Transphobia is a Form of Denialism

We have to counter Holocaust denial, and also transphobia

Photo by Salman Hossain Saif on Unsplash

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, has recently made transphobic noise. Looking up his bio, I saw he once wrote a book, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (2000) co-authored with Alex Grobman.

Immediately I was curious: Why and how would someone with deep knowledge about why not to discredit Jews and deny our persecution decide that it is, nevertheless, a brilliant idea to discredit trans people? (Since I am both Jewish and trans, the question arises to me with this parallelism.) I procured a copy of the book to see what insights I could glean from it.

Here are an assortment of observations.

Holocaust Deniers Make Intricate Arguments

In Denying History, Shermer and Grobman examine the actual claims put forward by Holocaust deniers.

“…most Holocaust deniers are very knowledgeable about very specific aspects of the Holocaust — a gas chamber door that cannot lock, the temperature at which Zyklon-B evaporates, or the lack of a metal grid over the peephole on a gas chamber door — so that anyone who is not versed in these specifics cannot properly question and answer their claims.”

Their book directly addresses such specific claims while also more broadly discussing “the difference between history and pseudohistory.” Pseudohistory is a revision that serves someone’s “political and ideological purposes.” Holocaust denial, they say, is a “classic case study” of that. (p. 2)

But Holocaust denial isn’t real scholarship

Arthur Hertzberg says in his foreword that some Holocaust deniers use “the appearance of scholarship with footnotes and bibliographies.” They present alleged evidence and claim to draw valid conclusions. “The pose of objectivity,” Hertzberg says, “makes this ‘scholarship’ a more dangerous enemy than the obvious incitements by neo-Nazis.” (pp. xii-xiii)

Holocaust deniers claim that Jews have established “a force field of dogma around the Holocaust.” Of course, “nothing could be further from the truth.” Real Holocaust scholars…