Think You Really Understand Trans People? | Diary of a Trans Popstar

Do you think you really understand trans people? Do you think you already know everything there is to know about trans people, because the media already told you, or because you've heard it all from some source? Think again.

Being trans is not a fashion statement. Being trans is not a political movement. Being trans is not a product of some academic ideology. And being trans is certainly nothing like the sensational stories you hear too often in the media.

The truth is, much of the conversation around trans people these days is strongly colored by people with an agenda. Their agenda comes from both extremes of the political spectrum, but what they have in common is they want to paint trans people in a certain way, to justify their doctrines. As a result, there's a lot of misinformation around trans people and trans lives out there right now. You might think trans people have come a long way in terms of visibility, but unfortunately, much of it is tied with misinformation, which is actually worse than no visibility at all.

Being trans is an inborn immutable characteristic, like race or sexual orientation. However, it comes with its own set of experiences, needs and challenges. What we ask for is understanding, fair treatment, and compassionate accommodation from society. This is what we want you, society, to see.

Dave Chappelle, Trans Issues and Free Speech | Trans Sandwiched #6

Today, I want to talk about the recent uproar over the new Dave Chappelle Netflix special that some people have described as transphobic. I then want to expand the discussion into the wider issue of trans issues and free speech, something that is close to my heart.

I actually don't want to go into the content of the Dave Chappelle special. I personally find most of Dave Chappelle's stuff to be in bad taste, and I'm definitely not a fan. However, I think, as a society, we have been overly focused on finding racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and so on in what people say. The problem is, this has not only not been effective in reducing discrimination and bigotry in society in general, it probably contributed to a substantial backlash towards the concept of social justice. Given that I believe the practice could be harmful, I'm not going to engage in it.

Having said that, I'm going to make just one comment: I believe we shouldn't throw the term 'TERF' around carelessly. Of course, it probably began with activists who like to inappropriately describe people like JK Rowling as 'TERFs'. Anyway, we should all stop doing it. TERF refers to gender critical feminism, a very specific left-wing ideology with a very specific form of anti-trans politics, and its meaning shouldn't be diluted. There is already enough misunderstanding as it is.

Anyway, what I found most important about this episode is that, once again, some people are out to pit free speech and trans people against each other. It really feels like last year's Harper's Free Speech letter drama is being replayed all over again. It appears that, the people behind the cause of 'cancel culture' are finding trans people to be good fuel for their cause. And I am indeed describing 'cancel culture' as a political cause: its roots go all the way back to the logic found in Herbert Marcuse's infamous 1965 essay Repressive Tolerance. Its objective is to change the way we think about free speech, free debate and freedom of conscience. Indeed, I believe that cancel culture is ultimately about cancelling liberalism itself, something in line with the objectives of radical critical theory.

Most people are passionately opposed to cancel culture, and with very good reason. My concern here is, if trans people are seen as supporters of cancel culture, we will bear the brunt of the backlash. While I am certain that the majority of trans people don't support cancel culture, I am concerned that we are being portrayed that way by the actions of certain activists. I don't think it's fair to us that this is being done to us.

As a trans person, I believe that free speech is the key to resolving issues and improving society in general. I also believe that free speech has been instrumental to the advancement of LGBT acceptance in particular, you just need to look at the gay marriage experience to see that. Free speech and the LGBT community have always been great friends, and they should remain great friends. It really pains me to see the inability of some trans activists to deal with speech they don't agree with. The point is, debate happens by people alternately agreeing and disagreeing with each other, and ultimately finding common ground where they can. We should all participate in this process in good faith. We should meet people where they are, and work out our disagreements. When we encounter ideas we disagree with, we raise our alternative viewpoint. What we should never do is to go around and demand that people be de-platformed, because that would disable the debate entirely, and lock everything in a permanent stalemate.

Revisiting Trans Empiricism | Trans Sandwiched #5

Today, I want to talk about the idea of 'trans empiricism', which I first raised earlier this year. Back then, I outlined how a 'trans empiricist' approach could put the focus of the trans conversation back on the experiences and needs of people who suffer from gender dysphoria, and end the dominance of academic debates of gender philosophy that have nothing to do with the everyday lives of trans people. Today, I will clearly explain what a trans empiricist approach looks like, and how it can help us put the conversation around trans issues back on track.

So what is trans empiricism? Basically, it's taking an empirical approach to the phenomenon of transgenderism, for lack of a better term. To be empirical is simply to be committed to the objective truth, and base our claims on observable evidence. In the empirical approach, observable evidence is taken to be the best representation of the truth. Empiricism is useful because it grounds our thinking in objective reality, and arguably protects us from sophistry. Using an empiricist lens, we can observe the following facts, regarding the trans phenomenon:

Firstly, trans people exist, and they comprise less than 1% of the population.
Secondly, the vast majority of trans people suffer from gender dysphoria, and transition because they want to alleviate their gender dysphoria.
Finally, gender is correlated with genetic sex in more than 99% of cases in the general population.
An extension to this point is that, there is a clear difference between trans people, and non-trans people, therefore the experiences of one group cannot be generalized to the other. This is a very important point I will come back to.

The aforementioned empirical observations form the foundation of the trans empiricist argument. This is a strong foundation for effectively untangling some of the most heated debates around gender and trans people today. This will help us move on from such arguments, so we can focus on more constructive discussions.

In the past three episodes, I discussed how certain radical feminists and postmodern activists have been pushing the idea that 'gender is a social construct', and tying this idea to their support or rejection of trans people. As a result, the trans discourse has been needlessly tied into this pointless philosophical question. A trans empiricist approach would overcome this in multiple ways. Firstly, the validity of trans people can be established simply by their continued existence in a similar pattern across time (at least several generations) and culture (trans people are present in every part of the world). Therefore, trans people are valid regardless of whether gender is a social construct. Secondly, the empirical fact that gender is correlated with genetic sex in more than 99% of the general population provides strong evidence against gender being a social construct.

Perhaps most importantly, the fact that gender is correlated with genetic sex in the vast majority of people, but not in trans individuals, mean that there is a very significant difference between the two groups. This, in turn, means that the experiences of trans people cannot be generalized to the general population; that trans people must be understood as a minority group with special accommodation needs. Recognition of this fact is good in two ways: firstly, it stops the postmodernist agenda of using trans people to demonstrate that gender is a social construct, or to deconstruct gender in general society. Secondly, by preventing trans people from being used like this, we can reassure the general public that trans rights do not amount to a radical change for the rest of the population, rather it is aimed at making life easier for a small minority of the population. This move would be analogous to when the gay marriage movement pointed out that legalizing gay marriage would only allow gay couples to get married, and not 'destroy marriage as we know it'. This realization, I believe, led to high levels of support for gay marriage in the general public.

Another thing is, postmodernists have been preventing a focus on gender dysphoria by participating in the long-standing 'transmed vs tucute' debate, and marginalizing voices in favor of centering dysphoria. Basically, transmedicalists believe that being trans is rooted in gender dysphoria, and that you need gender dysphoria to be trans. Tucutes believe that this view is judgemental, and amounts to gatekeeping. Postmodernists have made centering gender dysphoria impossible, by encouraging this divide, taking the side of the tucutes, and sometimes even resorting to baseless accusations of the transmed camp, e.g. that they are discriminating towards non-binary people, which most of them clearly aren't.

Trans empiricism overcomes this situation, by eliminating the need for this argument in the first place. An empiricist approach is agnostic about whether one 'needs gender dysphoria' to be 'validly trans', because it always accepts people as they are. However, the empirical evidence does clearly point to gender dysphoria being the main driver of trans identity and gender transition. Therefore, even without establishing whether gender dysphoria is a necessary feature of being trans, we can still establish that gender dysphoria is the most important feature of trans lives in general. This way, a trans empiricist can justifiably argue for much more attention to be placed on gender dysphoria, and the needs of people struggling with gender dysphoria, without being entangled in other philosophical questions.

In conclusion, a trans empiricist approach, one rooted in the observed objective reality, can help end the entanglement of trans issues with pointless philosophical debates that have little to do with trans people. It can help prevent trans issues from being taken advantage by those with an agenda, and restore the struggles of gender dysphoria back to the center of the conversation. I believe this would greatly help to advance the understanding and acceptance of trans people among the general public.

The Philosophy Wars Over Trans Lives and Truth | Trans Sandwiched #4

Today, I want to talk about the philosophy wars that are confusing the public discussion over trans issues, how it harms trans people, and the broader implications for society.

Right now, there are several different factions involved in the debate over trans issues, all with their own rationale for supporting or opposing trans rights to certain degrees. However, two of the loudest are the gender critical feminists, sometimes known as trans-exclusionary radical feminists, and the postmodern feminists. The former are staunchly against trans rights, while the latter are theoretically for them. Note that when I say 'gender critical', I mean the activist movement that is committed to that particular ideology, not just anyone who may be questioning certain trans issues.

What makes these two factions so important is that their views of trans people have become disproportionally influential in the general public, probably because they have the most dedicated activists. What I'm most concerned about is that, this essentially philosophical war over trans people, one that is not fought on scientific grounds but rather on philosophical grounds, is confusing the important issues, and leading to unwarranted backlash against trans people.

What may surprise many people is that, the gender criticalists and the postmodernists actually share a fundamental worldview, that is, gender is a social construct created by the patriarchy to oppress women. In turn, this is a particular expression of the general critical theory worldview: that the ideas held to be true by most people are often a social construct to serve the oppressors of society. Now, this might make sense if we were talking about laws or political systems. But to apply the idea to the realm of biological science is, I believe, basically no different from religious fundamentalism. As I previously pointed out, even if we separate gender out from genetic sex, there is still plenty of evidence that gender, defined as the social and psychological aspects, is mostly rooted in biology, and therefore not a social construct. Indeed, this biology based understanding of gender had been the basis of how many understood trans people for many decades. There is also no scientific reason as to why it should be abandoned.

For many decades, gender critical feminists, who believed that gender is a social construct, and therefore could be abolished, had been at odds with trans people, who believed that gender is innate and rooted in the biology of the brain. After all, if the gender critical feminists were right, then trans people would be basically invalid. If trans people were right, then the gender criticalist goal of abolishing gender would be impossible. This has always been the root reason of why gender critical feminism opposed trans rights. More recently, a third faction emerged, the postmodern feminists. The postmodernists hold that gender is a social construct, and the best way to essentially abolish it is to disrupt and deconstruct it. Therefore, they welcome trans people as disruptors of the gender binary. As you can see, the postmodernists' view is much closer to the gender critical than to old-school trans people, but their different theory of how to disrupt gender has led them to support trans rights.

I believe the rise of the postmodernist narrative is not because it is valid or logical. Like everything else postmodern, it is clearly not very logical. However, it is convenient. Especially by the 2010s, feminism was enjoying a resurgence, and trans rights had become a prominent issue, because of the rise of LGBT civil rights. If there were a conflict between the two, the progressive side of politics could descend into deep crisis. The conflict could have been resolved by adopting liberal feminism, but many people on the Left refused to do that because they connect liberal feminism to capitalism, which they see as inherently evil. Instead, they adopted postmodernism, which meant that they could continue the work of social constructionist radical feminism while also supporting trans rights. Very convenient, but not scientific or even logically consistent.

Ultimately, relying on postmodern philosophical sophistry to build the New Left's latest coalition has served to harm trans people and trans rights. People on the Right in particular love to constantly point out the multiple logical inconsistencies. There's a glaring inconsistency between the idea of gender being a social construct, and the idea of gender identity being innate to trans individuals. There's also the question of, if it is valid to be transgender, why is it not valid to be transracial, which would after all be no different under the postmodern worldview. All this time, our supposed community leaders have not been able to provide a response to these very valid points, as they have become beholden to the nonsense that is postmodernism. In turn, this has allowed both the anti-trans conservatives and the gender critical feminists to look more reasonable than us, which has meant increased support for their worldviews, and increased resistance to trans rights.

I believe, to get anything resolved, the most important thing is to uphold the truth. To deny fundamental facts using philosophical sophistry, like postmodernism essentially seeks to do, or to build shaky coalitions of political convenience, like so-called intersectionality seeks to do, can only create confusion. Ultimately, the truth trumps all philosophical sophistry. As trans people, we should return to the truth we have always known: that we are living proof that gender is not a social construct. The fact that so many trans people suffer from such intense gender dysphoria is the best proof that gender is biological, that it is in the brain rather than constructed by society. We need to uphold this truth, and tell it loud and clear to the world. The truth we know about ourselves will gain us respect, understanding and acceptance. Allying with one side in a philosophical war that doesn't even authentically respect our existence will not do us any good.