the civil rights of trans people, but trying to change how people think by force will almost always have the opposite effect.
The thing I hate the most about Roy Cohn is how often he’s right, and I can’t refute what he says. The same is true for Dawkins. I’d love to say to both of them, “You’re an atheist, so fuck off.” but I can’t. Right is right. I don’t think Dawkins is trying to be cruel. I think he’s trying to say things the way they are. He’s a champion for critical thinking.
I personally will call trans people whatever they want to be called. To me, it’s just words, and love is more important. I don’t think you can force people to be kind or loving by changing the words they use, though. I think that was a mistake.
