I’m reading a publication of key writing by I.F. Stone, “The Best of I.F. Stone”, and am working my way through the chapter titled “Holy War”, which is one of several articles IF Stone wrote about Israel over a period of several decades.
As with much of I.F. Stone’s writing, key points can be applied elsewhere, or are universal (e.g., the quote I discuss here). Here are a few interesting quotes:
For Israel is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry. In the outside world the welfare of Jewry depends on the maintenance of secular, non-racial, pluralistic societies. In Israel, Jewry finds itself defending a society in which mixed marriages cannot be legalized, in which non-Jews have a lesser status than Jews, and in which the ideal is racial and exclusionist. Jews must fight elsewhere for their very security and existence—against principles and practices they find themselves defending in Israel.
The above double standard - hypocrisy - is something I’ve seen in other areas of life as well.
We consider that, far from serving as justification, these facts constitute an aggravating circumstance; for those who have known the effects of racism and of discrimination in their own flesh and human dignity, are less excusably racist than those who can only imagine the negative effects of prejudice.
One uprooting cannot morally be equated with the other.
That principle also applies more broadly to other trans and gender diverse (TGD) people - and, as I write this, I am thinking specifically of the issue of revealing pre-transition details.
Some TGD are OK with revealing their pre-transition details - even do so themselves in presentations and on social media, for example.
For them and their choices, and how they choose to live their life, that is quite acceptable.
What is not acceptable is for ANYONE to assume that, just because one member of a minority does something, others are OK with that.
Staying with TGD people, for example, many TGD people object to being compelled to reveal pre-transition details (typically, deadnaming, but misgendering falls into the same category) offensive, distressing (to the point of causing suicide), and reflection of a false reality - they never were, in their essence as a person, the gender that was imposed externally on to them.
As regular readers would be aware from recent articles of mine, this is a particular issue with regard to police checks (particularly, at the moment, in the context of engineering registration - despite many other options being available).
The overwhelming majority of TGD people I know finding the compulsory disclosure of pre-transition details for our current one-size-fits-all version of police checks so damaging to mental health and wellbeing that they will not, for instance, apply for jobs that require (or "may require", in the case of managements that are too incompetent to know whether or not that is the case).
Any person who is seeking to consult with representatives (and those being consulted) of TGD, LGBTIQA+, or any other minority, must keep the following in mind:
- there will likely be a normal variation of views within that group (as a broader example of this, look at the variety of political views on show at any election);
- the life experiences of members of a group will vary for a wide range of reasons - generational changes, socio-economic status issues, religious views, changes because of differing cultures within nations and across national borders, and so on.
This applies to ALL forms of consultation, and is why significant effort is made in good consultation studies to adjust for some of those influences; - some of the responses of minorities will be scarred by the compromises and adaptations some of those people have had to do - this is sometimes a sort of Stockholm Syndrome effect, and is - based on my lived experience - noticeable amongst women who rose to power during the worst of patriarchal power structures in corporations, women who I saw in the 80s, 90s, and 00s, and sometimes seem to be trying to be more hard nosed and uncaring than men in similar situations of power.
Another way of viewing this is that it is like the responses of those being tortured - they will say anything that they think will stop the torture. As an example of that, many of Templar Knights being tortured in the 1300s admitted to worshipping Baphomet (which was actually the Old French mispronunciation of Muhammed) but each gave wildly different descriptions, indicating it was an attempt to stop the torture, and not anything real.
This is where representatives of communities need to consider the I.F. Stone quotes at the start of this article, as well as issues such as lateral hostility - which covers things like some gays being sexist or even misogynistic, some lesbians (or alleged lesbians) being transphobic, some trans people excluding non-binary people, some lesbians and gays being biphobic or perpetuating bi-invisibility, and some TGD excluding or harming intersex people ... and then make sure they avoid those wrongful acts; - some people will make responses that are warped by ulterior motives - for example, some members of minorities will say whatever - or bend what they say to further - they think will advance their professional, political, or other personal aspirations, rather than pass on hard truths that may be taken badly by those they are talking, an audience which may be seeking more to nurture treasured false “truths” than listen and learn how reality really is.
On that last point, it is vitally important that those doing the consulting be open minded (and definitely NOT bigoted) - this is not a case of poring over evidence to find tiny excuse to continue being a bigot, or excuses to enable perpetuation of a convention (such as the one-size-fits-all version of police checks) that the consulters may like but is a form of direct or indirect discrimination.
This is even more so when engaging sensitivity training - a key part of that MUST be the variability in minority communities, and thus do not weaken systems simply because one or a few members of that minority find them unnecessary or the issues they address (e.g., misgendering and deadnaming) inoffensive: others probably do find such inclusive measures necessary as the issues behind them important, and failure to address them damaging to the point of causing a risk of suicide.
PS - presumably people in witness protection schemes already have exemptions from providing all their prior names on police checks. The issues I am writing about regarding TGD people and police checks also apply to those fleeing domestic violence (who have been tracked down through things such as real estate agent photos of renters furniture), and perhaps others. It really is time for policing to move into the late 20th Century.
PPS - this, about a decision that excludes parts of the LGBTIQA+ community, from an organisation with a particular history of bi-exclusion, is an example of the problems I have written about in this post - decisions have been made on entertainment value (“creativity”) rather than hat is of value to LGBTIQA+ community.
