[mst]

If you consider Helen Pluckrose to be anti-trans, I worry that means you haven't actually read any of her writing on trans people, and rather only heard her opinions filtered through her very vocal and vitriolic critics from the critical theory swathe of twitter - and I certainly doubt you've seen the vast amount of vitriol thrown at her on a regular basis by gender crits either.

I'm not going to link any of the vitriol because it's mindless and horrible, but she gets called "a traitor to women" and told she wants her daughter to be raped on a fairly regular basis by such people.

To understand Helen's actual position, I recommend people read this:

https://areomagazine.com/2017/09/27/an-argument-for-a-libera...

It's somewhat long and somewhat nuanced, which means most extreme activists at both ends of the argument hate it, but I'd claim that it is, overall, very much more pro-trans than otherwise and the majority of trans people I'm aware of who've read it came away with the same impression.

[damnyou]

That's a shockingly ignorant article, particularly when it comes to nonbinary people — it even uses "transtrenders" to try and separate the good, gender-conforming trans people from those icky blue-haired weirdos.

Thank you for confirming that Pluckrose is in fact deeply transphobic. If you think that is "nuanced" you are seriously mistaken. Consider re-evaluating your priors, in SSC speak.

[mst]

The complete failure to understand enbies is, indeed, unfortunate.

I stand by my estimate that it gets a lot more right than it gets wrong, however.

My priors are based on conversations with a bunch of trans people; a mere assertion of "shocking ignorance" and "transphobia" largely leaves me thinking that you're so certain of your correctness you don't believe arguments need to even be made, which is not a position I can really rebut.

However, I shared the article, unfortunate parts and all, such that people can draw their own conclusions, and I'd continue to invite people to read and decide for themselves.

[damnyou]

It is not just "unfortunate", it betrays their actual views, which is that we should be ready to sacrifice people's lives on the altar of patriarchal gender norms.

A lot of the more polite bigots will be comfortable making concessions to the trans people who conform to patriarchal roles (and hey, good on Pluckrose for being slightly less bad than charlatans like Stock) but will have knives out for anyone whose existence challenges them. This is a problem.

The only way to true gender liberation is through abolishing the patriarchy.

[mst]

> It is not just "unfortunate", it betrays their actual views, which is that we should be ready to sacrifice people's lives on the altar of patriarchal gender norms.

Helen is hardly gender role essentialist and in fact quite substantially non-conforming to many female gender norms and visibly proud to be her.

To assume that her failure (as of the time of writing, at least) to comprehend non-binary identities "betrays" anything except a lack of comprehension is ... unfounded, at best.

[damnyou]

The entire idea of "transtrenders" is a made up one designed to perpetuate oppressive gender roles and work against solidarity within the trans community. The fact that she takes it seriously is pretty goddamn founded, as far as evidence goes.

[mst]

Not precisely true. IIRC it first came about during one of the iterations of the tumblr trans wars to describe people who identified as things like "AFAB demigirl" and kept claiming that people who wanted to medically transition "just wanted to be able to pretend they were cis" and therefore "weren't really trans", which understandably went down about as well as a shart in a spacesuit with the people with severe physical dysphoria.

There was a stupendous amount of circular firing squad style stupidity to go around back in those days.