Sam Harris, J.K. Rowling, and the Cesspool of Anti-Trans Activism
Dialing down the temperature doesn’t mean spouting careless anti-trans talking points
This exchange between neuroscientist Sam Harris and trans-tech journalist Ina Fried has been stewing around in my brain for some time now. So, I’ve given in, and I’m going to tear it apart publicly. It’s easily the highlight of the video, and you can find it by clicking on *Most Replayed* around 35 minutes on the red time bar.
The exchange happens near the end of a Q&A session with Sam Harris. At the beginning of the talk, Sam Harris argues that people have developed an understandable distrust in institutions, as they are increasingly “captured” by social justice “moral panic” ideology. The first example he gives of this is a preeminent medical journal, “The Lancet,” using the term “bodies with vaginas” instead of “women.” He says, “ this is where scientific rationality and the English language go to die.” He sees it as part of a negative feedback loop between the left and the right that makes it impossible for people to agree on a ground base truth or have rational discussions.
For everyone’s benefit, including my own, I’m just going to transcribe the conversation here.
Ina Fried:
Ina Fried with Axios. I am one of those women who was born without a uterus, so, I’m curious. Help me understand why it is that in order to deal with these massive issues: climate change, the virus, etc. Why do we simultaneously have to dehumanize and delegitimize transgender and non-binary folks who are speaking their truth about their identity? I don’t understand why those two things are in conflict.
Sam Harris:
I would just disagree with the premise of the question. I don’t think there’s anything dehumanizing about using terms like woman and man to make a specific point. They’re not intrinsically dehumanizing. It’s certainly not denying the reality of transgenderism, the ethical commitment to total political equality.
What it is doing, is it’s policing the language in a highly unrealistic way and making scapegoats of people who are actually on your side, who actually want total political equality for people regardless of anything, really. This is something that should be debatable obviously, I’m not saying the language never evolves, I mean we do learn to use new terms —
Ina Fried:
But it’s having real world consequences. We have, in many states, trans youth are not getting access to healthcare, they’re not being able to use the restroom, because of the actions and the words. These laws are coming out of the actions and the words of the people you’re defending.
Sam Harris:
Some of it is coming from a backlash. We’ve got two extremes amplifying hysteria on both sides, and there is just this violent pendulum swing even in the course of any given day between the two. What we need is a reasonable middle, that is committed to political equality, and actually has compassion as its moral ballast.
I mean, there are things that are non-negotiable, and perversely, as you go further to the left, you get really stark examples of moral confusion, where there are people who would castigate me for what I just said to you, but are actually kind of agnostic about the treatment of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Like, who am I to say that putting women in cloth bags is bad? That’s an ancient culture, they’ve decided that on their own. You know, maybe that’s my own colonialism and bigotry.
No no no, you can’t have it both ways. So there’s a lot of moral confusion approximate to your side of this debate, and that has to be sorted out. Again, it’s a conversation. What I’m really arguing for is; the moral emergency parameter that we’ve put over it has to be relaxed. What we have now is a trigger warning standing in front of our entire civilization, from the point of view of the left. I’ll grant you, you’re getting a reaction from the right that is another topic of valid concern. It is hostile, and it is overreaching, and it is amplified by real authoritarianism and in some cases theocracy.
Ina Fried:
But that starts with you saying I’m not a woman. It continues further.
Sam Harris:
No! Your situation only makes sense by first acknowledging the reality of biology. The only way to discover that you are trans is to discover that you don’t feel compatible with the biology that was on your birth certificate. But now we have people who are literally saying that you shouldn’t put boy or girl on a birth certificate; that should just be decided later because it’s so toxic for society to have made that decision at birth. There are so many reasons that isn’t good public policy.
But, what I’m arguing for isn’t any specific remedy now. I’m arguing for a conversation where the temperature has been turned down. But, that’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is that you have to literally be J.K. Rowling not to have your life destroyed if you say what I just said about the term woman.
Moderator:
Hey guys, I apologize, I just need to get to a couple other questions.
Sam Harris:
Thank you for the question.
Let’s start off with the obvious. These two people are clearly not from the same political community. Ina Fried, in fact, seems to see Harris as a political enemy, accusing him of dehumanizing her and saying she’s not a woman. On the reverse, Sam Harris doesn’t explicitly affirm her gender identity and talks about the “reality” of biology and “transgenderism,” which, to be frank, gives me a similar gut reaction to an earnest old white man talking about “the blacks.”
All of the responses I’ve seen to this exchange that weren’t blatantly transphobic criticize the accusatory attitude of Ina Fried. One individual on Reddit wrote a heartfelt post describing how it reminded him of an abusive relationship in which his ex-girlfriend would go into every difficult conversation with the underlying framework that they were adversaries and she was under attack. He sees Fried as a parallel of this dynamic, going into the conversation looking for the worst in Harris and accusing him of trying to dehumanize her, while Harris’ primary concern is getting back to the point where communication is even possible.
I think this is a fair interpretation of the conversation. Trans rights don’t appear to be Sam Harris’ “thing,” whereas he’s very passionate about restoring the center of American politics. I get the impression that he stumbles quite a bit during his response because he’s generally unprepared to talk about trans issues and is clearly afraid that he’ll say the wrong thing and receive harassment or damage to his reputation.
On top of this, a central argument of his is that we shouldn’t put too much emphasis on recognizing the differences between people anyway. He might not explicitly recognize Fried’s gender identity because he feels that detracts from her universality. For him, respect is ignoring her particularity and treating her the same way he would anyone else by getting right to the point and honestly explaining his disagreements with her.
The goal has to be to get to a society where we care less and less about the superficial differences between people, and it seems to me patently obvious that the path there can’t be a matter of caring more and more about these differences in the meantime. — Sam Harris
I wouldn’t be writing this article if I just agreed with Sam Harris. What’s interesting about this conversation is that it is very messy, and nobody gets off the hook. Ina Fried brings up legitimate, material concerns. Sam Harris says it’s irrational to call biological women “people with vaginas,” but Fried tells him why it actually makes sense to do that. She’s afraid of losing access to healthcare or being forced into a male-exclusive space.
Sam Harris responds by saying, at least in part, it’s the fault of people like her for being hysterical. The left is confused, and they need to figure out if they’re okay with the Taliban putting women in “cloth bags” before they can castigate him for opposing gender-inclusive language in medical journals. Both sides are wrong and need to come together in a reasonable middle.
Ina Fried is not hysterical. Sam Harris often brings up J.K. Rowling as an example of a benign, beloved public figure the woke mob has unfairly ravaged. Except Rowling is a prominent and outspoken supporter and personal friend of virulently bigoted and violent anti-trans activists.
These are people who are willing to compromise on issues like global warming and ally with white supremacists to stop what they see as the transgender ideological threat. She even praised self-proclaimed “theocratic fascist” Matt Walsh for a documentary that ends with him ranting at a school board that they’re all child abusers for letting trans students use locker rooms and bathrooms in line with their gender identity.
One fan of J.K. Rowling, Graham Linehan, came up with “Gender Critical Coming Out Day” as a celebration of a Rowling tweet in support of Magdalen Berns. He also shared part of the home address of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre director and trans woman Mridul Wadhwa online as part of a viral harassment campaign, which included death threats over the phone and in letters. The Rape Crisis Centre had to end its open-door policy and is still in lockdown.
This is to say that while Sam Harris is free to dismiss trans issues as a hysterical moral panic, it really is a “moral emergency” for the people who have to accept hate crimes, violence, and harassment as part of their everyday lives. This isn’t a “both sides” issue. The people threatening to kill Mridul Wadhwa aren’t just overreacting to overbearing language games. The backlash comes from trans people existing at all.
These words are being treated as magically destructive, like the word “Voldemort”… It’s a very childish relationship to language. — Sam Harris
Personally, I am skeptical of language as such making a significant impact on how people think. I remember when I was a kid, someone I watched on YouTube explained how when she had been in the “special ed” program, kids went from making fun of her for being “retarded” to “challenged” to “special” whenever adults tried to change the language to make it more gentle.
Sam Harris says that calling people “bodies with vaginas” is “where scientific rationality and the English language go to die.” My question is: Why? Sure, it’s clunky and impersonal, but how is it irrational? This must matter to Harris: It’s the evidence he uses to demonstrate that people are reasonable for distrusting institutions.
What also matters to Harris for some reason is that birth certificates have either boy or girl on them. I have no idea what his reasons could possibly be for thinking removing gender from birth certificates is a bad policy, but the American Medical Association thinks it could reduce discrimination, acknowledge the diversity of the sex spectrum and intersex people (Judaism has recognized at least six sex categories for over a thousand years), and make it easier for trans people to integrate into society. They argue that Standard Certificates of Live Birth would still record sex characteristics, and vital records would not be affected.
Sam Harris is a neuroscientist by training, but I’m not so sure he’s stumbling across this stuff through casual perusal of the scientific literature. More likely, he’s being exposed to it through his own social media bubble’s moral panic. I’m not going to drag anybody else down this terrible rabbit hole, but I discovered very quickly that there’s a major crossover between outrage around the “bodies with vaginas” statement and “gender-critical” “anti-trans-ideology” activists.
Walking away from the venom and bile of the Twitter “gender-critical” crowd (oh God, I hope they don’t start showing up in my feed), I agree that we would benefit from turning the temperature down and trying to listen to each other more. I try to embody even-handedness and nuance in the way I write. I hope that if for some reason, Sam Harris or Ina Fried were to read this article, they’d be happy with the way I’ve represented them.
Still, there’s a very clear imbalance here. Sam Harris gets to be ignorant of J.K. Rowling and the Cesspool of Anti-Trans-Ideology, but Ina Fried doesn’t. The internet is needlessly cruel, and he has apparently been harassed (by the right), yet he never has to face the prospect of being killed for who he is. Ina Fried caught him making lazy and potentially harmful claims, and he simply could not back them up.
I agree that the body politic must find a center. Some members of the trans community, like Medium writer TaraElla, feel that Harris’ project of reestablishing liberal norms is a cornerstone of keeping trans people safe. While I don’t agree with Harris’ “both sides” framing, I think the left’s inability to have open and honest conversations leaves room for violently splintering factions like Trans-Exclusive-Radical-Feminists.
One apparently foundational “TERF” essay I found while researching this article clearly mirrors the Gender Abolition vs. Realism divide I outlined in a past article. This essay was written by the woman who made the top reply on Twitter to the Lancet's apology, criticizing it for “erasure.” The feminist-led anti-trans movement embodied by figures like J.K. Rowling emerges from a fundamental disagreement about gender I haven’t seen anyone on the left begin to address.
To solve our current emergencies, we need to develop a consensus-building capacity and the ability to reason through complex issues. Part of that means being sensitive to what the other side is feeling. Part of that means knowing what you’re saying before you say it. I think Harris failed on both counts, and hopefully, talking to Fried helped him see that.
Addendum:
Some readers have brought up legitimate problems with the “bodies with vaginas” phrase. I don’t see this changing my fundamental analysis because I don’t think these were points Sam Harris was trying to make, but it’s important to lay them out.
As Elanor Rice points out, “bodies with vaginas” is genuinely dehumanizing and mirrors an attitude of people assigned female at birth being “broodmares of the state,” defined by their reproductive organs and status as sexual objects. They suggest using AFAB/AMAB (assigned female/male at birth) as an inclusive alternative.
Rex Kerr thinks that the phrase is indeed irrational in the sense that it muddles up the medical conversation and doesn’t add anything. As he and I discussed, the Lancet wasn’t talking about animal menstruation, there are people with vaginas who do not menstruate, and there are people without vaginas who do menstruate, so the better term on all counts would have been “people who menstruate.”
Still, I think that Harris’ suggestion that we keep using “women” under all circumstances has negative medical implications for vulnerable populations and isn’t strictly scientific. Ina Fried was right to point out that inclusive language is important, even if the language used in the Lancet was stupid.
