The Situation: On Rudeness

The Situation yesterday sung the praises of Ruth Marcus, whose own eloquent discussion of her departure from the Washington Post appears today in the New Yorker.

Today, I want to talk about rudeness.

The New York Times reports today that a “Republican lawmaker abruptly adjourned a congressional hearing on Tuesday after being challenged for referring to Representative Sarah McBride, Democrat of Delaware and the first openly transgender lawmaker in Congress, as a man.”

The long and the short of the story is that Rep. Keith Self of Texas introduced his colleague as “Mr. McBride” and then doubled down on the description when challenged about it by a colleague, saying that the administration’s policy is that there are only two genders in this country, male and female. When the colleague persisted, Rep. Self adjourned the hearing.

On its face, the matter has zero to do with the law of national security. It is precisely the sort of culture war matter we generally don’t deal with on Lawfare. And I’m going to respect our jurisdictional boundaries here. I’m thus going to avoid discussing whether gender is a social, or a biological, phenomenon. I’m going to avoid talking about how we should understand the gender and sex of transgender people—a matter on which I actually do have strong feelings—and how the law should regard such divisive issues.

But as I say, I want to talk about rudeness.

The issue of rudeness also doesn’t seem like one connected to Lawfare’s mission. But here I want to plant the flag and insist that a certain degree of civic politeness is actually central to liberalism, a critical lubricant for democratic functioning, and an important marker of respect for one’s political opponents. It is particularly important in polarized times and on polarizing issues. And its erosion leads quickly to dangerous places.

In our system, we actually have a norm that governs how we treat people who hold titles we regard with contempt or even actively believe to be false. We have a norm that regulates what one should do when confronting a person who claims to be one thing but whom you believe (rightly or wrongly) is something else.

That norm is humoring the person. And in a liberal society, one needs to do this all the time—up to and including flat-out lying. 

If America has now reached the stage where members of Congress cannot humor each other by using one another’s preferred nomenclature—and with President Trump referring to the prime minister of Canada as “Governor,” there is reason to worry we have long since passed it—polarization has reached a truly dangerous moment.

Consider the normal congressional vocabulary. It is customary to refer to a member of Congress as “The Honorable.” It may shock the reader to learn that at least some members of Congress are not, in fact, honorable, but I’m afraid it is the truth.

In the British Parliament, the custom is to refer to members of the opposing party as “the honorable gentleman”—even if the person is neither honorable nor a gentleman—and to members of one’s own party as “my honorable friend” even if the person is a contemptible enemy.

People don’t balk at doing this, as Rep. Self balks at referring to Rep. McBride as a woman, just because it is manifestly untrue in so many cases. It’s simply a social convention, a politeness one shows to fellow members of a tribe.

And the politeness does not end with a uniform manner of address to fellow members of a tribe either. It routinely crosses tribal boundaries.

Consider, for example, a Catholic priest. Normally, one addresses a priest as “Father” and the Pope as “Your Holiness,” and one does this whether or not one is Catholic. One addresses a king or queen as “Your Majesty” whether or not you find the person majestic.

This is actually a strange thing to do. I do not happen to believe that a priest is my “father”—even figuratively, let alone literally—nor do I believe that the Pope is any holier than I am. Royalty, in my experience, does not shroud itself in majesty. Indeed, in my opinion, such addresses are every bit as false as calling Rep. McBride a woman is to Rep. Self.

And yet I do it without any sense of betraying my own identity or beliefs whenever I interact with a priest. Why? Because I’m not a jerk. And being polite matters, and that means often interacting with people on the bases on which they want to be engaged, even if their sense of their own reality seems batty to me.

In a liberal society, people need to do this daily. Many Christians have to do business every day with folks whose souls they believe are eternally damned—and who believe they, in turn, are fools for their beliefs. Devout Muslims exchange pleasantries with bankers who charge interest and neither feels the need to call the other out. Indeed, they manage to say things like “Good day” to one another and actually mean it. They can do this precisely because they don’t reduce every question about one another’s sense of identity to first principles they feel called upon to challenge. 

People accept other people’s self-conceptions all the time, because, well, the convention is useful and it increases civic peace.

This is one of the reasons why Trump’s routine hurling of insults is so dangerous. It’s not that the insults hurt people’s feelings, though they do rile up crowds in a fashion that can endanger people. Rather, it’s that just as calling dishonorable people “honorable” as a matter of routine increases civic peace, insults reduce it.

So here’s what I think Rep. Self should do for Rep. McBride: Lie a little bit for the sake of civic peace.

I’m not asking him to believe what she believes about her gender identity—and neither, to my knowledge, is she, by the way. I’m asking only that he treat her as he would a religious figure from a religion he doesn’t believe in. 

Okay, I know what you’re thinking: But what’s the limiting principle here? If a member of Congress decides he’s an elephant, does one have to honor that self-identity too and call his nose his trunk? The short answer: If large numbers of people believe that person is, in fact, an elephant, then yes, it would be polite to humor the belief.

And this brings me to my final point. When you call a priest “Father,” you are not merely being polite to the individual and humoring his self-conception. You are also showing respect to the beliefs of millions of people who believe in Catholicism. When you refuse to do so, you are not merely being rude in the sense of saying to the individual that he is delusional in his self-conception. You are saying the same thing to all who believe in the priestly function.

This is what Rep. Self is doing when he refuses to engage Rep. McBride on the terms she asks the world to engage her. It is a very public, political rejection of the legitimacy of an identity—not merely a rejection of it on Rep. Self’s behalf, but a rejection by him of the right of millions of people to hold it and engage the world on that basis. That’s rude. And it’s rude not merely to an individual but to a whole community. 

It is very hard to run liberal society on the basis that we should all feel free to be rude to one another. Why should the trans atheist call the priest “Father” if he won’t call her “she”?

And why, more pointedly, should anyone call Rep. Self “honorable” if he refuses to extend such basic courtesies to a colleague as to use the word “woman”?

The Situation continues tomorrow.