This is inspired by one of the many sidetracks in DemonTree’s recent trainwreck of an ATMB thread. Some people attempted, for various purposes, to draw analogies between religious belief and gender identity, which I felt often fell into category errors, confusing matters of belief and identity.
Some argued that denying a trans person’s self-identification was no different than describing someone’s religious beliefs as being “delusional”, and questioned why the board treats these cases so differently. I offer some simple examples to explain the difference.
BAD RELIGION: “My religious beliefs are objectively correct, and I therefore have the right and obligation to coerce others into acting in accordance with my beliefs.” This, of course, is precisely the position of most transphobes (though the ones around here prefer to appeal to psuedoscientific rather than religious authority).
In this case, it is clearly not hateful to point out that their arguments in favor of their religion’s truth are objectively trash, built entirely on flawed logic and factually incorrect assertions. If, however, one were to go on to say that your opponent doesn’t actually believe their own arguments, and everyone making those arguments is doing so for some sinister ulterior motive, that would be jerkish.
GOOD RELIGION: “I find it spiritually uplifting to pray and study religious texts, and I feel that these make me a better person. Further, I have faith in the truth of my tradition, though I realize there is no evidence for that truth that would convince a skeptic”.
Describing this person’s internal sense of spiritual uplift, or their belief in things unsupported by evidence, as a “delusion” would be extremely jerkish, and only reveals that the speaker doesn’t understand what “delusion” means. Those sorts of attacks on a person’s description of their own internal state are more analogous to transphobic hate speech, and serve no useful purpose in any civilized discussion.