Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 9:36 am
To the people who think gender is entirely a social construct, the existence of trans people raises some interesting philosophical contradictions.
You see, if gender in fact is biological, then being trans imo can actually make sense and be meaningful. Gender, biologically, would be a fact about sometimes neurology, presumably. And one could imagine that it's possible that a person born with a penis could have, in some sense, a female-ish neurology. And that could give you context for why people with penises want to live as women, be recognized as women, and have surgeries and hormone therapies to make their bodies more female, to match their neurology.
On the other hand, if gender is entirely a social construct, then a lot of that stuff above doesn't really make sense. If gender is a social construct, then there's no meaningful difference between "I was born with a penis and want to live as a woman" Vs "I'm a man but I like wearing dresses and doing and behaving in ways that are seen as traditionally feminine". Those two statements become almost indistinguishable. And someone in that boat doesn't need a sex change, or to be recognized as a woman, what they really would need, hypothetically, is to live in a society where men are allowed to have feminine preferences and behaviours.
And yet if you talk to trans people, even trans people who insist that gender really is just a social construct, and you offer up that theoretical world where men are simply allowed, with no social penalty, to have entirely feminine behaviours and preferences, you'll find that that's not sufficient for them. A lot of them say they would still want to take hormones, say they might still seek sex change surgeries.
And that to me indicates that the "gender" of people who are "trans-gender" runs deeper than something that is just merely a social construct.
I'm not of course saying that every aspect of gender isn't a social construct, that every aspect of gender is biological. There are certainly parts of gender expression which are entirely cultural. But there does, I think, seem to be something deeper than the social and cultural aspects of gender that people who are trans-gender illuminate.
What you're pointing to is actually a deep incoherence in the ideology of "transing" itself. It's also one to which nobody, so far, as anything approaching a rational refutation.
There are many ways to put the contradiction. One would be, "How can one
need something that is a construct not a biological reality, and how can one
reconstruct something that is a biological reality rather than a construct?"
Or more simply, we could ask the question, "How
profound is the
transition in transing?" Is it a change of mere nomenclature, unfortified with any physical possibility, or is it a complete change of physical identity? But if it's only the former, then it can't be a "need"; it can only be a whim, imaginative fetish or delusion. But if it's the latter, then how can one propose to change the actual physical identity of what one is?
And what do we make of detransitioners? The trans lobby would love us to remain utterly oblivious to their very existence and deaf to their pleas of having been abused by the "reconstructers." How can the trans lobby campaign for us not to pathologize or "erase" their own alleged "identity," when they are absolutely adamant we ought to do exactly the same to the many repentant detransitioners? How can transition advocates campaign vociferously for their own acceptance, while they insist detransitioners should be allowed no voice whatsoever in the controversy?
The truth is none of it makes any rational sense at all, if we take it on the terms transitioners offer us. It can never make any sense unless we realize that "transitioning" is simply a symptom of something like body dysmorphic disorder, pubescent overreaction, or sexual fetishes, depending on the case in hand. Then it all adds up logically again.