The Dangerous Appeal of Reductionism
For a week now the vocal portion of the trans community has wrestled with the implications and fallout of an controversial op-ed in the New York Times by trans writer Andrea Long Chu. While undoubtedly a skilled wordsmith, the quality of her prose doesn’t even begin to answer the questions posed by the article, most notably among them, why did the Times think it was a good idea to run it?
As a foundation to what I have to say in response, I’m obliged to first acknowledge the wonderful and spot on commentary by the indispensable Katelyn Burns at Rewire. If I say anything from this point which seems to contradict her remarks then I have poorly expressed myself. There is, in my view, two parallel tracks here on which the publication of Chu’s piece is in error. One is the manner in which major media outlets gravitate towards controversy (to drive traffic) and thus seem to not hesitate in the slightest to publish material that feeds into the anti-trans meta-narrative so endlessly propagated by right wing culture warriors and left wing TERFs.
As one person noted on Twitter, a thousand trans women saying “transition saved my life” is not, apparently, worthy of column inches but ONE that says “I’m still not happy” needs a platform. It makes no sense. But then the Times and other publications have a history of such choices in other areas. Let’s send reporters to a small town diner in rural Pennsylvania to find four geriatric Trump voters and do a feature article on them.
Monthly.
Let’s do a feature profile of a Neo-Nazi, let’s talk to the poor misunderstood rapist, whatever. Elevating the outlier view is a form of journalistic click-bait that grows more problematic by the month. it’s no surprise it would turn up on the Opinion pages too. But it’s still worthy of rebuke and the Times deserves every bit of grief it might receive for what amounts to gawking at someone’s pain.
Historically, pandering to such prurient interest is always profitable. A hundred years ago, people with physical differences that were shocking to the public were hired by circuses and carnivals to appear in “freak shows” and often had no choice since conventional means of obtaining income were not available to them. The people of any given town, feeling superior, paid their nickel to walk through and gave with pity on the poor benighted creatures who were less fortunate than they themselves were. Our current media willingness to cash in on what is just a modernized version of “beholds the freaks” is not more thoughtful or high-brow, it just makes pretense to such.
It’s certainly true that in many venues from “reality tv” to tabloids, there’s a lot of money to be made in gawking at the misfortune of others, or just the “oddness” of someone’s life. But i would submit that serious journalistic outlets out to hold themselves to a higher standard.
Into this modern-day sideshow steps Chu with the other problematic aspect of this publication. The tendency to reduce a complex and multi-faceted concept to a simple all encompassing narrative. As the wonderful Jennifer Finney Boylan is wont to say, if you’ve met one trans person — you’ve met one trans person. Combine that desire to transpose your own personal simplified narrative onto the larger community, and then go out of your way to make that narrative edgy and provocative and you are, perhaps deliberately, trying to be a bomb-thrower, not a communicator.
While, as I noted, she’s a skilled writer she is also a problematic personality who seems to revel in creating narrative problems for other trans people heedless of the risk and damage that may result in their lives as a result. As Zinnia Jones noted on Twitter, the flaws in the article come into sharper focus when taking a step back to look at the author’s pattern of behavior. Chu seems to believe some really bizarre things, or at least asserts such things for the purpose of shock value.
Among them: that some “men” only transition to atone for guilt about having had male privilege; that some (including her?) transition because the idea “turned them on”; that “sissy porn” and “forced fem” erotica can make you trans. Beyond that, she seems to strive to elevate self-loathing to an art form (this is not a new or original concept in the world of art) and worst of all have a dangerous arrogance about insisting that her read on life, the universe, and everything is The Truth. Period. Everyone else is lying.
To borrow one of her own phrases, she has defined her life as a great Romance of Disappointment” and then generalized that if it is thus for her, by definition it must be thus for everyone. It is not untrue that, as Mr. Spock famously said to his betrothed, that “having is not, after all, so satisfying as wanting. it is not logical but it is often true.” But Spock inserted a key word — often. In Chu’s world it is, seemingly, always true. And if you say it is not true for you then you are lying. It’s a positively Trumpian level of arrogance.
It has been rightly pointed out that Chu stated factual errors in her piece, seemingly in an effort to spike the drama meter, and that in itself is problem enough but facts can be countered with facts from authoritative sources. The larger problem is that she’s selling herself as the Great Teller of Truth about ALL trans people, the revealer of secrets which confirm your favorite culture warrior’s narrative with claims that are self-verified because, to remind you, if you disagree well you are obviously lying. The danger of this is self-evident, it acts to reinforce anti-trans tropes that infect our culture to the point of literally costing lives. In objective terms, Chu’s framing is no less dangerous than that of profiteers like Walt Heyer or outright haters like Peter Sprigg. Whether you frame your narrative as “God’s truth” or some inside-baseball revelation, it still ends up with dead or suffering trans people.
As a general principle, I hesitate to be vocally condemning of any trans person speaking their truth. There is, as we know, no singular trans narrative and even that of any individual morphs and evolves over the early years of transition (for example, it took me some years to answer the question of my sexuality given that I both sought to define my desire in the context of being desired by a man — and yet remaining married to a wife that I was deeply committed to staying with. In time I came to the conclusion I didn’t need a label, but that’s my conclusion alone). However, Chu has not chosen to speak, write, and act out HER truth, but to insist that her truth was all our truth, even if we were lying about it.
A pox on that. I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to help the ill-informed understand transness on a level that opens up their emotions and activates their empathy. Ido not HAVE to do so, we do not owe the world an explanation to convince them we are worthy of their kindness, but I choose to do that. To be a communicator. A bridge. I have no patience for someone more invested in being a provocateur regardless of the damage such provocation does. Moreover, when one seeks to be notorious, then when the blowback ensues — well, it is the fire they choose to play with. Sorry, but I’m not sorry. Don’t endanger the lives of others to prove you’re an edgelord.
