An Interview with Carey Linde and Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson on Gender and the Law (Part Two)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/08/01

Abstract

Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson founded Hawkeye Associates. Carey Linde founded Divorce for Men (Law Offices of Carey Linde). They discuss: the most sensitive political and social outgrowths of transgenderism and transsexualism; furtherance of these, positive and negative, social and political outgrowths; Canadian society; and freedom of expression.

Keywords: Carey Linde, Divorce for Men, Hawkeye Associates, Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson, transgenderism, transmen, transwomen.

An Interview with Carey Linde and Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson on Gender and the Law: Founder, Divorce for Men (Law Offices of Carey Linde) & Founder, Hawkeye Associates (Part Two)[1]^,[2]

*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citation style listing after the interview.*

1. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: As the 2010s rolled past us, what were the most sensitive political and social outgrowths of transgenderism and transsexualism in this period?

Carey Linde: If you mean for the trans community, it was the developing collectivity of community. This increasing conspicuous collectivity in the public eye caused the very phobia from which the community wished to escape. As with acceptance of blacks and gays over time, gender identity issues and people are ubiquitous in the media. It is all less sensitive to a growing progressive set of the population. At the same time, the faith based right is rallying and dangerous. Gender radical feminists are under literal attack by the trans warriors.

Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson: Transwomen have been extremely sensitive to being accepted as women, and have battled for recognition often using the courts and human rights tribunals. A coalition of women is challenging their right to compete in women’s sports, occupy women’s safe spaces such as women’s washrooms and shelters, and access special female funding and programming for education and career development. It is interesting that transmen have not faced the same resistance from the vast majority of men. I can see a number of possible reasons for this difference. First, it is possible that men are more accepting of diversity as compared to women. Second, it is possible that women do not want to share their special privileges with people they do not recognize as women, and that would include allowing people who have had the physical advantages of growing muscle and bone density in a testosterone rich environment competing in competitions reserved for women. Third, in some situations, women may have a genuine fear that people with penises who claim to be women may be a threat to their safety.

2. Jacobsen: Following from the previous question, what might be a furtherance of these, positive and negative, social and political outgrowths of these issues?

Linde: Increasing acceptance by hopefully the majority will make life less dysphoric for most. The conservative right will become more harsh and succeed in passing laws against what they don’t like.  Freedom of speech will be a major victim.  It already is.

Robertson: Relying on recent federal legislation, the Ontario courts have forced the Ontario Minor Hockey Association to allow adolescents with female bodies to change in male change rooms. This is the kind of social experiment no university ethics committee would ever approve. One of two outcomes is possible. Either a number of people with girl’s bodies will be sexually assaulted by adolescent boys, or they will not. If we don’t see sexual assaults flowing from this experiment then we may reasonably decide that we do not need separate facilities for males and females at least for safety reasons. We are beginning to see this change with respect to the washroom issue. If, on the other hand, we see a number of sexual assaults, the logical conclusion would be to end the experiment; however, I don’t think that will happen. I think politically, the politicians behind the experiment will refuse to accept its failure. They will double down with increasing expensive measures to protect the genetically female while engaging in male-blaming, perhaps with references to “toxic masculinity.” But we as a society do not need to follow them down this hole.

I think we need to begin by acknowledging that people on both sides of this issue have valid points and concerns. As a society, we need to construct a synthesis from the thesis presented by the transactivists and the antithesis represented by the growing feminist-traditionalist coalition. We can only achieve this by respectfully listening to all concerns and responding to those concerns with sympathy. Scratch any scared or angry person and you will likely find a good person inside.

3. Jacobsen: Mr. Linde, how is Canadian society more dysphoric than in the past? How can Canadian society become less dysphoric than at present with the issues of transsexuality and transgenderism more in the public consciousness now?

Linde:  There are great works written that diagnose the malaise, alienation, addictive self destruction and dysphoria experienced by most of mankind in the present stages of world corporate capitalism etc. Canadians among them.  With some exceptions, life is more stressful and not less. “…transsexuality and transgenderism in the public consciousness” is a freak out knee jerk ego offended reaction. One percent or less of the North American population has captured a historic position in the broad political, cultural and social media consciousness.  The ubiquitous question is how did this happen so fast and why?

Many explanations are given. All making a contribution. No single answer has rung the bell yet. One of the new phenomena fueling the panic is the increasing number of young girls and women deciding that being a boy in this world is a safer bet than being a girl.   And the medical profession and big pharma is right their to enable this delusion.

Robertson: We have the situation of men being more accepting of transmen than women are of transwomen. The hypothesis that men are more accepting of diversity would require more study across different groups; however such an explanation would be more acceptable to feminists than the obvious alternative, that biological women are protecting their privileges from competition while men have no such privileges to protect.

If men are more accepting of diversity, it would have to be a function of socialization. The testosterone that gives men their sexuality also translates into stronger bones, more muscle mass, and increased aggression and competitiveness. These latter two traits were necessary in traditional hunter gathering societies to fearlessly challenge competitors, both predatory and human, to protect bands that were essentially extended families. But aggression and competitiveness needs to be controlled or channelled if civilization is to work. Religion played a pivotal role in controlling and channelling male aggressive instincts in the formative years of our human civilizations. We have largely transcended religion by secularizing our ethics and expanding their application to all humanity, as for example, with the establishment of universal human rights. And we have been incredibly successful. Steven Pinker has meticulously documented how we now have fewer homicides, fewer deaths due to war, more gender equality and lower poverty than ever before in human history.

The argument would be then that the history of civilization is, at least in part, a history of controlling and channelling male testosterone. That aggression has been channelled into business, sports, politics and protection of the nation-state. Men have been conditioned to increasingly ignore minor or insubstantive difference, but of course there are numerous variables that also influence behaviour in particular contexts.  Of concern to me is that tribalism has been increasing with a recent focus on ideological, cultural and racial identities and that this will result in breaking down the more universal humanist ethic. To take the argument full circle then, if the process of civilization included the aspect of controlling and channelling male testosterone-linked behaviours, then we would expect that women would have been less affected by this aspect of socialization. This would have left women more susceptible to ancient xenophobic fears  including fear of “the other.”

4. Jacobsen: Dr. Robertson, Mr. Linde opines, “Freedom of speech will be a major victim. It already is.” Is this true to you, too? If so, what forms of freedom of speech, as a colloquialism for freedom of expression? Mr. Linde, on the same note, who have been the central culprits in the reduction in freedom of speech? To both of you, why them?

Linde:  The central culprits in killing free speech are public institutions (such as universities and libraries) and the mainstream corporate media.  Having said this, on the evening of Fer 1 I attended a hotly protested talk at the Seattle Public Library by WoLF radical feminists. Seattle’s finest had to come in and haul off demonstrators who were set on denying women the right to speak.  And in March the Vancouver Public Library will be reversing previous denials and permitting radical feminists to rent space for a function.  This is a good sign for libraries. Now if only the universities would come out of hiding.

Robertson: I agree with Carey that freedom of speech is threatened, but I would add that it has always been in a vulnerable position. I have argued that the modern human self capable of individual volition and objective thought is a cultural artefact that evolved more than 3,000 years ago (see: Free Will), and that modern religions evolved, in part, to control and restrict the individual volition inherent in this self. Galileo, for example, was imprisoned for observing that there were moons circling Jupiter. Such observations undermined the Catholic Church’s then geocentric view of the universe.  Fundamentalists and literalists from all major religions hold that their dogma is “revealed truth” superseding any contrary findings of science or philosophy. Until recently, that view was on the defensive worldwide; however, the attack on science and reason has been enjoined from a different direction.

On the surface, postmodernism which holds that all “truths” are provisional based on time and context appears democratic. The logic of postmodernism holds that there are different “ways of knowing” and that all are provisionally true. In keeping with this, Tom Strong of the University of Calgary stated that science is merely a “white, male way of knowing.” Similarly, some feminists have coined the somewhat sexist term “mansplaining” to counter males when they use logic to refute some aspect of feminist dogma. I pointed out to Dr. Strong one and one half decades ago that if science were only a “white, male way of knowing,” the holocaust would be a Jewish male way of knowing (most of the writers on the subject are male), and the colonization of the Americas is only an indigenous way of knowing. With postmodern relativism each identity group conflates belief with truth ignoring or discounting evidence that may undermine that “truth.” But when framed as “truth” instead of “belief,” people exercising their freedom of speech to deny “my truth” is felt to be offensive. Hence, we have seen people “deplatformed” from speaking at universities and libraries, and we have even seen university professors fired for not speaking the “truth” of the dominant ideology. In my forthcoming book I point out the roots of postmodernism in German fascism, and I believe that it inevitably leads to totalitarianism.

I think we can agree that transsexual people have a human right to freedom of expression which is, of course, a broader concept than freedom of speech. Concomitantly, radical feminists, traditional women, and fathers such as the one Carey is representing need to be heard. But there can be no dialogue without differentiating between subjective realities and objective reality. If we do not respect science and reason, then we are left with different “tribes” shouting at each other with no discourse possible. 

Appendix I: Footnotes

[1] Founder, Divorce for Men (Law Offices of Carey Linde). Founder, Hawkeye Associates.

[2] Individual Publication Date: August 1, 2020: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/linde-robertson-two; Full Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2020: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.

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