ZINNIA: "Intellectual dishonesty".
This is the phrase that’s been on my mind since reading the recent profile of Blaire
White on Playboy.com.
To be clear, Playboy does tend to have good articles – my partner Heather has written
for them, and contributed to their coverage of the Pulse attack last year.
But this article by Debra Soh is one of the most uncritical and misguided puff pieces
I’ve ever read, particularly when Blaire White is allowed to preach at length on principles
of intellectual honesty.
Quote:
"The absolute best thing a person can do to combat intellectual dishonesty is to remain
strongly principled and stick to fact-based argumentation.
Call out falsities where you see them from both your ideological opponents and like-minded
people.
I strongly oppose the political tribalism that has taken over this country and caused
people to behave like they’re on a team rather than than truth-seeking individualists."
Nowhere does this article make note of Blaire White’s continued denial and mischaracterization
of transgender medicine and healthcare, something I’ve covered in extensive detail.
In light of this, her supposed dedication to “truth-seeking” and “fact-based argumentation”
is absolute nonsense.
She has spent months openly rejecting the medical consensus supporting gender-affirming
therapy and the use of puberty blockers for transgender youth.
She claims to have “expertise” on this topic even as her position contradicts the
stances of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, the
American Psychological Association, the American College of Osteopathic Pediatricians, the
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Family Physicians,
the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Endocrine Society, and
the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
Rather than acknowledging the overwhelming clinical evidence in favor of an affirming
approach, she labels this “child abuse”.
She broadcasts this shameless denialism to hundreds of thousands of viewers, deliberately
propagating misconceptions and causing untold damage to the public’s understanding of
trans people.
On its own, this already demonstrates a remarkable degree of intellectual dishonesty.
But when I presented her with evidence contradicting her assertions, she proved just how persistent
she is in her rejection of facts that don’t fit her ideology.
After 3500 words and 23 citations outlining this evidence, here’s how Blaire White chose
to respond:
BLAIRE WHITE: First up, we have Zinnia Jones, a transgender YouTuber who takes issue with
my opinion that children should not be transitioning.
What’s up, Zinnia?
ZINNIA: “This is absolutely mind-numbing.”
BLAIRE WHITE: You know that I’m pretty vocal about being against children transitioning.
ZINNIA: “What is wrong with you?
Like, actually what is your problem?”
BLAIRE WHITE: Um, children transitioning.
I thought that was obvious from when I said “vocal about being against children transitioning”.
ZINNIA: “What makes a person act like this?”
BLAIRE WHITE: Um, having a basic level of empathy for children, and understanding that
they don’t have the foresight to make permanent bodily changes and sterilize themselves — that’s
kind of my whole thing.
ZINNIA: “What is this?”
BLAIRE WHITE: Tourette syndrome?
ZINNIA: “You need to understand something.
Your viewers aren’t there for you.
They’re just in it for the ready-made excuses for transphobia that you provide to them.”
BLAIRE WHITE: Okay, this might blow your mind, Zinnia, but people who are transphobic do
not subscribe to trans people on YouTube.
Similarly, people who are snaggletooth-phobic don’t subscribe to you.
ZINNIA: “I don’t know why you think this is okay.
I don’t know why anyone thinks this is okay.
It’s nothing but evil for the sake of evil.”
BLAIRE WHITE: Okay, out of all the people that I’ve responded to on YouTube since
I started, however diametrically opposed I may have been to their views or the things
that they said, I’ve never thought any of them were evil.
I didn’t even think the ‘transgender terrorist’ was evil.
I mean I’m sure he’s great fun at parties and satanic rituals.
So I’m really sorry, Zinnia, that you seem unable to escape this pubescent mindset that
the planet is separated into good guys and bad guys, and whichever side you land on is
the good guys.
But it is possible to not hate trans people and simultaneously believe that children sterilizing
themselves for the sake of growing tits isn’t the best idea.
ZINNIA: Did she acknowledge the clinical consensus and extensive evidence supporting the availability
of transition treatment for trans youth?
No.
Did she admit that trans adolescents who are allowed to access puberty blockers have measurably
improved health outcomes?
No.
Did she recognize that there are relevant aspects of a person’s quality of life other
than fertility?
No.
Did she offer any reason why her position should be considered more reliable and persuasive
than that of numerous major medical organizations, dozens of leading children’s hospitals,
and countless specialists who have treated trans kids for years?
No.
Did she admit to any of her errors, or make any effort to correct them, or apologize for
any of this?
No.
Did she insult the condition of my teeth?
Yes.
Is this what intellectual honesty looks like?
Maybe – to the intellectually dishonest.
What few defenses she does offer are deliberate and practiced strategies to undermine fact-based
discussion in the pursuit of truth.
In a comment responding to the video she quoted, Blaire White had this to say.
Quote:
"This is my view and I've never claimed to be an expert on the topic.
I specifically state "I FEEL/IN MY OPINION/TO ME" constantly in my videos about this.
You're fucking childish for branding my difference of opinion as evil or malicious.
You know the world isn’t separated into “good guyz vs bad guyz”, right?
like someone can feel differently than you without being a bad person.
I share MY perspective - it's easy for you to say I'm flat out lying to people or that
I'm pretending to care about children, but deeming people who disagree with you as (in
your words) "evil for the sake of evil" is incredibly stupid."
In this context, the label of “opinion” serves as an escape hatch from accountability,
a mental stop-sign intended to halt any closer examination of her position – because there’s
really nothing there.
So you have a belief about something – so what?
On what basis did you form this belief?
What evidence supports your belief?
To what extent does your belief account for the existing body of knowledge on a given
topic?
If your belief diverges from the consensus of relevant medical authorities, do you have
a compelling reason why your belief should be regarded as being of equal standing?
Blaire White has hardly anything to offer in the way of this.
In and of itself, holding an opinion means very little.
The mere fact that a person believes a thing does not lend support to that belief.
But as a rhetorical device, invoking one’s “opinion” can be quite valuable.
Are we to believe that the opinion of major medical organizations and the opinion of Blaire
White both hold equal merit?
Of course not.
But stripping away all of these relevant features is a handy trick if your position loses on
those terms: when you treat an opinion as a mere excuse with zero responsibility attached,
reducing a discussion to a “difference of opinion” subtly discredits the positions
of everyone involved.
It projects a false modesty - in a realm of free-floating opinions where the simple act
of holding a belief is treated as practically unimpeachable, assertions of facts are liable
to be seen as an uninvited intrusion, a rude claim to possess something that rises above
the newly flattened playing field of opinion.
The humility of adjusting one’s beliefs based on facts is thus framed as an act of
arrogance, while the arrogance of disavowing facts in order to maintain your preferred
beliefs instead becomes a performance of humility.
This is not the behavior of an intellectually honest person.
Her resistance to having her actions judged as good or bad at all is similarly dishonest.
Of course Blaire White is willing to pass such judgment on others, just like pretty
much any of us.
If anything, she has a history of doing so especially zealously and recklessly, making
the most inflammatory accusations with little justification for this.
In a video titled “Children Transitioning = Child Abuse”, she described an article
about a 9-year-old trans girl as “every bit of this story looking like the mom encouraged
the kid to live this way and be this way”, and suggests that it’s highly unlikely for
a transgender child’s mom to be an activist for trans kids.
She made this claim despite a number of easily-located stories stating that this mother became an
activist after her child came out as trans.
This family subsequently received a great deal of harassment and violent threats from
internet trolls.
When Blaire White conducts herself in this way, she is making a moral argument.
She is appealing to a sense of what is right and what is wrong, she is invoking supposed
consequences and harms, and she expects others to concur on this moral equation and agree
with her conclusion.
She is accusing a person of child abuse.
The seriousness of such an allegation is not compatible with her attempt to retreat to
blurry ethical ground where nobody is ever told that they’re good or bad.
This disavowal of good and evil is nothing but a situational shield for her.
When a person aims to smear the very idea of assessable ranges and spectrums of right
and wrong into one shade of grey, they typically have something to get out of it that they
can’t get any other way.
In the course of explaining why early treatment for transgender youth is effective and medically
necessary, I didn’t have to defend my position by saying “well, is anything really good
or bad?”
Does she?
If so, that should be very revealing.
Imagine how she might react if that child’s mother responded to her accusations with “you
really shouldn’t say people are good or bad”, or “hey, this is just my opinion”.
Do you think that would convince Blaire White to say “oh, my bad, sorry for accusing you
of child abuse”?
Yet these are the very same excuses she makes for herself when she’s called out for intentionally
misinforming a mass audience about the benefits of medical treatment and encouraging harassment
of children and their parents.
Again, this is not intellectually honest.
Another situational shield she makes use of is the notion that her channel cannot possibly
be a hotbed of transphobia because she herself is trans – a rare invocation of identity
politics that she normally seems to deplore.
Once again, she resists any attempt to focus on the actual content of what she’s saying,
much of which is unambiguously transphobic and will attract a transphobic audience.
Denying the proven medical necessity of appropriate treatment for transgender youth is transphobic.
Ignoring the harms of untreated gender dysphoria and reducing this to “for the sake of growing
tits” is transphobic.
Mischaracterizing treatment for adolescents as being decided solely by the child and not
by an accompanying team of adult medical specialists is transphobic.
Claiming non-binary trans people aren’t “real” is transphobic.
In one recent video, she even suggests that a “cure” for trans people is not being
developed because of “political correctness”:
BLAIRE WHITE: My opinion sits somewhere in the middle on that.
I think that transitioning is not for everyone, but for some people it is really their best
bet, and it can be successful.
I would, however, love for in the future there to be some sort of other option other than
transitioning, because like I said, I don’t think that it’s for everyone.
And I think part of the reason there’s no funding going into finding a cure or a treatment
is the political correctness factor.
ZINNIA: In making this claim, not only is she proposing without evidence that such a
“cure” could even exist, but she is exempting herself from providing that evidence by further
claiming that some imagined conspiracy exists to suppress this.
Her viewers are invited to do all the work of filling in whatever shadowy details they
like, and all she has to do is toss out a vague and groundless suggestion.
This is Blaire White’s own political correctness: a political correctness of withholding accurate
information from her viewers on treatments that already work, and misrepresenting anyone
who contradicts her on this.
This doesn’t cater to transphobes in spite of her identity – it caters to them because
of her identity.
She has unique value to them, offering an example that they can hold up to say, “See?
Even trans people believe that they’re mentally disordered, and that there needs to be a ‘cure’,
and that allowing children to access treatment is ‘child abuse’”.
Her denial of everything she’s doing right in front of our eyes is not intellectually
honest.
If Blaire White wants to “combat intellectual dishonesty”, she should have started a long
time ago.
The honest thing to do would be to admit that she just doesn’t care.
I’m Zinnia Jones.
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