In Defense of Bad Faith

“Ask a Trans Person Anything” did not mean Mia Hughes

good-faith (adj) /ɡɡʊd.feɪθ/
done in an honest and sincere way.

I’m going to do some free advertising for a trans-rights organization. (Never let it be said that I am not an ally.) Please read the following event description:

We can’t find common ground without conversation. Without creating space for dialogue, we risk turning people into problems. Our hot take? We have more in common than we think - but when complicated issues become political, it’s hard to find those connections.

We want to hear your worries and share our side of the story. That’s why Fae Johnstone and Victoria Bucholtz, two of Canada’s most prominent trans activists, are hosting “Ask a Trans Person Anything” events across Canada.

This is your chance to get your questions answered - yes, even the tough ones. We won’t cancel you. Instead, we’ll give you our honest takes — and we think they’ll win you over.

Hear from Victoria and Fae as they make the case for trans rights, and then dive into an interactive Question and Answer period where nothing* is off limits.

*Okay, there are exceptions - threats and personal attacks aren’t welcome.

Mia Hughes, Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, director of Genspect Canada, and prominent opponent of trans ideology, registered. Then she received the following email:

Good afternoon Mia,

The organizing team has made the decision to refund your ticket, as is our prerogative. We do not believe you are interested in good-faith conversation. The refund has just been processed through Eventbrite, and you will be denied entry if you seek to attend.

Thank you,

Fae

I believe in the right of places to deny entry to others based on their values. In fact, it is the backbone of my stance on immigration. I do not believe, however, in advertising that you welcome challenges, and then filtering for the opposite under the guise of “good faith.” (It’s worth noting that their “refund” was symbolic as the ticket was free.)

From Ask a Trans Person Anything’s Instagram page

Mia’s experience was not a one-off. Freelance columnist Amy Hamm was turned away at the Vancouver stop of the “Ask a Trans Person Anything” tour after her ticket was rescinded; security said organizers had a list of people who would not be “coming with the right intentions.” Toronto lawyer Caryma Sa’d was excluded from the Toronto event two months earlier via the same “refund” email.

After Hamm was barred, Fae Johnstone (one of the trans-rights activists) wrote that the events were “not an open invitation for prominent anti-trans people to come and argue with us.” I want to ignore for a moment the fact that this was actually, literally, exactly what the event was, and instead I want to focus on the rationale behind the bans: “Good faith.”

Fae Johnstone decided that to be allowed to ask questions at an event that prides itself on answering “tough questions,” one must ask questions in good faith.

This is fallacious. And it’s reasoning I see everywhere, on the left and the right.

Fae Johnstone, MSW

There are many wicked reasons to ask questions: To trick someone, to make respondents look foolish, to make oneself look good, as part of an ideological crusade, and I could go on. However, it is fallacious to think that any intent, no matter how wicked or virtuous, has any bearing on the veracity of that question’s answer. A question stands independent of its intent, and so does its answer. (I published a paper that thematically addressed this idea, found here.)

At an event that bills itself as, “… your chance to get your questions answered - yes, even the tough ones,” the intent of the questioner is irrelevant. (If intent is useful for anything, it could be for deciding how much time to give someone, not for deciding whether a proposition is true.) This is even more so the case because this particular event had “two of Canada’s most prominent trans activists”.

To be clear, the trans part is irrelevant. Asking experts difficult questions should have nothing to do with their area of expertise or their identity characteristics. This should be the case in every domain of expertise, trans or not. At scientific conferences, hard questions are the norm. It’s a way to stress test ideas. Organizers at a scientific conference would never market an open Q&A and then pre-clear named critics. If anything, this would show that the presenters did not have sufficient reason to justify confidence in their claims.

I was recently at an event in which a young academic accused pro-life “right-wingers” of not actually caring about the lives of babies. If they truly cared, he argued, they would have overturned the Second Amendment and mandated all eligible citizens receive the Covid vaccine. I could have argued back and said that his question wasn’t in good faith: Why is he pro-choice when it comes to abortion but pro-federal-government-making-medical-decisions-for-you when it comes to vaccines? But I didn’t. I didn’t because his question was a good one, and it had merit regardless of his intent or how well thought out his position was. I wanted the individuals to whom he posed the question to have to answer it, and I wanted the audience to hear their answer. That is how you behave when you actually believe what you are saying. You expose your ideas to reality.

One of the things I’ve learned from moving in this space for well over a decade is that those in the orbit of this ideology in general do not believe the methods they advertise. I am not being hyperbolic: They literally do not believe what they are saying. It is all verbal behavior. If they meant what they said, then they would not disinvite people who disagreed with their positions.

In fact, quite the contrary. They’d do what I’ve done at my public events for over a decade: Highlight dissenting voices and ask people who disagree to move to the front of the queue. (They would also readily engage people with whom they have significant disagreements.) But they do not do this.

Years ago, I asked my mentor a question about why a university I will not name claimed to champion “inclusion” but then acted in ways that actively worked against that idea. In a thick German accent, he responded, “Ack, thems just words”.

Peter

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