What is Gender and Gender Dysphoria?

Today, we are going to discuss what gender is, and by extension, why there are trans people. I'll give an explanation of my sincere beliefs, my scientific hypotheses, based on my observations and my knowledge in the biological sciences. As a moral libertarian, I always acknowledge that I am not always right, and other individuals have an equal moral right to raise alternative hypotheses, in the name of being committed to the truth. But by putting my thoughts out there into the free market of ideas, I hope we can advance towards the truth of things, through rational debate. This is the very purpose of free speech, right?

I regret to have to warn you that what I am going to say today may sound controversial to some people, but shying away from controversy to please the establishment isn't my thing. It is infinitely more important to advance our understanding of why people are suffering, than to toe the establishment party line to keep egos happy.

Part One: Is Gender a Social Construct?

The radical feminist theory is that gender is a social construct, part of an oppressive system called patriarchy. This conception of patriarchy as a social system is in many ways linked to the neo-Marxist model of sociology, where our culture and institutions, called the superstructure, exist primarily to reinforce the base, that is the material system and its production relations. I will explore this concept further in a future episode. One thing I really don't like about the left is that their practice is largely based on theory, and practice based on misguided theory can be very harmful. We classical liberals base our practice on values and principles, like liberty and equality before the law, which I think is a much better approach. My regular viewers will know that I don't believe in leftist theories in general, but I will examine this one in good faith, I promise.

As leftist YouTuber ContraPoints explains in her video 'What Is Gender', saying that gender is a social construct doesn't mean that gender is not real, because money is a social construct, and it is clearly real. I actually think the example of money explains what a social construct is. That it is entirely constructed by human thought, and can be changed by human decisions. For example, back in the 20th century, people in Paris used the Franc, but nowadays they use the Euro. Because money is made real by laws made by the government, the government can decree a change in how money is defined and used, and this will effectively change the properties of money in a given country. Francs are no longer legal tender in France, because the French government decided so.

We can then look at whether gender is a social construct or not. At this point, I have to note that I will be using the normative cases of male and female in my discussion. Now, I'm not saying that normal is necessarily better, but I guess a good method to understand things is to look at your average or typical cases first, before we consider things that lie outside of the norm, like trans people and intersex people. The problem with postmodern leftist theory is that they too often jump to fit their theory around marginal cases before they have even appreciated the normal case. The Gender-bread Man that was shown in the ContraPoints video is a good example of a theory that over emphasizes the marginal cases at the expense of looking at the normal.

Let's start with what gender is. In common linguistic usage, gender refers to the dimorphic social and behavioural characteristics associated with biological sex. The female gender is the social and behavioural characteristics associated with the female biological sex, and the male gender is the social and behavioural characteristics associated with the male biological sex. (You know, as a somewhat conservative person, I really feel uncomfortable saying 'sex' so many times. That's why I don't use words like transsexual and homosexual. It just feels dirty saying it.)

Now, let's look at how gender typically functions. A good example would be how women are generally better at caring for children compared to men. Now, this is clearly universal across all cultures and times, and it is not something a government could change by legal decree. If you think about it, it makes biological sense for the mother to be the primary carer, because the father may be absent at birth. Similarly, across all cultures and all times, women have placed a higher emphasis on making themselves look beautiful, compared to men. Again, this is not something a government could change by legal decree. This is all evidence that gendered behaviour is biologically hardwired, and not able to be changed by human decisions. Therefore, gender is clearly not a social construct.

I mean, there are certain gender roles that are social constructs, but the bulk of gendered behaviour is biological. I must also emphasize that gendered behaviour can manifest differently in every individual. But there are clearly many patterns of gendered behaviour that is typical of each gender, and has a scientifically logical purpose to it.

Part Two: The Biology of Gender and Sex

So what is gender? Gendered behaviour in humans is essentially the equivalent of mating behaviour we see in other animals. And if you look at nature, every species has a set of highly specific mating behaviour, all ultimately geared to increase the success rate of reproduction, which let's face it, is the ultimate biological purpose of all animals. The other thing is that mating behaviour exists even in animals of low intelligence. It doesn't require conscious decisions to function. Instead, it functions as a set of pre-programmed behaviours. Even in humans, mating behaviour functions at a subconcious level, and doesn't require much conscious input. It all happens naturally. Now, we need to note that when I refer to mating behaviour, I'm not refering to just behaviour that happens around mating. A lot of mating behaviour is essentially life-long. It is more like a pattern of programming that manifests itself in many natural behaviours in many different contexts. This explains why gendered behaviour encompasses a wide range of behaviours across the whole of life. In this view, gender is just as biologically grounded as reproductive sex, and the two normally complement each other.

Part Three: Let's look at Gender Dysphoria

To use a modern metaphor, biological sex is the hardware for reproduction, and gender is the software that makes the hardware work. In normal cases, which is more than 98% of the time, biological males have male gender software, and biological females have female gender software, and it fits like a hand and a glove, like a horse and a cart. But nature is messy, and is not perfect in the sense of mechanical perfection. Everything that can go right can also go wrong. For example, there is a specific neurological program for recognising faces, but some people like myself don't have that program, so we are not good at recognising faces. It's like the phone doesn't have the app, to use another modern metaphor. Therefore, as you can imagine, it is very possible to have a mismatch between the biological reproduction hardware and the gender program in the brain. As a result, the individual would have the gendered behaviour of one sex whilst having the physical characteristics of another. As gendered behaviour is hardwired and manifests itself across many areas of life, this represents a very painful situation. For example, in the area of self-grooming, the individual would be compelled to hate their own body image. In the area of romantic relationships, the individual would find it difficult and even repulsive to have to take on the role of their biological sex. There are also numerous other examples that arise in our everyday social interactions, where people who have the right match between hardware and software can just function without even thinking about it, but where people who have a mismatch experience recurrent living nightmares. This is what gender dysphoria is.

I think this model of thinking about gender and transgenderism in biological terms is better than all other similar models out there, because it explains the nature of gender dysphoria and accounts for why it has such a huge impact across an individual's life. In contrast, the more traditional explanation of 'male brains' vs 'female brains' grossly oversimplifies things, and cannot convincingly explain why normal people don't have a sense innate gender identity, or why gender dysphoria is so all-encompassing and so debilitating.

Now, I have to say that, although my views can be classified as transmedicalist, it doesn't follow that I share the beliefs of so-called truscums, or that I don't accept non-binary people. I will have more to say about these topics, and how they fit with my understanding of gender, in the coming weeks.

So there it is, my beliefs about what gender is, and what gender dysphoria is. I believe thinking about things this way is helpful for both trans individuals themselves, to understand why and how they are suffering, and for others to understand why there are trans people in the first place. The trouble is, I still don't feel comfortable speaking like this in real life, because it might offend postmodern radical feminists. Which is why we do need a more robust free speech movement.