Balloon Juice - planet eddie, Author at Balloon Juice

This morning I woke up, and like most mornings, I readied myself for the daily wave of anti-trans rhetoric.

For those of you who don’t know what a gish gallop is, it’s a tool used when debating to overwhelm an opponent with SO MANY arguments, with no discretion for the validity of the argument, that it is impossible to respond. Waves and waves of anti-trans “concerns” flood the news, and by the time you even begin to answer one “concern,” there are a dozen more that have accumulated while you’ve been responding.

Honestly, some days it’s hard to breathe when I get hit by that tidal wave.

The Gish Gallop: How to Stop Anti-Trans Rhetoric in its Tracks

Something I’ve observed though is that most of the “concerns” around trans folks are premised on fundamentally not believing trans people are who they say they are. This pile of problems creates an unnavigable morass to distract from the primary issue: trans people are people who deserve full human rights, dignity, and respect.

I cannot tell you how many times I have stopped a conversation about women’s bathrooms or trans people in sports in its tracks by simply cutting straight to the chase “Do you believe that trans women are real women?” In that moment there is often… a hesitation, and then something like “Well… yes but also they haven’t lived as real women…” or “If someone has fully transitioned, then yes, but if they haven’t then…” This slippery nugget slithers under the majority of trans-related concerns, creating an Otherness in people’s minds, and until it is addressed it will continue to insinuate itself into every “concern.”

It’s okay to not “get it.” It’s okay to be confused, and there will be lots of messy uncomfortable moments as the world adjusts to creating space for trans people. People’s feelings will get hurt. Change is hard! But the first thing you can do as an ally is simply this: believe trans people.

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The Gish Gallop: Recognizing and Responding to Bad Faith Trans “Concerns”Post + Comments (274)

Trans people are basically made into a public spectacle where everyone gets to chat about what they really think is enough for someone to be “real.” People jump right into discussing the logistics of “the trans debate,” creating a huge tally of problems, without first reflecting on their own biases and coming to truly 100% accept that trans people are telling the truth about who they are. Any argument that isn’t first founded on believing trans people is simply a bad faith argument. A lot of people need a little guidance to get to this place.

For instance, my mother is an extremely liberal woman, but she definitely struggled to accept that trans women were “real” women, even years after accepting me, her own kid, as nonbinary. I asked her to engage in an imaginative exercise with me. “Imagine,” I told her, “That you are you: Kate. Exactly you, with all the textures and flavors of Kate-ness, knowing with your full heart and soul that you are YOU.” Then I asked her to imagine herself born in a different body. Not that she had been born a man, but as herself, Kate, treated like someone else. By building from that imaginative space, I asked her to imagine being forced into certain kinds of behaviors and expectations knowing that she was really herself underneath all that, and that furthermore when she tried to tell people the truth of who she was, they tried to convince her that she was mentally ill and tried to heavily regulate her in public and private spaces. Trans women don’t spend their childhoods “living as boys,” they spend their childhoods living as girls who are perceived and forced to live as boys. Trans women endure all the same pressures and gender norms as cis women do but in different ways, and they have to wrangle with the added layers of transphobia and misogyny that emerge when they come out or try to transition.

“But women are killed all over the world, just for being women,” she told me in one heated argument.
“Exactly,” I responded. “And some of those women are trans.”

That’s when she got it.

I have had so many awkward and uncomfortable but transformative conversations when I shift the gear to what I am really hearing underneath a person’s “concerns.” I am hearing that they don’t get it and that that makes them afraid. I am hearing that they are afraid that they will lose something, that women will be robbed of their spaces. However, once someone is able to make this mental shift, their concerns shift as they realize that protecting trans women IS protecting women, and that women’s rights and trans rights are inherently woven together.

So my task for you today, Jackals, is to reflect on who in your life you can have this gentle conversation with. I wouldn’t go for your far-right MAGA hat wearing uncle, but maybe there’s someone in your book club or friend group who you can invite out for coffee. Help trans folks by seeing if you can get one person to open their mind today. If all 200+ of you who commented on my last post could shift 5 people over the course of the month, that’s 1,000 people who are suddenly seeing things a bit more clearly.

Also, speaking to my own mental health: Because every day feels like an assault, I have to take these posts simply and gently. They’re probably full of typos! I’m hoping to do a post about later in the week about how transphobia is an old tool used by fascists to seize power, and definitely recommend the linked article. I also encourage people to stay up to date on anti-trans legislation by subscribing to Erin in the Morning substack — Erin is doing *tremendous work* for the trans community and is well-worth subscribing to!

I’m on a train heading to DC for a wedding, and I’m spending a few extra days there because I’m thinking of moving there. If you’re local and have any fun recs, please holler in the comments! Hopefully his majesty will be okay for a few days without me.

The Gish Gallop: Recognizing and Responding to Bad Faith Trans "Concerns" 1

Hey folks, it’s exciting to be here.

My name is Eddie, and I’m not just a long-term lurker on Balloon-Juice, but also your unofficial resident Balloon-Juice artist. Back in 08, I made the original Tunch OBEY shirts and the drawings of Lily and Rosie that are still available in the BJ store. The angelic cat image that so often pops up on this page was a drawing I made for Cole back when Tunch went to kitty heaven in the sky, and it always makes me smile to see it.

I am extremely politically active, which I channel through my art. I’m a full-time artist for a living, primarily working as a director-choreographer, visual artist, and writer. I also teach courses in public speaking, directing, movement, and story-crafting. I have been really lucky to find a way of life where I am always fundamentally giving back to the world. In the last fourteen years, John has offered me the keys to the blog numerous times, and numerous times I have begun to draft something, chickened out, and gone back to lurking. I generally much prefer to be a behind-the-scenes kind of person…

But I can’t just exist lately… because I am trans. My very existence is deemed political. Not a day goes by where I don’t experience anti-trans propaganda. New anti-trans laws are being proposed and signed into law at a hysterical pace, politicians are building their entire platforms on eradicating trans folks, and newspapers like The NY Times and WaPo write furiously about the “trans debate.” Even the Pope decided to take a shot today!

To which I’ll say: There is no trans debate for me. I exist. I can’t “take sides” here, and the way the media is framing transgender issues is deeply harmful and painful.

Last Friday, I had coffee with a friend of mine, a very liberal older gay man who had a lot of concerns and questions about “gender affirming care” for children. I spent the next two hours breaking things down for him about what exactly that process looks like as someone who not only transitioned themselves as an adult, but what exactly we are talking about when it comes to gender affirming care for children. He told me that he learned so much and was surprised at how much the media was misrepresenting these issues, and he wished that more people could just sit down with me and learn from my experience, expertise, and resources.

So here I am! My goal as a poster is to provide more resources for all of you so that you can better understand how to argue when someone tries to “debate” trans rights. I will also field questions that come up in the comments when I have the time, although I really hate your commenting system (sorry, John) so I will likely always answer them within posts themselves. There is SO much information and there is SO much going on right now, that it’s hard to find a place to start, so I’ll begin by simply offering you the TedX talk I gave in 2020 that will give you a rundown of my own story and answer some of the questions people most commonly have about being trans.

I use they/them pronouns mostly, which was first used as a singular pronoun in the English Language by Geoffrey Chaucer around 1390, and was commonly used as a singular pronoun until the Victorian era. However, if you struggle with what you feel is a plural pronoun, you’re also welcome to use xe, xer, xers (pronounced ze, zer, zers, and used like “she, her, hers”). I find that once you offer the grammar police a new pronoun, they rapidly shut up. And for anyone saying, “THESE NEWFANGLED PRONOUNS,” xe has been in usage since the 1970s, so they can either shut the fuck up, or use the phonetically identical pronoun “Ze” which was first used in the 1840s.

I speak four languages and love history, linguistics, and kindly proving people wrong. Let’s dance.

I have some posts planned already, but please ask questions in the comments. I’m very good at providing great answers to “gotcha” questions, so feel free to make requests to boost your arsenal against anti-trans rhetoric. Forgive me as I figure out posting etiquette like how to add a category that is just “trans rights,” and make a “below the fold” link, which I swear I’ll know next time…

Here is also my CAT / ART TAX. His name is Baby, and he’s been around for about 16 years. We’ve had some crazy adventures, including him once escaping from his carrier on a place during take-off. If there is interest, Baby would be pleased to share more pics and stories.

The State of Being Trans in AmericaPost + Comments (212)

In my day, never was longer.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

White supremacy is terrorism.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

The Gish Gallop: Recognizing and Responding to Bad Faith Trans “Concerns”

The State of Being Trans in America