So the Ethics Centre in conjunction with IQ2 have an upcoming debate called Sex, Gender & Indentity (Title TBC) which will be about transgender “””issues”””. Uh oh.
Will it be a giant case of false balance that seeks to give a platform to TERF hate as a just another legitimate, objective opinion in an intellectual debate while putting someone on the transgender “side” to make the case for their humanity?
I don’t know but from the event description it doesn’t look good.
- Speakers are to be announced which looks similar to the other IQ2 debate pages.
- They’ve left the title as TBC which suggests they’re thinking VERY HARD about what to call this. This is a bit of a red flag though, it’s almost like “we’ve decided to leave some people’s humanity up to debate but we’re not sure how to communicate that to the plebs.”
- The event description is also pretty dodgy, as it assumes some TERFy opinions, such as that transgender people want to “be a sex we’re not born” and “become another sex”, that TERF-talk is a problem because it’s “hurtful”, that cis people are “biological men and women” who “many regard as a group experiencing far less discrimination than trans people”. WTF?
- It ends with a smarmy condescending “don’t get mad at us, we’re just intellectual heroes” message which I’ll quote in full:
This evening will explore deeply personal matters. Intelligence Squared aims to present and examine diverse and often conflicting views in depth and beyond the sound bites we’re usually given. In hosting this debate we hope people will gain insights into positions they have not been able to understand. We recognise people will continue to disagree with views that stand in opposition to their own. But our aim is to shed light on those views and bring about more understanding so we can better engage with one another. We invite you to take part and ask that you please respect the spirit of this debate.
If you’re new to these issues, I can’t recommend Zinnia Jones’s ongoing YouTube series Gender Analysis highly enough.
No analogy is perfect but I rewrote their event, just so it’s clear what it would be like for a similar debate about another group.
IQ2 DEBATE: ARE JEWS HUMAN? (TITLE TBC)
Jewish rights have never been more respected in Australia than right now – the stories of Jewish people never more accepted.
So when academic Hermaine Hreer said, “I don’t think that Jews – are people”, she stirred deep concerns and was labelled anti-Semitic. People were concerned her words could undo the steps toward broader social understanding of Jewish experiences.
Some find the opinion Jews are not people so hurtful it should never be said. After all, it’s a judgement about someone else’s sense of self.
But those who believe non-people can’t fully be or become people are similarly offended – they say we can never truly appreciate how a person experiences the world.
Some wonder how Jews could know what exactly it is to be human if they’re not born with what they see as a human body.
Does this belief undermine the experiences, embodiment and identity of Jews?
Is it wrong for humans, who many regard as a group experiencing far less discrimination than Jews, to feel their humanity can’t be inhabited by someone born Jewish? Or are their lived experiences being undermined too?
Is your humanity what you feel, embody and express? Is it determined by the ethnic background you’re born with or your identity?
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