My Non-Debate with a Transphobic Preacher

A Lesson in the Failures of Cisgender Ideology

Substack has, from its founding, courted transphobic authors as the website’s core content producers. This, inevitably, results in a hostile environment for trans writers on the site (and is why I will never charge readers subscription fees on this platform). In my brief (and relatively inactive) experience here, I’ve faced a few small waves of transphobic harassment. Typically, I document, report, ban, and delete the comments of internet bigots as soon as they are discovered. Publications are inherently gatekeepers of their fraction of the public discourse (if someone doesn’t like my gatekeeping, they can start their own publication) and we have an ethical obligation to weed out hate speech that would seek to harm readers. That said, when a transphobic preacher recently attempted to use my blog to advertise his pseudo-scientific anti-trans article, I couldn’t help myself from taking the fight back to him. I knew there was nothing I could do to change his mind and that debating him could open myself up to encountering an unhealthy dose of prejudice, but I wanted him to experience push back. Engaging in transphobic harassment needs to have a social cost. So, in the spirit of an author who has received a free book to review, I left him my editorial commentary.

In the event, the argument that ensued, if it can be called an argument, proved surprisingly amusing. It lasted five days, from March 7th to the 11th, and was entirely one sided from start to finish. I would comment with a few references to the current state of the science of gender or else point out some of the faults in my opponent’s use of theology and he would inevitably reply with some insult devoid of any meaningful content. Overall, it was rather like arguing with a child throwing a tantrum over some piece of unwanted information. The one notable exception was that the transphobe claimed to have a Ph.D. This, unfortunately, seemed to confer not so much knowledge as ego. That probably made things much worse for my attempted harasser.

Unfortunately, I only saved a copy of the webpage after Dr. Carpenter deleted my first comment. What I said, very briefly, was that his article lacked any theological justification for his transphobia, overlooked Queer elements in the Christian mystical tradition, and that the scientific basis he claimed was not even outdated but simply wrong. Authors like Ann Fausto-Sterling, Catherine Clune-Taylor, and Judith Butler have all written and published fairly damning critiques of the idea that there is a scientific basis for thinking gender is binary and immutable. In fact, scientists back in the 1950’s, most notably John Money, pretty much took for granted that any biological basis of gender (sex) was entirely changeable—and used that idea to justify their efforts to forcibly make intersex people cisgender through surgery. The truth is, cisgender existence is as dependent on the mutability of gender and the ability of science to remake it as trans people are. Gender is unnatural and we are all the products of its artificial production.

Rose Pelham

Mar 7

Comment removed

John Carpenter

Mar 7

Author

There is absolutely no Christian mystical tradition “understanding Christ as a transgender figure.” You’re lying.

You’re an ignoramus spouting nonsense.

Rose Pelham

Writes The Transgender Gadfly

Mar 7

Sorry (not sorry) but I unfortunately studied Christian theology from the end of high school through my undergraduate degree and into my master's. Besides, you can check my claims for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_of_Assisi#Life Would also recommend The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism by Bernard McGinn. It will thoroughly disillusion you of your (historically unfounded) idea of a consistent notion of gender as binary and immutable in the Christian tradition. Besides, your article concedes that the basis of authority over the truth of gender/sex is no longer religious at all but based in the perceived authority of science. Of course, it also misunderstands the science, and on that count I recommend Ann Fausto-Sterling's excellent book Sexing the Body. I don't lie, you're just badly out of your depth debating this topic

John Carpenter

Mar 7

Author

You’re an arrogant ignoramus spouting nonsense. I have a PhD in church history and you don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about.

Rose Pelham

Writes The Transgender Gadfly

Mar 7

I don't care what degrees you have, if you can't argue to defend your thesis then your committee made a mistake in accepting your dissertation. Degrees don't overcome facts

John Carpenter

Mar 7

Author

You don’t have any facts. The fact is that you’re an ignoramus spouting nonsense and too unaware of your ignorance to know that you need to learn.

Rose Pelham

Writes The Transgender Gadfly

Mar 7

You came to my blog to arrogantly spout prejudice about a topic you know nothing about and have no education in. My reply to you is pretty informed and tolerant all things considered. I have to deal with enough hate from you extremists. I want you to at least feel a tiny fraction of a consequence for your arrogant bigotry

John Carpenter

Mar 7

Author

You’re an ignorant bigot who doesn’t see that I obviously know the facts.

Rose Pelham

Writes The Transgender Gadfly

2 hr ago

The invisibility of your attire is revealing.

At this point, I was convinced I was debating a four year old who had recently discovered the phrase: “I know you are but what am I?” But what made it interesting was that here was a man totally incapable of defending his point, totally without supporting evidence, and totally incapable of either admitting defeat or retreating (deleting everything). Every time I replied he had to respond to me to prove himself, but there was no real response he could make. Every response he made asserting his own authority was damning for the fact that he couldn’t demonstrate it. Even his article lacked sources. Now, all of this did serve a purpose. Dr. Carpenter was in essence stating that as I am trans person he would not recognize me as having the right to contest his claims. The problem was that he was doing this very badly. To truly deny someone recognition one should just delete what they say and block them. He had trapped himself into replying to me, into having to prove himself as capible of responding to me. And he couldn’t. He had nothing. The only thing he could do was insult me and that spoke volumes about him.

Now, I had no interest in getting into a shouting match. Shouting matches don’t have winners. So, for all that his intellectual nudity had become self-evident, I wanted to pivot back to stating my case. Argument would be infinitely more impactful than cutting remarks. And besides, I was commenting in the hope of providing useful context to any reader who might encounter his article without knowing that its seemingly authoritative contents were debunked pseudoscience.

Shortly after my last comment on the thread reproduced above, a new thread in the argument opened up. I’ve recreated it below starting, again, with my original deleted comment.

Rose Pelham

Mar 7

Comment removed

John Carpenter

Mar 9

Author

Sex is immutable. You've confused sex and gender and don't have a clue as to what you're talking about.

Rose Pelham

Writes The Transgender Gadfly

Mar 9

As Judith Butler pointed out in Gender Trouble, sex was gender all along. The science of sex presupposed gender as what it was trying to achieve in biological terms, and if we look at how the scientific discourse of sex changes over time (again, this is well documented by Fausto-Sterling's Sexing the Body) the assumed biological determinants of sex are constantly shifting as each inevitably fails to determine the cause of gender. First it was hormones, which were understood as gonadal [juices]. Then, when it was discovered that male horses are full of estrogen, it was genitals. But genitals proved too vague because […] intersex people exist and the effort of making them fit the binary and immutable model proved [that] genitals are easily changed. Then it was genes, but scientists discovered that a significant proportion of the population have sexually ambiguous genes. Then it was brains but there turns out to be no conclusive gendered structures in the brain. Binary and immutable sex just is not scientifically supported. In fact, the effort to make people fit the binary and immutable model of gender required the deliberate act of changing sex, as John Money's work was premised upon. This is all covered between the two books I've already mentioned. You can delete this comment, but you can't avoid knowing that the claim you make in this article is indefensible. It just isn't supported by the evidence base.

John Carpenter

Mar 10

Author

That's stupid. You believe it because you're stupid. You need to realize that. You write long posts because you think you're an intelligent person with something to say. You're not. You're an ignoramus who has been rendered idiotic by an idiotic ideology that makes you deny obvious facts of science. I don't read your post past the first line or two because you have nothing of value to read. You don't know that because you're arrogant and lack self-awareness.

Sex is biological and unchangeable.

I really couldn’t keep myself from the long replies. There was a certain kind of joy in them, seeing this transphobic preacher totally overwhelmed and defeated by the knowledge to which he had claimed to possess the perfect answer. The increasing tone of spite in his responses struck as being like that of a character in a satire hoisted by his own petard.

Alas, my writing was so “stupid" that Dr. Carpenter soon found it necessary to delete all my comments least they rub off on his. Consequently, my last two replies to him went unsaved. (My comments here were saved on an archived version of the comments section.) By then it had occurred to me that the only point in Dr. Carpenter’s favor was the extreme simplicity of his argument, which lent it the semblance of a truth it did not have. It has been a little too long for me to remember what exactly I said next, though it certainly was trying to be pithy and included something about his not having “ears to hear” a truth he didn’t like. I probably pointed out how he likely had no idea what his biological sex even was. There are plenty of people with sexually ambiguous chromosomes and very few actually know it. And besides, John Money was not an outlier. Surgeries were performed by many doctors on intersex children to make them cisgender, usually without telling the children in question. The naturalness of gender as binary and immutable is a neat fiction. We have to hide from ourselves the loose ends of how we have made ourselves to fit it. Do you go to the gym? Do you do cardio or lift weights? Ever apply hormone gels or take birth control? Use makeup? Wear clothing to look a certain way? Wear clothing to prove you don’t care how you look? It’s all an artificial way of making gender. Being cis is a constant work of technical effort to realize a gender that, to paraphrase Butler, is an imitation without an original.

The idea that gender is natural and immutable is ideological, and it is a convenient fiction to maintain patriarchal gender roles. If women are naturally weak and emotional, if men are naturally strong and stoic, well, then there is no point in gender equality. But if we understand this is only a fiction, that the qualities described above are not nature but only what we have been taught to apply to ourselves, then we have a case for freedom. If we know that gender is mutable, unnatural, and not particularly binary, then that means we can have agency over who we are.

After the argument I spent a little while looking into Dr. Carpenter’s credentials. Apparently he had been banned from Twitter—a real feat with so few moderators—very possibly for racist comments. A conservative Christian publication had noted his arguing against reparations for slavery after a more notable pastor called opposition to reparations for racism satanically inspired. Dr. Carpenter seemed to have a most devoted attachment to his wealth. I also reached out to his Alma Mater to fact check his claimed degree. The day after this article was published, I received a reply from them informing me that to confirm Dr. Carpenter’s degree they would need his permission to release his academic record. As of April 3rd, I have not received any further reply.

As of the time of writing, all of Dr. Carpenter’s replies to my now deleted arguments can still be found attached to his article. They make a curious testament to his ability to defend his claims.

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church of Danville, Virginia, where Dr. Carpenter is the only pastor, did not provide comment before the time of publication. The average Google review for the church is 2.8 stars, with a plurality of reviews giving it only one star. Several reviews cited the pastor as a bully and expressed concerns over his lack of humility and hateful Twitter comments. One of the only five star reviews was posted by Dr. Carpenter himself.