Feelings don’t care about your facts.

And how this relates to the transgender debate.

Let me preface this by telling you how painful it is for me to write this. I’m a biomed graduate, though I left that field a few years ago now. I’ve read and critically analysed research papers. I’ve done (a small amount) of experimental research. I believe there is objective truth to most things, barring emotions. I despise “alternative facts” and “medicine” which can be boiled down to expensive placebo effect.

Rigorous scientific research is a good thing. It advances our understanding of the world and allows us to innovate cool new stuff. It helps us to know why certain things happen and how we can avoid or mitigate the bad experiences in life. Research moved us past the ghosts-in-the-blood phase of medicine (while an objectively more fun theory, it didn’t help us actually cure people). It also advanced us beyond simplistic genetic and environmental causes of disease to a more nuanced take of a mixture of factors, including epigenetics, influencing pathology.

But there are two huge limitations to science:

1. The average person doesn’t understand the scientific method, nor how to view statistics critically and use them correctly.
2. Nobody cares.

Photo by Mattia Ascenzo on Unsplash

You might argue that point 1 is not a problem with science, but a problem with scientific literacy in laypeople. Maybe if we fixed the education system, things would be different, right? Well, maybe a bit, but I don’t think that’s the entire solution. The thing is, people will still cherry-pick their evidence to fit their existing idea of what they believe to be true, because we all do that to some extent — we’re human, imperfect. We know this to be true because scientists, who are supposed to be better, do it. Scientists are trained in how to properly conduct experiments, but sometimes they set out to prove a hypothesis that they desperately wish to be true and aren’t as unbiased as they should be. Sometimes they reject others’ findings because it calls their own research into question, and it makes them feel like they’ve wasted the last few months (or years) chasing a dead end. Sometimes they’re jealous. Sometimes they’re lazy.

Sometimes, they lie.

Just look at Andrew Wakefield, the progenitor of the myth that vaccines cause autism. Sato and his osteoporosis research. A few cancer researchers and a worrying amount of stem cell researchers. Sometimes it’s money. Often, it’s the fame and glory gained by discovering a cure to a disease, by saving lives. It’s like surgeons — the field attracts huge egos.

Of course, this doesn’t happen very often. Most of science is a boring, slow march towards truth, and the process is designed for everyone to check each other as we go. A few slip through the cracks until they are caught, and then they quietly resign and go away.

Unless you’re Andrew Wakefield, then you double down.

Unfortunately, these few bad researchers ruin the reputation of the field, and some of the public are convinced that it’s all a scam — Big Pharma or whatever other sinister boogeyman. Wakefield deliberately stokes these rumours (god, I hate that arsehole) in an attempt to make himself look like the silenced hero fighting for the people to know the truth. There is a mistrust of science.

But those that mistrust science and “the establishment” don’t just refuse to use science altogether in their arguments. No, they carefully choose whichever bogus papers prove their point, even if they’re decades old and have been declared fraudulent by the peer review process. People who do appreciate science but don’t fully understand it can fall for this malicious tactic, and they inadvertently do the same thing; they latch onto one or two papers that fit with their theory, and they might even be decent papers at the time they first read them, but after years they fail to read further and update their thinking. Science is never static, it’s constantly updating. Old theories are thrown out in favour of new ones which explain the world better, or they’re updated with complexities. New stuff can often take a while to be adopted by other scientists, never mind the public, because it’s so bizarre that it needs to be replicated several times by more than one team to make sure the discoveries aren’t due to human error. (Prion diseases spring to mind.)

This doesn’t just happen with laymen. I’m not being condescending to those with less education. I’m saying that more education, while it would be a positive thing in general and may help people tell apart the bullshit from the real stuff, may not do much to stop people deliberately misusing science. Scientists have blinkers on too, and doctors are some of the worst to fail to update themselves. They know the importance of staying up to date, and they’re supposed to know how to interpret data, but anyone with a rare disease will be able to tell you how many times they were called hypochondriacs because their symptoms “didn’t fit”. Particularly if you’re a woman.

The thing is, reading is hard and people are lazy. And scientists can be terrible at communicating.

And the truth isn’t that important to belief anyway.

Which brings me to my second point. Unless you’re an extremely logical person, statistics don’t really mean much to humans. We are famously bad at risk assessment. Numbers are far less important than experiences to our minds. Even for those who mean well and intend to educate themselves; how many times have you heard someone say “I knew it was bad, but until I saw it with my own eyes…” when confronted with the reality? People might know the facts in a distant, academic way, but they don’t feel real — they don’t feel urgent — unless you experience them first-hand.

I’m white. I knew that racism was a big problem. I knew, rationally, that people of colour, particularly black people, face prejudice in the workplace, are profiled more by cops, treated harsher by the media and are the victims of violence more than white people, particularly black people that also belong to other marginalised communities such as black trans women. I knew the police are brutal — I have some stories to tell myself — and still it didn’t really hit home until I saw videos of police killing black people, and heard stories from my POC friends. I knew it was an issue but I didn’t feel that issue acutely until fairly recently. I knew but I didn’t understand. I had the privilege of not feeling that problem in my day-to-day. I’m trying to do better.

At the moment, the UK media has a vendetta against trans people. Trans people have gone from being invisible and uncared for to being vilified by the press, by publications which pride themselves on impartiality and truth. Even the Guardian, a left-wing paper, will regularly publish anti-trans rhetoric and alarmist pieces about women’s safety. Obviously, some of these articles are written by transphobes, who know they’re deceiving others and relish in it, but I think a lot of them truly believe cis women will be hurt by allowing trans people the rights and respect they deserve. They have been convinced by the transphobic arguments and it’s almost impossible to pull them out from that hateful thrall.

We are a species which enjoys a narrative.

You can show them the truth; that trans people aren’t criminals, that transitioning does work, that there is no epidemic of young trans men who change their minds, that trans women aren’t perverts, that men won’t misuse the gender recognition process to pretend to be women in order to abuse women. (You really believe that?!) And many people have. It doesn’t work.

However many statistics you show them, they choose to believe the things the transphobes already told them, the things which already aligned with their suspicions and fears. I don’t think many of these concerned cisgender people, who label themselves “gender critical”, started out with a hatred of trans people, but they probably had questions like “is this a sexual fetish thing?” or “is this about gender stereotypes?” or “is this getting more common?” and the transphobes answered those questions with the most insidious lies, reinforced with bogus science.

There is another reason scientists lie, beyond conflicts of interest and ambition, and that’s hate. Scientists are not above prejudice. Scientists can be racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic — any other type of -ism or -phobia you can think of — and yes, transphobic. Sometimes these biases are unconscious, but sometimes they actively push an agenda with experiments designed to show a false conclusion. Unfortunately, because they’re a scientist, people are more likely to believe them. Take Littman’s Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria paper, which tells people there’s a plague of transness among young girls which makes them want to be men. It was based entirely on studies given to parents, not the young people themselves. The parents accessed the survey via highly transphobic online forums, so they were already immersed in bias. You’d think, if you wanted to find out how rapid this onset of gender dysphoria allegedly is, you’d ask the people who experience it. Apparently not. The paper is entirely discredited, and yet still does the rounds in the TERF crowd. Littman has even been turned into a Wakefieldian martyr by some. Autogynephilia pseudoscience also gets spread around, which seems to be based on the (horny male) researchers’ findings that they want to fuck some trans women but not others. Fantastic observation. Really great analysis.

So, you try to tell them these things, but they don’t listen. Why? Well, they’ve already been told that trans people are dangerous by feminists they trust and newspapers they otherwise respect, and they have seen some trans people who they think fit the theories, or heard anecdotes by people online. Those anecdotes mean a lot more to these people than facts. Like I said above, we all experience it. It’s just the way humans are. We have confirmation bias. We have to make an effort not to draw conclusions from our biases. We are also a species which enjoys a narrative, a story. These gender critical people will see some drag acts, conflate them with trans femme people and conclude that it’s all a performance. Or they’ll hear an urban legend of a male predator in a bathroom, and that hits home harder than anything else because despite being only one aggressor compared to millions of trans people — and probably fictional at that — what if they/their daughter/their wife is hurt? They’ll see a bunch of people they perceive to be trans men with colourful short hair and facial piercings going about their business and conclude it’s getting more prevalent among the teens, forgetting they might be lesbians, or young effeminate cis men, or simply that fashion exists and counterculture will always be a thing that happens. They see trans threats even when there are none.

“Far from experience producing her idea of the trans woman, it was the latter that explained her experience. If the man in a dress did not exist, the TERF would invent him.”

Did I just butcher Sartre to make a point? Yes. Am I proud of it? More proud than I was of the Ben Shapiro allusion…

There’s been some scepticism over the phenomenon termed the backfire effect: when showing people evidence refuting their beliefs, they believe harder than ever before. And with good reason. But it seems the backfire effect might still happen in contentious, emotional matters, and what’s more important than our perceived safety, our rights and freedoms? Even if it’s not a backfire, we can’t deny that some people are remarkably able to simply ignore evidence; Trump supporters will deny something Trump said, despite video evidence, because it doesn’t fit their vision of him.

A complicating factor in all of this is that some of these gender critical feminists are survivors of abuse from men. They are threatened by anyone they perceive to be a possible rapist. That’s a very emotional response, and it’s very difficult to be rational in that situation. I empathise with that. But we can’t, as a society, use a marginalised group as a scapegoat. Some of the people the TERFs stand with, who claim to be protecting women, would be prime targets for their ire. They don’t truly believe Donald Trump or Boris Johnson are acting for women’s rights, surely? We should blame the justice system and the patriarchal structures that allow women to be disbelieved and rapists to walk free. We should not blame trans women.

This prejudice is hurting the trans community, and we weren’t in a great position to start with. We continue to be at risk for violence and suicide, despite Marcus Evans’ lies to the contrary. Our rights and access to healthcare are being reduced. The problem is getting worse with corrupt governments and respected celebrities chiming in with their ignorant comments. It’s also dangerous in general. There is an obsession with people’s genitals and how people live their lives, which serves nobody, especially not feminists. There’s a conviction that trans people are a threat to women’s rights, which couldn’t be further from the truth, and — pure speculation here — this may even give an excuse to right wing governments to do nothing to help women and blame it on the “trans activist lobby”.

So, what can we do? Short answer: I really don’t know.

Long answer: a variety of things may help counter this tirade of misinformation. But none are guaranteed; you just have to see the anti-vaxxer crowd to estimate what an uphill battle this is going to be. I have a few ideas though:

1. Gender criticals should actually get to know some trans people. Offline. This might help them realise we’re just normal people and not a scary threat, because their first-hand experiences matter more to them than anything else. Unfortunately, this can be quite labour intensive on trans people, expecting us to answer invasive questions and educate and be a role model all the damn time.
2. Swamp the bad trans anecdotes with many more of our own anecdotes. Trans people doing good things for the community, trans people in politics, as teachers, as charity workers, saving lives. Print as many positive stories about trans people as possible, because there are so many negative ones out there.
3. Change the media. And politics. Vote out as much corruption as possible and become journalists and activists. Protest. Promote the voices that are speaking for equality. Support trans creatives.
4. Stop having men in dresses play trans women in films. Seriously. More representation in general would be good.
5. Don’t snap at allies who are trying their best but might be off base about something minor. Nobody likes to be shouted at and learning is an ongoing process. It’s possible to request (or even demand) better from someone who should know better in a polite and respectful way. It feels dehumanising to have to ask for basic respect but these people are on our side and there are too few of us to risk pushing them towards the love-bombing TERF or alt-right crowds. Shout at the true bigots all you want though — we don’t owe them anything.
6. Use studies and statistics to help educate those who want to learn, but don’t use this method alone. Don’t expect people to care about a barrage of numbers if that’s all you’re offering.
7. Deplatform anti-trans bigots. This will be seen as restricting free speech or silencing women though, as the TERF crowd market themselves a lot better than Nazis. It’s tricky.

Basically, you have to somehow make a connection with someone who has no interest in connecting to you. You have to find common ground, invoke their empathy. Then they might listen to you.

I did say it would be hard.