Whack a Woke — James Finn Special

Why vulnerable minority groups must be mindful of who they encourage to advocate for their community.

This story relates to a very well written article by an LGBTQ+ writer on Medium. James Finn and I have agreed on a lot of things in the past and I’ve always enjoyed his writing and the vast majority of his insights. The guy has a great style.

Turns out he doesn’t like being questioned or debated and alas, that is my hobby. It’s in the name.

If you want to be familiar with the wider context of our discussion then you’ll need to be familiar with the highly contentious and salacious novel ‘Call Me Max’. It’s aimed, as all good salacious novels are, at six-year-olds.

The book is by Kyle Lukoff and is the story of a young trans boy discovering his identity.

Look at it. Doesn’t it exude quiet danger in a way that only books like ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, ‘Lolita’ and ‘The Satanic Verses’ have done before it?

Max looks like a right little bastard. He’s got dungarees, a go-getter attitude and a dog which is a sure sign of trouble. Almost all problematic youth have dogs, see Dennis the Menace, Charlie Brown and Tintin for more.

The book was included on a list of books that teachers in Austin, Texas were passing to each other as recommended reading. No harm no foul, teachers do this sort of thing all the time. One teacher then read this ‘very dangerous book’ to their fourth-grade class like an absolute maverick.

The crap didn’t just hit the fan, a truck of manure hit the windmill.

Some parents complained and took it up with the school board. Who in the spirit of farcical overreaction promptly removed the book from the curriculum and offered all the children therapy. The book was labelled ‘inappropriate’ by the Superintendent, who seems to have all the political savvy of a dead hamster in a plastic bag.

Trans-activists waded in to defend the teacher and verbally slap the Superintendent for labelling trans children inappropriate. Parents entrenched their positions and demanded a more robust response.

Massive own goal by everyone involved and it’ll come as no surprise if you’re a regular reader of mine that I took a centre-ground position. It’s the one I usually take, where it turns out everyone involved is an idiot.

You can read James’ original take and my comment on his page. He went on to block me *spoiler* so I can no longer see it. I’m going to presume it was very witty and erudite as usual — but, by all means, check for yourself.

Deconstructing James’ Response

I believe in a pluralistic society where rights between individuals are balanced. The response from James Finn is excellent because he very succinctly demonstrates, better than I ever can, the absurdity of taking an extreme position when faced with polite and moderate centre ground dissent.

His words are in bold but you could’ve probably worked that out for yourself.

So you think teaching trans kids that they’re inappropriate is OK in the name of compromise?

No. I think compromise is achievable without teaching trans-kids they’re inappropriate. I don’t think any children should be actively taught they are inappropriate. Maybe Tintin, but only for that mid-1930s period where he went a bit Hitler Youth.

I used to be a drama teacher. I’ve taught trans kids, or ‘kids’ as I prefer to call them. I don’t care about a child’s genitalia and I worry about those people who do. Kids are very accepting of difference, though they sometimes need a little bit of help.

I had a boy Princess Elsa and a girl Batman show up for one of my costume days towards the end of my teaching career. This wouldn’t have happened a decade ago. It was wonderful. Theatre and youth drama in particular encourage people to express themselves however they wish and as a liberal, I absolutely endorse expression in this way.

I don’t know whether either of these children was trans, nor do I care. Both sets of parents arrived with worried expressions that spoke of ideological skirmishes over breakfast. Both children had triumphed in that way that single digit humans often do and so I had boy-Elsa and girl-Batman.

Or Elsa and Batman as they should be called(she was emphatically NOT Batgirl despite such an option being available.)

Initially, some of the other children were a bit open-mouthed and standoffish. Nothing a decent teacher can’t handle. Guess what? I’m a decent teacher. Within ten minutes I had all of them playing duck-duck-goose and was amused to see Batman caught by Elsa.

Such a thing doesn’t bode well for the Justice League.

The sight of two six-year-olds running around freezing each other and throwing imaginary batamarangs against gender conformity warmed my soul to its frozen little core. Maybe I’m a pioneer for gender inclusivity? Or maybe, like the kids themselves, I couldn’t give a shit either way.

But no, in answer to your question. I don’t think teaching kids they are inappropriate is ever the answer. Ever.

Wow, you are every bit as problematic a bigot as the parents who demanded the book be removed.

A parent has a right to demand a book be removed from the syllabus. That demand doesn’t have to be granted and the fact the Superintendent fell over to accommodate the parents was an unfortunate misstep.

If teachers suddenly decided 1920s classic Mein Kampf was to be read allowed, Jewish parents would have the right to demand the book be removed. Rightly so. If the education system insisted Mein Kampf remain in the syllabus, Jewish parents would be within their rights to remove their children from class.

For those parents, for whatever reason (but probably transphobia) ‘Call Me Max’ is their Mein Kampf. I can’t see any good reason why a tale about a young-trans boy attending school and sorting out what he wants to be called is the hill they’ve chosen to die on.

I think it’s a totally ridiculous stance to take.

But in a shared society they don’t need a logical reason to dissent. They just can. You can’t mandate parenting to be free from homophobia, transphobia, racism or any other societal malaise. You can only mitigate against it by inclusive activities. Compulsory reading lists isn’t the way to go.

A child’s well-being is the responsibility of their parent(s), it is for them to define and for the State to have minimal interference in that process. Only when children are at risk of significant harm should the State get involved.

This is a balancing act in law. I would argue that in some instances removing your child from mainstream education is abusive.This is not one of those cases. It’s not for activists to mandate what should and shouldn’t be required reading. By all means campaign for it, but you cannot enforce it.

The word ‘bigot’ is thrown around a lot in the activist’s circle. It is usually short-hand for ‘someone who disagrees with me’ — and James has used it in that context here.

The real definition of ‘bigot’ is someone who doesn’t listen to the views of other people. It has nothing to do with political stance or your given position on any issue. Remember the Penguin mantra.

A lack of agreement is not oppression.

You are every bit the immoral force for evil that the principal is in this story.

Everyone loves a good bit of hyperbole. I’ve been called many things but ‘immoral force for evil’ is a new one. No harm, no foul. Sometimes I am an immoral force for evil, usually because I haven’t had my morning coffee. I’ll accept this one in good faith.

Did you even read it? The book was REMOVED from the school after a teacher, not an “activist type,” read it to 9 and 10 year olds.

I haven’t read the book. In my defence, I’m not the target age and nor do I have children. I have been a teacher though and it looks like a good book. I’m all for inclusive book reading in the classroom. I don’t understand why some Texan parents have such an issue with it, but they do.

On a side note, I wouldn’t let a trans-activist into a classroom for the same reason I wouldn’t let a KKK Grand Mage into the classroom. Children need to be protected from the stupidity of extremists and taught to think critically. Not told what to think by idiots who presume they have all the answers

That principal (and you) are every bit as bigoted those horrid British politicians last year who tried to cave to those homophobic parents in Birmingham. Homophobia and transphobia are evil and immoral because they HURT people.

This was in response to raising the issue of what happened when Muslim parents in Birmingham removed their children from classes that teach homosexuality as part of sex-ed. James has a vested interest in tackling homophobia and transphobia but not, it would seem, Islamaphobia?

Identity politics rapidly falls down when two minority groups are at odds with each other. It becomes a zero-sum-game pissing contest where the stakes are raised by leveraging suffering and won by calling oppression at every turn.

It’s what happened in this instance.

Whilst I’d prefer every child gets an education that includes normalisation of homosexuality — I can’t mandate this without getting really legalistically oppressive.

I don’t want an entire culture to be labelled as homophobic. Muslim parents differ in their views and different cultures have different ideas and psychological frames of reference for homosexuality. That’s not a defence of homophobia via religion as James will infer, it’s a complexity that has to be acknowledged in order to undo it further.

All liberals like me can do is point at the law and say “What do you want to do now?” Welcome to pluralism. You don’t have to like it, but in a liberal democracy, you have to tolerate it.

Inclusivity hurts nobody. Ever. There is no harm. None.

On this point, James and I can reach a consensus. Inclusivity isn’t the thing I’m arguing here. I think inclusivity is vital for the wellbeing of society. I’m all for inclusivity.

But as with most destinations for a utopian society, there are multiple ways there. I think James has the right idea. I agree with his premise, but his methodology is childish. You can’t mandate inclusivity, it’s an organic process that has to develop through mutual understanding.

People like you who try to find an equivalence between bigots and those who push for inclusion do great harm.

As I’ve pointed out, bigotry is related to listening, it is not the opposite of those who push for inclusion. What James means with ‘those who push for inclusion’ is ‘people who think like me’ and everyone else can be dismissed out of hand.

It goes against James’ world view to think that maybe there are people who don’t think like him but who might have the same goal. He doesn’t want to listen to those people, he blocks those people with a simple click, in what turns out to be a masterful handling of irony.

Here’s a timely reminder that I’m blocked. His home-grown brand of total inclusion doesn’t even include me in his world anymore. Gutted. I can’t imagine what he’s got in store for actually transphobic people. I suspect it isn’t tolerance.

You’re trying to say it’s all relative, that stigmatizing LGBTQ people is acceptable sometimes, that showing kids we can be unacceptable sometimes is OK.

No. I’m saying that LGBTQ+ people are stigmatised. That is a fact. In a pluralistic society people stigmatise each other. It’s part of living in a shared space. There’s very little you can do to stop racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic parents raising their kids that way without enacting fascism.

To mandate a totally inclusive society you’d have to bug people’s houses and require neighbours to snitch on each other for minor indiscretions. You would have to introduce high penalties for ‘phobic’ language. All of this would, of course, be mandated by the state and someone as balanced as James Finn would be in charge.

I know, I know, there’s literally no example of the left ever hijacking the state in such a way and electing a leader who brooks no dissent. At no point between say 1917 and now has that ever been a thing.

Except of course, all the times that it has. I’ll no doubt get my own gulag with no warm croissants for breakfast in Finntopia.

Going off like a bomb over what book to read in a classroom full of six-year-olds might not be the best way to counter stigmatisation of minority groups. This is most true when your opposition includes parents who believe you’re an uncompromising bunch who want to dictate what their children do and say.

Just saying.

Your whole comment is horrifying. I know evil exists in the world, but having to wade through it on Medium is literally sickening. Don’t reply to me again. I seriously don’t want to hear your evil, bigoted garbage.

This really ups the ante on the ad-hominem. I was just a bigot earlier, now I’m the verbal effluence of unquestioning evil. Not bad for a casual Sunday comment. Bonus points for the classic ‘don’t ever talk to me again’ tactic.

As, international legend and all round good egg Steve QJ pointed out, this normally means that you’ve got someone on the back-foot and they don’t want to acknowledge your points.

Spoiler. I replied. I can’t help myself. That’s when I got blocked. Poor penguin.

LGBTQ people are fully human and deserve FULL, UNCOMPROMISING equality everywhere on Earth, whether homophobic/transphobic bigots like you are cool with that or not.

And here we get to the crux of the matter. A bit more ad-hominem just for good measure. As it happens I’m neither homophobic nor transphobic — but that’s not the point I’m making.

Yes they do. They absolutely do. But full uncompromising equality doesn’t have to look the way James expects it to look. Nor does it have to be achieved the way he thinks it will be achieved.

I am fine having kids taken out of the class because their parents are transphobic. I’m a liberal. There’s no crime against being transphobic, it’s not a hate crime to hold views that run counter to the received wisdom of progressives like James.

Plus I think letting them take their kids out of the class would’ve had the opposite effect to the one their parents intended. Here we get to the own goal section of ardent trans-activism.

I can tell you from personal experience and a decade of teaching when kids are told they can’t do something, they get curious. They want to know what they’re missing. They’ll find out from their friends. They’ll pick up the book anyway when nobody is looking to see what the fuss is about.

If you let parents take their kids out of the class, you increase the likelihood of an excluded child finding out about trans issues anyway.

They’ll hold their own conversations and form a little playground sub-committee to see what the under eights decided to think. No kid likes to be excluded from the group. If the majority of their class are pro-trans and pro-Max being at school — they’ll go with the flow.

They also go with the flow at home, kids are adaptable like that. They’d be trans-inclusive at school and trans-excluding at home — and they’d grow up conflicted. But hell… they’ll work it out.

Slow and steady progress.

Taking trans-kids out of the school because you don’t want to include them in the education system is transphobic. Letting parents remove their children from the classroom because they don’t like the subject matter of a book is a liberal position.

The vast majority of the population in the West are centre ground. They couldn’t give a crap what their kids are reading as long as they come back from school with improved literacy. They don’t consider trans-rights as part of their daily life and I suspect it doesn’t occur to them at all.

“As long as my kid reads gooder than I did at her age, Imma be happy.” (Fictional quote)

Now consider what happens when one parent has a vested interest in making this an issue fighting over. Consider what happens at the school gates. Consider what happens on the phone each evening. Consider how the gradual emergence of trans-tolerance has suddenly become a polarising issue.

Centre ground parents are now being forced to pick a position. Picking their position also depends on their relationship with other parents, their own kid’s friendships and the parent’s own experience with the school and teacher in question.

In short, you just split your moderates. This is now a game of two teams neither of whom is likely to back down. It’s a capture-the-flag moral high-ground for idiots.

That first parent who complained might’ve been a transphobic bigot. If that parent had got their own way, one child could’ve left the class. Maybe five total if they’d done a set of phone calls and they were very persuasive.

Their kids would’ve felt what it was like to be excluded. Over time they likely would’ve had their transphobic views slowly and inexorably corrected by their peer group. I believe in the power of children to do this. Crotchfruit love loopholes.

Inclusion and tolerance by the back door the way that classic liberals like me think it should be done.

Instead, it’s a political hot potato. A battle to the death between two teams of intolerant idiots and one into which the loudest voices are pouring their best Dunning-Kruger style mortal combat phrases.

“FINISH THEM!” (I did the gender-inclusive pronouns so you know I’m not really the embodiment of transphobic evil.)

As James has demonstrated with his explosive reaction and then blocking me This isn’t about a push for inclusion, it’s about having things your own way at all costs. A childish position to take. It seems the only people not behaving childishly in this debate are the children.

Like James I would also like trans-people to be included and for this book to be read, but I’m not prepared to set up a subjectively-benign-Finninan-fascist state to ensure it is.

I believe James has yet to understand that mandating inclusivity is the wrong move, even if it works towards his eventual goal of equality. He’s too caught up in the heady, heavy-handed and all-to-often applauded brand of justice he’s currently dispensing.

Bigots, bigots everywhere!

Bigots like me. A one time liberal drama teacher who dared to suggest parents have the right to remove children from lessons when they disagree with the content. And then pointing out that perhaps labelling those parents as the walking embodiment of evil incarnate might not be a wise move in the fullness of time.

I am the dreams that bigots are made of.

James attempts to create a tolerant society via tyranny and doesn’t understand why moderate liberals have become bigots around him. His push for inclusiveness can only be achieved by excluding people whose views don’t align with his own. Such people are easily excluded because they do not meet James’ criteria as human. Like many activists, he sees no irony here.

In advocating for a marginalised group with such an aggressive style he doesn’t allow for any other solution but his own. This would be fine if he were the one on the receiving end of the backlash from people less moderate and liberal than I am — but he’s not. The backlash will not land on him, only applause from his echo chamber, and one moderate dissent from a penguin, now blocked, landed on him.

There’s two types of bigot causing problems for the trans-community. One kind immediately jumps to mind. James Finn is the other kind.

Want some more penguin on the trans-rights arguments?