Motherfucker’s got moving candles!

There is a reason why there is a more modern antisemitic caricature of "the college educated coastal elite trying to erode at western masculinity and femininity" and it's literally, in part, because of Jewish led transfeminist action. It is a caricature that exists in dialogue with longer standing antisemitic stereotypes, but we're talking specifically about the modern iteration of it.

It's because of Leslie Feinberg's action, mobilization, and writing in the late 70's through the early 00's as a vocally Jewish transgender feminist. It's because of Judith Butler's essay "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution" and their book Gender Trouble in the 90's. It's because of Bornstein's books Gender Outlaws and Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, the second of which was worked on in collaboration with Jewish trans man S. Bear Bergman. It's because Riki Wilchins has been an active part of trans and intersex feminist action for decades despite you probably not knowing hir* name.

Wilchins co-founded Camp Trans with Feinberg. S/he co-founded Transsexual Menace with Denise Norris. Wilchins coined the term "genderqueer" and they also helped lead to the foundation of Intersex Awareness Day thanks to her work with intersex activist Cheryl Chase and the Hermaphrodites With Attitude! protest group. Wilchins has been a backbone of trans and intersex activism since the 90's.

All Jewish nonbinary people from different assigned gender backgrounds working towards trans liberation and solidarity. For decades.

If you ever question why my own politics are aimed so pointedly towards liberation and solidarity, particularly across the lines of sex and gender, it's because it is a legacy that I'm very proud to follow in the footsteps of as a nonbinary Jewish person.

You are trying to explain the trajectory of research on trans issues, and how the informed consent model came about as a wildly successful alternative to the gatekeeping model because time and again, people with clinical experience who actually cared about their patients found that just letting trans people transition was easier and the fear that it would lead to something bad was unfounded.

The Principle Understander is shouting at you that the medicalization of trans people is inherently unjust, and even the informed consent provider is still a gatekeeper, just a more lenient one.

You are already aware of this.

You are talking to someone who, as a first priority, needs to know what the worse gatekeeping model looks like.

"What the fuck do you think freedom MEANS, Earl?"

Edvard Munch, Weeping Nude, 1913

2020:

Amelia Lewis (Author) (2021)

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the way humans interact with domestic companion animals, with a focus on 'positive reward-based training' methods, particularly for dogs. From a biosemiotic perspective, I discuss the role of animal training in today's society and examine what binary reward- based reinforcement schedules communicate, semiotically. I also examine the extent to which reward-based training methods promote better welfare, when compared to the more traditional methods which rely on aversive stimuli and punishment, if and when they are relied upon excessively. I conclude that when used as the primary means of communication, they have the potential to be detrimental to animal welfare, because the underlying social signal is control and resource dominance. As an alternative view to behaviourist-based learning theory and conditioning, I outline how enactivist theories of cognition support a semiotic approach to interspecific human-animal communication. I therefore propose a move toward a dynamic semiosis and mutual understanding based upon Peirce's phenomenology, resulting in a more balanced merging of Umwelten. The aim is to create rich and more complex semiospheres around humans and domestic animals, which allow for individual agency and autonomy.

Conclusion

Whilst undeniably, basic training using lures and rewards is necessary, the focus on "positive reward-based' training paradigms when interacting with domestic animal species gives little, if any, room for more complex communication or signaling to take place. Moreover, they reduce individuals of other species to little more than automata, responding to binary inputs. In these circumstances, how can the animal's human companion, or the animals themselves, achieve a true bond and interspecific relationship? The most logically unsound argument commonly proposed to support these paradigms is that because physical force is not used, they are 'humane' and 'kinder'. However, the comparisons with coercive control and psychological manipulation are striking. A more innate, complex, and dynamic interspecific means of communication should not be supplanted by repetitive conditioning and 'commands', which are fast becoming a widespread misapplication of a genuine, but misunderstood and overutilized, biological principle. Nor is it possible to quantify and 'proscribe' communication, as though it were a simple recipe which can be reduced to pre-determined steps. Thus, positive reward- based training has a place as a technique in animal management, but it is not without risks, and it should be understood as what it is; manipulation and coercion (with threat of loss of resources or social interaction) focused on maintaining control. Substantive arguments that as a training technique, it is preferable to fear-based methods and physically aggressive practices, do not alter this statement. As a means of communication, it should not be relied upon as the primary modality, and consideration should be given to more appropriate interactions alongside methods such as 'clicker training', which should not be used without vocal or tactile communication and guidance from the trainer, as described by Fugazza and Miklósi (2015). Perhaps, in moving away from "The Five Freedoms' model of animal welfare, toward a quality-of-life based assessment scale which emphasizes positive welfare rather than the absence of poor welfare (Mellor, 2016), we should begin to change our thinking about how we interact and communicate with domestic and captive animals. This may ultimately lead toward an acceptance that training is not the most enlightened way of communicating with other species, alongside an accompanying paradigm shift toward complex dynamic semiosis, mutual understanding, 'Total Umwelten', and ultimately, a more balanced semiosphere.

Glossary: