Background
You know, as a trans person, I’m truly sick and tired of the trans wars! Being trans should be a simple thing. Back when I came out, the mind-body mismatch narrative was common, and it got the point across. I know it’s a gross simplification, and there are more nuances on a scientific level, but still, it was easy to understand, and it got us the understanding we needed. It also fit right into the ‘born this way’ narrative that was a large part of the LGBT message at that time.
Nowadays, the talk around trans stuff is stupidly complicated, and counter-productive to letting others understand trans people. Let’s start with the whole debate around whether gender is a social construct. Just two or three years ago, I wouldn’t even have known what a ‘social construct’ was. It’s not like I majored in radical philosophy or anything like that. Anyway, there’s now a false view in some circles that trans people believe that gender is a social construct. Perhaps some activists actually believe that, but I don’t, and my friends don’t either. I mean, I didn’t choose to be trans, I was born this way. There’s nothing socially constructed about my gender. Seriously, not only do I not believe that gender is a social construct, because it contradicts everything I’ve learned in biology, I also don’t know why this question has been seen as relevant to trans issues at all!
On a related note, let’s move to the transmed wars. Those of us who believe that gender is rooted in biology are called transmedicalists, or transmeds, in trans circles nowadays. Apparently, the dividing question is ‘do you need dysphoria to be trans’, and we on the transmed side are supposed to believe that you do. But I think it’s a kind of pointless question to define ourselves around. The fact is, I don’t care if there are one or two outliers, but the vast majority of trans people transition because they have dysphoria. It’s just fact, it’s not even a debate! What I’m more concerned about is that trans issues continue to be examined through the lens of science and medicine, to ensure that we get the best medical care. What I’m worried about is a move by some to turn being trans into a philosophy thing, which it is clearly not. I mean, I knew I was trans when I was three years old, I certainly didn’t understand any philosophy back then. This, for me, is the clearest proof that it is all biological, and not philosophical at all.
And then there’s the pronoun wars. Of course us trans people would love to be referred to by our preferred pronouns. It also makes social situations less awkward. I mean, it’s weird to see a trans woman, clearly presenting as a woman, being referred to as a ‘he’ all the time. However, pronouns are not one of the biggest issues in life, not even for trans people. Between jobs, relationships, life goals, doing interesting things, and of course seeking health care, pronouns really aren’t high up on the ‘things that matter’ list. That is, until some people decided to assign prime importance to it. This has led to the misperception that trans people are obsessed with pronouns. The truth is, we’re not. Or at least I’m not, I can’t pretend to speak for every trans person in the world. But many of us are just content with living normal lives, and wouldn’t feel comfortable making a big fuss about our preferred pronouns anyway. Many of us just want people to treat us like normal, and we don’t want people to feel like they are stepping on seashells when they are talking with us. And there’s also the related issue of free speech. Ever since pronouns somehow became a big thing, there’s this idea that trans people want to compel people to use their preferred pronouns, and people are now accusing us of supporting ‘compelled speech’. Let me say this loud and clear: I have no intention to compel anyone’s speech. I’m a big supporter of free speech, and I will always be. The pronoun wars are not my wars, never have been, never will be.
I guess what I’m most concerned about is, everything around being trans is now highly politicized, and that people are using us as a political football. Suddenly, we aren’t seen as human beings with needs to be accommodated anymore. People are using us for political point-scoring, without even trying to understand us. Everyone, from the religious right who are still upset that they lost the gay marriage wars, to the different factions of radical feminism that have been at war with each other for decades, to postmodernists with their radical social agenda, want to use a piece of the trans wars, to help advance their political goals. Meanwhile, the humanity of trans people is forgotten by all sides.
You know, it’s all a mess that I don’t want to be in. None of the trans people I know actually want to be in it. I bet that the silent majority of trans people hate this situation too. They’re probably too busy with other things in life to want to speak up publicly, so a loud minority is pretending to speak for all of us. I’m really frustrated with this, to be honest.
Is Gender a Social Construct
Looking back historically, the debate about whether gender is a social construct has never been a big part of the culture or dialogue of the trans community. After all, before the so-called ‘trans tipping point’ in 2014 or so, back when the outside world didn’t care much about trans people and trans issues, the trans community in general also didn’t care much about the larger questions of the outside world. The trans community I used to know was a small community of people who shared some needs, who came together to help each other out, focusing on those needs. To be honest, I actually really miss the way the trans community used to be. Pragmatic, less divisive, and certainly less politicized.
Anyway,
back to the question of whether gender is a social construct. Trans
people mostly didn’t care about the answer to this question, but one
group of people certainly did: the subset of radical feminists who
didn’t like trans people. I guess they would be what some would call
‘gender critical feminists’ and others would call ‘trans exclusionary
radical feminists’, a.k.a. TERFs, nowadays, although these terms did not
exist back then. Even back then, radical feminism provided the biggest
non-religious justification for anti-trans attitudes, and it was all
rooted in the idea that ‘gender is a social construct’.
Basically,
the idea that gender is a social construct originated in second wave
radical feminism. Its development was heavily popularized by the
then-prevalent view that socially dominant cultural ideas were
constructed to serve the interests of the powerful, or the oppressors in
society. This view is in turn ultimately derived from Marxism, but
that’s another long story. Anyway, the takeaway is that the origins of
the idea that gender is a social construct has a lot to do with second
wave radical feminism, and even something to do with Western Marxism,
but it has absolutely nothing to do with trans people. Indeed, radical
feminists who strongly believed that gender is a social construct tended
to invalidate the experiences of trans people. Taking their beliefs to
their logical conclusion, they believed that there is nothing to gender
other than socialization, so people can’t really feel like the gender
they weren’t socialized as growing up.
Meanwhile, trans people of course didn’t agree with this radical feminist position, because they knew that what they were feeling was real. Instead, most trans people believed that they were born with a brain more similar to that of the opposite sex, at least in some ways. This view, rooted in the work of doctors going back to the 1960s or even earlier, was generally supported by doctors who were sympathetic to trans people. Broadly speaking, anti-trans radical feminists had neo-Marxist theory and philosophy on their side, and trans people had evidence from clinical medicine, that gender dysphoria was real, and transition alleviates it, on their side. Looking back, the trans community of 15 or so years ago, while they didn’t consciously aim to do so, had actually provided a de-facto answer of ‘no’ to the question ‘is gender a social construct’.
Fast forward 15 years, and I’m still quite surprised that there are now trans people on both sides of this debate. I personally remain very strongly against the idea of gender being a social construct, firstly because I take the traditional view that this position totally invalidates the lived experiences and needs of trans people. Like gender critical feminists themselves, I believe that the lived experiences of trans people are simply irreconcilable with the idea of gender being a social construct. Unlike the TERFs, I believe that when their theory and my experience are in conflict, it would have to be their theory that is wrong, because actual experience trumps theory. My position is also informed by my scientific views, based on Darwinian evolutionary biology, which I have detailed in my previous work.
So right now, there are trans people on both sides of the social construction debate, just like in the general population. It’s like how there are Americans who are Republicans and there are Americans who are Democrats, and neither can claim to represent Americans as a whole. Stereotyping Americans as a whole as the typical Democrat or the typical Republican would be very inaccurate or unfair. Therefore, the stereotype that trans people believe that gender is a social construct certainly isn’t true. I myself am a living refutation of that. As to why there are people on both sides of the debate, I guess trans people are not that different from other people here. That is, I suspect it may be partially a political cultural thing, that is, what you believe on this question is often a matter of where your political and cultural influences come from.
But equally importantly, I think we should really separate the social construction debate from the discussion around trans issues. Most trans people actually want to resolve their gender dysphoria and get on with their lives, and don’t want to invite politicized discussions to complicated the matter. Besides, as we have examined, the debate over whether gender is a social construct doesn’t have much to do with the actual issues of trans people. This debate didn’t start with trans people, it really isn’t about trans people, and what I’m seeing is that it is being brought up by people who want to confuse the discussion about trans issues. It’s being brought into the debate by people who want to distract from the actual lives of trans people, to transfer the focus to this big, almost pointless, academic debate, either to advance their own agendas, or to make trans reforms sound too complicated. This is why I think we should demand that the debate as to whether gender is a social construct be kept completely separate from the discussion of how society can better accommodate trans people.
The Transmed Wars
One of the most confusing phenomenon in the contemporary trans world is the so-called transmed wars. On the surface, it looks like this: transmedicalists, transmeds for short, believe that you need the medical condition called ‘gender dysphoria’ to be trans. On the other hand, anti-transmeds, sometimes also called ‘tucutes’, believe that anyone who chooses to identify as a gender that is different from their birth gender is trans. Moreover, they believe that transmeds are exclusionary, because their criteria leads to the invalidation of some people’s claimed trans identity. Stemming from that, some anti-transmeds also believe in and perpetuate false stereotypes about transmeds, like how they are not accepting of non-binary people, or how they don’t accept trans people who don’t pass, which is clearly false information. Going even further, some anti-transmeds have sought to lump transmeds together with people who oppose trans rights, which is totally ridiculous.
As you see, the transmed wars are pretty confusing, and can be pretty toxic, especially in the way some anti-transmeds behave towards transmeds. On the surface at least, it seems to boil down to one single question: do you need gender dysphoria in order to be considered ‘trans’. Transmeds generally argue that you do, because that is the only way to prevent absolutely anyone from identifying as trans, which would distract from the needs of those suffering from gender dysphoria. But while this line of argument is valid, I think the transmed wars represent something deeper: it’s really the intra-trans community version of the argument over whether gender is a social construct. Put it simply: to believe that being trans is primarily defined by the medical condition of gender dysphoria is to effectively say that gender is rooted in biology. This position clearly refutes the idea that gender can be a social construct. On the other hand, if you believe that anyone can identify as whatever gender for whatever reason, that would strongly suggest that gender is infinitely malleable by human actions, which would logically have to mean that it is a social construct.
As we have previously established, the culture war over whether gender is a social construct is one that is being waged by particular factions of radical feminism, against the more traditional understanding prevalent in general society. The transmed wars thus represent the intrusion of this external culture war into the trans community. Moreover, it is very clear that the transmed wars are strongly linked to politics in the external world: almost every anti-transmed I know identifies with a branch of radical feminism that believes in gender being a social construct, which in turn also means being part of the postmodern critical theory far-left, because that’s where this branch of feminism came from. I have made another film about postmodern critical theory’s encroachment on liberalism, and I think all this strongly links into that too. But I’m not going to go into further detail here, because it’s outside the scope of this film. My point is simply that, the transmed wars are actually an appendage of a much bigger, much wider culture war being waged outside the trans community.
This creates a dilemma for someone in my position: I believe in science and biology, I don’t believe that gender is a social construct, and I believe that gender dysphoria has biological roots. Hence, I’m a transmed. Now, I don’t really care about the ‘whether you need dysphoria to be trans’ question. I mean, the vast majority of trans people say that they transitioned to relieve dysphoria, and I really don’t care what the remaining small minority believe, because it’s really not that important to me. But I’m a transmed simply because my views of gender are rooted in science rather than philosophy. Furthermore, I believe that if we go down the path where gender is artificially redefined as a social construct that is infinitely malleable, then anyone could just declare themselves to be trans, and trans people, as people with particular needs due to their gender dysphoria, are effectively erased. Forget about conservative administrations supposedly defining trans people out of existence; it is postmodernism that might really end up doing that! Given that one must always stand up for what one believes to be true, and what one believes to be most moral, I have to just keep stating the transmed viewpoint, so it can be heard loud and clear in the relevant debates, both inside and outside the trans community.
On the other hand, I have come to recognize that, in the transmed wars, all of us are effectively being used as pawns, as part of a wider culture war that won’t benefit trans people at all. Therefore, the other thing I believe we must do is to transcend the transmed wars altogether. While I will keep stating my transmed views, and I don’t expect the other side to agree with us anytime soon, we all need to recognize that this disagreement shouldn’t form the core of the trans community. Instead, I firmly believe that the trans community’s discourse should be focused on the experiences, needs and bread and butter issues of everyday trans people. It would be in these places that both sides of the transmed debate would be able to find much common ground, and hence transcend the toxicity introduced by the transmed wars.
The Pronoun Wars
The pronoun wars are actually another way the outside world culture wars have invaded the trans community. I mean, trans people have always wanted to be referred to by their preferred pronouns, but it was just one issue among many, and not the most important either. The prominence of the pronoun issue is indeed something new.
Trans people want others to refer to them by their preferred pronouns for several reasons. The chief one is probably acceptance and blending in: that is, they would feel like they are simply accepted as a member of their identified gender, and could live a life blending in as such. This is why, for many trans people, other people using their preferred pronouns makes them happy only if it is done on the same basis as for all other people. If people instead have to make deliberate efforts to use the pronoun, that would defeat the purpose of the exercise, and could even make things worse. Last year, a prominent trans icon raised the issue of pronoun rounds and the way they are applied, which kicked off a fierce debate inside the trans community. One important theme that came out of that was how some trans people could indeed feel embarrassed more than anything, if others were deliberately treating them differently when it comes to pronouns. A trans friend once confided to me, how bad someone made her feel, when they apologized for using the wrong pronoun. As she said, hearing the wrong pronoun once felt like a slap on the wrist that she could just ignore, but hearing the deliberate apology felt like a kick in the guts!
As you can see, the relationship between trans people and pronouns is complicated. Most importantly, trans people usually want to blend into society as just another member of their identified gender. If the way others use pronouns signal that this is happening, this would make them happy. However, if a preferred pronoun is used but in an artificial or forced way, this would not be what most trans people would want! Which would logically mean that, trans people want to encourage others to use their preferred pronouns, but probably wouldn’t want it to feel forced or deliberate in any way.
The fact is, much of the recent pronoun drama have not focused too much on what trans people actually want. As previously mentioned, the recent phenomenon of pronoun rounds have made many trans people uncomfortable, especially if they believe it is only done when they are there. Even pronoun rounds that are routinely conducted, for example as a formality required at certain events in recent years, can make trans people especially uncomfortable, because it reminds them of their trans status and hence their dysphoria in an area of life they wouldn’t normally expect. High profile public debates about pronouns, for example during debates about what would constitute ‘hate speech’ in the law, have been especially hard on trans people. Some trans people also feel like these debates make it harder for them to blend into society, making them less confident in their everyday lives. Needless to say, some trans people would prefer if none of this was happening, and they could just go back and live their lives as it was, before the so-called ‘trans tipping point’.
So if the pronoun drama ain’t really rooted in the wishes of trans people, what is it rooted in? I think it is actually rooted in postmodern philosophy. In postmodern thinking, there is no objective reality that can be known, so only the social construction and perception of reality matters. Therefore, language takes on a heightened importance, because it is the way reality is socially constructed. In other words, language is reality itself. Which in turn means that, for example, if we all use a trans person’s preferred pronouns, it would somehow make their gender identity more real. This is why enforcement of pronouns has been equated with trans acceptance. Of course, this is totally inconsistent with most trans people’s views. Trans people generally believe that gender identity is innate. But then, the postmodernists, who subscribe to the Marxian view of identity being determined by external conditions, don’t really accept this view either. For example, many postmodern feminists believe that gender is a performance, which would invalidate trans people’s views that they have always been their identified gender. The point is, the whole pronoun exercise has so far been rooted in postmodern ideology, which is actually not very compatible with trans people’s own views and wishes.
What I’m most worried about is that, trans people are effectively being used as the thin end of the wedge, in postmodern critical theory activists’ war on liberal free speech norms. While liberals have long believed in free speech as a core value, postmodern critical theory believes that, as per Michel Foucault, speech is power, and that as per Herbert Marcuse, unfettered free speech leads to the domination of the oppressive ideas of the status quo. Trans people are being used by these activists to demonstrate that they are right, and the liberals are wrong. But then, this would just be a logical fallacy, because while the basic position of free speech liberalism is that it would not compel anyone to use any pronoun, many liberals would also encourage others to be decent and compassionate in their treatment of all minorities, including trans people. This approach, rooted in an ‘organic’ compassion, appears to me to be closer to what most trans people want. I mean, at least this is what I want, and what many trans people I know want.
My conclusion is that, the pronoun wars, it’s complicated. Trans people do want people to use their preferred pronouns, but only where it doesn’t seem forced. An approach to pronouns that negates free speech is certainly not in line with trans people’s wishes. I think it’s time this message was heard loud and clear. The bottom line is, trans people don’t want to wage a culture war over pronouns, it’s postmodern activists who are doing that in our name.
Theory Over Lives
You know, I really miss the days, back when the trans community was a small group of individuals who had some common needs, who came together to help each other, and also provide emotional support to each other. While that was just less than 10 years ago, it may as well be ancient history now. The politicization of trans issues, in its rapidness and severity, really has no historical parallel. No other community in the history of humanity has ever gone from being absolutely obscure to being a hot button issue in this timeframe. And we must remember that real trans people have suffered, and are still suffering, because of this change. One thing I hate about political activists is that they never stop to consider how they are trampling on the lives of real people.
As for why trans issues became polarized, well, as we have seen in this film, much of it is due to the culture wars happening in the outside world. People with agendas, from both the Left and the Right, have sought to use this latest hot issue, to make their case, recruit supporters, and advance their cause. It’s quite easy to do too, because trans people and trans issues were very obscure just a decade ago. Most people didn’t already come with pre-established positions on trans issues, which meant that there were many hearts and minds that could be turned using trans issues. And so, they came, far-left and hard-right alike, as well as people in between.
There’s the postmodern critical theory people, who want to use trans people as a justification to deconstruct gender, all the social norms around gender, and even wider liberal norms like free speech. Their agenda, which was first promoted in the 1960s New Left, and was soundly rejected by the mainstream by the 1980s, is clearly incompatible with traditional trans narratives like the mind-body mismatch model. But this wouldn’t deter them, because trans people are so few in number, and they could just shout over them, and pretend to speak for them. As a result, radical postmodernism now enjoys an increasing popularity among people who want to be LGBT allies, which is a big slice of the younger generations. On the flip side, there are now people out there who think that being trans is a political thing, rooted in the idea that gender is a social construct. This is literally as wrong as thinking that the sun is a big disco ball, and it rises in the West.
And then there’s the anti-gay marriage movement, overlapping with the so-called ‘religious right’, who, after having fought a generational battle over gay marriage and lost, were almost desperate to continue their movement in some other issue. Some of the infrastructure that was used to fight against gay marriage are now being squarely aimed at trans people. It is no accident that anti-trans ‘bathroom bills’ started to appear everywhere after gay marriage became legal throughout the US in 2015. If you remember, unconditional and immutable biological sex differences were a very big part of the argument against gay marriage. So what they are doing now is essentially fighting for that argument, just to retrospectively justify their fruitless 20-year crusade. Perhaps they think that, if they win on this point, gay marriage would be exposed for being a sham, and they will still be able to claim the ultimately moral victory.
What they fail to notice is that, the scientific understanding about sex and gender has long since advanced beyond their mid 20th century understandings, and it is this advance that has in part helped make the case for gay marriage. Which means, their attitude is actually similar to those who believed the Earth was flat in the face of new scientific evidence to the contrary. However, they have the money, they have the organization, and they will continue to be a force to be reckoned with. Moreover, the rise of postmodernism on the Left has lent credence to these gender flat-earthers, because they at least claim to believe in science, even if it is the science of 70 years ago.
Finally, there’s the so-called ‘gender critical feminists’, who have sought to use trans issue to highlight their belief that gender is a social construct that only exists via socialization. The scientifically invalid idea that only physical sex is real, and that gender is only a social construct, which had previously been long rejected by the mainstream, has proven to be increasingly popular with those who want to invalidate the existence of trans people, including people from the anti-gay marriage movement. This, ironically, means that a certain faction of conservatives are now promoting radical ideas rooted in second wave feminism and Marxism. It’s literally conservatives embracing radical far-left ideas to own the LGBT community. I never thought I would see this in my lifetime, but it’s really happening.
So, in all this, who are the winners? I guess everyone on both the far-left and the hard-right. Those who oppose gay marriage get another shot at relitigating a lost battle, and those who want to push radical theories into the mainstream get a very good opportunity to do so. But there has to be losers. Who are the losers, then? Trans people, of course! Our voices get drowned out, our issues get confused, and we get to be used as pawns in political battles that we won’t benefit from in any way, shape or form. We get to suffer all the backlash too! So yes, trans people are the biggest losers in all this.
Conclusions
As we have seen, much of the trans wars actually don’t have anything to do with trans people or trans issues. Instead, what we are seeing is that actors with bigger agendas are using trans people to push their views into mainstream society. In the end, though, it is trans people who suffer from the backlash to those unpopular agendas.
It would indeed help the situation if more trans people spoke up. While one lone voice may not change much, if we can get a chorus of trans voices talking about their actual everyday issues, perhaps we would be able to move the discussion back towards the needs of actual trans people. However, given that only about 1 in 500 or so people are trans, trans people are a very small minority in society, and real trans voices are easily drowned out by those who are determined to use the trans community for their own ends. Therefore, I think it would really help if more people in the wider community became aware of the current hijacking of the trans discussion, and if people started to consciously listen to the voices of everyday trans people over the louder activist class.
I’m hopeful that, one day, the trans wars will be over. We can get closer to that day by building constructive dialogue, encouraging mutual understanding, and most importantly, cutting through the ideological agendas on all sides.
