What is common sense? And why is everyone going on about it so much right now?
People keep saying that this stupid Supreme Court ruling, which states that a woman is defined only by biological sex under UK equalities law - is ‘common sense’. Although, as a trans woman myself - what it sounds like they’re actually saying is: Haha, you lose - you big ugly mentally ill he-she in a bad wig and cheap makeup, why don’t you go and die in a puddle somewhere! I dunno, maybe I’m just over sensitive to it…
Some people are saying that this degradation of trans freedoms is a ‘victory for common sense’ - an issue that we should have had sorted years ago, and that we were negligent to not nip in the bud early, before it all got out of hand. Even our Prime Minister, the human Minecraft villain - Keir Starmer, praised the ruling, stating that it brought needed ‘clarity’ - before digging downwards with a pickaxe into the ground and falling into a pit of lava or whatever it is you do in that game, I’ve never actually played it.
But what actually is common sense? Like, really? It sounds simple enough, right? It’s sense. Sense that is common… for common people…or something…
Wikipedia describes ‘common sense’ like this:
Common sense (from Latin sensus communis) is "knowledge, judgement, and taste which is more or less universal and which is held more or less without reflection or argument"
Wow -no reflection? No argument? I dunno, to me that doesn’t seem like Ithe best path for a modern, complex, nuanced society - but what do I know, I’m just some mentally ill tranny, aren’t I? My sense is probably more uncommon. Less valuable. Irrelevant.
The implication that ‘common sense’ makes is that, it shouldn’t take any great effort to come to such a conclusion. It’s the smarts you’re born with - innate intelligence, like how a bird just knows how to fly (except for when it doesn’t, and falls out of the nest and gets inhaled by a hungry roaming snake).
Historian, Sophia Rosenfeld describes it like this (I didn’t read her whole book, I just saw this on Wikipedia):
“Those plain, self-evident truths or conventional wisdom that one needed no sophistication to grasp and no proof to accept precisely because they accorded so well with the basic (common sense) intellectual capacities and experiences of the whole social body”. (Common Sense: A Political History).
Common sense is tribalism. The ‘community’ decides what ‘common sense’ is and what it isn’t - based on whatever set of arbitrary circumstances or environment it came about within. There’s no ‘common sense’ to be found in a vacuum (except maybe: if you’re stuck in a literal vacuum, then you should probably try and get out of it…) I’ll give you that one.
I’ve always been uncomfortable and distrusting of the term ‘common sense’, as I am with anything which tries to oversimplify obviously complex ideas and situations. Not to mention the obvious issue with how perceptions on what is, and isn’t, ‘common sense’ change drastically over time. Sure, it might be easy with the luxury of hindsight to look towards examples like: women having the right to vote, or the racial desegregation of public life - as being an obvious no brainer - dur! But it just isn’t a truthful perspective, because up until the 1960’s, and then all the years preceding it, racial segregation was viewed as a public ‘common sense’. Our ‘common sense’ now would suggest that that was wrong. What would our future generations think of us, then? Isn’t it worth considering - even just for a second?
‘Common sense’ is kind of stupid, because it relies almost entirely on assumptions. Assumptions that your instincts are correct. YOURS! You’re dumb as hell, and you know it. And so am I. The assumption that the majority of people must feel the same way as you is so arrogant. And you know what they say: When you assume… you need… erm, to not do that so much.
To me, calling this Supreme Court ruling ‘common sense’ is completely, irresponsibly dishonest - mainly because it wilfully ignores any sense of actual, practical reality. ‘Reality’ is another thing that trans people like me are often accused of ‘not living in’. Philosophically, ‘reality’ can be argued to mind numbing degrees - and it can be a pretty fun conversation sometimes when it’s all theoretical and we’re asking whether a table really is a table, or if we just perceive it that way etc. - but, on a slightly more practical level, I think it’s fair to say - tables are good at putting drinks on. The version of that here is - trans people have been using the spaces that they feel most comfortable using for decades - and it has, statistically - overwhelmingly - not been an issue. How then, can it be the ‘best’ or most ‘reasonable’ solution to now tell us we can’t? How is that a representation of ‘reality’? It is the anti-trans campaigners, Supreme Court Judges and celebratory dogshit newspapers like the Telegraph who are the true reality-avoiders - seeking to misrepresent, other, and - ultimately erase trans people who have only ever wanted to wee in peace.
So much of this discussion is predicated on trans women’s apparent ‘capacity’ to be abusers. The accusation that we are dormant sex criminals is now fundamentally built into the law - which is, ultimately, why we aren’t wanted in the bathroom. This completely unfounded view has now been totally signed off on, and we’re supposed to just take it for some reason. And, like it has always been with queer lives - straight, cisgender society is more than willing to go along with it, so long as it redirects attention away from themselves. It doesn’t matter one bit to them what the truth of us is - ‘common sense’ is being used as a dog whistle for totalitarian enforcements to strip us of our dignity.
In just a few short weeks since the ruling, the assertion that ‘trans women are men’ has seemingly, already become totally normalised and accepted by the mainstream media. This is the narrative which frames the ‘women’s spaces ban’ as somehow legitimate, and it can only exist in that dishonest, oversimplified framework. When people make statements like ‘trans women are men’ - they’re allowing biology to completely trump a trans person’s life & experience. They see the world in depressingly unimaginative terms - devoid of philosophical inquiry, nuance or actual truth (as in, the kind of truth that represents what is actually happening on the ground, in day to day life for real, existing trans people). If ‘common sense’ is reducing people right down to their physical attributes like this - and if it means taking a more dogmatic, un-flexible, borderline neo-phrenological outlook on life, then I don’t want to be anywhere near it.
Common sense can be good for some things. Not getting into a stranger's car… not following a trail of candy towards a delicious looking steak, which is under a box propped up on a stick with a string tied to it. But when we over-embrace ‘common sense’, bad things can happen. A courtroom, trying a suspect of muder, might lean heavily on common sense in place of any usable, compelling evidence. An innocent person gets the death penalty, because ‘common sense’ suggested they ‘most likely did it’. I know a few of you absolute psychopath conservatives out there would love to live in a world like that, but I’m pretty confident in saying - you’re wrong. You’re bad for that.
To a pigeon, ‘common sense’ means landing on that thing that looks like a tree - because hey, I’m a pigeon - I always land on things that look like trees, only to be blown into a thousand flaming bolts, because it turns out - it was a live electricity pole. Sometimes, following your ‘common sense’ is the worst possible thing you can do. Wouldn’t it be better if we celebrated the pursuit of more information, instead of less. Wouldn’t it be good if we, as a society, embraced the messiness and the nuance and the complexity of life - rather than trying to forcefully retrofit one perspective of ‘common sense’ onto it instead?
The answer is: yes - it’d be great. Unfortunately, it’s just common sense to choose the easier option…
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