In my blog yesterday I said something about Xi, Jinping of China having authoritarian blood and genes. I should correct it or add something to it, that we all have dictator’s blood in us.
Right after publishing my blog I became aware of a controversial book of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” written by Abigale Shrier, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, and published by Regnery Publishing in 2020. Interestingly, the way I found it was through a place least expected: Today’s Headline 今日头条, a popular news app developed in China. Domestic politics is off-limits to the mainlanders but they are totally free on the US side, which is another sign contradicting the confidence doctrine.
Anyway, I Googled it this morning for more details in English. One can find more details in this Wikipedia page. On November 17, 2020, Fox News also had a very short news clip of the author talking to the host about the controversial and highlighting some of the criticisms.
I must say it first that I have not been following the transgender movement at all, and consider myself taking a neutral stand, neither for nor against it. I don’t even have sufficient interest to pick up the controversial book and finish reading it. What follows is entirely about the controversial, little about the book itself. For a sense of what the book is about, this site has an except, which should be enough for people like me who are not really into the issue.
Some Responses Are Shocking
Having something controversial is nothing new in this country. What is shocking is that some high profile critics have gone too far. The English professor at UC Berkeley, Grace Lavery, is one of them. I am quoting from this site, where the professor was quoted as saying, “Since some ppl have misunderstood my tone, and censorship is an important matter and as a public educator I have a duty to be precise, let me clarify: I do NOT advocate defacing library books. I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre.” The original tweet was dated November 14, 2020, at 2:41pm.
Professor Lavery continued with detailed instruction:
“Plz make sure you use a safe pyre, and that you have an extinguisher to hand,” she continued. “Be safe, when you are burning books. Remember: all you’re doing is removing a commodity from circulation—much as one might destroy a contaminated crop, or take action if a distributor failed to do so.”
It provides only partial relief to learn later that Prof. Lavery was only joking. She quickly added however that “the sort of moral panic that book burning elicits, despite never happening, is weird” as it is to destroy a copy but not the original.
I did not understand the word “Deface” and had to Google it online. It says (as a verb) to “spoil the surface or appearance of (something), for example by drawing or writing on it.” I am also glad that she was aware of her duty as public educator. Yet I am still appalled by her more accurate and clarified suggestion or encouragement. In fact, I am not sure which action is worse: defacing a library book or stealing it and then burning it.
Similarly, this site has highlighted other outcry, specifically from an ACLU (by Googling I found that ACLU stands for American Civil Liberty Union) officer:
“Abigail Shrier’s book is a dangerous polemic with a goal of making people not trans,” Chase Strangio, the American Civil Liberties Union’s deputy director for transgender justice, tweeted Friday. “I think of all the times & ways I was told my transness wasn’t real & the daily toll it takes. We have to fight these ideas which are leading to the criminalization of trans life again.” Then: “Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.”
The Responses I Liked
Let me quote responses from the opposite direction. All these can be found on the same site quoted before. One tweet by the LGB Alliance (@ALLIANCELGB) says:
“People who haven’t read @AbigailShrier’s book are eager to have it banned, to ensure other people don’t read it either. Practices like that belong in a totalitarian state. There is not a syllable of hate in the book.”
Similarly, Discovery Channeled (@DscvrChnnld) tweets:
“This book highlights girls deciding they are trans in groups, all of a sudden, with their girl friends… the author investigates that. It’s not about trans people. Only totalitarian people and cultists want to shut down debate. People who are afraid of the truth.”
But the longer piece that says exactly what I want to say is this one by a professor of psychology at Stetson University. I loved it and read it in its entirety. I’ve also learned two things from it: The Streisand Effect and the Overton Window (aka window of discourse).
I have much more respect to Prof. Ferguson than to Prof. Lavery. Sorry, I can’t bring myself to promote the idea of stealing and then stopping (even just a copy of) a book from circulation. That is nothing constructive and everything destructive. It is worse than banning because stealing is a crime, arguably outside the Overton window. Prof. Lavery may even be legally liable if copies of the Shrier book indeed were stolen.
Are We Fighting Trump By Being Trump-Like?
The point I want to make here is related to the question in the above section heading. A more extreme statement is whether we all have dictator’s blood.
I really want to say “Yes,” although at least in the US I would avoid using the word “blood” and instead for words like “instincts”, “propensities” or “impulses” to honor the roots of this nation that set up a model for others.
Domestic violence, bullying at school and federal pardons are the real life examples how dictators’ impulses are at work.
The important point here is that the sense of democracy has to be intentionally or consciously taught and installed, preferably when we are young. All failed nations ultimately failed because parents in those countries have raised their youth in wrong ways. To quote Leo Tolstoy but twist it a bit: All happy nations are happy in their own ways, all unhappy nations are all alike.
A Better Way to Fight Censorship
So far firms or platforms are taking it as its self responsibility to label, ban or censor particular pieces of information, be it a book or a tweet. But this is not the best way to do it. They have been acting like judges in the court of law with the sole and final authority to determine what readers can or cannot see. But platforms are not judges and should not be. They may have mistaken out of good intention. Furthermore, as in the case of Target stores this time, the decisions tend to be binary: To sell it or not to sell it. Amazon chose to sell it but blocked all paid ads promoting the book. As another example, one MD’s YouTube piece was blocked by YouTube, even though some audiences will certainly benefit from learning the professional opinion (based on facts and studies) on Ivermectin for preventing and treating Covid-19.
A better way is to have democracy at play: Publish all pieces within the Overton window, but make sure to help readers make choices or educate themselves by presenting other relevant pieces. On Twitters for example we do not simply label Trump’s lies as lies, but present relevant links right below Trump’s to let readers read and compare. With AI this should be easy to do. The nice thing about it is that to let ideas, facts, opinions compete with each other. This is how democracy should work and we would offer no excuses for any form and shape of censorship.