Labeling lies and knowing minds

I don't have super strong feelings about whether news outlets should use the word 'lies' to describe Donald Trump's lies. As long are they're super clear about how he's saying that p even though p is false, that seems to me to be the important thing. The controversy over whether to use the 'L-word' doesn't really interest me all that much.

That said, I did find it pretty interesting to read NPR's description of why they don't call Trump's lies 'lies'. The basic thought is this: in order for something to be a lie, it has to be said with an intent to deceive. So in calling something a lie, one is in part making a claim about the intentions behind it. As NPR's Mary Louise Kelly puts it: "without the ability to peer into Donald Trump's head, I can't tell you what his intent was. I can tell you what he said and how that squares, or doesn't, with facts."

This is an epistemological claim—a skeptical one. It's often tempting to say that you can never really know what someone is thinking, because all you really have to go on is how they behave. But skeptical temptations are funny things, and there's probably good reason to resist a lot of them a lot of the time. For example, notice that it's also tempting to say that you can never really know anything about the future, since it hasn't happened yet, or that you can never really know historical facts, since you weren't personally there. At an extreme, Descartes famously argued that you can never really know anything about the external world, since you might be the victim of an evil demon who is manipulating your senses in a way that doesn't correspond to reality.

Is this trans girl the 20th most powerful person in Vancouver?

This week Vancouver Magazine published its list of the 50 most powerful people in Vancouver for 2015. Number 20 this year is Tru Wilson, a 12-year-old trans girl whose family filed a successful human rights complaint against her school, which had been refusing to treat her as a girl. The media by and large is treating Wilson's spot on the list as a feel-good human rights story; see for example the positive profile in The Province this week. From what I can tell, Wilson is an awesome person, and I'm 100% behind trans rights, but I do not think her placement on this list is a feel-good story. I think it was a mistake.

I'm going to give Vancouver Magazine the benefit of the doubt and assume that their intentions were great; they saw the unfair discrimination against this child, and wanted to celebrate her for overcoming it, and to highlight her eloquent speech on the topic. But calling her one of the most powerful people in Vancouver is the wrong way to do this. Wilson stood up to her school district and insisted on being treated with dignity, and that is awesome. But it doesn't mean she's one of the most powerful people in town; on the contrary, her bravery was necessary because of the high degree to which trans people are marginalized. By all means, put her on a list of 'people to celebrate', or 'people who achieved something important', or 'up-and-comers to keep an eye on'; putting her alongside CEOs, governmental leaders, and the chief of police as one of the 'most powerful' people wrongly suggests she won't have to fight harder than most of us do just to be treated with basic respect.

I don't think the mistake is harmless; it feeds into a reactionary bogeyman. A favourite trope of the old guard is the myth of marginalized people as wielding tremendous power—"you'd better toe the line or the trans activists will come for you!" This kind of fear is very dangerous. I'm all for celebrating trans successes, but attributing power to trans activists isn't the way to do it.