Is debate club still a thing? It’s been a long while since I was in school, but decades ago there were actually clubs and classes dedicated to learning the art of arguing. Debate was a formal match, a dueling of words and ideas. Debaters would battle back and forth with well crafted, well researched points to counteract each other on any given subject. If you wanted to go into politics or any kind of public speaking profession, it was an essential experience to have.
Fast forward to the days of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and the art of debate has…shall we say…changed. It’s in much the same way the world changed a little when depicted in shows like The Walking Dead. If you go online, it can seem like debate is a lost cause. When we log on we wander through a wasteland of troublesome trolls, celebrity moms that think they’re doctors, and literal Nazis. There is no civility or structure. It’s just a barrage of insults, straw men, and bigoted slurs being lobed overhead like mortar fire in a war zone.
I was not prepared for such a world.
I was trained for the art of actual debate. In a real debate you cite your sources and only score points if you can accurately counteract your opponents claim. That’s not how it works in the wasteland of the internet. On the web, sources are “fake news”, and the proper counter to your argument is either a personal insult or diverting to a barely related topic and acting like that’s really what you’ve been talking about all along. If the internet were really a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the big sign spray-painted on a mangled sheet of metal and posted at the far boarder would read: “DON’T FEED THE TROLLS”.
Despite my better judgement, I do often find myself engaging with someone online who is…shall we say…less than civil. Most of the time I leave these people alone, but when the argument is about transgender rights, I often just can’t help myself. After all, these are people arguing over my very existence! They’re discussing my right to live, to exist in society, to use the damn bathroom in peace! How can I not weigh in?
The first thing you learn when arguing with someone online is that they have no intention of learning anything. It’s not about expanding their worldview to them, but rather taking their narrow understanding of reality and stretching it over everything else. What makes this incredibly frustrating is that, given their position in this fight, it’s a technique that’s both easy to use and sadly effective.
How is it effective in winning? Well, because you and they are going into this with two very different definitions of victory. You’re trying to change their mind, when all they need to feel accomplished is to simply not have their mind be changed. There is no call to teach on their side of the debate. They don’t care if your stance on anything is changed, only that they demonstrate that theirs is wavered. This is especially true when it comes to arguing about civil rights. 99 times out of 100, you’re arguing against someone who isn’t in the demographic being oppressed. You’re likely arguing women’s issues with a man, race issues with someone who’s white, trans issues with someone who is cisgender, etc. If you are a part of the targeted demographic, you have more on the line. It’s your rights, your freedom, your person-hood that’s being discussed. There’s no cultural threat imposed upon your opponent, so the stakes aren’t the same for them. Therefore, what constitutes an intelligible argument from them can be something completely asinine. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous their statement is; you’re the one with something to lose so it’s on you to rebuke it.
You will always be on defense.
I’ve seen this too many times when arguing transgender issues online. In my many (let’s be collected and call them) discussions with naysayers, I’ve seen some pretty baffling arguments. Here are some of the highlights from things I’ve actually been told are counterpoints to being transgender:
“What’s to say I can’t identify as an attack helicopter?”
“I identify as a 70 year old so you have to respect that by giving me Social Security”
“I identify as a house cat, so I don’t have to work anymore and people have to feed me.”
And the one that makes my blood boil and would likely land me in jail for murder if someone said it to my face…
“What if a pedophile just identifies as a 7 year old? Do you have to respect their love of children then?”
All of these things have actually been proposed to me when debating transgender issues online. These are their counterpoints to my researched topics, personal testimonies, and cited sources which I shouldn’t waste my time on because I know they’re not going to read them. To any rational human being, these are ludicrous notions. In an actual debate, using points like this would have you laughed off the stage. Countering them is like shooting fish in a barrel. You can’t identify as an object because objects aren’t conscious and thus don’t identify as anything. You can’t identify as an age because age isn’t a social construct and is tied to actual brain development that alters your understanding of the world (i.e. you can’t revert your mind to an adolescent state of being without giving yourself some kind of specific head trauma).
The problem is not in countering these points, but in the simple notion that you feel like you have to. Beyond the fact that they’re incredibly insulting, they serve as a reminder that you and your opponent are here to achieve two different things: you want to prove your right but they simply don’t want their mind changed. If you just respond with “that’s ridiculous and I’m not going to entertain such a notion,” then they win because you didn’t rebuke their argument (as flimsy of one as it is) and thus their world-view is unaltered. They didn’t change your mind, but that doesn’t matter to them. They know you’re the one with something to lose so you alone see a need in changing the other’s perspective. Your victory here is impossible. The only way to win is to fire back with facts and logic that will just be ignored anyway. Even if you do manage it, they’ll just come back with something religious and really have you on the ropes because its a lost cause to argue against the what someone “believes” to be true.
What’s the moral of this little story? Well, make sure you read the sign before you traverse the wasteland: DON’T FEED THE TROLLS. I understand the frustration of encountering a bigot online. I’ve lost many an hour of sleep arguing in vain against a stranger online because they were advocating for my very existence to be legislated away. Instinct tells us to fight when we’re under attack, and these online trolls serve as reminder that there are many in the world who are out to get us and have the social or political influence to make it happen. Just remember that for every troll you find, there are thousands of people who take a more neutral stance on the issue and are more capable of being persuaded.
These are the people you should concentrate your efforts on, and you win them over by being an example of just how normal and awesome transgender people can be. Living by example is the most powerful argument of all, no matter what the topic. Live as an example of your community to the people in your neighborhood, your city, your state, etc. It’s not only the best way to win, it’s the only one.
Now, if you read my examples earlier and were wondering I didn’t include people who argue about identifying as a certain race…well…there’s a lot more to unpack on that one so it’s getting it’s own post. I’ll see you all next time for that one.