Belonging to an exclusive club

Some months ago I wrote an essay on occasion of the media storm that unfolded when the author of the Harry Potter book series, British Joanne Kathleen Rowling showed her support for Maya Forstater, who had been fired from her job because of comments that were allegedly discriminatory against trans-gender people. I copy it below, plus an addendum on the current situation.

Being a US citizen does not mean belonging to a very exclusive group. This "club" counts more than 300 million members and another 4 million babies join every year by the simple fact of being born in the country. For the rest of us mortals, obtaining that citizenship entails going through a long, arduous and expensive process, whose success is not even guaranteed. And in spite of how cumbersome it is, year after year more than a million people initiate the process because the membership of this not-so-select group can have a substantial impact in the ability of these people to sustain themselves (e.g. work and residence permits). These are people that need to be US citizen to survive.

Photo: Joseph Mischyshyn

However, for an immense majority of humanity (7800 million minus 331 million) being a US citizen is not a necessity and in most parts of the world it is even acceptable to behave as a US citizen even if you are not one: you can give yourself American names, listen to country music, fire up the grill on the 4th of July, drive a pick-up truck or sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" as you watch the beginning of an American football match. In everyday life nobody freaks out anymore if they hear you speaking with a Brooklyn accent or wearing a Stetson because there are very few situations outside the pure institutional where it is necessary to verify if a cowboy we just met is a US citizen or is only pretending.

Does it make sense, then, that the entry barriers are so strict, in particular compared to the simple fact of being born? From my humble point of view that is indubitably the case, because otherwise the situation can become incredibly confusing. Each one is born under their own circumstances, and there is in general very little debate about it (that is why birth certificates are so important). But acquired circumstances, such as a new nationality, cannot be too volatile, because otherwise the definition of the category does not make sense anymore: only those who have met all the requirements and completed the naturalization process can call themselves US citizens and only those can enjoy all the associated rights. The rest of us can be tourists, traveling business people, holders of a student visa and many other things, but certainly not US citizens because we have not completed (or even started) the process.

Furthermore, each of these groups of non-citizens have different rights, recognized as function of the requisites they fulfill and the need that they have demonstrated, but certainly not on the bases of how they see themselves of what they declare to be. Would it make sense that an illegal alien "saw himself" as a US citizen when the government comes to deport him? Of course not, citizenship cannot be a matter of opinions. And even if this hypothetical immigrant has spent years living in the US as a citizen, regardless of how much he feels "like everyone else", if he has not fulfilled the paperwork he will have to resort to keep living like an American... in his country of origin.

And I do not want to enter in the problem of jurisdiction: what would have happened if the Iranian militias had "declared themselves" US citizens when they attacked a Japanese oil tanker in the gulf of Oman? In which prison do they belong?

If you are wondering what this rant about nationalities has to do with J. K. Rowling, you can just replace the change of citizenship with a change of sex. Because the administrative recognition of your sex, as with the citizenship, has to be based on fulfilling certain requirements and cannot depend on your whim.

This is the end of the essay I wrote back in June, when the storm broke out. In the intervening time I have written a post or two about the culture of cancellation and how it is radically different having an unpopular opinion and calling to action on it.

On the other hand, one can only wonder where all the support for trans-gender people is coming from. It took almost a century for African Americans to gain equal civil rights and even now their complaints about discrimination and police violence receive unequal support. The same applies to women (52% of the world population by recent accounts) who suffer discrimination and sexual violence every day. Still trans-gender people, who are approximately 1 out of every 300 in the world, receive a rabid and unmitigated support from the most diverse sections of society. For comparison, the Uyghurs are 1 out of every 520 humans in the world and are suffering major repression at the hands of the Chinese government. I am not able to conduct a psychoanalytic study of the situation, but the unequal treatment is rather disturbing.

Still more disturbing is the fact that most of the pronouncements around the trans-gender people revolve around men (assigned male at birth, AMAB, as they say) who want to be recognized as women. Why is it so? The club is not select at all, and in most cases membership comes with a very heavy burden, both domestic and social. Do they really want to belong to that club? Or do they just want to be able to come and go according to their convenience? And what are we ready to accept? This question will probably take years or decades to find an answer, but until then you can start by enjoying the evening.