Years ago I happened to sit next to an archbishop in the Armenian Church on a plane from Seattle to Burbank. What started with me inquiring about the alphabet of the book he was reading turned into one of the more memorable conversations in my life.
It was one of those extended exchanges where you find yourself putting something together intellectually that resolves an almost spiritual discomfort. It was this: I told him I was not a Christian. I said I would rather face God as a non-believer and say I lived with integrity to a lack of faith than the other way around.
How could God desire anything other than integrity? If I do meet a Maker someday I hope that I have the courage to stand my ground in the face of a forbidding and incontrovertible rule book. The Archbishop was an extremely warm and generous man, but he did not or could not agree. On the way out of the plane, he turned to me and gave me a small cross he kept in his clothing. I'm guessing he kept a handful of them for exactly this kind of interaction.
I took it from him and thanked him genuinely - this after a pretty large fissure opened up between us on faith and integrity. And this is important. I disagreed with him in the chair and, in a fashion, agreed with him while filing out. Very different things mattered in each context.
You've written this essay so thoughtfully and with such care that I want your opinion on something if you have the time or are inclined to give it.
I don't know if I've made this up myself or borrowed it from somewhere, but there's an idea that character is what we choose when faced with conflicting values. If you are a writer of a story and you want to demonstrate something about a character's character - then force a decision between two values that are both resonant/valid but also in conflict with each other.
This is very much at odds with Solzhenitsyn's blanket - "never support lies!" This strikes me as a philosophical and dogmatic rigidity that looks at all choices as binary and in isolation from each other. There's something in the conservative temperament that's often hard here.
I can almost guarantee that there are times when "never support lies" for Solzhenitsyn himself would have come into conflict with an opposing value where "never support lies" lost out - on someone's death bed I'll use whatever pronoun somebody wants period full stop because not coming into conflict with someone's view of themselves and the world when they are leaving the world would be a higher value for me. In a courtroom a different value would win. I think you can establish my character, Solzhenitsyn's, your own based on this tension between values. One might not believe in God for example and still close your eyes for a prayer at the Thanksgiving table.
With the Archbishop when I was in my chair, I was ready to challenge his faith and his God, but when we were filing out I felt that the awkwardness of how he presented the small cross was a true act of kindness that I wanted to honor. So, I did. I'm consistent to my value system, even if my behaviors are not consistent to my emperor's clothing system. It forces me into a grey zone where I'm not consistent, but it also has - feels like - a more organic, nuanced relationship with my values: sometimes one value loses to another.
I think this nuance shows up with the other swimmers wanting the male swimmer to participate in the female competition. Some of this could be social fear, but some of it can be that it is genuinely more important to not shame someone in any way than to win an athletic competition. The parent of the swimmer and the coach might have exactly the same two values in play but come out emphatically on the opposite side.
Do you think that one can believe something to be absolutely true (with an Emperor is Wearing No Clothes confidence) and still find "telling the truth" to be secondary to another value? Or is this fairly black and white? What am I missing? What can you add? Subtract?
You've done your mental homework here and there is goodwill in your work (I've only read one other article, but you have my attention), and I'd love your thoughts. You are reasoned and insightful. I'm just finding the Solzhenytsin insistence on truth "off" somehow, rigid, missing something. That even the black and white Emperor's issues aren't so cleanly dispatched.
[JFYI: I've slightly edited this comment for clarity and to correct a misused term (I said "desistance" when I mean to say "dissident"). I initially wrote when it was late and I was tired, so in the AM I found a few small (but worthy to me) changes. ;-) ]
Hi again, Adam. I don't know if you have further thoughts, having read those other two essays I mentioned, but I've been pondering your comment. It seems to me that it's the apparent rigidity of Solzhenitsyn's admonition that you are questioning...perhaps wondering why I included his quote at the end when it seems so unforgiving or immovable?
I have to admit, I don't read him making a rigid "never ever bend from the truth" claim so much as I hear him saying that we must resist attempts by authorities to gaslight us into agreeing that falsity is truth, black is white. I've always read his words in the context of his experiences under totalitarian rule, so I associate him with broad dissident movements rather than with the relative minutiae of interpersonal conflicts or relationships. And I do realize, even as I write that, that those things all exist along the same spectrum: at some point interpersonal interactions may indeed end up subsumed by a dissident movement—at least if it is to succeed.
But in juxtaposing the smaller good vs the greater good, for example, you point out that you would not resist using cross-sex pronouns with someone on their deathbed. Well, I wouldn't either. For one thing, gender specific pronouns are typically used when talking *about* a trans identifying person, not when talking *to* them, so that specific scenario isn't all that likely to occur. But even if it did, the good in caring for that dying person without adding upset to their final days would far outweigh any "wrong" in having signaled apparent agreement with something you believe is untrue. So I don't think there is any truly conflicting binary there. OTHO, I think a trickier situation would be if the kindness of going along with falsity was in conflict with actual harm to others by denying the truth. I put Lia Thomas and his "win" in that category, for example: there was actual injustice to actual women done in the name of advancing/defending the false notion that he is a woman. The "good" of that male-is-female pretense did not outweigh the harm that accrued from it.
And speaking of Lia, with regard to those other athletes who defended his right to swim in the women's competition, I stated in my essay that it's possible they were speaking from sincere conviction that it was the right thing to do. And I pointed out that it is exactly that impulse—to be kind and accommodating—that is being insidiously exploited (weaponized?) by ideologues to convince well-intentioned people that the morally righteous thing to do is, in fact, to agree that black is white, male is female, falsity is truth. Which brings me to the crux of the problem (as I see it):
Is kindness/doing the right thing by others always accompanied by good feelings like moral righteousness or friendship/solidarity with others? Is it possible that true kindness can actually feel hurtful to those we are helping? Feel hard and painful to the person seeking to be kind? Does tough love exist? Should kindness and righteousness be defined by feelings—of warmth, connection, inclusivity? I suspect the answers are No, Yes, Yes, Yes, and No, in that order. But I also think that in this era of running from pain and discomfort in any form, it will be a hard sell.
I’m at a conference for several days so in a spin cycle of meetings and responsibilities, but had a chance to read the two articles you mentioned. Hard not to have lots of thoughts after reading your articles - essays? - and there’s an observation of my own I’d like to share, but I will need to wait for a calm minute here. Great to discover your work, Leah. It’s why I’m on here. Amazing platform for exactly this.
You may have moved on from the initial energy of our exchange (I know how time and the goings-on of life can carry us along), but I want to share this piece I just read from a wonderful writer and thinker I subscribe to. He gets into the question of refusing to "live by lies" and why it matters. I think you might find it worthwhile.
Of course, I'm still interested to discuss, if you'd like to delve into the topic. Hope life is good.
I've thought a lot about your essays and our back-and-forth here over the last few days. It's taken me about five different mental directions, mostly unexpected ones, and at least two of them felt like they would blind-side you in a way I didn't like. So, some of the tardiness was stalling, and some of it was I didn't get back to New York City until 1am.
If I have a useful observation it is this: the only hope for meaningful unity is that we have respect for what our opponents fear. I'm not saying we agree with their fears or that they're not rubbish, but that we respect the fact that they fear it. It is the foundation of political compassion. I think this came up reading one of your other articles and not from this thread, but the more I turn that thought over and over, and the more I see the contempt we have for each other in social media, the more it feels like respect for what other people fear is a missing ingredient. Moral salt.
Solzhenitsyn. I read the First Circle in college and there is a section in the book where the protagonist talks about noting every time he uses a foreign word instead of a Russian one. He cuts into his desk or marks a tick in a book, or something. That paragraph will always be Solzhenitsyn to me. There's a rigidity in it that feels like it is missing something by insisting on a principle. There's something in hard, implacable reason that is intuitively wrong to me. But you can't throw reason at reason to fix the problem. The reason has already set.
The corollary might be using passion to correct someone who trusts only in their passions. I'm distrustful of thinking that has arrived so confidently, whatever side of the brain it is operating out of. More empirically, it seems to me that too much confidence in one's political stand distorts something good in the owner.
I think about the gender issue not because I see social chaos coming. I think about it because I don't want to be untrue to myself. If I have any clear feeling on it, it is that it pains me that J.K. Rowling has been crucified over the issue. She has given the world books filled with love end-to-end. She's earned the good faith to disagree, but she doesn't get that. I want her to be safe as much as those who disagree with her. And I think it is because we don't have any respect for what our opponents fear that we are so dismissive and cruel to them. Any open-minded person can look at the most divisive issues of our time and understand what the other "side" is afraid of. If we did, maybe even formally made a point of doin it, then we might find we have a lot more natural empathy and latitude with those we disagree with. Unless we are sure we are intellectually or emotionally right.
Here are the two observations that are going to get me in hot water with you. (I worry.)
About a decade ago, I reread the gospels during a pilgrimage through France and Spain. I've mentioned already that I'm no longer a Christian, but I wanted to get at the gospels again directly. The Pauline epistles matter far less to me, but the gospels are where the faith stands or falls. And, here it comes, I think Jesus would have been almost indifferent to the issue of gender. Like I really, really, really don't see anything in how he related to the world that would have stumbled on it. It's like he was playing a different game, and all more expressions that don't have the spirit of the Jesus of the gospels feel "off" to me. This has nothing to do with hypocrisy. it has something to do with the need for certainty and rigidity around pleasure broadly, but sexuality in particular. These issues felt like things the disciples cared - still care - about, but not Jesus so much. It just feels like Jesus was playing a different game, and a better one than his disciples did then or do now. And if Jesus's followers played the same game he did, I'm not even certain Christianity could hold together.
A lot of this is sloppy thinking and writing. I hope I'm getting the gist of things down here. I know I'm all over the place.
And here's the thought that kept me from responding earlier:
We all have blind spots, significant ones, and it occurs to me that I have the same anxiety questioning someone's religious faith that I might someone else's gender. What seems patently obvious to a person of faith - to you, I'm guessing - for someone else is an Emperor Has No Clothes conflict. Faith is as vulnerable as anything else, its role in the public sphere brings up the same (greater?) anxieties, and often has the same passionate intolerance for opposition. And I've wondered how you might take that.
To bring things very sloppily home: my instinct is that respect for what others fear in relation to our sexuality or faith or whatever else has the seeds of something healthy even when we don't agree in the slightest. Certainly, J.K. Rowling (criticized by woke and fundamentalist alike) would have a less precarious existence.
Again, I know this is sloppy and given some of the sensitivities around all of this, too quickly written, but it's help me get my mind around or at least adjacent to a few things.
I'm glad to stumble across your work and look forward to reading your work in the future.
Wow...so much to consider and respond to here—again, thank you for engaging so thoughtfully, and with true care and concern.
I love your reflection about having respect for what our opponents fear. I think you have zeroed in on something important, speaking to the critical role of empathy in creating a space for dialogue. We all have fears, and pretending that ours are the only ones that matter closes the door needlessly on any hope of understanding or connection. So I agree that that respect—that empathy—is essential for any genuine unity to have a chance.
When it comes to confidence in political stands, I guess I don't distrust it in the way you do. It's not clear to me from what you've written, but it seems you might correlate confidence with inflexibility or obstinacy? Of course, it might be me making excuses—being one who tends towards confidence—but to me there's a world of difference between being confident and being close-minded, between feeling reasonably assured you have a solidly constructed viewpoint and refusing to consider other viewpoints or to adjust your own in the face of new, relevant information.
At the same time, your concern about too much confidence distorting something good in a person also resonates. I think over-confidence is a real danger of being confident, and so learning to ride "loose in the saddle" (the title of a blog post I wrote on the topic of self-awareness) is pretty crucial to maintaining our sanity and staying in touch with the humbling, fundamental uncertainty of life.
Regarding your two points that your were worried might offend(?) me...I'm not in the least bothered to hear your perspective. Fwiw, people engaging in good faith with very different perspectives than mine do not trigger my "hot water" reaction; OTOH, bad faith interactions and ad hominem attacks (which tend to involve a lot of overlap) are what push my buttons.
So...I disagree with your take on Jesus likely being indifferent to the gender question. For one thing, given how the Jewish leaders of that day went out of their way to try to trip him up, show him up, expose him as a heretic, had that issue been then what it is today (IOW if there was a debate back then about whether people can be born in the wrong body/change sex) he simply would not have been permitted to avoid it. The Pharisees et al would have used it in the same way woke activist types use it today—to try to force their agenda. And my belief is that he would have done exactly what he always did when the moment arrived to speak Truth to power: he'd call bullsh#t. He always did it in masterful ways that left little room to argue back without revealing the malevolence of their motives or the emptiness of their piety. But given that humans are created in God's own image and likeness, and "male and female He created them," I can't see Jesus being neutral once it was brought to him. AND I agree with you that he was always speaking to higher truths, deeper realities than simply the external appearances of this natural world.
Lastly, you wrote: "We all have blind spots, significant ones, and it occurs to me that I have the same anxiety questioning someone's religious faith that I might someone else's gender. What seems patently obvious to a person of faith - to you, I'm guessing - for someone else is an Emperor Has No Clothes conflict. Faith is as vulnerable as anything else, its role in the public sphere brings up the same (greater?) anxieties, and often has the same passionate intolerance for opposition. And I've wondered how you might take that."
I do think that religious faith, by its very nature, is an act of belief not a matter of scientific/natural world proof. So I totally get that a non-believer might see my religious assertions as an emperor-has-no-clothes situation. If faith were verifiable in this natural world it wouldn't be faith.
I would push back on this one thing though: as many people have pointed out, gender ideology operates as a religion. A cult, in fact. Human biology, however, which is what the claims of the gender religion reject, is a matter of universal natural world observation and scientific proof: the existence of biological sex isn't actually, in reality, in question, despite the pretenses of gender ideologues. So while I know many people who have adopted the beliefs of the gender religion, their claims are not like those of my faith or a Catholic's faith, or any other God-centered religion because none of those require the rest of the society to reject the evidence of their own eyes regarding the existence of biological reality. None of them require the buy in from the rest of humanity in order to survive. This is something different, something insidious, something evil. That doesn't mean its believers are evil—they may be very well-intended and/or genuinely confused and hurting. But the belief system and the pernicious way it is being imposed upon society, such that it requires everyone accept AND repeat a self-evident lie, is evil. And I do say that with confidence, because the evidence of that lie's destructive nature is all around us.
Lastly, lastly, I don't think your thinking was sloppy. At least no more than mine might be. I deeply admire your desire to think carefully and with humble self-awareness about these kinds of things. Given the constant din of the culture battle going on 24/7 online, I am always thankful to find a soul out there who is more focused on exploring topics than righteously defending (or attacking) opinions. So thanks again for your good faith, Adam. Cheers and good night!
Final thoughts! Closing arguments! Places, everyone!
* Empathy is the right word, and it is the quality of a relationship that I'm going for. Any reasonable person who maintains functioning relationships will agree. I'm focused on what the practical application of it looks like. To respect the fears of others is an admonition that makes empathy real. THEY may not even know what they fear (in fact, generally don't). It requires identifying their fears not just their discomfort. Besides the enormous power of understanding someone else's fear, I think the only true relationship with someone else flows from that. Our relationship with the straightforward fears of children might be instructive here. Maybe, I'm suggesting that empathy in the political fear requires doing this.
* A great book I read a decade ago had two very simple ideas. One was to confront every criticism of ourselves with a simple question. "Is it true?" If someone tells me I'm stingy, I might light up like a Christmas tree - but her point was to ask oneself this instead: "where am I actually stingy? what does my stinginess look like?" she was saying, "find the truth in it." It's a razor-sharp observation and easy to put in practice. It also requires no participation of the other person. For all of the rich wisdom in that, I still only do this, at best, zero times out of a 100.
* In the spirit of the last bullet, consider this. What if the audience for the interactions with the Pharisees (sp?) wasn't the Pharisees at all. What if it was the disciples themselves? What if the message was: you guys are Pharisees? what if to be a Pharisee was in the deepest nature of a human, or, in particular, of a religious person? If dealing with Pharisees and fixing something in them was the point of that day's interactions, then it was a colossal, two thousand year failure. Not enough in my mind is made of the staggering lack of faith of the immediate lack of faith of the disciples to get it right when they were directly dealing with a miracle worker. How outrageously difficult must it be for someone today - without direct interaction with a Lord and Savior - to proceed confidently in any direction wearing the mantle of religious leader? Other than possibly Nicodemus, Jesus didn't seem to acknowledge ANY religious leaders as getting it right. Man, if that isn't sobering for a Christian, then what is? And, now in the spirit of the previous bullet, where are you a Pharisee? That is an obnoxious question, but one to spend time with (not in interaction with me certainly, but in, let's hope, prayerful interaction with oneself. Talk about a Bible study.
* Finally, this: the word "evil" is a problem, because it may blind you to something critical. And I'm not referring to the pitiless exercise of woke (or fundamentalist Christian) insistence on a worldview that brooks no disagreement and therefore gets at bullet #1 again. It's a loaded word that insists something is a settled, self-evident matter. It is particularly pernicious when it adds unseen agents into the mix. Now, we are moving into dangerous territory. The one thing that has shaken me up on the question of gender is the idea that someone literally hates their demonstrable gender. The first time I heard someone say this it gave me pause. It still does - even while loathing the Soviet level intolerance for a different worldview. But the idea of "evil" precludes new information so it is to be feared as a practical matter for a truth-seeker.
* To go all the way back to the beginning, ultimately I think individuals need to weigh out conflicting personal values in these issues and decide what is contextually right - whether on sports teams, bathrooms, prisons, the courtroom, wherever. This arena is extremely uncomfortable, the merciless politicization/weaponization is a nightmare for society's good-faith function.
Let's leave it there! I'll read your own closing arguments with an open mind.
I'm so glad you've found things here that spark your thoughts and your interest to engage. I look forward to reading your response if/when you have the opportunity to return.
Hi Adam, thank you for this very thoughtful and thought-provoking response. If I am reading you right you have honed in on the core of what I grapple with: what to do when being kind conflicts with being honest, or put another way, when love seems in conflict with truth. You mentioned having read one other of my essays and I'm not sure which that was, but I have touched on this dilemma directly, though briefly, in One True Thing, and tangentially in The Comfort of Contempt. I don't have the time this morning to give your response its due, but I hope to come back to it this evening. In the meantime I have two thoughts to leave you with:
First, the short answer to your question ("Do you think that one can believe something to be absolutely true (with an Emperor is Wearing No Clothes confidence) and still find 'telling the truth' to be secondary to another value?") is "yes, definitely."
Second, as an example, here's an excerpt from a comment I wrote as part of a lengthy Facebook discussion that ensued when I shared Our Lying Eyes on my timeline. Perhaps you will find it speaks to that core conflict you are mulling re: the rigidity of Solzhenytsin's admonition to "live not by lies":
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Pronouns are the biggest challenge for me in the arena of trans issues because when it comes to a person's sense of self, pronouns are deeply personal. And my social instinct in personal interactions is to avoid offending or hurting people, to be as reasonably accommodating as possible to another's needs or state. That's my default.
Yet at the same time, referring to someone I know to be male as "she/her," or to be female as "he/him," feels profoundly *off* to me, like I'm gaslighting myself, engaging in a flagrant pernicious deception. ("They/them" doesn't really jar me, other than grammatically, so it feels easier.)
Regardless, the way I handle this issue in personal conversation is to follow the lead of the person I'm speaking to. Usually that is a loved one or friend of the trans-identifying person, someone closer to her/him/them than I am. To avoid putting that person in a difficult position I go along with the pronoun choice they indicate.
Outside of such conversations, my willingness to follow pronouns has everything to do with the specifics of the particular trans individual.
For example, I have no trouble using preferred pronouns when referring to Blaire White or Buck Angel (two high profile trans people) for two main reasons: one is that they have *fully* embraced transition and easily "pass" as a person of the opposite sex, so they inspire their pronoun of choice; the second—and more important one—is that they are honest about their origins and unassuming about the limits of being trans—neither endorses the "Transwomen are women!" mantra which is deployed by trans activists to insist that ANY male who claims to be a woman IS an actual woman, deserving of all rights and protections accorded biological women regardless of whether he's initiated any kind of transition or even wardrobe change. It's under this slogan we see intact male convicts self-IDing into women's prisons, half of whom are convicted sex-offenders.
Which brings me to an area in which I refuse to respect pronouns: when women or girls are harmed by males claiming a female identity. Lia Thomas falls into this category, as do all post-pubertal MtF trans people who displace girls/womens in their own sports leagues. Also in this category are the supposed "female" rapists who are now being misidentified in news reports that describe male sexual assault using female pronouns. (Talk about gaslighting. THAT is true misgendering.) And certainly also included are all the sex offending convicts trying to claim their supposed "human right" to share prison cells with women.
You'll notice that FtM trans people don't figure heavily into this rubric and it's because very, very few of them inhabit their trans identity in a way that creates a real problem or harms others. (Though Chase Strangio of the ACLU is a glaring exception to that rule.)
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Hopefully this evening I can come back with a more fleshed out response. Thanks for being willing to engage with curiosity and goodwill. I deeply appreciate that.
This is an extremely moving, and thought-provoking essay. You've covered a lot of very complex issues in this piece and raised some very important points. I certainly am not sure what the solution is, if there is one. I think it's going to take a lot of effort on a variety of fronts to change the tide. One such effort would be a series of very vigorous, high profile, high dollar lawsuits against the medical practitioners of these gratuitous surgeries.
Your opening point — that we have to stand up for what we think is right — is certainly true. However, for a variety of reasons, for some that's not possible. Those who can, should. And those others should support those who stand up. Thank you for this very interesting piece, Frederick
Thank you, Frederick! I much appreciate your support and kind words. I want to acknowledge your point that not everyone is positioned to stand and speak. That is certainly a reality, part of the picture. I am blessed that my life circumstances do not constrain my ability to be vocal (though my own ego fears and comfort sure get in the way😏). So yes, it is to people like me that my appeal is made. And whoever cannot stand might add to the courage of others by reaching out to those who are, to let them know their voices make a difference. Thanks again, and best wishes to you. **[EDIT: This is not a new comment, just FYI Frederick. I discovered I initially posted it as an original comment to my essay rather than a reply to yours, so I've just moved it into proper position.]**
Years ago I happened to sit next to an archbishop in the Armenian Church on a plane from Seattle to Burbank. What started with me inquiring about the alphabet of the book he was reading turned into one of the more memorable conversations in my life.
It was one of those extended exchanges where you find yourself putting something together intellectually that resolves an almost spiritual discomfort. It was this: I told him I was not a Christian. I said I would rather face God as a non-believer and say I lived with integrity to a lack of faith than the other way around.
How could God desire anything other than integrity? If I do meet a Maker someday I hope that I have the courage to stand my ground in the face of a forbidding and incontrovertible rule book. The Archbishop was an extremely warm and generous man, but he did not or could not agree. On the way out of the plane, he turned to me and gave me a small cross he kept in his clothing. I'm guessing he kept a handful of them for exactly this kind of interaction.
I took it from him and thanked him genuinely - this after a pretty large fissure opened up between us on faith and integrity. And this is important. I disagreed with him in the chair and, in a fashion, agreed with him while filing out. Very different things mattered in each context.
You've written this essay so thoughtfully and with such care that I want your opinion on something if you have the time or are inclined to give it.
I don't know if I've made this up myself or borrowed it from somewhere, but there's an idea that character is what we choose when faced with conflicting values. If you are a writer of a story and you want to demonstrate something about a character's character - then force a decision between two values that are both resonant/valid but also in conflict with each other.
This is very much at odds with Solzhenitsyn's blanket - "never support lies!" This strikes me as a philosophical and dogmatic rigidity that looks at all choices as binary and in isolation from each other. There's something in the conservative temperament that's often hard here.
I can almost guarantee that there are times when "never support lies" for Solzhenitsyn himself would have come into conflict with an opposing value where "never support lies" lost out - on someone's death bed I'll use whatever pronoun somebody wants period full stop because not coming into conflict with someone's view of themselves and the world when they are leaving the world would be a higher value for me. In a courtroom a different value would win. I think you can establish my character, Solzhenitsyn's, your own based on this tension between values. One might not believe in God for example and still close your eyes for a prayer at the Thanksgiving table.
With the Archbishop when I was in my chair, I was ready to challenge his faith and his God, but when we were filing out I felt that the awkwardness of how he presented the small cross was a true act of kindness that I wanted to honor. So, I did. I'm consistent to my value system, even if my behaviors are not consistent to my emperor's clothing system. It forces me into a grey zone where I'm not consistent, but it also has - feels like - a more organic, nuanced relationship with my values: sometimes one value loses to another.
I think this nuance shows up with the other swimmers wanting the male swimmer to participate in the female competition. Some of this could be social fear, but some of it can be that it is genuinely more important to not shame someone in any way than to win an athletic competition. The parent of the swimmer and the coach might have exactly the same two values in play but come out emphatically on the opposite side.
Do you think that one can believe something to be absolutely true (with an Emperor is Wearing No Clothes confidence) and still find "telling the truth" to be secondary to another value? Or is this fairly black and white? What am I missing? What can you add? Subtract?
You've done your mental homework here and there is goodwill in your work (I've only read one other article, but you have my attention), and I'd love your thoughts. You are reasoned and insightful. I'm just finding the Solzhenytsin insistence on truth "off" somehow, rigid, missing something. That even the black and white Emperor's issues aren't so cleanly dispatched.
[JFYI: I've slightly edited this comment for clarity and to correct a misused term (I said "desistance" when I mean to say "dissident"). I initially wrote when it was late and I was tired, so in the AM I found a few small (but worthy to me) changes. ;-) ]
Hi again, Adam. I don't know if you have further thoughts, having read those other two essays I mentioned, but I've been pondering your comment. It seems to me that it's the apparent rigidity of Solzhenitsyn's admonition that you are questioning...perhaps wondering why I included his quote at the end when it seems so unforgiving or immovable?
I have to admit, I don't read him making a rigid "never ever bend from the truth" claim so much as I hear him saying that we must resist attempts by authorities to gaslight us into agreeing that falsity is truth, black is white. I've always read his words in the context of his experiences under totalitarian rule, so I associate him with broad dissident movements rather than with the relative minutiae of interpersonal conflicts or relationships. And I do realize, even as I write that, that those things all exist along the same spectrum: at some point interpersonal interactions may indeed end up subsumed by a dissident movement—at least if it is to succeed.
But in juxtaposing the smaller good vs the greater good, for example, you point out that you would not resist using cross-sex pronouns with someone on their deathbed. Well, I wouldn't either. For one thing, gender specific pronouns are typically used when talking *about* a trans identifying person, not when talking *to* them, so that specific scenario isn't all that likely to occur. But even if it did, the good in caring for that dying person without adding upset to their final days would far outweigh any "wrong" in having signaled apparent agreement with something you believe is untrue. So I don't think there is any truly conflicting binary there. OTHO, I think a trickier situation would be if the kindness of going along with falsity was in conflict with actual harm to others by denying the truth. I put Lia Thomas and his "win" in that category, for example: there was actual injustice to actual women done in the name of advancing/defending the false notion that he is a woman. The "good" of that male-is-female pretense did not outweigh the harm that accrued from it.
And speaking of Lia, with regard to those other athletes who defended his right to swim in the women's competition, I stated in my essay that it's possible they were speaking from sincere conviction that it was the right thing to do. And I pointed out that it is exactly that impulse—to be kind and accommodating—that is being insidiously exploited (weaponized?) by ideologues to convince well-intentioned people that the morally righteous thing to do is, in fact, to agree that black is white, male is female, falsity is truth. Which brings me to the crux of the problem (as I see it):
Is kindness/doing the right thing by others always accompanied by good feelings like moral righteousness or friendship/solidarity with others? Is it possible that true kindness can actually feel hurtful to those we are helping? Feel hard and painful to the person seeking to be kind? Does tough love exist? Should kindness and righteousness be defined by feelings—of warmth, connection, inclusivity? I suspect the answers are No, Yes, Yes, Yes, and No, in that order. But I also think that in this era of running from pain and discomfort in any form, it will be a hard sell.
I’m at a conference for several days so in a spin cycle of meetings and responsibilities, but had a chance to read the two articles you mentioned. Hard not to have lots of thoughts after reading your articles - essays? - and there’s an observation of my own I’d like to share, but I will need to wait for a calm minute here. Great to discover your work, Leah. It’s why I’m on here. Amazing platform for exactly this.
Hi Adam,
You may have moved on from the initial energy of our exchange (I know how time and the goings-on of life can carry us along), but I want to share this piece I just read from a wonderful writer and thinker I subscribe to. He gets into the question of refusing to "live by lies" and why it matters. I think you might find it worthwhile.
Of course, I'm still interested to discuss, if you'd like to delve into the topic. Hope life is good.
https://open.substack.com/pub/tommyt23/p/sex-is-not-assigned-at-birth-and?r=2jy1d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I've thought a lot about your essays and our back-and-forth here over the last few days. It's taken me about five different mental directions, mostly unexpected ones, and at least two of them felt like they would blind-side you in a way I didn't like. So, some of the tardiness was stalling, and some of it was I didn't get back to New York City until 1am.
If I have a useful observation it is this: the only hope for meaningful unity is that we have respect for what our opponents fear. I'm not saying we agree with their fears or that they're not rubbish, but that we respect the fact that they fear it. It is the foundation of political compassion. I think this came up reading one of your other articles and not from this thread, but the more I turn that thought over and over, and the more I see the contempt we have for each other in social media, the more it feels like respect for what other people fear is a missing ingredient. Moral salt.
Solzhenitsyn. I read the First Circle in college and there is a section in the book where the protagonist talks about noting every time he uses a foreign word instead of a Russian one. He cuts into his desk or marks a tick in a book, or something. That paragraph will always be Solzhenitsyn to me. There's a rigidity in it that feels like it is missing something by insisting on a principle. There's something in hard, implacable reason that is intuitively wrong to me. But you can't throw reason at reason to fix the problem. The reason has already set.
The corollary might be using passion to correct someone who trusts only in their passions. I'm distrustful of thinking that has arrived so confidently, whatever side of the brain it is operating out of. More empirically, it seems to me that too much confidence in one's political stand distorts something good in the owner.
I think about the gender issue not because I see social chaos coming. I think about it because I don't want to be untrue to myself. If I have any clear feeling on it, it is that it pains me that J.K. Rowling has been crucified over the issue. She has given the world books filled with love end-to-end. She's earned the good faith to disagree, but she doesn't get that. I want her to be safe as much as those who disagree with her. And I think it is because we don't have any respect for what our opponents fear that we are so dismissive and cruel to them. Any open-minded person can look at the most divisive issues of our time and understand what the other "side" is afraid of. If we did, maybe even formally made a point of doin it, then we might find we have a lot more natural empathy and latitude with those we disagree with. Unless we are sure we are intellectually or emotionally right.
Here are the two observations that are going to get me in hot water with you. (I worry.)
About a decade ago, I reread the gospels during a pilgrimage through France and Spain. I've mentioned already that I'm no longer a Christian, but I wanted to get at the gospels again directly. The Pauline epistles matter far less to me, but the gospels are where the faith stands or falls. And, here it comes, I think Jesus would have been almost indifferent to the issue of gender. Like I really, really, really don't see anything in how he related to the world that would have stumbled on it. It's like he was playing a different game, and all more expressions that don't have the spirit of the Jesus of the gospels feel "off" to me. This has nothing to do with hypocrisy. it has something to do with the need for certainty and rigidity around pleasure broadly, but sexuality in particular. These issues felt like things the disciples cared - still care - about, but not Jesus so much. It just feels like Jesus was playing a different game, and a better one than his disciples did then or do now. And if Jesus's followers played the same game he did, I'm not even certain Christianity could hold together.
A lot of this is sloppy thinking and writing. I hope I'm getting the gist of things down here. I know I'm all over the place.
And here's the thought that kept me from responding earlier:
We all have blind spots, significant ones, and it occurs to me that I have the same anxiety questioning someone's religious faith that I might someone else's gender. What seems patently obvious to a person of faith - to you, I'm guessing - for someone else is an Emperor Has No Clothes conflict. Faith is as vulnerable as anything else, its role in the public sphere brings up the same (greater?) anxieties, and often has the same passionate intolerance for opposition. And I've wondered how you might take that.
To bring things very sloppily home: my instinct is that respect for what others fear in relation to our sexuality or faith or whatever else has the seeds of something healthy even when we don't agree in the slightest. Certainly, J.K. Rowling (criticized by woke and fundamentalist alike) would have a less precarious existence.
Again, I know this is sloppy and given some of the sensitivities around all of this, too quickly written, but it's help me get my mind around or at least adjacent to a few things.
I'm glad to stumble across your work and look forward to reading your work in the future.
This may be of some interest or at least a window into this guy writing long comments: https://adambnathan.substack.com/p/finisterre-chapter-1
Wow...so much to consider and respond to here—again, thank you for engaging so thoughtfully, and with true care and concern.
I love your reflection about having respect for what our opponents fear. I think you have zeroed in on something important, speaking to the critical role of empathy in creating a space for dialogue. We all have fears, and pretending that ours are the only ones that matter closes the door needlessly on any hope of understanding or connection. So I agree that that respect—that empathy—is essential for any genuine unity to have a chance.
When it comes to confidence in political stands, I guess I don't distrust it in the way you do. It's not clear to me from what you've written, but it seems you might correlate confidence with inflexibility or obstinacy? Of course, it might be me making excuses—being one who tends towards confidence—but to me there's a world of difference between being confident and being close-minded, between feeling reasonably assured you have a solidly constructed viewpoint and refusing to consider other viewpoints or to adjust your own in the face of new, relevant information.
At the same time, your concern about too much confidence distorting something good in a person also resonates. I think over-confidence is a real danger of being confident, and so learning to ride "loose in the saddle" (the title of a blog post I wrote on the topic of self-awareness) is pretty crucial to maintaining our sanity and staying in touch with the humbling, fundamental uncertainty of life.
Regarding your two points that your were worried might offend(?) me...I'm not in the least bothered to hear your perspective. Fwiw, people engaging in good faith with very different perspectives than mine do not trigger my "hot water" reaction; OTOH, bad faith interactions and ad hominem attacks (which tend to involve a lot of overlap) are what push my buttons.
So...I disagree with your take on Jesus likely being indifferent to the gender question. For one thing, given how the Jewish leaders of that day went out of their way to try to trip him up, show him up, expose him as a heretic, had that issue been then what it is today (IOW if there was a debate back then about whether people can be born in the wrong body/change sex) he simply would not have been permitted to avoid it. The Pharisees et al would have used it in the same way woke activist types use it today—to try to force their agenda. And my belief is that he would have done exactly what he always did when the moment arrived to speak Truth to power: he'd call bullsh#t. He always did it in masterful ways that left little room to argue back without revealing the malevolence of their motives or the emptiness of their piety. But given that humans are created in God's own image and likeness, and "male and female He created them," I can't see Jesus being neutral once it was brought to him. AND I agree with you that he was always speaking to higher truths, deeper realities than simply the external appearances of this natural world.
Lastly, you wrote: "We all have blind spots, significant ones, and it occurs to me that I have the same anxiety questioning someone's religious faith that I might someone else's gender. What seems patently obvious to a person of faith - to you, I'm guessing - for someone else is an Emperor Has No Clothes conflict. Faith is as vulnerable as anything else, its role in the public sphere brings up the same (greater?) anxieties, and often has the same passionate intolerance for opposition. And I've wondered how you might take that."
I do think that religious faith, by its very nature, is an act of belief not a matter of scientific/natural world proof. So I totally get that a non-believer might see my religious assertions as an emperor-has-no-clothes situation. If faith were verifiable in this natural world it wouldn't be faith.
I would push back on this one thing though: as many people have pointed out, gender ideology operates as a religion. A cult, in fact. Human biology, however, which is what the claims of the gender religion reject, is a matter of universal natural world observation and scientific proof: the existence of biological sex isn't actually, in reality, in question, despite the pretenses of gender ideologues. So while I know many people who have adopted the beliefs of the gender religion, their claims are not like those of my faith or a Catholic's faith, or any other God-centered religion because none of those require the rest of the society to reject the evidence of their own eyes regarding the existence of biological reality. None of them require the buy in from the rest of humanity in order to survive. This is something different, something insidious, something evil. That doesn't mean its believers are evil—they may be very well-intended and/or genuinely confused and hurting. But the belief system and the pernicious way it is being imposed upon society, such that it requires everyone accept AND repeat a self-evident lie, is evil. And I do say that with confidence, because the evidence of that lie's destructive nature is all around us.
Lastly, lastly, I don't think your thinking was sloppy. At least no more than mine might be. I deeply admire your desire to think carefully and with humble self-awareness about these kinds of things. Given the constant din of the culture battle going on 24/7 online, I am always thankful to find a soul out there who is more focused on exploring topics than righteously defending (or attacking) opinions. So thanks again for your good faith, Adam. Cheers and good night!
Final thoughts! Closing arguments! Places, everyone!
* Empathy is the right word, and it is the quality of a relationship that I'm going for. Any reasonable person who maintains functioning relationships will agree. I'm focused on what the practical application of it looks like. To respect the fears of others is an admonition that makes empathy real. THEY may not even know what they fear (in fact, generally don't). It requires identifying their fears not just their discomfort. Besides the enormous power of understanding someone else's fear, I think the only true relationship with someone else flows from that. Our relationship with the straightforward fears of children might be instructive here. Maybe, I'm suggesting that empathy in the political fear requires doing this.
* A great book I read a decade ago had two very simple ideas. One was to confront every criticism of ourselves with a simple question. "Is it true?" If someone tells me I'm stingy, I might light up like a Christmas tree - but her point was to ask oneself this instead: "where am I actually stingy? what does my stinginess look like?" she was saying, "find the truth in it." It's a razor-sharp observation and easy to put in practice. It also requires no participation of the other person. For all of the rich wisdom in that, I still only do this, at best, zero times out of a 100.
* In the spirit of the last bullet, consider this. What if the audience for the interactions with the Pharisees (sp?) wasn't the Pharisees at all. What if it was the disciples themselves? What if the message was: you guys are Pharisees? what if to be a Pharisee was in the deepest nature of a human, or, in particular, of a religious person? If dealing with Pharisees and fixing something in them was the point of that day's interactions, then it was a colossal, two thousand year failure. Not enough in my mind is made of the staggering lack of faith of the immediate lack of faith of the disciples to get it right when they were directly dealing with a miracle worker. How outrageously difficult must it be for someone today - without direct interaction with a Lord and Savior - to proceed confidently in any direction wearing the mantle of religious leader? Other than possibly Nicodemus, Jesus didn't seem to acknowledge ANY religious leaders as getting it right. Man, if that isn't sobering for a Christian, then what is? And, now in the spirit of the previous bullet, where are you a Pharisee? That is an obnoxious question, but one to spend time with (not in interaction with me certainly, but in, let's hope, prayerful interaction with oneself. Talk about a Bible study.
* Finally, this: the word "evil" is a problem, because it may blind you to something critical. And I'm not referring to the pitiless exercise of woke (or fundamentalist Christian) insistence on a worldview that brooks no disagreement and therefore gets at bullet #1 again. It's a loaded word that insists something is a settled, self-evident matter. It is particularly pernicious when it adds unseen agents into the mix. Now, we are moving into dangerous territory. The one thing that has shaken me up on the question of gender is the idea that someone literally hates their demonstrable gender. The first time I heard someone say this it gave me pause. It still does - even while loathing the Soviet level intolerance for a different worldview. But the idea of "evil" precludes new information so it is to be feared as a practical matter for a truth-seeker.
* To go all the way back to the beginning, ultimately I think individuals need to weigh out conflicting personal values in these issues and decide what is contextually right - whether on sports teams, bathrooms, prisons, the courtroom, wherever. This arena is extremely uncomfortable, the merciless politicization/weaponization is a nightmare for society's good-faith function.
Let's leave it there! I'll read your own closing arguments with an open mind.
I'm so glad you've found things here that spark your thoughts and your interest to engage. I look forward to reading your response if/when you have the opportunity to return.
Hi Adam, thank you for this very thoughtful and thought-provoking response. If I am reading you right you have honed in on the core of what I grapple with: what to do when being kind conflicts with being honest, or put another way, when love seems in conflict with truth. You mentioned having read one other of my essays and I'm not sure which that was, but I have touched on this dilemma directly, though briefly, in One True Thing, and tangentially in The Comfort of Contempt. I don't have the time this morning to give your response its due, but I hope to come back to it this evening. In the meantime I have two thoughts to leave you with:
First, the short answer to your question ("Do you think that one can believe something to be absolutely true (with an Emperor is Wearing No Clothes confidence) and still find 'telling the truth' to be secondary to another value?") is "yes, definitely."
Second, as an example, here's an excerpt from a comment I wrote as part of a lengthy Facebook discussion that ensued when I shared Our Lying Eyes on my timeline. Perhaps you will find it speaks to that core conflict you are mulling re: the rigidity of Solzhenytsin's admonition to "live not by lies":
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Pronouns are the biggest challenge for me in the arena of trans issues because when it comes to a person's sense of self, pronouns are deeply personal. And my social instinct in personal interactions is to avoid offending or hurting people, to be as reasonably accommodating as possible to another's needs or state. That's my default.
Yet at the same time, referring to someone I know to be male as "she/her," or to be female as "he/him," feels profoundly *off* to me, like I'm gaslighting myself, engaging in a flagrant pernicious deception. ("They/them" doesn't really jar me, other than grammatically, so it feels easier.)
Regardless, the way I handle this issue in personal conversation is to follow the lead of the person I'm speaking to. Usually that is a loved one or friend of the trans-identifying person, someone closer to her/him/them than I am. To avoid putting that person in a difficult position I go along with the pronoun choice they indicate.
Outside of such conversations, my willingness to follow pronouns has everything to do with the specifics of the particular trans individual.
For example, I have no trouble using preferred pronouns when referring to Blaire White or Buck Angel (two high profile trans people) for two main reasons: one is that they have *fully* embraced transition and easily "pass" as a person of the opposite sex, so they inspire their pronoun of choice; the second—and more important one—is that they are honest about their origins and unassuming about the limits of being trans—neither endorses the "Transwomen are women!" mantra which is deployed by trans activists to insist that ANY male who claims to be a woman IS an actual woman, deserving of all rights and protections accorded biological women regardless of whether he's initiated any kind of transition or even wardrobe change. It's under this slogan we see intact male convicts self-IDing into women's prisons, half of whom are convicted sex-offenders.
Which brings me to an area in which I refuse to respect pronouns: when women or girls are harmed by males claiming a female identity. Lia Thomas falls into this category, as do all post-pubertal MtF trans people who displace girls/womens in their own sports leagues. Also in this category are the supposed "female" rapists who are now being misidentified in news reports that describe male sexual assault using female pronouns. (Talk about gaslighting. THAT is true misgendering.) And certainly also included are all the sex offending convicts trying to claim their supposed "human right" to share prison cells with women.
You'll notice that FtM trans people don't figure heavily into this rubric and it's because very, very few of them inhabit their trans identity in a way that creates a real problem or harms others. (Though Chase Strangio of the ACLU is a glaring exception to that rule.)
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Hopefully this evening I can come back with a more fleshed out response. Thanks for being willing to engage with curiosity and goodwill. I deeply appreciate that.
This is an extremely moving, and thought-provoking essay. You've covered a lot of very complex issues in this piece and raised some very important points. I certainly am not sure what the solution is, if there is one. I think it's going to take a lot of effort on a variety of fronts to change the tide. One such effort would be a series of very vigorous, high profile, high dollar lawsuits against the medical practitioners of these gratuitous surgeries.
Your opening point — that we have to stand up for what we think is right — is certainly true. However, for a variety of reasons, for some that's not possible. Those who can, should. And those others should support those who stand up. Thank you for this very interesting piece, Frederick
Thank you, Frederick! I much appreciate your support and kind words. I want to acknowledge your point that not everyone is positioned to stand and speak. That is certainly a reality, part of the picture. I am blessed that my life circumstances do not constrain my ability to be vocal (though my own ego fears and comfort sure get in the way😏). So yes, it is to people like me that my appeal is made. And whoever cannot stand might add to the courage of others by reaching out to those who are, to let them know their voices make a difference. Thanks again, and best wishes to you. **[EDIT: This is not a new comment, just FYI Frederick. I discovered I initially posted it as an original comment to my essay rather than a reply to yours, so I've just moved it into proper position.]**