A Question of Manners

The political questions around the so-called   trans issues are fairly easy, at least for libertarians. If adults wish to pretend to be of the opposite sex or have themselves surgically or hormonally altered to more nearly resemble the opposite sex, it is their business.  If other people wish to consider their behavior praiseworthy, daring, wonderful, evil, sinful, stupid, crazy, delusional, or a matter of indifference, that is their business.  As to the bathroom controversy, each private owner of restrooms should be free completely   to make his own decisions leaving  government organizations to make rules only about facilities on their  property on the basis of the usual interplay of political pressures, inducements, payoffs,  and threats.

That leaves  the (for libertarians) non-political question of how one should behave  – the question of what one should do to be decent and mannerly.  The politically correct answer favored by people in the traditional media is  that one should go along completely with the pretense or delusion and  treat and refer to men who say they are women and women who say they are men as  though their claims were true. (Some go beyond this and claim one should also believe the claims are true.)

I think that is wrong. Good manners do not require saluting someone who says he is Napoleon or genuflecting before  a person who claims to be Jesus or Mohammed. Neither do they require one to treat and  consider a  Caitlyn Jenner as a  woman when he is not or to treat and consider a  Chaz Bono as a man when she is not. Of course there is no reason to be unnecessarily rude about it. Most of the time  the whole business can be ignored easily.  In this as in many other things, minding your  own business and keeping your  judgments to yourself as appropriate tend to work well in social situations. However  there is no requirement to accept or pretend to accept something false as true because someone wishes you would or would be offended if you didn’t.  For people who try to be intellectually honest, there is a requirement not to do so.