You not understanding the way someone exists doesn’t mean their existence is a debate
If you’ve logged into Twitter, turned on a political talkshow like Question Time, or listened to talk radio like Jeremy Vine in the last two weeks, you’ll probably have been witness to “the transgender debate”.
If you’re not familiar, this is a thing where people who are not transgender, have - generally negative - opinions on transgender people, and they discuss these opinions as if they are instead fact that carry such significant weight that they might somehow at the end “win” the debate and transgender people will simply cease to exist.
The same thing happens for other experiences too. I’m sure you’re familiar with “the race debate”. Much like the above this is when people who do not experience racism, or have their lived experience negatively impacted by their race, discuss all the reasons they don’t believe racism exists and why they think the only real problem is talking about race in the first place.
Or how about “the gender debate”? This is usually women explaining the numerous ways in which existing as a woman is painful/intimidating/fear inducing/generally unequal, and then a man is invited on to say he doesn’t agree with that based on all his lived experience as a woman, and we’re expected to give both sides equal weight in the “debate”.
It is obscene. To the point where I feel like I’m losing my mind watching it all play out. Because all the people engaging seem to be completely clueless to a very key point that renders the entire thing obsolete. Let me give you a few scenarios, imagine yourself in them and answer the questions at the end.
You’re punched in the stomach by John Doe and it causes you to vomit, bruise and experience pain. You explain this to Sally and present the evidence clear as day, and crucially you know you were punched by John and nothing that followed would have happened without him punching you. Sally considers you, and invites John in who argues that even if he did punch you, which he’s not saying he did, he would suggest there are perhaps many other reasons you vomited, bruised and felt pain in that moment. Sally says he’s raised an interesting point, and invites Mark - who wasn’t there, but is a friend of John - to give his opinion. Does Mark’s opinion matter? Should this even be getting debated? Does the attempt to debate or intellectualise your experience change the fact you experienced it?
Your bike was stolen. You have video footage of your bike being stolen, and you can quite clearly see it was Jane that stole your bike. You later see Jane riding your bike around town. You post about your experience and turns out Jane has stolen lots of bikes in the area, and majority of them have footage of this happening. You report it, presenting the evidence, and Jane is brought in to answer some questions. Jane argues that the evidence doesn’t actually show what we think it shows, that you’re all misinterpreting what you’re seeing, and that if it does show her, then maybe there’s a valid reason she was there. You’re all baffled - the evidence is quite clear, it’s there in Black and White. Jane calls her friends Sam and Jean, who are also known for stealing bikes. They back her up, and ask you to prove why you should be allowed to keep the bikes anyway. Does the stance taken by Jane, Sam and Jean make sense? Should their opinion here be given equal weight to that of you and your peers who have had their bikes stolen? Should this be a debate at all? Does the attempt to debate your experience change the fact you experienced it?
I hope that the majority of people reading this would say it’s absolutely ridiculous to attempt to “debate” either of these scenarios. The people who didn’t have the lived experience really can’t speak on it, because they don’t know what they’re talking about, and the people who caused the lived experience should only be apologising. Any other interpretation would be completely illogical, it would make no sense. But importantly, it wouldn’t do anything to change the lived experience, it would serve only to make it worse or prolong the experience.
So why on earth do we, as a society insist on attempting to do it?
Why are we tuning in to Question Time and seeing men “debating” whether women should get the right to medical leave due to menopause, a thing they have never and will never experience? Why is this being positioned alongside topics such as “Is the supply of western tanks to the Ukraine a good idea?” and “Can Nadhim Zahawi stay in post?” as if women’s experience are in any way the same thing as these political ideas? Why are we consistently, across pretty much every outlet that discusses it, seeing Black people invited on to talk about their lived experience only to be met with hostile white people who tell them they’re wrong, tell them it’s in their heads, tell them if they don’t like it then they should leave. And why are both people treated as equally valuable contributors to the conversation, when one quite clearly has no reason to even be involved in the conversation. Why do we have people debating the validity of transgender people, when they themselves are not transgender? Why when there’s an icidence of racism that becomes public news, do I turn on BBC Radio 2 and hear Jeremy Vine discussing with white callers how the “reaction to racism is too much”?
“I’m a woman, and the evidence shows that I am most likely going to be paid less than a man for doing the same thing” is not the same as “Do you think the government needs to be doing more to mitigate the cost of living crisis.”
“I am Black, and I have faced racism throughout my life, from sly digs and nasty comments, to discrimination about my hair, to worse treatment by doctors, and there’s decades worth of evidence and hundreds of thousands of people like me with similar stories to prove how rife this really is” is not the same as “Is the ongoing investment into HS2 worth it, when the money could go into settling the dispute between government and rail workers?”
“I am transgender, and the lack of mental health and medical support means that I have spent the majority of my life battling severe body dysmorphia, depression, and anxiety. I have lost multiple friends in my community to suicide, and it’s terrifying being myself in public as people like me are four times more likely to be victims of violent crime than cisgendered people are.” is not the same as “Should the defence budget for 2023 be sitting at £60.3million, when sectors such as transport, healthcare and education are in such desperate need of reform and increased investment?”
A debate is literally a conversation about a particular topic in which opposing arguments are put forward. Someone makes a point of argument, someone else counters it, with the goal of getting more people to agree with you than the opposition. “The transgender debate”, “the race debate”, “the gender debate”, they do not make sense. They are not debates. They can’t be, by definition. So can we stop calling them debates, and start calling it people expressing prejudice without risk of consequence? Because a person simply existing isn’t a point of argument for you to contest because you don’t understand it. Whether you understand it or not, whether you agree with it or not, whether you like it or not, a persons lived experience is, was, and will remain the experience they lived.
I leave you with these three tweets that sum up perfectly the reason these “debates” are perceived as such, or as intellectual conversation, when that could not be further from the truth.
