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Skeptical of Trans People Above All
They could have been skeptical of science denialism and supernaturalism instead
An old article by Edie Miller, “Why is British media so transphobic?” (The Outline, November 5, 2018), explains a lot for those who are wondering where the transphobia of the last decade came from. I like her short article because it goes a long way toward answering the question.
The Skeptics Movement
In the early 2000s, “the U.K. Skeptics movement” was, as Miller describes them, “a loose network of people who were far too impressed with themselves for not believing in astrology and homeopathy.” They informally promoted their “specific brand of scientific skepticism” — all science, practically no humanities — focusing on “the ‘debunking’ of alternative medicine and pseudoscience.”
With their “anti-humanities bias,” they believed that science could “reveal a set of immutable principles upon which the world was built,” and they held “almost no regard whatsoever for interpretative analysis based on social or historical factors.” As Miller explains:
“Part of this mode of thinking was an especially reductivist biologism: the idea that there are immutable realities to be found in our DNA, and if we just paid enough attention to Science and stopped trying to split hairs and discover meaning over in the superfluous disciplines of the humanities, then everything would be much simpler. It’s precisely this kind of biological essentialism — which skirts dangerously close to eugenics — that leads people to think they can ‘debunk’ a person’s claim to their gender identity, or that it should be subjected to rigorous testing by someone in a lab coat before we can believe the subject is who they say they are.”
What did they ultimately want people to be skeptical of? Not gods, not poltergeists, not flying saucers (which don’t exist, perhaps limiting the time one can allocate to speaking about them) but trans people (who do exist and can be pointed at). Their simplistic, essentialist ideas about how we are exactly what our DNA says we are “explicitly helped to incubate trans exclusive politics,” Miller says.
But where did the skeptic movement go? Miller explains, citing Tracey King…
