Madness Masquerading as Progress
Madness Masquerading as Progress
Why I became critical of gender after detransitioning
I identified as transgender for ten years. During this time, I would have said I had a “gender identity” that was at odds with the sex that was observed and recorded when I was born. Part of detransition, for me, was the cessation of my subscription to the framework of gender identity. Detransition forced me to scrutinize it so that I might understand why I’d transitioned in the first place. The more I examined it, though, the less sense it made.
I no longer see people with unquestionable identities. I see people with beliefs about themselves who have made choices in how to express those beliefs — but all of whom are either male or female. And they were not simply “assigned” those roles. The characteristics that make them either male or female are baked into their DNA.
Part of society has decided that the “progressive” thing to do is allow people who are male to identify into the female category and vice versa — and I also believed this wholeheartedly for many years, so I understand why it seemed like the proper thing to do. Ultimately, it was an emotional argument. It felt right. It felt good. It felt like you were supporting people in living as their authentic selves. It was easy to characterize anyone opposed to such a noble cause as “mean” (at best—“genocidal fascists” at worst).
I didn’t realize the extent to which turning “man” and “woman” into mixed-sex categories would affect all of society. With such wide-reaching effects, there should be strong evidence to support the change.
Going back thousands of years, women have had shared experiences: getting our first period, growing breasts, being pregnant, giving birth, experiencing menopause, etc. Not every single woman experiences all of them, but those experiences were understood to be fundamentally female. Female bodies are genetically-determined to grow in such a way to support the production of ova and the ability to bear children. “Female” as a sex class is a reproductive role. Adult human beings of that sex class are “women.”
Most male human beings can physically overpower most female human beings. That is not a value judgement. Male bodies evolved in that way to fulfill the reproductive role of “provider.” Women have their own strengths, but they were categorized as the “weaker sex,” and throughout history, their freedoms have been restricted. Women were expected to stay in the home, have children, and rely on their husbands. In more extreme cases, their genitals were mutilated to prevent pleasure or they became the “brides” of older men as soon as they could have children (sometimes before). These things are still happening in some places of the world. All of the different social and cultural expectations around what women should or should not be doing ultimately centre around that biological reproductive role—as do cultural expectations of men.
The movement for women’s rights was a demand for liberation from those expectations. They wanted the ability to be independent. They wanted to make choices for ourselves. They wanted to participate in politics. They wanted to compete in sports. They wanted to represent ourselves. They wanted the freedom to be more than just wives and mothers.
This idea that our sex class shouldn’t determine our lot in life has since become divorced from its context. Now people are claiming that defining “man” or “woman” by their reproductive role is sexist. That’s bullshit. Definitions are meant to be discriminatory. What’s sexist is the assumption that all of our value as human beings comes from our defining ability.
Regardless, apparently we must now redefine “man” and “woman” to make them completely meaningless. Instead of reflecting the material reality of your sex, these terms now reflect your personal relationship with “gender.” A woman is a person who identifies as a woman. It’s a circular definition. Sometimes, with prying, people sometimes say a woman is someone who identifies with characteristics that are associated with women. But ultimately that means they “identify with” the gendered expectations that were placed on the female sex class due to their reproductive role—or perhaps they just don’t identify with the expectations of their own sex class. However, there are countless women on the planet who do not identify with the gendered expectations of their sex class. They’re still women.
The political angle seems to be that a person’s subjective sense of gender (i.e., their gender identity) has more of a meaningful consequence in real life than their sex class—even framing it as a human rights issue. As such, we are seeing governments allowing male prisoners to identify into women’s prisons. We are seeing male athletes competing in women’s sports. We are seeing male sex offenders permitted to enter female-only changing areas. We are seeing an unnatural shift in language—referring to women as “menstruators,” “pregnant people,” and “vulva owners” because the word “woman” has been divorced from its biological meaning. This is all being done to accommodate personal beliefs that have no more empirical evidence than the existence of God. What’s more, though, is it’s being done to avoid being branded as a bigot. If all feelings were actually being taken into account, then the women in opposition to the hostile takeover of a category they have organized under for decades would be taken seriously.
This is my take: I don’t care how individual people choose to live their lives. I don’t even particularly care about pronouns. I do think it’s a waste of time to try and completely ban transition as a medical treatment. People will access what they want to access, legal or not. The best we can do is use evidence and ethical arguments to make decisions around regulating practices. That is my goal when it comes to detransition advocacy: I demand clinicians take much more caution in prescribing an invasive medical treatment that causes permanent changes for what may only be a transient identity. The sudden explosion of patients referred to gender identity clinics should have made people ask more questions, not less.
But I will not repeat the mantra that trans women are women. I reject the definition that a woman is a person who identifies as one. A woman is an adult female human. An adult human male is not a woman.
I understand that a male person may persistently feel that they are a woman. I understand they may genuinely believe they are one. I understand that seeing their male characteristics might bring them great anguish and suffering. I understand that my saying “I do not believe what you believe” will cause them to frame me as a bigot.
I understand this because I experienced a persistent and genuine belief that I was a man (and later that I was nonbinary). My female characteristics brought me such emotional distress that I had a mastectomy and hysterectomy. I was triggered into fight-or-flight mode by anyone who “invalidated” my sense of myself, and I framed them as a bad person. However, denying my material reality did not serve me in the slightest. It made me into someone who believed I had the right to control how others perceived me. It made my happiness contingent on whether I was successful at that or not. I was set up for disappointment. You can never control how others perceive you. What a waste of time.
This current iteration of “gender identity” is wholly new. It was constructed in the last 30 years, even though there is a concerted effort from activists to claim that “trans people” have been around forever. No. Gender non-conformity has been around forever. People have been passing as the other sex (for various reasons) forever. Not all of these instances would meet the stringent definition of a person whose “gender identity” doesn’t match their sex—and in my opinion, while it’s fine to wonder about how gender non-conforming historical figures might interpret today’s discourse, it’s always inappropriate to categorize them with the modern-day label of “transgender.”
This new iteration of what it means to be transgender is at odds with the experiences of many “trans people” from years past and present. It’s impossible to know what figures like Marsha P. Johnson would have said about queer theory, but Johnson identified as a gay man and a transvestite. He may have used female pronouns for himself, but he recognized that he was male and was clearly not offended by material reality.
Today, transsexuals who recognize the limitations of transition (e.g., by supporting sex-based rights) are vilified by the larger trans community and are accused of experiencing “internalized transphobia.” (Obviously, the only reason a person would recognize and prioritize material reality is self-loathing rather than understanding why sex matters.)
The current political campaign around gender is not about human rights. It is about the redefining of biological sex classes. (This particularly affects the class that has historically had to organize for their own liberation.) It is not a “human right” to redefine words that never described you so that they include you. It is not a “human right” for someone to occupy space reserved for the opposite sex. It is not a “human right” to be granted access to drugs and surgeries via self-diagnosis.
There remains no evidence that a male person who identifies as a woman is indistinguishable from the average female person (or vice versa). I don’t care what is considered “progressive” anymore. I don’t care about looking good to others. I care about fairness; I care about evidence; I care about the objective truth—that is what we use to make policies, not coercive accusations of bigotry when someone disagrees with the faith-based belief that some people are “meant” to be born with a different body.
Without some serious hard evidence, there is absolutely no reason to completely reorganize society around gender identity (by effectively replacing sex class). It’s madness masquerading as progress.