Playing the pretend-knowledge trick: I am an expert in this made-up Thing (field? discipline? ideology? campaign?) so I get to say anyone who disputes said made-up Thing has no right to do so because No Expertise.

Like trans-activist Ugla Stefanía Jónsdóttir for instance:

Experts on trans rights and people who have been working in the field for decades are being pitted against almost anyone with a negative opinion about trans people – regardless of who they are. This seems to be a trend among anti-trans campaigners; they’re given a platform despite their lack of knowledge or experience of the discussion they’re taking part in. As an example, in a controversial move, Scottish MP Joan McAlpine has just invited Canadian writer Meghan Murphy, founder of the blog Feminist Current, to speak at the Scottish Parliament about ‘how transgender ideology affects women’s rights’. Murphy’s blog has long been known for its strong anti-trans stance and regularly publishes material that advocates against trans rights and discusses the alleged dangers of the ‘transgender lobby’. It is a go-to-site for strong anti-trans campaigners. It would be safe to say that Murphy herself has no expertise, qualifications or experience with transgender rights.

But would it? No, it wouldn’t. Murphy has, for instance, abundant experience with the way the more belligerent trans activists work hard to silence Murphy and other feminists. And while we’re on the subject, what expertise, qualifications or experience does Ugla Stefania have with women’s rights? Other than battling them?

Her invitation to this discussion therefore seems quite out of touch, such as if a climate change denier was invited to discussion about how to stop the catastrophic damage we are doing to our planet. Or if a representative of the Flat Earth Society was invited to a discussion about an upcoming space expedition by NASA.

Oh no you don’t. There is a mountain of Actual Science dealing with climate change, and the same goes for cosmology and engineering. Transery isn’t a body of knowledge, or any kind of knowledge at all, it’s mere declaration of identity. Trans ideology insists with great ferocity that it is entirely a matter of self-identification, so it can’t possibly also be a matter of specialist knowledge. “A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman” – how many times have we been told that, usually with menaces? There’s nothing to know, no expertise or qualifications or experience required. It’s all about the assertion, and the fact that it is all about the assertion is the very thing we’re attacked and shunned for questioning. So no: it’s not even slightly like climate change denial.

People who fundamentally do not believe trans people are the gender they know themselves to be, and who deliberately and repeatedly misgender and misrepresent people’s identities and personhood, can never be seen as reasonable representatives of this debate. Trans people are who they say they are, and any conversation that doesn’t acknowledge this is inherently flawed and biased.

See? She says it herself. “Trans people are who they say they are” so what expertise can there possibly be?

These groups and individuals are disguising themselves as protectors of the rights of ‘women and girls’, but it’s time we see them for what they truly are: misguided people with conservative and fundamentalist views about sex and gender. They do not want equality, but supremacy.

Interesting, that’s what anti-feminist men have been saying about feminism since before Mary Wollstonecraft learned to read.