I try to stay out of discussions of trans-related issues, because it’s not my place, but also because most anti-trans or ‘gender critical’ arguments are shallow and bad faith – post-hoc rationalisations of bigotry. However, debates within the LGBT community are more interesting to me, because all the participants share an overlapping epistemic basis – they have experienced the same oppression, they share the same ‘lived experience’. So we come to a recent [unproductive] ‘debate’ on YouTube between, among others, Clara Sorrenti (a.k.a. keffals), a [controversial] transwoman and streamer, and Buck Angel, a [controversial] transman and well-known gender-critical conservative. In setting out his views (see below from 3:20), Angel essentially made two claims. Firstly, that social recognition of a non-cis gender identity should be contingent on putting in the effort to pass as a gender other than the one assigned at birth; to wit, Angel would use a male bathroom because over multiple decades he had extensively invested in ‘passing’ as a man. And secondly, that the thing that most alienated Angel and ‘ordinary people’ from the so-called trans movement was their authoritarian insistence on ‘compelling’ recognition of their gender identity.

Now, my first inclination was to dismiss all this out of hand. In the first instance, Angel is merely re-stating the well-trodden ‘transmedicalist’ position that what matters is ‘passing’ – that members of the trans community have to conform to stereotypes of the gender binary (to be more masculine than men, to be more feminine than women) in order to exist safely in mainstream society. And the accusation of leftist tyranny or illiberal progressivism is a veritably ancient right-wing canard at this point. But it occurs to me that in actuality these two arguments are the same argument. Moreover, this pattern of argumentation recurs over and over again throughout history – for example, among black communities in the US, among the indigenous community in Australia – and this recurrence of this divide among marginalised peoples reveals something interesting about how humans do politics. And perhaps in a contemporary Australian context, it might help illuminate why the indigenous community takes divergent views on a constitutional Voice, and why large chunks of potential voters find the prospect of a Voice referendum so off-putting.

Respectability Politics

To put it simply, Angel is arguing that recognition (of one’s gender identity) must be earned – mainly through compliance with social norms and expectations. And to put it somewhat uncharitably, progressives demand recognition of their identity, regardless of whether or not they comply with social expectations. It is fair and accurate to say that this dichotomy (spoiler alert, it’s false) is fundamental to the pursuit of social change. Even when progressive movements couch their demands in solid liberal terms of universal access to rights, much of the backlash against them comes from the centrist perception that to demand equality is somehow illegitimate. So, for example, large parts of the LGBT community believed that integrating into respectable society through adherence to monogamous models of marriage and family life were the key to acceptance; black conservatives think their community has to behave ‘respectably’ in order to cut down on police violence; and the modern welfare state makes recipients of state transfers demonstrate their ‘moral worthiness’ before providing them those critical economic supports necessary for their survival. In most cases, access to dignity is conceded upon performance of some ritual humiliation or submission – i.e. compliance with a social norm. For Angel, to demand equality on the other hand is to tacitly admit one has failed to earn it. Or to make an analogy, to ask for state support is to admit one has failed to earn a basic standard of living in the market; and to ask for cultural or linguistic diversity is to admit failure to integrate.

Now, one could argue that Angel’s argument – let’s call it the respectability position – is merely tactical. That members of oppressed minorities consider the most effective route to achieving political change and assess that social compliance is more likely to lead to the majority of the desired gains. And certainly, for trans individuals who can pass sufficiently well to go ‘stealth’, that may be true. But I don’t think that’s all that’s going on. The tactical explanation does not address why this is the dominant view of large swathes or non-minority populations – ranging from well-meaning cis liberals and centrists to right-wing libertarians and other persuadable groups with no stakes in reform. Respect for existing hierarchies is, after all, one of the foundational dimensions of human political personality. And individuals who lean more conservative on other issues are also more likely to adhere to the respectability position. In fact, the demand that liberal societies recognise the actual equal autonomy of all citizens to express themselves and be treated as full members of society regardless of their ethnic, religious, sexual or other status is in fact vanishingly rare.

I’m currently in the middle of researching my next project on the history of liberalism, so this pattern seems very familiar. There’s an inherent contradiction at the heart of liberalism, between it’s idealised expression of the universal equality of all mankind and the reality, which is that for almost the entirety of the liberal era some populations have been considered more equal than others. Thomas Jefferson, who famously wrote that ‘all men are created equal’, just as famously owned and abused slaves. But even beyond the individual hypocrites, just who is considered an ‘active citizen’, a member of the political community deserving of respect, and who forms part of the masses to be governed (‘passive citizens’) has long been contested. The history of progress is by-and-large a history of expanding the conception of what it means to be human. And a core part of that has been moving beyond mere legal or symbolic equality to ensure in Elizabeth Anderson’s phrase, equality of dignity. That includes, of course, the right to be heard and have one’s conception of self recognised as legitimate. By denying marginalised groups their own culture or individuals their right to self-actualisation, liberals require assimilation into the status quo prior to granting recognition of others as full citizens. This contradiction has been the motor driving social reform, while laying a seed of resentful instability that can germinate into fascism.

Recognition must be given – or taken

So here’s why the divide between earning and demanding rights is something of a false one. In both cases, recognition must ultimately be given by someone with power to someone without. I am not enough of a liberal to believe that rights have a transcendent quality that pre-exist social relationships – recognition and substantiation of rights requires collective, social action. Ultimately, respectability politics of the type advocated for by Buck Angel, or Thomas Sowell, or Noel Pearson, doesn’t work because the position of a plurality of opponents is driven by base disgust and fear of loss – particularly, an irrational fear of a relative loss of social position. Most gender-critical men and women will never tolerate trans people – not even within the prescribed margins tacitly conceded by the transmedicalists – because they view the existence of any trans person at all as a threat, driven by feelings of personal disgust, confusion and rejection. As keffals points out, throughout history minority groups have been met with both public and private violence, legal suppression and harassment. American conservatives have basically already conceded that bills banning trans healthcare for minors, or to ban trans individuals from sport etc., are the thin end of the wedge towards their complete removal from public existence. Out of sight, out of mind.  

But it’s not enough to merely demand recognition, either. And doing so, as we have seen, may alienate those liberals and centrists who resent any expectation that they have to act to improve society somewhat. The notion that they cannot be existentially secure in their [undeserved] social position until and unless marginalised people are also secure is a truth that threatens the very core of their immense self-regard. Until and unless minority groups have the power and organisation to take recognition by force – to seize influence over key institutions and win rights on their own terms – that recognition will continue to be withheld. And in all honesty, the trans community – and indigenous peoples here in Australia – probably lack the sheer numbers to prevail in that kind of political fight. I’m not saying don’t do it. Pressure needs to be exerted from all directions and coercion is an essential part of building any social norm. But galling as it may be, progress will probably be won when the vast body of self-satisfied liberals deign to grant recognition of minority rights ‘as a gift’. The act of charitable giving re-enforces the centrist’s own sense of moral superiority and generosity. So there must be a fine balance between bullying and cajoling; a battered liberal will just as easily become a fascist.

Politics as charity

Does this carry any relevance for the referendum campaign for a Voice for indigenous Australians? I’m on the record as supporting the Voice proposal as a route to political representation, but I’m afraid that the mood of the public is souring and the window to make a make a positive case for constitutional change is narrowing. But the motivation of the Voice’s non-indigenous but well-meaning supporters appears to be not constitutional re-design but recognition of colonised peoples as full citizens. For liberals, the symbolism of the Voice - including their ‘recognition’ in the constitution - is the point; it will cost the centre nothing in real terms. So I think the Prime Minister’s messaging about relying on Australians’ ‘best qualities’ is probably his best saving throw at this point. The referendum will get up if and only if the government is able to convince sufficient voters that they’re good enough people to make the most minor of symbolic concessions to a historically marginalised group of people, whose land and culture we stole. Some might think that’s an easy victory; for me, it appears to sit on a knife’s edge. The politics of this kind of political charity may be frustrating and insulting to genuine leftists - we don’t beg - but fortunately, it’s a skill at which most high-status liberals excel.