A podcast on fear

The "Ologies" podcast with Alie Ward: Fearology Pt. 1 (FEAR) with Mary Poffenroth

This episode discusses the limbic system's fight-or-flight response, in which the amygdala sends chemical signals to the thalamus. We tend to relabel "fear" as "stress" because it's socially acceptable, even encouraged, to talk about how stressed we are about our lives. "We feel confident talking about stress because we can commiserate, but we don't feel confident talking about the f-word because there's so much shame associated with fear in our society." (13:28-41) Yet we can't eliminate fear, because it's one of four basic human emotions: happy, sad, afraid/surprised ("afrised"), and angry/disgusted ("angrusted"). "How much do you think of our anger in general is just fear that comes out the wrong pipe?" Ward asks. "So much," Poffenroth responds. (48:25)

Poffenroth distinguishes "factual fear" ("actual threats to your life, that are happening in a shared reality, right now, that your body is responding to") and "fictional fear" ("just like a good fictional book might have a nugget of truth in it, but most of it is just made up"). (25:10-26:45) The latter is a good candidate to focus on to change our responses.

In the second part of the interview, which is delivered as a separate podcast episode, Pt. 2, Poffenroth mentions a study finding that extremely successful businesspeople used the word "fear" more frequently than "stress." (at the beginning of the episode) We tend to "dress rehearse" our fears so that we can feel prepared (at about 38 minutes), but, if your body is in a heightened state of stress chronically, that stress can negatively impact cellular regeneration. (at about 34 minutes)

How the have-it-both-ways "moderate" can begin to break out of the armchair

Joshua P. Hill: "Opposing something in any meaningful way does not simply mean expressing an opinion; opposition is not a state of mind, it’s a verb. And if 61% of Americans were in active opposition, were taking action to oppose Israel’s genocide and the U.S. government’s arming and funding of the genocide, it would end tomorrow." Hill continues:

"This paradigm shift, the turn from the concept of opposition as a position we take to opposition as the actions we take, applies across our world. We cannot just sit and say that climate change is a danger, we must organize and act for a sustainable future. We cannot just say that capitalism is hurting people and the planet and therefore we oppose it, we must build unions that struggle for the working class and organizations and institutions that make this battle for a better, freer future tangible and real. We must act and build the capacity to take increasingly powerful and meaningful collective actions."
— Joshua P. Hill, Opposition means Action: We must act to free Palestine and to free ourselves. New Means. Sep 04, 2024.

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Writing in 1939, Max Lerner wrote this indictment of the typical "liberal." It would be a mistake to read this term using the 2020 American understanding of "liberal" vs. "conservative." It may refer to those who believe in liberal democracy (rather than any of its alternatives), but in context the best substitute term seems to be "moderate." The "liberal," here, is an armchair "moderate" who wants to have it both ways when it comes to judging others yet never taking firm action.

For to the public the liberal has become the caricature of the way he has presented himself. He is Mr. Janus Facing-Both-Ways. He sees two sides to every question (why only two?). He is Hamlet-like in his indecisiveness at a time when victory comes to those who can make up their minds. He is generous in his judgment of others and tolerant of their way of life. His principle is one of inclusiveness – not in the democratic sense of including his fellow-men in his orbit because of his camaraderie with them, but in the martyr-like sense of allowing others to say and do as they please even when he hates and is hurt by everything they stand for. He has an uneasy distrust of the capitalists, yet he feels that capitalism alone stands between him and anarchy. He is forever emphasizing the preciousness of the social heritage, the delicacy of the social fabric, and the danger of endangering either. His indignation at the denial of social justice mounts in direct proportion to its distance from himself. He will talk with unction about democracy, yet he fears the actions and passions of the democratic majorities. He is lofty in his attitude toward the masses and fluctuates among lip-service to their stereotypes (which he calls "public opinion"), uneasy fears when they begin to want something hard ("pressure groups"), and panic when they act to get it ("revolution"). His symbol is the swivel-chair, whether that of editor, columnist, or professor — and the best thing about it is that it can turn in so many directions. His ammunition is abstractions. His tenacity is nil. A purpose to him is like a work of art meticulously carved in butter.


The risk may be inherent to the intellectualization of politics. In 1941, Erich Fromm wrote that there is a type of "irrational doubt" that sticks with us until we achieve a "positive freedom," i.e. freedom that is not just "freedom from" something but is a "freedom to" be, do, or have something. And what that means is that we must achieve social connection and personal fulfillment before we can let go of a deep-seated sense (whether conscious or unconscious) of instability and insufficiency.

Doubt is the starting point of modern philosophy; the need to silence it had a most powerful stimulus on the development of modern philosophy and science. But although many rational doubts have been solved by rational answers, the irrational doubt has not disappeared and cannot disappear as long as man has not progressed from negative freedom to positive freedom. The modern attempts to silence it, whether they consist in a compulsive striving for success, in the belief that unlimited knowledge of facts can answer the quest for certainty, or in the submission to a leader who assumes the responsibility for 'certainty' — all these solutions can only eliminate the awareness of doubt. The doubt itself will not disappear as long as man does not overcome his isolation and as long as his place in the world has not become a meaningful one in terms of his human needs.

Peter Levine wrote in 2013:

The dangerous kind of ideology is highly intellectual. It proceeds from a few ideas — the fewer the better, for the sake of elegance. Its foundational principles are mutually consistent; contradictions would be embarrassing. Adherents of such ideologies make concrete, practical judgments by applying principles. * * * They are deadly when they seize control, because then people, organizations, and institutions that are inconsistent with their ideas are at grave risk. A healthy, helpful kind of ideology emerges in a different way.

Ideally, in politics, the goal "is never completely attainable because this politics is nothing more than a permanent challenge, a never-ending effort that can only in the best possible case leave behind it a certain trace of goodness," Levine said.

Of the best liberal activists, Levine said:

Their lives of struggle become compelling stories, enriched by their efforts to balance conflicting goals and values. Their disparate contributions are embraced by one or more political parties — or by other major political forces, such as coalitions within civil society. * * * By emphasizing liberalism’s pragmatic, experimental roots, I do not mean to deny its intellectual achievement. Jane Addams, for instance, was an extremely learned and insightful writer. But I suggest that in a healthy ideological movement, intellectual reflection follows practical experimentation, not the reverse.

Some limitations

Before we can begin to answer what kind of practical actions need to be taken, we have to recognize some parameters.

First of all, the type of pro-democracy activism that is most needed for you to do depends where you are.

"Most countries are neither full dictatorships nor consolidated democracies; they fall somewhere in the middle," Nicholas Cheeseman and Brian Klaas wrote in 2018. Thus, many countries "did not experience a moment of high-quality democracy and then gradually fall back into authoritarianism; rather, in most cases they simply shifted from one form of authoritarianism to another." For these countries, "it is more appropriate to talk about how we can strengthen or build democracy, rather than rescue or defend it.”

Or, to use Umair Haque's more specific suggestion from 2018: "The way to beat authoritarianism is to offer people a transformative new social contract." His point is that strengthening certain institutions can make the democratic system look more attractive than its authoritarian alternative.

The authoritarians have a radical plan to reconstruct society. Not a very thoughtful one — one based on hate and spite and fear. But the problem is that no one else offers an opposing one.

That is the difference between 'resistance' and opposition. Opposition says — radical change is coming, one way or the other, in a broken society. Here is the positive, beneficial kind, that creates the future, not just rewinds to the barbarities of the past. But if no such opposition exists, then a society can never beat authoritarianism....fighting authoritarians with cries of hypocrisy and evil does less than no good. You beat authoritarianism by repairing the broken society that gave rise to it.

Second, the more diverse a constituency, the more compromises the government must make to satisfy everyone's preferences, expectations, and needs. Homogeneous constituencies, by contrast, can tend towards extremism. What we may leap to criticize as mealy-mouthed moderateness may be a delicate line someone is treading, not primarily because they are an armchair philosopher who shies away from real debate, but because they are an actual political leader with diverse constituents to satisfy. Adam Serwer, in 2020:

The source of the GOP’s extremism, and the Democrats’ relative moderation, is not personal virtue. It is, rather, the fact that one party is relatively ideologically, religiously, and ethnically homogenous, while the other has to represent a constituency that is ideologically, religiously, and ethnically diverse. The Republican Party’s leadership and propaganda apparatus have trained their base to view Democratic voters not just as political rivals but as an existential threat, whose claims to American identity and therefore power are intrinsically invalid. This sense of being under siege allowed Trump to seize control of the party, to govern as though his voters are the only ones with legitimate claims to American citizenship, and to command absolute, unquestioning loyalty even as his ignorance and vanity prove lethal.

Because democracy is about compromise, most people in a democracy will not get everything they hoped for from their government. More pointedly, because democracy empowers majority coalitions to decide for minority populations, it means that some freedoms will be sacrificed to the system, generally in the hope that the system will, on the whole, preserve freedoms. This could be desirable on utilitarian grounds (i.e. the individual enjoys a net gain of freedom) or on deontological grounds (i.e. a democracy upholds certain freedoms that must be upheld at any price, even if the individual experiences a net loss of freedom). Jamie Bartlett, 2018:

Democracy is about individual liberty of course, but that’s only half the picture. It is also a system of coercion because your liberty must sometimes be taken away too....The moral basis for this control is the assertion that its laws and powers express the will of the people, and also protect certain fundamental rights.

Third, there is the recognition that mere knowledge doesn't always translate to power, and mere transparency isn't always activism. Garret Keizer, in 2012:

Even more than openness, the byword of the new prudery is information; its favorite motto, ‘Knowledge is power.’ You know you are in the presence of a confirmed knowledge-is-power type when your concerns about technologically enhanced surveillance are countered by the assertion that the same technologies are allowing citizens to watch the watchers. ‘Just the other day,’ you will be told, ‘some kid with a smartphone got pictures of these cops beating the crap out of a guy, and now they’re all over the Internet!’ I’ve gotten into the habit of remaining silent long enough for the speaker to grasp the implications of what he’s just said, but that can leave you speechless for the better part of a week. So what you’re telling me, I want to say, is that after more than two hundred years of constitutional government, police are still beating the crap out of citizens, but you feel empowered because somebody took a picture of it?

I don’t dispute that knowledge can lead to power or that access to information is essential to self-government, but I fear we have been bamboozled into believing that knowledge is itself power, that sitting in a coffee shop racking up ‘badges’ for your visits to muckraking websites makes you a revolutionary. For almost a decade now we have had the knowledge that there were never any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and I challenge anyone to stand with me next to the bed of a legless twenty-five-year-old Iraq War veteran and tell me that the knowledge was power. Power for whom?

In fact, the only sphere in which the mere possession of knowledge amounts to power is the sphere of individual privacy. If I know that my government has engaged in illegal wiretaps, that knowledge by itself is nothing but an illusion of power — and an illusion that the powerful may be quite happy for me to have. But if I know my neighbor is cheating on his wife, and he knows that I know, that is power, however pathetic and humiliating. Perhaps that is one reason for the voyeuristic streak in our culture: a bid for some kind of power on the part of otherwise impotent Peeping Toms.

Similarly, Jia Tolentino, in an essay reprinted in 2019, suggests that in observing the crimes of the rich and famous, we have access to imagine what it would be like to perpetrate those crimes. The real-life story is consumed almost in the way we consume fiction, for similar purposes.

The final, definitive scam for the millennial generation is the election of an open con artist to the presidency in 2016. Donald Trump is a lifelong scammer, out and proud and seemingly unstoppable. For decades before he entered politics, he peddled a magnificently fraudulent narrative about himself as a straight-talking, self-made, vaguely populist billionaire, and the fact that the lie was always in plain sight became a central part of his appeal. * * * As long as he’s rich and white and male and bigoted and rapacious, to many people he represents the most quintessentially American form of power and strength. He was elected for the same reason that people buy lottery tickets. It’s not the actual possibility of victory that you pay for; it’s the fleeting vision of victory. ... The pipe dream is becoming the dominant structure of aspiration, and its end-stage shadows — cruelty, carelessness, nihilism — are following close behind. After all, in becoming party to a scam, we access some of the hideous glory of scamming: we get to see, if not to actually experience, what it might be like to loot the place and emerge unscathed.

Fourth, it is usually neither our knowledge nor our virtue that determines whether we have war or peace. It is the dominant political "mood." Zat Rana in 2020:

...some philosopher or statesman between 500 or 2,500 years ago made an abstract, logical cause-and-effect argument that connected the idea of freedom (different from actually experiencing freedom) to our livelihood, and we spend most of our waking hours living under its banner, thinking that it is the real justification for why we do things today. And the fact that it isn't really why we do things in practice is, of course, very clear to anyone not living in our own little bubble. * * * Nations don't go to war based on some purified notion of freedom. That's either a post-hoc justification or a lie told to subdue the masses. Like any group, they go over the edge based on mood and momentum. * * * How much of your current outlook on the world is shaped by your own rational judgement of what is going on around us right now, and how much of it is simply opinions you externalize that were first absorbed and internalized from the cultural mood you predominantly identify with? The former isn't necessarily superior to the latter if the people you surround yourself with have strong collective judgement, but the question still provides good insight into whether your emotions actually reflect reality as they should or not.

Here's another way of posing the question. Marisa Kabas reports that "writer and panelist Andrea Grimes asked a few hours earlier during her [May 14, 2024 ComstockCon] discussion with historian Jules Gill-Peterson: “How do you break out of the mindset that compliance is more fulfilling than solidarity?”

Source

Max Lerner. It Is Later Than You Think: The Need for a Militant Democracy. New York: The Viking Press, 1939. p 5.

Erich Fromm. Escape from Freedom. New York: Avon, 1941. pp. 97-98.

Peter Levine. We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Nicholas Cheeseman and Brian Klaas. How to Rig an Election. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018.

"Beating Authoritarianism Isn’t as Simple as You Think. It’s Even Simpler." Umair Haque. Eudaimonia (Medium). June 17, 2018.

“We Can Finally See the Real Source of Washington Gridlock.” Adam Serwer. The Atlantic. April 2, 2020. Accessed April 6, 2020.

Jamie Bartlett. The People Vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (and How We Save It). Dutton: April 5, 2018.

Garret Keizer. Privacy. New York: Picador, 2012. p. 38.

“The Election,” Jia Tolentino. Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion. New York: Random House, 2019. pp. 215, 219-220.

Zat Rana. “Thinking Better, Together.” List email. 24 March 2020.

We have nothing if we don’t have solidarity: What the abortion rights movement can teach us about killing zombies, Marisa Kabas, The Handbasket, May 17, 2024.

Quotes: Is the world an illusion, and what do we know about it?

Upton Sinclair:

In college, when they were teaching me the theories of the world's leading philosophers, I said to the stout and jolly professor: "Why doesn't someone make a philosophy based on common sense?" Said he: "What do you mean by common sense?" I replied: "The things we all really know are true." That was more than forty years ago; the philosophers called "pragmatists" were already at work, but nobody appeared to know about them in the College of the City of New York, nor later in Columbia University.

Rene Descartes:

Common sense is the best distributed thing in the whole world. Everyone thinks that they are well endowed with it, so that even those who are most difficult to please in every other respect do not usually wish to have more than they already possess.

Clive James:

I am showing them [young people] the way to a necessary failure: the grim but edifying realization that a complete picture of reality is not to be had.

Fernando Pessoa:

There is only one problem: reality, and that is insoluble and alive. What do I know about the difference between a tree and a dream? I can touch the tree; I know I have the dream. What does that really mean?

Upton Sinclair, again:

When Dr. Samuel Johnson kicked a stone, and said he knew it was there, the old fellow wasn't telling us anything except that he was a dogmatist... * * * The difference between myself and the materialist is that I don't know and say so, while he doesn't know but says he does. * * * Let us be ever so proud of our intellect, a portion of our subconscious remains the primitive thing that evolution has made it; and upon that mind we have to depend for the assimilating of our food, the making of new blood, the repair of tissues--yes, even of the mighty cortex, which has explored all the secrets of the universe, but does not know how to build a single cell of its own tissue.

Ralph Minogue:

Humans have always suffered the illusion of knowledge while living the reality of belief.

Sources

Upton Sinclair, What God Means to Me. New York: Ferris Printing Company, 1935. 24.

Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method, Part I

Clive James. Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts. (2007) New York: Norton, 2008. p. xxv.

Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet. Edited by Maria Jose de Lancastre. Translated by Margaret Jull Costa. London: Serpent's Tail, 1991 (a collection of writings that were unorganized upon Pessoa's death in 1935). p. 126.

Upton Sinclair, What God Means to Me. New York: Ferris Printing Company, 1935. 15-6, 24, 39.

Ralph Minogue. Responsibility To, Responsibility For. Baltimore: AmErica House, 2000. p 21.

Twitter allows bots to spread false information about COVID-19

Here's an example of a Twitter bot sharing false information.

What people?
Name them.
What better way to lead people to slaughter than to tell them the "experts" say we need this.
HOW MANY DIED UNDER OBAMA? (H1N1) pic.twitter.com/t9AyfXm8DA

— 154,552 Sealed Indictments ⭐⭐⭐ (@Theresa78375601) March 23, 2020

What looks wrong about this? First of all, I personally remember the H1N1 flu. People were initially concerned about it, but it turned out to be a regular flu. At least one of my close family members eventually was diagnosed with it, had only mild symptoms, and was told not to worry. I don't even remember if I had it. The idea that H1N1 killed one of out every five sufferers is simply not plausible to me; it does not track with my own memory.

How do I check the data in this image? Conveniently for me, the fakers left the news outlet's logo, "Business Insider," in the image of the chart. Perhaps this was intentional, to make the chart appear more official. However, it also allows me to easily research whether this is indeed a Business Insider chart. I simply Google the name of the publication together with the title or keywords from the alleged material ["Business Insider" "Wuhan coronavirus compared to other major viruses"].

Here's the real information. The Business Insider chart (from an article dated 30 January 2020, viewed 23 March 2020) is different from what the bot shared on Twitter. It's clearly modified to make the 2009 H1N1 virus look more dangerous than it was.

Another difference between the charts is that the fake one has "Wuhan coronavirus" data updated as of 30 January, while the real one has "COVID-19" data checked again as of 4 February. Business Insider's original chart indeed likely used the name "Wuhan coronavirus" (it's still used in their article). The name "COVID-19" was probably swapped out later, as that name was announced on 11 February, so Business Insider probably updated their chart later to reflect the new name (and didn't provide a new "as of" date, because the data is still only current as of 4 February).

The difference in the name of the coronavirus is therefore not concerning; Business Insider is entitled to update their own images at any time to reflect better terminology. What is concerning is the difference in the H1N1 data from 2009, which could not have changed. The H1N1 virus ultimately had a fatality rate of 0.02%. The false chart is claiming that H1N1 was around 870 times more lethal than it was.

You'll notice I edited the JPGs directly to indicate which is false and which is real. I want you to know the reason why I put that information in the JPG and not merely as text captions within this blog post! It's because I don't want the false JPG to spread any further.

And who is responsible for the spread of false information on social media? The people who create these bots, and the Twitter executives who allow the bots to exist.

Throat symptoms: 'Flu' or air pollution?

On self-diagnosis in time of plague.

On 6 March 2020, I felt a slight tickle in my throat. I wasn't coughing, nor did I have any other symptoms of cold. It was barely identifiable as a "symptom" of anything whatsoever, not even a small cold. It happened to arise the same day that Colombia confirmed its first coronavirus diagnosis, so, regardless of whatever symptoms anyone might have had that day, it seemed highly unlikely that any given person in Colombia would also have that virus. So I didn't think it was worth mentioning to anyone as a complaint on any level about anything since it was so minor and barely noticeable.

Over two weeks later, the tickle in my throat was still present. It cannot possibly be coronavirus (symptoms of which peak around day 7 or 8, I hear). Suddenly, I realize what it is.

The air quality in Bogotá has been poor for several weeks. This is a known problem. According to scientific measurements, my neighborhood is affected to a medium degree compared against other neighborhoods in the city. Here are screenshots of data from AQICN.org (visit the website for real-time updates). I placed arrows in the screenshots to indicate the onset of my throat symptoms. The timing corresponds to an increase in pollution.

PM2.5

NO2

O3

Even several days of citywide self-enforced quarantine — which has almost entirely eliminated road traffic on the 8-lane road on which I live, for one example — has not improved the air quality much. The particulates are coming from smoke in other parts of Colombia and Venezuela.

It's nice to know it's not a virus. It's unpleasant that there is general air pollution.

"Hell is so much easier to picture. The recent U.N. report on the climate forecasts, with devastating frankness, worldwide catastrophe, absent a sudden upsurge of yet undetectable stewardship and coöperation. Meanwhile, Trump’s E.P.A. has dismantled an expert panel on air pollution. This is, of course, a disaster. Nobody has a right to feel very optimistic about the outcome, and there’s a vast unfairness at work: even the most ardent recyclers and carbon tiptoers—not to mention those without a wide range of options when it comes to what and how they consume—will feel the burn. But, here, as almost nowhere else in the visible world, the lines of cause and effect, neglect and decay, sin and punishment, are plain. You sow the coal and reap the whirlwind. Heat the air, and let the icebergs roll on righteously, like a mighty stream. First comes the flood, then comes the fire. It matters, very much, what you do." — "How the Idea of Hell Has Shaped the Way We Think: For centuries, we’ve given lavish attention to the specifics of punishment, and left Heaven woefully under-sketched. Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, January 14, 2019

Update, March 28, 2020: Here's a map of how European air pollution has reduced during quarantine for coronavirus. One scientist is quoted as giving this context: "the way our economies operate, absent pandemics, has massive hidden health costs, and it takes a pandemic to help see that."

2026 air pollution map

MAP: Track the air quality across the US, Byron Manley, Curt Merrill, Renée Rigdon, Matt Stiles, CNN, July 17, 2026

Two brief thoughts about planning and trust

Laurie Penny wrote for Wired in March 2020:

You can’t fight an epidemic just by being aggressively right about it...Shaming and blaming people...sometimes works in the long term, when people have had time to go away and think about it and calm down. We don't have that time right now. We have to be gentle with each other. We have to practice trust. Because right now and in the decades to come, our biggest problems as a species are going to be the problems we can't solve without trusting each other to do the right thing.

Years ago, Henri J. M. Nouwen wrote:

Along with trust there must be gratitude — the opposite of resentment. Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception ad experience of life as a gift. My resentment tells me that I don’t receive what I deserve. It always manifests itself in envy.

Gratitude, however, goes beyond the 'mine' and 'thine' and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.

Sources

Laurie Penny. "Panic, Pandemic, and the Body Politic." Wired. March 14, 2020.

Henri J. M. Nouwen. The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming. New York: Doubleday, 1992. p. 85.

10 failed arguments in 1,000 words: The latest anti-transgender screed

In a 2 March 2020 opinion piece, "Women must have the right to organise. We will not be silenced" — distressingly categorized by The Guardian under the theme "Transgender," when it is really anti-transgender — Suzanne Moore puts forth some remarks to which I strongly object.

[Image: Juliet does a massive eyeroll.]

Before getting started, I wish to acknowledge this statement in Moore's opinion piece: "I know from personal experience the consequences of being deemed transphobic by an invisible committee on social media. It has meant death and rape threats for me and my children, and police involvement." She gives no further details. While I am unfamiliar with the situation to which she is referring and I am ignorant of whom she might be accusing, no one should ever receive violent threats, full stop.

I also wish to acknowledge her statement at the end of her article: "Women have the right to call out the violent men who rape." Again, of course they do. "We have the right," she adds, "to speak and organise without being told that speech is itself dangerous." Well, yes. Speech itself must be protected.

That said, there's nothing else in this 1000-word article I can sympathize with or support. I am not objecting to speech per se. I object to the content of this particular speech.

Here's ten areas where I disagree.

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1. In Moore's initial paragraphs, she expresses nostalgia for the 1980s during which (supposedly) people of all sexual orientations were able to unite behind a feminist agenda. Then, "solidarity took precedence over sexuality," but now, no longer. She laments infighting that has "obscured our understanding of who the real enemies are." The sentiment is hypocritical given that her article is not supportive of transgender people. She is asking transgender people to support her cause, while asserting that she will not support their cause. She is missing half of the point about solidarity. Perhaps the better half.

2. Next, she describes physical sex as "a material fact," not "a feeling" nor "a construct." She says: "Female is a biological classification that applies to all living species. If you produce large immobile gametes, you are female...This is not complicated, nor is there a spectrum, although there are small numbers of intersex people who should absolutely be supported." Very well, if this is where she wants to begin. But where is she going? Why does this matter to her? It matters, she says, because women are oppressed based on the way they reproduce. Their experiences of "menstruation, childbirth and menopause" are highly relevant.

Very well, but where do we go from there? Indeed, female reproductive processes are relevant to discussions of women's rights — to broad discussions and to some specific discussions. But there are many women who, for any number of reasons, don't menstruate or can't give birth or nurse. This doesn't mean they aren't women or that they can't be subject to the same sort of discrimination. They might be discriminated against based on other people's assumptions about their reproductive capacity or desire, or based on their belonging to a gender category in which most other people are able to get pregnant even if they as individuals are known to be unable to do so.

"We won’t now have our bodies or voices written out of the script," Moore says. This is a leap. Just because transgender women are unable to get pregnant (unless, just perhaps, they are also intersex) does not mean they are writing anyone else's body out of any script. What is "the script," anyway?

3. Moore complains that "some transgender ideology" holds that "gender is material and therefore can be possessed by whoever claims it, and it is sex as a category that is a social construction." This doesn't sound quite right, and I think it is oversimplified to the point of inaccuracy. Transgender people do generally reserve the right to assert their own genders (i.e. they "possess" a personal gender identity by "claim[ing] it"). However, asserting an identity does not mean that the identity has a "material" reality. And, while some people say that biological sex is a construct, others do not explain it that way, and furthermore the pursuit of hormones and surgery — common among transgender people, of course — implies, to me anyway, that sex does have a material basis. Sex and gender can be biological facts and social constructs, simultaneously, in different ways for different people. It is an oversimplification to suggest that only transgender people believe that gender is material while everyone else believes that sex is material. This ideological dichotomy is not going to hold up to scrutiny.

4. Moore throws down the gauntlet: "You either protect women’s rights as sex-based or you don’t protect them at all." This absolutist statement is not supported, elaborated, or otherwise defended in any way. It is question-begging. The underlying question for which this op-ed is a "subtweet" is something like: Can you support women's rights while not drawing a strict equivalence between "woman" and "female"? Moore says no: you have to equate "woman" and "female," or else females don't have any rights whatsoever. But she doesn't defend this, and it seems as though defending this statement was meant to be the point of this 1000-word article.

5. In the following paragraph, Moore implies that women should be allowed to organize female-only groups (in her view, groups that explicitly exclude transgender women). She says it's important that women are "trusted to make decisions about their own reality" and that they be able to organize "autonomously" without "rely[ing] on male authority." This is not a complete argument. Nowhere in this article does she say there's a legal challenge to women's groups that exclude transgender women. There might well be a lawsuit somewhere, but she doesn't discuss any. She seems to be talking only about moral challenges. And these moral challenges surely do not emanate only (or even primarily) from "male authority." Many women challenge other women on their transgender-exclusive policies; these women's voices, too, should be trusted.

6. "Meanwhile," she says, "men-only spaces are how half the establishment operates and no one considers that to be transphobic. None of this discussion is about men giving up space for trans men; it is always about what women must accept." This simply makes no sense. What is "the establishment," and how do we measure "half" of it? What is "this discussion," and how do we measure "none" of it? As a generalization, men do not have many single-gender/single-sex groups that serve the same kind of purpose as feminist groups serve for women. Is that what is meant by "the establishment"? Or is this a comment that most corporate boardrooms tend to be male-dominated? Or is she talking about locker rooms? Or prisons? And is she suggesting that men are happy to count transgender men in these spaces (spaces which are men-only for varying reasons) without challenge or comment? Is she suggesting that the world would somehow be more just and equal if transgender men were harassed more frequently, to put them on a par with transgender women, and so that cisgender men could begin feeling that they were being inconvenienced by the existence of transgender people just as some cisgender women feel this way? What kind of solidarity is Moore endorsing here?

7. "Living your best life would be one free of male violence," she says. Surely that is one criterion for a good life. It is not the sole criterion of anyone's "best life."

8. And this is some kind of logical fallacy (her words in quotation marks and italics):

a. The "tiny" transgender population should "have the best lives they can."
b. The best life is "free of male violence."
c. It's typically men, "not feminists[,] who murder trans people."
d. "Male violence is an issue for women, which is why we want single-sex spaces." Her entire article defines "women" as "female" and as non-transgender. But she just acknowledged in parts (b) and (c) that transgender people also face violence at the hands of men. What's her proposal for helping transgender people avoid violence so they can live their best lives? Nothing. As she expressed herself in part (a): transgender people should have the best lives "they can." The implication I'm hearing is that she is not inclined to help them, advocate for them, or otherwise enable them to make their way in the world. They have to hardscrabble and bootstrap the best life they can. She has no intention to get involved with the self-actualization of this "tiny" population.
e. "Vulnerable women in refuges and prisons must be allowed to live in safe environments — the common enemy here is the patriarchy, remember?" Her implication seems to be that transgender women are violent toward other women or otherwise make women's spaces unsafe; however, no information is provided here to support such a claim. Nor does she explain how, if "the common enemy is the patriarchy," any good is served by ejecting transgender women from women's spaces that those transgender women feel, believe, and successfully demonstrate (and that many other people agree) are appropriate for them.

9. "How did we arrive at a situation where there are shocking and rising numbers of teenage girls presenting at specialist clinics with gender dysphoria, while some who have transitioned are now regretful and infertile?" This is a non sequitur. Suddenly she is talking about transgender boys — different gender, different age group. And only for one sentence. Of course, if they transition, they may well end up "infertile," as the sterilization of female reproductive organs is often a goal of a transgender man's transition. Since this is the autonomous choice of someone who, by her standards, is "female," she shouldn't oppose that choice, but should trust that person. And if she claims to worry that these people will be "regretful," this comes across as nothing more than concern-trolling, since nothing in this article previously attempted to identify these people as individuals or as a group, expressed sincere interest in their well-being, or listened to them.

10. The last line is, "There are more of us than you think." This has rhetorical power but it is, of course, nothing but an appeal to the majority or to popularity, a common logical fallacy. Suggesting that other unknown people out there agree with her position does not make her argument any more logical or persuasive. Certainly not to people who are harmed by it.

2022 article

Suzanne Moore also wrote for the Telegraph: "When did ‘woman’ become the hardest word to define?": If a politician can’t give a clear answer when asked on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, it’s evident there is a problem… March 10, 2022.

Here, she said: "On Woman’s Hour – on International Women’s Day – the redoubtable Emma Barnett asked Anneliese Dodds a simple question," which supposedly "her listeners had sent in: a clear definition of the word 'woman'." According to Moore, "Dodds prevaricated for what seemed like hours."

She then complained about attempts at inclusive language, including "cervix-havers", "bodies with vaginas," and "vulva-owners," each of which — according to the way she wrote the article — has been used at least once, by someone, at some point in the last four years. A couple universities have recently used the term "birthing parent" in their maternity policies.

She asks: "Why, then, this utter denial of womanhood? Is 'woman' now a dirty word?" If she really wants an answer to "why" there are changes in language, she could ask the institutions who tried out this inclusive language. Surely they could offer an explanation.

She adds the obligatory "sympathy" line: "Trans women have an incredibly tough time. I have every sympathy for someone who puts themselves through this – as I do for trans men – and feel it should be an adult decision." The age at which trans people decide to transition is, first of all, not Moore's decision to make, and second of all, she hasn't justified her opinion on that inside this article, and third of all, it's a non-sequitur from "I have every sympathy" for trans people, unless what she's saying is that she pities trans people who transition because transition is itself horrible, a position which, again, she hasn't justified in this article.

She also says "the vast majority of people...have no issue whatsoever with trans people leading their best lives." Hmm. She means what I define as the best possible life for them or the best version of their lives, from the options they put forth, that I will allow them to live, insofar as she doesn't automatically agree that trans people get to live the lives we want to live.

"The small number of the population who are trans are the reason, through no fault of their own, that all political parties are now terrified of the word 'woman'. It is a form of madness. In the name of inclusivity, we cannot name the majority of the population.

Until recently, this was but a very fringe issue. However, in the space of a few years we've reached the point where a politician can't explain what a woman is on the radio on a programme called Woman's Hour, showing how mad the debate has become."

Rather than considering what any trans-inclusive person may have had to say on any issue, she jumps to assuming it is "madness" and "mad," and that there is "a debate" — about what? If "the debate" she's pointing out is a mad version of itself, can she name the proper version of "the debate"?

Moore says that one politician said that "woman" is "a way to self-identify"; according to Moore, this answer — although apparently a definition — means she "couldn't define a woman," and it is "misogyny."

She goes on:

"Where has this demand come from? Trans activism and lobby groups like Stonewall and Mermaids have been phenomenally successful in persuading corporations, institutions and political parties to adopt a language in which the word 'woman' is verboten as it may 'trigger' someone who feels themself to be a woman, even though they have male anatomy."

This is a bizarre assumption. Here I was thinking that "birthing person" would be an attempt to include transgender men who were born with uteruses and give birth, yet are legally not "women" because they have updated the gender markers on their IDs, so a maternity policy that speaks of "women" might actually not give rights to someone who used to have an "F" on their ID but now has an "M." No, Moore's assumption is that a trans woman "who feels themself to be a woman" would actually be "trigger[ed]" by hearing "the word 'woman'," so women who are trans want to ban the word "woman." This makes sense! Why didn't I think of that!

She makes this claim about the origin of trans-inclusive language:

"Much of it came out of the so-called 'radicals' around Jeremy Corbyn, and by 2020, those lined up to replace him all signed what, to me, was a quasi-Stalinist pledge. It demanded that all signatories “accept there is no material conflict between trans rights and women’s rights”. Anyone who disagreed was a bigot and to be drummed out of the party.

Many lifelong members and trade unionists were purged – the very people who had helped shape the 2010 Equality Act. Many who had helped found Stonewall and fought against Section 28 for gay equality set up Woman’s Place UK; this was deemed to be 'a hate group'."

As a bonus, she refers to "transphobic" in scare quotes regarding a J.K. Rowling tweet from 2020. Never mind that J.K. Rowling has continued to tweet since then, and her tweets are transphobic.

She concludes with a quotation that is popularly used by anti-transgender people on Twitter these days: "As the American social reformer and women’s rights activist Susan B Anthony had it: 'No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party who ignores her sex.'" I cannot find the attribution, except that this photograph suggests that Anthony had indeed said this (or something like it) as early as 1872. One issue here is that Anthony was campaigning for white women's suffrage at the same time as African Americans were campaigning for suffrage as well. Anthony strongly felt that white women should get the vote first, or perhaps simultaneously with Black people, but in no circumstances should Black people get the vote before white women. Her arguments were racist. And so when she allegedly referred to "a party who ignores her sex," she may have been referring to a party that addresses racism before sexism. Her biographer, Ida Husted Harper, said that around 1867 when updates were being proposed for the New York state constitution, Anthony "was highly indignant and declared that she would sooner cut off her right hand than ask the ballot for the black man and not for woman." That's why I'm concerned about the context of the phrase "a party who ignores her sex." It looks like transphobes might be taking a racist argument and leveraging it for a transphobic argument, which they do all the time.

Suzanne Moore's resignation letter from the Guardian reads like a dril tweet. 'I am devastated and will leave / mAnd you can declare your victory. You have pushed out a working class women ( I am longer that for sure }'

— Nate (@nateffo) April 4, 2023