Exposing The Anti Trans Alliance
A story about three ideological groups with an agenda and their unholy alliances.
Today, I need to talk about a situation I am very frustrated about: bad ideas rooted in ideological positions from various sides are preventing an honest discussion of trans issues, one that is rooted in real evidence and observation. This means a productive conversation is not taking place, and ideas are not being developed to advance the social acceptance and accommodation of trans people.
Let's start with this. What do you see as an honest discussion of trans issues?
Basically, I am a trans empiricist. My ideas are similar to what is often called transmedicalism, but the emphasis is a bit different: the traditional transmedicalist view is often stated as 'you need dysphoria to be trans'. On the other hand, I arrived at my conclusions through empirical observation, drawing conclusions from the actual way trans people exist, and their lived experiences. And any honest empirical observation of trans people would yield the conclusion that the vast majority of trans people transition because they have severe gender dysphoria. The reason they need to transition is because they need to get the heavy burden of gender dysphoria off their lives, at least as much as possible, so that life becomes somewhat livable. Therefore, understanding gender dysphoria and its effects is central to understanding the vast majority of trans lives.
THE MOST IMPORTANT FUNDAMENTAL POINT...
Any discussion of trans issues that doesn't center gender dysphoria simply isn't operating in reality, and won't solve any problems effectively. Gender dysphoria isn't the most pleasant thing to discuss, but any honest discussion of trans issues should be firmly centered on how to alleviate dysphoria, and accommodate people with dysphoria.
As a trans empiricist, I base all my conclusions and solutions on the observable reality of trans people alone. Basically, I focus on what simply is there. On the other hand, the ideological people start with their ideological framework, and force fit the reality of trans people into their framework. There are three main groups here.
THE 3 IDEOLOGICAL GROUPS
Firstly there are people whose worldview doesn't allow for trans people to exist at all. These include religious fundamentalists, for whom 'God never makes mistakes' so trans people can't exist. This is why they resort to explaining transness as a mental illness, even though this view is no longer accepted scientifically.
Secondly there are the 'gender critical feminists', otherwise known as TERFs, but I prefer calling them 'gender critical', because this term accurately describes their ideology. As the name plainly says, it is a form of 'critical theory', i.e. Marxian or pseudo-Marxist theory, that is applied to the concept of gender, that is, everything related to biological sex that is cultural or behavioral rather than physical. Gender critical feminists believe all of gender, is a social construct that serves the patriarchal system, and should be abolished. This ideology leaves no room to acknowledge the lived reality of gender dysphoria in trans people, which is variously dismissed as a mental illness or the result of societal stereotyping. In this worldview, trans people are essentially making a lifestyle choice, and one that is not conducive to the radical feminist program of 'liberation', so trans people are the enemy.
Thirdly, there are the postmodern feminists, who basically share the same criticalist influences and fundamental worldview as gender critical feminists, including that gender is a social construct that should be abolished in its current form. However, the difference is that they aim to deconstruct gender by destabilizing the binary, drawing from the ideas of the postmodern thinker Derrida. They see trans people as helpful to this process. Therefore, they appear to be friendly towards trans people and trans rights. However, their worldview still ignores gender dysphoria, and their dominance means that the trans narrative can't focus on gender dysphoria at all, so it still ends up hindering rather than helping trans people.
THE 2 UNHOLY ALLIANCES
Finally, these three highly ideological forces combine to derail the trans discussion, in what I call the 'two unholy alliances'. The first unholy alliance is between the transphobes, including the religious right, and the gender critical feminists. Their worldview is otherwise diametrically opposed to each other, but some of them appear to be joining forces just to prevent trans rights from happening. The second unholy alliance is not a conscious alliance, but rather a dynamic between postmodern feminism and the first unholy alliance, that means trans people are made to keep losing every argument needlessly.
I think that, basically, the first unholy alliance is ultimately built and maintained by people with a political agenda. These are often political conservatives looking for a culture war program that could boost the electoral fortunes of conservative parties like the US Republican Party. Given their absolute hostility on issues like abortion, the religious right and gender critical feminists wouldn't naturally come together to work out an anti-trans program. The glue to this alliance is thus conservative political operatives with an eye on the next election, hoping to replicate the anti-gay marriage wave of the 2004 US elections. They even draw in some rational atheists who normally have no sympathy for religion or radical feminism at all!
The result is an internally inconsistent argument against trans people that looks rational on the surface. I mean, the coalition includes rational atheists who simply have an inadequate understanding of the science behind sex and gender, as well as religious fundamentalists who wouldn't care what the science says anyway. It includes religious conservatives who uphold traditional gender roles, as well as radical feminists who want to completely abolish gender roles. As a result, their argument against trans people looks like a mix of over-simplified eighth-grade level biology, plus radical arguments supporting gender abolition, as well as conservative arguments against gender abolition, essentially both sides of the 1970s culture war at the same time. The internal contradictions are easily exposed if one simply tries.
If it is so easy to discredit the arguments of this unholy alliance, then why has it not happened effectively yet?
Of course debunking the first unholy alliance is the way forward. But we need to get past the second unholy alliance first! I would even go so far to argue that, the only reason the anti-trans alliance hasn't crumbled under its own contradictions yet, is because postmodern feminism is essentially holding it up. Therefore, postmodernism is basically the biggest barrier to trans acceptance, even as it pretends to be trans friendly. The only reason why the anti-trans alliance makes sense in the first place is because they all see trans people as the representation of an illogical and reality-denying postmodern phenomenon. If you replace the postmodern gender ideology narrative, and replace it with a scientific narrative centered on gender dysphoria, their whole alliance would crumble. For example, rational atheists are mainly skeptical of trans people because they see it as an illogical postmodern thing, a scientific perspective would convince many of them to stop being anti-trans. The discussion of this science would also drive a big wedge between the rationalists committed to science on one hand, and the religious right plus the gender critical feminists on the other hand, who aren't that big on science in the first place. Similarly, using the existence of gender dysphoria to argue against gender being a social construct would effectively put a wedge between the conservatives, who uphold the idea of gender being biological, and the gender critical feminists, whose whole ideology is to deny this fact.
In other words, if a trans narrative that centers gender dysphoria, as well as the clinical evidence and scientific theory that supports it, is allowed to take center stage in the trans debates, it would blast the anti-trans alliance wide open, probably resulting in its various factions fighting each other instead. However, postmodern feminism and its associated postmodern 'gender ideology' would not allow this to happen, simply because it is protecting its own ideological doctrine. Remember that postmodern feminism basically shares a lot of the gender critical worldview too. It's why it wouldn't allow the gender critical worldview to be effectively challenged by trans empiricists. It simply cannot allow liberal scientific empiricism to discredit the criticalist worldview in the first place. Postmodernists may say they are trans friendly, but in reality they are also effectively shielding gender critical feminism from the most effective attacks. This is why some transmedicalist people like to say that postmodernists are effectively TERFs. Because they are effectively very similar. And they would also rather the TERFs win than allow trans empiricism to prevail, even if it means delaying trans acceptance.
So what do you think should be the way forward from here?
I think the answer is simple, but not easy. Firstly, we need to return to a trans discourse that centers gender dysphoria. The justification is simple: it is clear from simple observation that most trans people transition because of gender dysphoria, so it is the root cause of the vast majority of transness in this world. Therefore, only a trans discussion that centers dysphoria would be effective in helping trans people. Any debate that occurs on the level of ideology and not reality can only detract from the goal at hand.
Secondly, we need to have a seat at the table to present our view. We need to have a voice in mainstream media, there is simply no alternative to that. The reason why trans people keep losing right now is because all of the three components of the unholy alliance have much more mainstream media representation than us. We need to demand change, and try every way to change that. Remember, attitudes to gay people and gay marriage only started to change with media representation. It's time we demand that trans voices that represent the real lived experiences of trans people be heard. While there seems to be some media representation of trans people in recent years, almost none of them focus enough on dysphoria. This is ridiculous, and really needs to change.
From Transmedicalist to Trans Empiricist
It seems like many people don't understand the point of transmedicalism at all. From there, they naturally think, like, why have this worldview when it wouldn't necessarily gain you any acceptance, validation or rights. From here, some start to speculate bad things about transmeds, which loops back into the first point. To resolve this, I think we need to go back to the basics. What's the point of the transmedicalist model in the first place? Why do you believe in it?
I'm certainly not interested in any of the gatekeeping stuff. In fact, I don't even think in terms of do you need gender dysphoria to be trans. For me, I guess the transmedicalist model is the only logical choice for a trans person who is opposed to postmodern philosophy. Basically, there are two main ways people use to explain the world these days. There's the empirical, scientific way, in which we are committed to the objective truth, and base our claims on observable evidence. And then there's postmodern philosophy and its associated 'no objective truth', 'everything is a social construct' way. I guess I'm too committed to empirical science to have any room for postmodernism in my thinking.
Now, let's apply this to models of transness. There are four main models of how 'sex', as in genetic or reproductive sex, and 'gender', as in the social and behavioral aspects, are related. The first is the traditional model, where sex and gender are both biological reality and are strongly bound together, with gendered behavior explained by neurological differences. This model can be split into where sex and gender are always correlated, which is how many religious conservatives believe, for example, and where there could very occasionally be a mismatch between sex and gender, which is the transmedicalist model. The next model is the second wave feminism model, where sex is a biological reality but gender is a social construct, i.e. gender behavior is entirely due to social expectation and modelling. The final model is the postmodern model, where both sex and gender are seen as social constructs or at least linguistic constructs, and neither is inherently natural or biological. Hence people should be free to redefine sex and gender as they see fit, and anything less would be oppression.
If you examine these models, two of them are incompatible with trans identities being valid at all. The model where sex is always consistent with gender is self-explanatory in this regard. The model where sex is real but gender is a social construct also leaves no room for trans people being a natural occurrence, and would suggest that it is a mere lifestyle choice. Indeed, this is the model of gender critical feminists who are trans-exclusionary. There is no way I would accept these two models, because they go against my own lived experience, as well as that of the many, many trans people who have ever existed. An honest scientific empiricism would have to reject these models.
So we are left with two models: one where both sex and gender are biological but there is allowance for mismatch, and another where sex and gender are both social constructs and people should be liberated from all of it. However, the second only makes sense if you accept postmodern philosophy, and all its metaphysical consequences. Which means an anti-postmodernist trans person, or a facts over feelings, science over philosophy type trans person, can only believe in the first model, that is, the transmedicalist model.
There is also another good reason to choose one model over the other: the transmedicalist model provides a very plausible explanation about why there are trans people, and justifies the reasonable societal accommodation of trans people. The postmodernist model is much weaker here, in that it ultimately does not explain transness, does not differentiate it from a pure lifestyle choice at all, and merely demands societal accommodation in the name of liberation. It is no different from demanding societal accommodation for any lifestyle choice, whether reasonable or not, and is therefore rather weak in terms of arguing for trans acceptance, unless the whole world also adopts postmodernist philosophy.
In conclusion, we can see that, at least in my case, I identify with the transmed model simply because it is the only one that makes sense to me, and because it provides a firm reasoning for transness, which would also be an argument for trans acceptance and reasonable accommodation.
Given that it is an argument that comes from a medical and scientific reasoning point of view, it rejects postmodernism in the name of upholding the principles of scientific empiricism, including a demand that all claims be based upon observable evidence, I think that we may as well call this model the Trans Empiricist model from now on.
Is the Trans Community Really Going Over A Cliff?
I guess these concerns represent real things that are happening, at least to some extent. However, have you thought about the fact that it may only be happening among a small segment of society, like the saying 'a storm in a teacup'? I mean, there are all sorts of discussions about trans people and trans issues, particularly in the 'extremely online' world, but if you look at the discussions people are having at their local bars and clubs, I doubt trans issues even feature there. And I doubt that they even know what postmodernism is, either.