Denialism of the planet and of trans people

Florida approves instructional material from a climate denial and anti-trans organization

Children's videos produced by the Prager University Foundation (PragerU) have been approved for use in Florida classrooms. In grades K–5, PragerU videos may be shown to tach civics and government. PragerU's climate denial videos include, as Scott Waldman phrased it for Politico: "Wind and solar power pollute the Earth and make life miserable. Recent global and local heat records reflect natural temperature cycles. And people who champion those beliefs are fighting oppression." Florida is currently willing to show these as long as they're not categorized as being climate videos. Of course, because everything is connected: "PragerU's foray into approved classroom use comes as conservative states and politicians aggressively seek to dismantle curriculum in African-American history and LGBTQ issues." This organization is funded by fossil fuel billionaires.

This organization also creates anti-trans material.

Meanwhile, in 2022, the manatees died. "At Least 800 Manatees Died In Florida Last Year As Starvation Concerns Continue." The seagrass meadows that manatees eat have been disappearing due to widespread water pollution. Nick Visser, HuffPost, Jan 13, 2023."

On August 30, 2023, when Hurricane Idalia hit Florida, a 100-year-old tree oak tree fell on the governor's mansion in Tallahassee where DeSantis lives. Does DeSantis believe in climate change now? No he does not. No he does not. (President Biden knows it, though.)

We have science explaining why

The Real Prof. Katharine Hayhoe @KHayhoe tweets on August 27, 2023: 'Every "but what about...?' argument against human-caused climate change is already covered by @skepticscience's handy list; so why won't it convince people? Because it's never been about science or facts. It's solution aversion so any excuse that justifies that position will do."

The science exists. Climate deniers, procrastinators, and apologists don't want science. They just want to make excuses.

Why governments refuse to address climate change

Paul Krugman wrote in June 2022 for the New York Times that there are four reasons why climate change is difficult to solve politically:

• "when scientists began raising the alarm in the 1980s, climate change looked like a distant threat — a problem for future generations."
• climate isn't "visible to the naked eye, at least the naked eye that doesn’t want to see."
• people have always stated that it would be too expensive to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions.
• because solutions require coordinated "global action," it's simple for someone to counsel inaction, on the grounds that some other country will always continue to wreck the planet.

In sum, it's been discussed as something far in the future, not directly perceivable, difficult to address (tech, $, etc.), and requiring worldwide cooperation or else why bother.

Denialism of the planet's life and of trans people's lives feels similar

How much of this climate inaction resembles transphobia, hmm? Transphobic arguments about whether we're too futuristic; whether we are or aren't obviously trans to everyone we meet; whether we're technologically, linguistically, and culturally impossible and therefore don't actually exist; and whether we require some unfathomably burdensome accommodation just to survive, the implementation of which would remake the world.

Racial denialism

In response to an NBC article on PragerU (Dec 30, 2023), these comments on Bluesky:

Supporting racism is racist.

Misinformation on climate, transgender, race

[Corey S. Powell:] "You have written about three broad misinformation techniques in the trans debates: oversimplifying scientific knowledge, fabricating and misinterpreting research and promoting false equivalences. Are these the same techniques that have been used in science-based arguments about race and other human traits?"

[Simón(e) Sun:] "Absolutely. Even in climate change. Perhaps the most salient example is race science. There’s an entire history of asking about the science of racial differences, and how can we describe them in a biological way. That kind of research has been used in the past, and still is to some extent today, to bolster racist arguments. It’s an oversimplification to say that one population exhibits a lower average IQ than another population. That’s just biology, but there’s also social environment, socioeconomic status and other factors that come into play."
— Interview in OpenMind, April 2024

"...anti-trans rhetoric has swamped the actual science. Only a concerted effort by trans inclusive writers with large enough audiences can put a dent in this, and this will only have an impact if anti-trans voices are shown to be peddlers of misinformation. Yet more energy spent wasted on combatting misinformation when the reality is we need to address the actual issues facing trans healthcare. ...this sucks energy from trans content creators who are forced to combat this misinformation, time they could be using on other things."
"Trans medical science communication," Rachel Saunders, April 20, 2024

Call it out

"The way you deny the denial is with accurate naming."
— A.R. Moxon, No Beliefs, Just Intentions, The Reframe (Substack), Dec 17, 2023.

That's why I use the word "transphobic." Opposing or "being skeptical" of trans people is denialism of historical and scientific facts. The denialism isn't curious nor intellectual nor empathetic. It's transphobic. I name it what it is.

Although, as Florence Ashley said in the same OpenMind interview:

[Corey S. Powell:] "Here's a huge question: How do you help the general public recognize legitimate information from BS?"

[Florence Ashley:] "We need to get out of the idea that correcting misinformation by itself will convince people. But once you’ve appealed to people's emotions, once you've appealed to people's values and desire to be on your side, then correcting misinformation can make their commitment to equality sustainable. And there’s another gap, which is people who don't really have an opinion. If you already don't have an opinion on the topic, then being exposed to actual, scientifically grounded information can be very helpful. That's often what we see in courts, where even judges who were appointed by Donald Trump will sometimes rule in favor of trans rights when they're presented with information and they don’t have much preconceptions. They realize, oh, there’s so much evidence in favor of trans rights, we’ve got to do something about that. That's possible because we are talking about people who didn't have strong political attachments yet."