E-Pluribus | March 25, 2024
Transgenderism gets real; what the NCAA basketball tournament says about DEI; and Guatemala's fight for freedom.
A round-up of the latest and best musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Leor Sapir: Empirical…ish
In a New York Magazine article this month provocatively titled “Freedom of Sex,” transgender activist and author Andrea Long Chu argued for the right of children to choose their own sex. Chu’s article contains jaw-dropping lines such as this: “But if children are too young to consent to puberty blockers, then they are definitely too young to consent to puberty, which is a drastic biological upheaval in its own right.” The article nonetheless drew some praise for transparency as well as serious responses, such as from New York Magazine’s own Jonathan Chait. While Chait offered some pushback to Chu’s assertions, Leor Sapir at City Journal says both Chu and Chait are missing the boat.
While trans activists often pretend that only “right-wing reactionaries” and “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” (“TERFs”) oppose their claims, [transgender activist and author Andrea Long] Chu refreshingly observes [in New York magazine] that this isn’t true. The most “insidious” pushback, Chu says, has come from “TARLs,” or “trans-agnostic reactionary liberals.” Indeed, polling has shown that Americans with liberal views largely reject such policies as schools keeping students’ gender “transition” secret from their parents and allowing trans-identified males to compete in female sports.
Chu’s essay went viral, prompting New York staff writer Jonathan Chait to pen a “Liberal Response.” Chait has a history of opposing trans activists’ censoriousness, particularly about medical transition for youth. Last December, for example, he responded to transgender advocacy groups’ fury that the New York Times had acknowledged the ongoing scientific debate over how best to treat gender-distressed minors, which they claimed had abetted state-level Republican efforts to ban pediatric transition. Chait called for “carefully following the evidence,” and observed that “the whole reason leftists try to associate reporters at the Times with Republican-backed laws is precisely that their targets do not agree with the conservative position on transgender care.”
Chait’s December piece correctly identified the tribalist logic informing elite discussions of gender medicine in the United States, and progressive journalists’ efforts to banish from the liberal tribe those who raise questions about this controversial area of medicine. His response to Chu’s essay, however, fails to extend to conservatives the charity he expects trans activists to extend to liberals like himself. If Chait is worried about tribalism obscuring the pursuit of truth, he might consider how his own writing may contribute to this problem.
Consider his characterization of the debate over “trans rights.” Chait claims that “[c]onservatives dismiss trans rights altogether, while liberals completely support trans rights as it pertains to employment, housing, public spaces, and other adult matters, disagreeing mainly in how it is applied to children (as well as, in limited cases, addressing the problems raised by trans female athletes competing in women’s sports).”
[. . .]
Has Chait accurately characterized the conservative position in this debate? Despite his claim that “[c]onservatives dismiss trans rights altogether,” there’s no evidence that the standard “conservative” position on, say, employment is to allow adverse action against trans-identified people tout court. The YouGov poll found that 44 percent of Republican respondents said they support “banning employers from firing employees on the basis of their transgender identity.” Fifty-seven percent of Independents, which presumably includes some conservatives, answered the same way. Recalling the abstract nature of “rights talk,” what is framed as “employment non-discrimination” often comes down to policy questions about how employers should treat trans-identified employees or candidates in circumstances where sex presumably matters, for instance access to workplace bathrooms.
When asked whether there should be specific provisions for “transgender people in hate crime laws,” 42 percent of Republicans and 57 percent of Independents agreed that transgender status merits special protection, while 24 percent and 27 percent, respectively, said they weren’t sure.
In short, it is highly misleading to say that liberals support trans rights while conservatives do not. When the abstraction “trans rights” is broken down into concrete policy questions, as inevitably it must be, many liberals seem to disagree with policies favored by trans rights activists while many conservatives agree with them. Chait himself recognizes the uselessness of abstract rights talk when he turns his attention to Chu’s argument for “freedom of sex.”
[. . .]
Above all, thoughtful discussion of youth gender transition is not possible unless one is willing to interrogate the very notion of the “transgender child.” And this, I think, is still a bridge too far for liberals like Chait. What does it mean to say that a child “is transgender”? That she was “born in the wrong body”? That’s metaphysical talk, and absurd. It’s also dangerous to suggest such a thing to vulnerable teenagers who are going through the throes of puberty. Nor is there evidence for the transgender brain hypothesis—and even if there were, gender clinicians (even the “cautious”) ones are not calling for, and most would actively oppose, brain scans as part of the diagnostic process.
Read the whole thing.
Richard Vedder: The Real March Madness
At Minding the Campus, Richard Vedder says while the NCAA basketball tournaments may be “mad,” at least they are based on merit. The contrast to the DEI ideology endemic in higher education is stark and should be a reminder to those schools that focusing on achievement rather than demographics is what makes the competition great. The same mindset on the academic side would undoubtedly achieve similar results.
If there is an annual event that most clearly demonstrates the importance of merit and skill on American college campuses, it is the March Madness surrounding the NCAA basketball championships.
. . . Jared Gould, Minding the Campus’s Managing Editor, sent me a story by Haley Taylor Schlitz from The Black Wall Street Times, which, among other things, said, “As we revel in the triumphs and heartaches on the basketball courts, we must also confront a disturbing trend … the systematic dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.” Basketball excellence is based on merit—outstanding performance resulting from great talent and hard work. Those having it are rewarded with high recognition, money—from name, image, and likeness revenues—and campus and community adulation.
By contrast, DEI is militantly anti-merit: people should be evaluated based on biological attributes, such as the color of their skin. Practically speaking, in America, DEI is primarily about expanding black involvement in college life—and even sometimes in corporate job placement—combined with a contempt for the free expression of ideas traditionally the hallmark of collegiate life.
To use March Madness to lament attacks on DEI strikes me as ludicrous.
One area where black Americans have excelled based on merit is sports. I attend many college basketball games and it is certainly not unusual to see 10 black men playing, but virtually unheard of to see 10 white men on the court. Black basketball supremacy is universally accepted and is a consequence of exceptional talent and hard work. If we used a DEI mindset emphasizing skin color over merit, there should be lawsuits over the vast underrepresentation of whites, Asians, and Hispanics from college basketball teams.
[. . .]
[T]he efforts to dismantle DEI programs are to be expected and, from my pro-merit perspective, applauded. The spirit of DEI is the antithesis of what makes college basketball fun. Most of the present or past basketball greats—LeBron James, Steph Curry, Michael Jordan, Kareen Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, etc.—were black, but race played zero role in their success. Competence, skill, and determination did.
Read it all.
Quico Toro: How To Save a Democracy
Like many Central American countries, Guatemala’s political history is rather a mess, and the past few years are certainly no exception. Writing at Persuasion, however, Quico Toro sees some reasons for optimism. (Even with the extensive excerpts below, it’s difficult to grasp the narrative, so read the whole piece.)
Guatemala’s transformation since June 2023 may be the most startling episode of democratic renewal anywhere in the world this century. For the first time in living memory, everyday Guatemalans of all backgrounds talk with pride about their government, which they have elected and fought for in the streets. After winning an electoral landslide, President Bernardo Arévalo, a little over one month into his term, has the support of four-fifths of the population.
Guatemalans know the corrupt old regime is down, but not out. Still, the story from Guatemala is amazing, and deserves to be much better known. In a little over eight months, an unlikely coalition of intellectuals from Guatemala City and indigenous activists from many different Maya nations teamed up with parts of the business elite and the U.S. embassy to unseat a ruthless kleptocracy, all without a trace of violence.
[. . .]
Having banned all plausible reform candidates except [Bernardo] Arévalo in the 2023 election, [Guatemala corrupt leaders] created obvious incentives for reform-minded voters to rally around him. In a hugely fragmented field of 22 candidates, 15% of Guatemalans cast valid ballots for Arévalo in the first round in June, seeing him through to the second round run-off six weeks later. There, he faced a former first lady deeply enmeshed with the old kleptocratic power structure.
[. . .]
Fiscal General Porras seems to have thought that Arévalo could be dealt with in the usual way: that her office could bring suits before friendly judges and they’d just run Arévalo off the road, as they’d done to so many others. Soon, investigators dug up a complaint filed the previous May where a single citizen alleged his signature had been faked in the drive to register Arévalo’s party, and a judge threw Arévalo off the ballot.
[. . .]
The decision barring him from the second round was reversed on appeal. And a jolt of electricity shot through Guatemala’s body politic.
[. . .]
There was something in the air even then, so it wasn’t quite a shock when Arévalo swept the run-off vote with a stunning 61% in August. But it was still an almighty affront to the system.
[. . .]
This was too much for Porras and the pactos. Once again she moved against Arévalo, invalidating the result on the basis of a hare-brained allegation of election fraud that simply made no sense at all. But what happened next… well, what happened next might define Guatemalan society for the coming two generations.
Guatemala erupted, but not the way you’d expect. It erupted from the margins, with indigenous people in the lead. And not indigenous groups in some general sense, but one indigenous community. The biggest one. The K’iche’.
At the start of October, a K’iche’ NGO known as “the 48 cantons of Totonicapán” announced they would march on the capital to demand Fiscal General Porras’s resignation and Arévalo’s inauguration. With roots dating back to the 16th century, the cantons brought together the mayors of 48 K’iche’ settlements in one area of the Western highlands, some 200 km west of Guatemala City.
True to their word, in early October the 48 cantons started busing large numbers of villagers to the capital, setting up a protest camp in front of Porras’s office to demand her resignation. The protest was big, loud, and uniformly peaceful, inspired by principles of civil disobedience as old as time.
[. . .]
The protest went on for three entire weeks: an encampment of thousands of indigenous people from a city 200 km away living on site, eating from communal kitchens and toilets organized and supplied by the church and university activists. The demonstrations just about brought Guatemala to a halt. Road blockages forced the issue, making travel between different parts of the country impossible.
[. . .]
In the end, the movement was supported by a coalition so broad that even the pacto de corruptos couldn’t resist it. Arévalo, the diplomat, skillfully wove together support from groups that had never been close to one another: indigenous rural Catholics and ladino urban progressives, American diplomats and Catholic priests, representatives of the old white oligarchy and penniless Maya campesinos.
The power elite around Consuelo Porras had no choice but to give way. Arévalo was inaugurated as president in January.
Read it all here.
Around Twitter (X)
Via Parents Defending Education - so, no agenda in public schools?
Arizona State University thinks free speech is worth celebrating!
And finally, via FIRE, a reminder that free speech should not be taken for granted, and our children should be taught to appreciate it. (Click for video.)