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Transgenderism - Polansky

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In the following article by Dan Polansky, let transgenderism refer to the position that gender, an analogue of biological sex distinct from it, is determined by self-report and that state ought to change laws to reflect self-determined and self-reported gender. A key part of that position is that some men have vaginas and that some women have penises. Thus, transgenderism so understood is a theory and a sociopolitical program.

Neutral point of view

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This article is not written in a fully neutral point of view (as allowed by Wikiversity), although it tries to take such point here and there. Moreover, it is not clear what neutral point of view consists in: whether in giving equal space to competing points of view in this arena or whether in treating one point of view as proper and the other as marginal/fringe.

Be it as it may, if one wants to hear from both sides and go beyond one's favorite point of view, one is well advised to peruse a well conducted debate featuring both sides of the debate in a reasonably polite manner, such as this:

Importance of person's sex

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The importance of the category of sex as opposed to gender is stressed in the following sections. Areas and concerns include the following:

  • Reproduction (not subject to transgender-related policy debate)
  • Medicine
  • Sports
  • Prisons
  • Toilets/bathrooms
  • Locker rooms

Political demands

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The transgender sociopolitical program seems to make many or all of the following demands:

  • Language use
    • The general public shall adjust usage of the words "man", "woman", "boy" and "girl" to meet new quasi-definitions.
    • The general public shall adjust usage of personal pronouns like "he", "she", "his", "her", etc. to match person's preferred pronouns.
    • The general public shall start using novel pronouns like "zer" based on person's individual request.
    • Medical journals shall use the terms "man" and "woman" in compliance with the new quasi-definitions. If they need to divide the population by sex, they need to use appropriate new labels, e.g. "persons with vaginas".
  • Single-sex spaces
    • The division of sport categories by sex shall be replaced with division by gender.
    • The division of prison cells by sex shall be replaced with division by gender.
    • The division of toilets/bathrooms by sex shall be replaced with division by gender or abolished.
  • Schools
    • Children (minors) who report gender different from their sex shall be immediately and unquestioningly affirmed by their teachers. The teachers shall not report the event to the child's parents.
    • A parent who refuses to affirm a child's chosen gender different from sex shall be prosecuted as child abuser or molester.
  • Medical intervention
    • Medical experts shall swiftly/without unnecessary delay prescribe hormone therapy or surgery to minors who show gender dysphoria or interest in these interventions. The rationale: prevent suicides and self-harm.
    • Psychotherapeutic interventions shall be shunned as hateful or dehumanizing.
  • Speech
    • Universities shall not host debates relating to the demands; the demands shall be treated as obvious, in no need of interrogation from opposition.
    • Opposition to transgender program shall be treated on equal footing with racists, white supremacists, and similar.
  • Other
    • Personal identity documents shall reflect gender rather than sex. The change of the gender on such a document shall be based on self-report with no need of delay or expert examination ("self-ID").
    • In particular, the above applies to birth certificate as well. The birth certificate's gender shall be modifiable later based on changes in self-reported gender identification.

The above may be approximate, not representing all strands of transgenderism. In particular, not every transgender person makes these demands, especially since not every transgender person is a transgenderist, an advocate of a fairly extensive sociopolitical program. A contrast needs to be made between a transgender person and an activist for transgenderism.

Medicine

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Epidemiological results are often split by sex. It would seem they need to be split by sex rather than gender: it would be the physiological characteristics that interact with pathogens and pharmaceutical interventions rather than self-felt gender.

Contraindications of pharmaceuticals are often sex-specific. To learn whether a pharmaceutical is contraindicated (and therefore to be avoided), a person needs to consider their sex, that is, the biological and physiological properties of the body, not self-felt gender. Therefore, the language of "man" and "woman" and "male" and "female" in the leaflets of pharmaceuticals needs to refer to sex or be abandoned in favor of new terminology that takes the role of the old terminology. The distinctions drawn by the traditional terminology of "man" and "woman" are still relevant and cannot be abandoned; we can at best discuss which words to use to refer to or pick up these distinctions.

The importance of the category sex for medicine is recognized in draft guidelines about mammography screening by Preventive Services Task Force:

These recommendations apply to cisgender women and all other persons assigned female at birth (including transgender men and nonbinary persons) age 40 years or older at average risk of breast cancer. This is because the net benefit estimates are driven by sex (i.e., female) rather than gender identity, although the studies reviewed for this recommendation generally used the term “women.”

Links:

Sport

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Physiological males self-reporting as females would be expected to have it easier to outperform physiological females.

Those who see the above as a problem could consider to explore potential policy formulations:

  • A person who was born into a male body cannot compete in sports as a female.
  • A person whose DNA test shows they have male chromosomes cannot compete in sports as a female.
  • A person who at one point in time was identified on their ID document as a male cannot compete in sports as a female.

One related subject is of people with rare genetic conditions. An example is of athlete Caster Semenya, who has the legal status of a female and was prevented from participation in women's sports.[1]

Restrictions on access to women's sports by male-bodied athletes were introduced especially in 2023, as per Wikipedia. Examples are restrictions issued by World Athletics, International Sport Fishing Confederation, and International Chess Federation. The case of chess is interesting, having nothing to do with the muscle but with the brain and the mind.

Links:

Authenticity

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If a characteristic is defined by self-report and only by it, there is no way to independently verify the presence of the characteristic. Such a characteristic can in principle be claimed by a person for personal profit regardless of any true feelings.

An imprisoned person with a predilection to unauthorized access to other people's sexual organs (informally, a rapist) has an objective interest (as part of self-pleasure maximization) to gain access to prison facilities where humans having the requisite sexual organs are stationed. Based on that objective interest, it is instrumentally rational for that person to try to gain access to facilities of the opposite sex by misreporting self-felt gender, assuming the person has accepted their own pleasure as a very important aim overriding many other concerns, which many such persons are suspected to do.

The core problem is that a statement of the form "X has lied about their gender" becomes tautologically false if gender is defined as whatever one reports to be. For the concept of gender to become genuinely meaningful, its determination needs to depend at least in part on reports and observations of persons other than the person in question. Thus, a team of psychologists could possibly try to determine whether a particular self-report of gender is genuine, that is, whether that person genuinely feels to be, say, a woman. But that leads to a different definition of gender: gender is no longer that which one reports to be but rather that which one genuinely feels to be. But this creates the epistemic problem: genuine feelings of persons are hidden and merely reveal themselves via behavior. It is not clear by which method a team of psychologists could elicit responses to establish a genuine feeling. Such methods could possibly involve some kind of provocation or manipulation, and such techniques are liable to be of questionable ethics. More research into the questions raised is required.

Prisons

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The possibility of a prisoner falsely claiming to be a transgender person (for some sense of "falsely") was hinted at in Authenticity section. This concern has been picked up by a policy in the U.K. in 2023. The issue of whether male-born female-identified people should be kept in women's prisons is subject to an ongoing political debate.

Transgender persons are subject to unequal bad treatment in prisons per National Center for Transgender Equality.

Links:

Self-identification

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A range of countries support self-identification as for gender; this means no judge or medical expert is involved. The extent is shown in File:Gender self-identification around the world.svg. Given the range of countries where self-identification is possible, one would think this poses no actual grave problems.

However, what is not clear is whether this idea of self-identification concerns legal gender only or also legal sex. Since, one can well allow change of legal gender but then segregate prisons by sex. According to Wikipedia, e.g. in Brazil one can change one's legal sex. And changing one's sex based on self-identification is strange since sex is a biological category (perhaps not according to Judith Butler).

Further reading:

Change of terminology

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Some persons require other persons and organizations to make a change in terminology.

Traditional terminology:

  • woman: an adult human female, where female refers to child-bearing capacity in principle.
  • man: an adult human male, where male refers to female-impregnation capacity in principle.

Changed terminology:

  • woman: a person who identifies as a woman (does it mean, self-reports to be a woman or genuinely feels to be a woman?)
  • man: a person who identifies as a man (does it mean, self-reports to be a man or genuinely feels to be a man?)
  • female: a person who identifies as a female (following one of the senses in Merriam-Webster)
  • male: a person who identifies as a male (following one of the senses in Merriam-Webster)
  • pregnant person: a person who is pregnant. The term "pregnant woman" is too narrow, not covering pregnant men.
  • menstruating person: a person who is menstruating. Required instead of "menstruating woman" to cover menstruating men.
  • birthing person: definition unclear. The term covers birthing men.
  • pregnant person: a person who is pregnant. Required instead of "pregnant woman" to cover pregnant men.
  • person with a penis: a person who has a penis. Required instead of "man with a penis" to cover women with a penis.
  • body with a vagina: a person who has a vagina.
  • misgendering: the use of a word such as a pronoun that does not match the gender identity of the addressee or referent.
  • deadnaming: using a previous first name of a transgender person which they no longer wish to be associated with, typically one that pertains to the no longer held gender identity.
  • TERF: an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a feminist who opposes transgenderism.
  • cisgender woman: biological woman who self-identifies as a woman.
  • cisgender man: biological man who self-identifies as a man.

The introduction of non-traditional pronouns such as zer can be seen as a change of terminology as well, depending on whether one includes the lexical category of pronoun in the concept of terminology. See section Pronouns.

The use of honorific Mx can also be seen as a change of terminology. See section Honorifics.

The redefinition of "female" and "male" above following Merriam-Webster deserves a mention. When one accepts it, one can define "woman" as "adult human female" and still get a transgenderist definition.

Links:

Pronouns

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Some transgender persons ask that others refer to them using their chosen he or she pronoun. Other transgender persons ask that others refer to them using a non-traditional pronoun such as ze and zir. Some prefer they, e.g. the person in Paikin 2016 YouTube video after 15:00.

Failure to use the preferred pronoun can have employment and career repercussion in at least one country.

Example pronouns follow.

Traditional:

  • she/her/hers -- traditional female
  • he/him/his -- traditional male

Gender-neutral semi-traditional:

  • they/them/theirs -- singular that is gender-neutral, and also traditional plural

Genderism-specific:

  • co/co/cos
  • e/em/eir
  • en/en/ens
  • ey/em/eir
  • per/per/pers
  • tey/ter/tem
  • ve/vis/ver
  • xe/xem/xyr
  • xie/hir/hir
  • yo/yo/yos
  • ze/hir/hirs
  • ze/zir/zir
  • zie/zim/zir

Further reading:

Honorifics

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Expanding the traditional honorifics Mr and Ms, there is the new honorific Mx, which is gender-generic rather than gender-specific. Variants with a period at the end exist: Mr., Ms., and Mx.

Further reading:

Redefinition and legislation

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Let us assume legislation historically uses the words "men" and "women".

Let there be a change in the definition of the words "men" and "women" without a legislative process.

Let there be a requirement that courts of law interpret the words "men" and "women" using the new definitions.

It seems the result is a de facto change in law without legislative process, enacted not by the elected representatives who alone are supposed to be able to change the legal code of the country. Put metaphorically, some group has hacked into the law storage database, gaining unauthorized write access to it.

On a marginally related note, some editors changed the definitions of "man" and "woman" in the English Wiktionary without a change request (which is the usual way in a wiki), and without showing that the attesting quotations supporting the old definitions no longer apply. The old quotations support the old senses; by removing the old senses, the editors pretend they never existed.

Existence of biological sex

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The academic historian Nicholas Matte stated that "basically, it's not correct that there is such a thing as biological sex", as per Paikin 2016 at YouTube, from 11:20. If that is so, why is it that the characteristic tracked as biological sex makes a difference in epidemiological results? He confirmed that failure to use the preferred pronoun is tantamount to "abusing students", "violence" and "hate speech", when asked, as per the video, since 28:50.

Sokal quotes Professor Alice Sullivan et al. as follows:[2]

a prominent strand of gender identity ideology holds the view, asserted vociferously by campaigners and activists, that it is “transphobic” merely to assert that sex exists as a meaningful category, distinct from people’s self-declared “gender identity”. … Gender identity activists have adopted the slogan and hashtag #nodebate, claiming that debate constitutes “real harm” or even “literal violence”.

Further reading:

Self-descriptions

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Let us consider statements of the form "P is Pr", where P is a person and Pr is a predicate. Usually, whether an entity in the world comes under a headword is decided by the language users, not by the entity. For inanimate entities, they cannot supply their self-description anyway, and there is no controversy. For humans, not only can others make observational reports that "P is Pr", but also the person can make a self-report, "I am Pr". For nearly all values of Pr, self-reports have no decisive role, and in fact, persons are known to make wilful misrepresenations about themselves to gain advantage. Self-reports usually do not prevail, as exemplified in "I am black" (said by a white person), "I am a gorilla", "I am tall", etc. Self-reports can play bigger role in harder to verify internal state descriptions, such as "I am in pain", "I feel tingling in my right hand", etc. Even in the "I am in pain" case, the self-report is not taken to be automatically true, as if by definition; people can lie about whether they have pains and in what location. Emotional dispositions of the person usually do not play a role; the following reasoning is usually rejected: "He is white but let us admit that he is black to prevent self-harm; people who are white but think they are black are some of the most vulnerable people". Self-descriptions can nominally prevail if the person is very powerful, as shown in the Emperor's New Clothes tale; other language users either comply, "or else". The "or else" intimidation principle applies not only to powerful individuals but also to powerful groups, where a group is made powerful not only by holding official political power but also by the ability to cause harm to the opposers.

A name is something a person can change on request in many countries. However, applying a proper name to a person is not predication proper and not a self-description, merely a choice of identifier that is reasonably unambiguous in some circumstances. Here, the distinction between proper nouns and common nouns is significant.

Discrimination

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Let us investigate the concept of discrimination, whether for sex or gender. Let us consider the following cases:

  • 1) I will not go to a romantic appointment with you since you are a female, and I am a heterosexual (opposite-sex-attacted) female.
  • 2) I will not hire you for the managerial position open since you are a female.
  • 3) You cannot compete in women's sports since you are not a female.

All three cases are cases of discrimination in some very general sense. However:

  • Case 1) is usually considered to be an acceptable and normal thing to do.
  • Case 2) is immoral and in many countries illegal. However, there could be some rare contexts in which the requirement of male-only managers could be justified; this would require a deeper investigation. In that case, the requirement of being a male would have to be stated as part of the position description.
  • Case 3) is debated in the public media at least in 2016-2023 as to whether it is the right thing to do.

It follows there is an objectionable discrimination and non-objectionable discrimination. For brevity, the word discrimination is often used to refer to objectionable discrimination; this use seems to be liable to create a confusing effect in the minds of language users.

Reasoned discussion vs. intimidation

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Compare the following two modes of engagement in disagreement:

  • 1) I disagree with your arguments and here are my counterarguments, including evidence. Let's have a reasoned discussion or debate. Let's hear both parties; let each party have some uninterrupted time to present their arguments. Let's focus the discussion on substance and less on the discussion participants.
  • 2) I disagree with your position and unless you accept my position, I will cause physical harm to you (you will go home in ambulance), I will harm your academic career, I will try to have you removed from your non-academic job, and I will take other steps to ensure your arguments can be heard less such as "deplatforming" you. I will not engage you by considering your arguments and responding to them point to point since that would be enabling you.

Further reading:

Supporting personalities

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Public personalities/figures supporting transgenderism include the following:

Opposing personalities

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Multiple public personalities/figures oppose in part or in full the transgender theory and sociopolitical program. The result is sometimes their shaming and attempts to cause them non-physical harm such as reduced access to professional engagement, e.g. to teaching. Opposing public figures include:

In the U.S., the opposition tends to be on the Conservative side. So does the opposition in the U.K. It seems intuitive enough, as in, conserve the previous time-tested cultural practices rather than introducing various kinds of revolutions, especially Marx-inspired or Hegel-inspired revolution. On the other hand, "time-tested" cultural practices may include slavery.

Links:

Alignment with political party

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Left-leaning people tend to support transgenderism while right-leaning people tend to oppose it; these are tendencies, not necessities. It is clearly true for the U.S. and the U.K. A Pew Research Center poll provides charts for the U.S.

Further reading:

Bad consequences for the critics

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Criticising transgenderism can have negative consequences for the critic:

  • Maya Forstater lost a job after tweeting tweets critical of transgenderism.
  • Richard Dawkins lost an American Humanist Association award after a transgenderism-relating tweet.

Links:

Threats of suicide

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The notion that if person threatens suicide unless others accept that person's self-label or self-identity, others have the moral duty to accept that self-label, is untenable. Other people cannot in this way be held responsible for psychiatric conditions, no matter how prevalent and how great risk of suicide they create. And psychiatric conditions can be rather prevalent; for instance, per NIMH, "estimates of the international prevalence of schizophrenia among non-institutionalized persons is 0.33% to 0.75%"[1] Schizophrenia is an example psychiatric condition that creates higher risk of suicide.

International views

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Transgender theory and sociopolitical program is not spreading uniformly across the planet; it seems spearheaded by American and British cultures. Some cultures may be more resistant to transgenderism. The question requires research and identification of good further reading.

In multiple European countries, if a citizen wants to have their gender change officially recognized and indicated in their identity documents, a sterilization is a prerequisite; it is said to apply to Slovakia, Albania, Latvia, and Finland (the source is of an unknown authority).[10]

Further reading:

Definition of woman

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The question What is a woman was asked by various parties opposing transgenderism. It was asked by Matt Walsh in his 2022 film What is a woman, where various putative transgenderism experts he interviewed gave an answer. The answers the transgenderism supporters are giving to the question are either evasive or difficult to make sense of: they appear circular and underdetermining the term defined or self-contradictory/inconsistent. However, that does not preclude the possibility that one could find an acceptable or workable definition matching either all or some of the key tenets of the transgender theory.

Let us consider the following tentative answer sometimes given:

  • A woman is a human who identifies as a woman.

Walsh asks: identifies as what? Since, the definition appears to be circular or recursive: the defining part depends on a term whose definition we do not yet have.

In general, recursive definitions can work in mathematics and programming, but not all of them; there needs to be a termination mechanism. Above, there is no termination mechanism. To give an example, we can define the Fibbonaci sequence as follows: fib(1) := 1; fib(2) := 1; for n >=3, fib(n) := fib(n-1) + fib(n-2). The third item is recursive, using the name "fib" both at the left-hand side and the right-hand side. But this causes no underdetermination or contradiction: the specific parameters of fib at the right-hand side differ from that at the left-hand side, go in the downward direction, and the walk in the downward direction is terminated at the parameter values of 1 and 2.

To expand on the possibly recursive interpretation of the definition: by applying string substitution, we get:

  • A woman is a human who identifies as a human who identifies as a woman.

And the substitution goes further:

  • A woman is a human who identifies as a human who identifies as a human who identifies as a woman.

The process appears to never end, which can be indicated as follows:

  • A woman is a human who identifies as a human who identifies as a human who identifies as a ... .

The mathematically inclined may ask whether some kind of semantics of a fixed-point operator known from the semantics of programming languages and from the powerful modal logic mu calculus could help. It is not clear how it possibly could, since the semantic equation seems to be this:

  • X = a human who identifies as X.

The semantic equation form highlights that the following two definitions are identical except for the label:

  • A woman is a human who identifies as a woman.
  • A man is a human who identifies as a man.

What, then, is the difference between a woman and a man? Apparently, in the word applied only. Aware of possible synonymy of terms, we note that a single concept or a class can have two different names or labels. From the above definitions, then, how is one to know that "woman" and "man" are not synonyms, words referring to the same concept/class? There is nothing in these definitions to rule this out. But we can add a distinctness axiom:

  • "woman" and "man" refer to two distinct entities.

Fair enough, but then, which is which? Let us consider a mapping "woman" --> WOMAN and "man" --> MAN where the capitalization indicates this is a concept, not a word. Let some mischievous spirit swap the entities in the ontology, resulting in "woman" --> MAN and "man" --> WOMAN. How is one going to discover the swap took place? No method seems obvious since the two putative entities do not stand in any firm relation to anything observable except for self-report behavior.

Expanding on the above, we may note the statement that gender is often congruent with sex. But how so? That is, what makes "man" map to "male" and "woman" map to "female" rather than the other way around? The definitions expanded with the distinctness axiom above do not help. Thus, one probably needs more axioms as part of definitions, e.g. the following:

  • "woman" is typically, but not always, associated with being biologically female.
  • "man" is typically, but not always, associated with being biologically male.

However, what if there is a gene that codes for transgender feeling that does not require a medical intervention and this gene becomes dominant in the gene pool of humans, part of which would be e.g. trans women having children with trans men, both biologically unmodified and reproductively fully functional? If that happens, the axioms stop being true; then, "woman" being matches to female becomes a less common phenomenon. And yet, the axioms were supposed to be part of the definition and therefore true by definition. This consideration suggests, at least weakly, that the statistical association of "woman" with femalehood is in principle a temporary phenomenon, which is to be expected if the concepts of "woman" and "man" are as free-floating as the definitions suggest.

The above idea can be reinforced with the use of Wikidata. Let there be two entities, say, Q17 and Q18, one having the label "man", the other having the label "woman". Let there be a definition via statements, Q17 self-identifies-as Q17 and Q18 self-identifies-as Q18. But then, this yields the same relational definition, and suggests the entities should be merged. (However, there can be a statement for the preferred pronouns. But these would not be part of a definition, would they?)

To break the circularity, we may focus the definitions on the words as opposed to their meanings. Thus:

  • A woman is someone who uses the word "woman" to label themselves.
  • A man is someone who uses the word "man" to label themselves.

This breaks the circularity. However, what if the person uses German word "Frau" and speaks no English? This can be addressed:

  • A woman is someone who uses the English word "woman" to label themselves or uses a word traditionally used as a translation of the English word "woman".

This seems to be a neat trick, but it seems to be piggybacking on the previous language usage with the biological senses, or else there would be no way to establish a semantic equivalence between "woman" and "Frau". Indeed, in a consideration above, we assume a mapping "woman" --> WOMAN and "man" --> MAN. How do we know that the following is untrue: "Frau" --> MAN and "Mann" --> WOMAN? Since, there is no access to WOMAN other than via the word/label "woman"

Another problem with "X = a human who identifies as X" is that this equation seems to be equivalent to this:

  • X = a human who identifies as X even if that human is not X

Since, if the possibility of not being X is not considered, why say "identifies as" instead of "is"? But that does not make sense: if a human is not X (right-hand side), that human cannot be X (left-hand side). The problem thus is not so much with circularity as with implied contradiction. Put differently, rather than the semantic equation underdetermining X, it makes an impossible demand on it.

There is a possible way out of the circularity:

  • A biological woman is an adult human female.
  • A woman is a human who identifies as a biological woman.

There is neither circularity nor contradiction above as long as "X identifies as Y" is kept semantically separate from "X is Y". A consequence is that, assuming that definition, it holds true of transwomen that X identifies as something which they are not. On the external cultural characteristics level, it holds true of many a transwoman that they present themselves using the external cultural characteristics that used to be stereotypically associated with biological women, e.g. by wearing a skirt and a lipstick. As an aside, the phrase identifies as is sometimes used even with "lesbian", yielding "X identifies as lesbian", while "X is a lesbian" is common and unproblematic. Moreover, there is a whole profession of people who, while do not identify as, at least act as someone who they are not: theatrical and movie actors.

Some other answers were given in the Matt Walsh film, and they are yet to be covered.

Definition of transphobia

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According to Merriam-Webster (MW), a transphobia is:

  • irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against transgender people

It is not clear to which nouns the adjective irrational binds; thus, does it also bind to aversion and discrimination? If so, then transphobia covers irrational discrimination but it does not cover rational discrimination.

The definition seems to leave it open whether there exist in fact rational fear of transgender people (TGP), a rational aversion of TGP and rational discrimination of TGP.

MW's definition of -phobia is as follows:

  • exaggerated fear of
  • intolerance or aversion for

Thus, it seems to match the MW definition of transphobia fairly well, except that -phobia is ontologized as two entities whereas transphobia merely as one entity.

By contrast, Oxford Learner's Dictionaries (OLD) definition of transphobia is:

  • dislike or unfair treatment of trans people

The above definition seems rather unetymological, at odds with the -phobia suffix pointing to fear, especially the unfair treatment part. Surely one can dislike something without fearing it. This is further borne out by the same source's definition of -phobia:

  • (in nouns) a strong unreasonable fear of or feeling of hate for a particular thing

One would think that, to cover transphobia, the definition of -phobia would need to be expanded. Upon strict reading, neither dislike nor unfair treatment is covered; the later is not covered at all, and dislike is arguably not so strong as hate.

The above analysis corroborates the tentative working hypothesis that the word transphobia creates a powerful rhetorical and ideological effect deviating from the meaning/definition, by invoking an image in the mind that does not match the definition. A word that has a powerful ideological or rhetorical effect ought to be avoided in media required by law to be neutral, such as state-regulated media such as the BBC or the Czech and German regulated media.

An alternative term to "transphobic" is "gender-critical", used e.g. in a 2023 BBC article.[11] Another alternative, not in use, is "transgenderism-critical". The term "trans-critical" is used in physics for a different purpose.

Context of serious LGBT maltreatment

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There is no denying that serious maltreatment of people in the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transsexual (LGBT) group is well documented. A striking case of a serious state-mandated maltreatment and violation of fundamental human rights is that of Alan Turing, a homosexual mathematician noted for helping Britain win the World War II who was convicted of a certain crime for homosexuality and chose chemical castration instead of imprisonment, and the castration is likely to have lead to his premature death. In this case, the violence of the state force was used against the will of a person who harmed no one, in gross violation of Mill's harm principle. The chemical castration was a gross violation of his bodily and mental autonomy, albeit one that he seems to have chosen himself in preference to prison, probably an error on his part for lack of awareness of the grave dangers of these kinds of violations of integrity of a biological system.

This context helps put things in perspective. We can compare the following items:

  • The bodily and mental integrity and autonomy of person P is grossly violated via chemical castration.
  • Person P is put to prison.
  • Someone refuses to use person P's preferred non-traditional pronouns.
  • Someone refers to person P as a man although P self-identifies as a woman.

Further reading:

Use of toilets

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The use of toilets by transgender people is a controversial subject. In particular, there is a controversy about whether transwomen (male-born woman-self-identified persons) should be allowed to use women's toilets.

Further reading:

Gender identities

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A person can self-identify as one of multiple gender identies.

Example common gender identities:

  • agender
  • cisgender
  • genderfluid
  • genderqueer
  • intersex
  • gender nonconforming
  • transgender

Some of the non-constant gender identities, per medicinenet.com[12]:

  • aerogender: the gender identity changes according to a person's surroundings.
  • affectugender: the gender identity is based on a person's mood swings.
  • agenderflux: the person is mostly agender (having no gender) with brief shifts of belonging to other gender types.

One can ask how many genders or gender identities there are. Sources indicate 72[12] and 58[13] genders.

Further reading:

Gender expression

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Gender expression is defined as distinct from gender identity. For women in the West, one can think of wearing skirts, wearing long hair, wearing earrings, and using a lipstick as the cultural expression of being a woman. However, the movement for women's rights and emancipation in the West made it possible for women to abandon woman-associated stereotypical behaviors and do their own thing instead. Thus, it is common for women to wear trousers and short hair.

If one sees a biological woman has a short hair, is it part of gender expression? If so, is it an expression of the man-gender even if the woman reports to be a woman? If a biological woman has a short hair, wears trousers, and uses lipstick, is that the gender of agender or perhaps mixed-gender, even if the person reports to be a woman?

If one accepts gender identity and gender expression to be two distinct entities, distinct from sex, one may find e.g. the following configuration: MWM, where the letters identify sex, gender and gender expression. Under this configuration, there is an adult male biology, self-identication as a woman, and there are stereotypical male cultural traits such as wearing trousers, short hair, not wearing lipstick and not wearing earrings. Lia Thomas would be an example of MWM.

What historically happened is this. A parent saw that a child was a girl based on genitalia. The parent thought that pink was for girls, a temporary cultural stereotype. Then, the parent bought pink clothing for the girl. Thus, the cultural trait (of pink clothing) was culturally associated with sex and was something like a cultural sex expression, as opposed to biological sex expression.

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Medical intervention

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Medical intervention is available to bring the body closer to one's self-identified gender as for sex-specific hormonal levels, their impact on secondary sexual characteristics such as facial hair and baldness and as for presence or absence of sexual organs or their analogs. It is referred to as gender-affirming care. That includes:

  • Intake of substances that act as puberty blockers.
  • Intake of cross-sex hormones: testosterone or estrogens.
  • Double mastectomy: surgical removal of breasts.
  • Others.

Administering these kinds of intervention to minors (non-adults) has become controversial in the U.S. politics, with many Conservatives opposing the practice. As of April 2023, there are at least 15 U.S. states with laws to ban such care, as per NPR.

One consideration applies to the term "gender-affirming care": the transgender theory states that gender identity and gender expression are conceptually distinct from sex, and independent in principle. If this is so, it is unclear why the act of affirming gender--whether gender identity or gender expression--would involve a modification of secondary sexual characteristics, e.g. breasts. By contrast, affirming gender e.g. by choosing to switch to gender expression that aligns with gender identity raises no such question.

If one assumes that misalignment between sex and gender is not a medical or psychiatric condition or disorder, it is unclear why a medical intervention should be considered indicated in such a case. On a related note, if one is in a condition in which a lack of medical intervention is very likely to lead to imminent death (by suicide), it is unclear why this condition is not a disorder. Thus, one can ask what is it that the gender-related medical interventions are supposed to treat, if anything, unless one considers e.g. having breasts to be some kind of disorder, a state of something being wrong with the body.

One can compare the ideological/psycho-associative effect of the terms "gender-affirming care" and "medical intervention". The former refers to "care", which in general hardly anyone could object to. And it "affirms", a good thing on the face of it. By contrast, "intervention" evokes that one has to decide whether to proceed or not. Not all interventions are desirable, especially not all military interventions. Moreover, the term medical intervention seems evocative of stronger medical interventions such as surgeries, although a pharmaceutical intervention is also an intervention. However, this is rather tentative and possibly subjective.

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References to transgenderism in popular culture include the following:

  • In 1979 comedy film Life of Brian, a character called Stan says that he (or she) is a Loretta and wants to have babies. A comic skit develops about oppression and struggle with reality.
  • In a 2005 South Park episode, Mr. Garrison, having transitioned to a woman, wants to have an abortion.
  • In a 2014 South Park episode, Eric Cartman identifies as "transginger" to get to female toilets and uses a language typical of the transgenderism to defend his action.

Alphabet soup

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Persons identifying as transgender are usually classified as being part of a larger category that is denoted as LGBT, LGBTQ or even LGBTQI+. Other variants are listed in Wikidata.

LGB Alliance is a British group that intends to draw attention to a contrast between LGB (lesbians, gay and bisexuals) on one hand and transgenderism on the other hand. The group opposes transgenderism.

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Entities and their labels as truth-value bearers

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The terms LGBT, LGBTQ and LGBTQI+ exemplify a principle that may seem counter-intuitive, namely that terms labeling putative entities can represent truth-value-bearing claims. Naively, one would think that it is sentences and proposition that are the key truth-value-bearing entities. Since, the very term "LGBT" implies a statement, namely "the concept of transgender is closely related to the concept of homosexuality, same-sex attraction". And yet, the two concepts and movements are arguably fundamentally different: same-sex attraction makes no ontological commitments and does not introduce any new fundamental entity or entity type. Rather, it 1) admits that some people are sexually attracted to people of the same sex, as counter-intuitive it may seem from the perspective of the implied quasi-purpose of sex as instrument of biological reproduction (a descriptive fact hardly disputed by anyone) and 2) state ought not interfere with sexual activities performed in private between adult people who find each other attractive (a normative position disputed by some). By contrast, transgenderism introduces new externally objectively undetectable entity--gender, also called gender identity, invents a range of subentities within that entity (as if various colors within the entity of color), redefines traditional words, and imposes new speech duties on the language users at the pain of negative consequences for one's professional or public life.

The principle applies not only to the alphabet soup entity but also e.g. to term "gender-affirming care". The term, naively interpreted as a mere label for certain phenomena, makes truth-value bearing claims by implication, and if not truth-value, at least normative-position claims. (Some count normative-position claims as truth-value bearers, some not.)

Violence

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There is a suspicion that that transgender people are exposed to higher rates of violence than non-transgender people. Unfortunately, Wikipedia's article "Violence against transgender people" does not immediately help to reveal the scope of the problem; rather, it starts by stating the following:

Violence against transgender people includes emotional, physical, sexual, or verbal violence. The term has also been applied to hate speech directed at transgender people and at depictions of transgender people in the media that reinforce negative stereotypes about them

Once the term "violence" is so diluted, it can no longer be used to investigate what is at stake, namely physical harm and murder. More research is required.

A 2021 Forbes article indicated: "375 transgender people were killed this year (2021), a figure that has risen since last year's total of 350." and "The majority of the murders happened in Central and South America (70%)." This is a global figure. It is hard to believe that the actual global figure is not much higher, given the world population of nearly 8,000,000,000.

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Genocide

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Some use the term "transgender genocide". However, that is at odds with the concept of genocide, which, on the most strict interpretation, selects the targets by biological affinity, although there is a looser interpretation, which allows religion as a selector for targetting. The broad interpretation is unetymological. Merriam-Webster is even looser, allowing political and cultural groups as subject of genocide; not so AHD. And if being a transgender is being part of a cultural group, the genocide label could fit.

Why, if there is such a etymological mismatch, would one use the term in this way? Like with "transphobia", the term has a strong rhetorical effect via the imagery it invokes, bringing the transgender case in the same group/under the same head as the genocide of Jews and Armenians. If there was a state-driven systematic killing of transgender people, e.g. in concentration camps or in prisons after their imprisonment, the strong imagery would seem justified. There would be other justifiable cases, e.g. where the perpetrator would not be a state actor but an organized criminal group. However, if all that we observe are elevated murder rates, the term seems hyperbolic and hysterical (not that elevated murder rates are nothing to worry about).

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Birth certificate

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There are disputes about whether it should be legally possible to change one's sex on the birth certificate based on one's gender identity.

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Judith Butler and fascism

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According to Judith Butler, one of the key contributors to the theory of transgenderism, opposition of transgenderism ("anti-gender movements") is a fascist trend. However, Butler does not seem to provide a definition or comprehensive detection criteria for "fascism". Nor is it obvious that opposition of transgenderism is one homogeneous entity as Butler suggests: it could well be that the opposition in the U.S. is quite different from the opposition in the U.K. given that U.K. is reported to be much more atheist. As an analogy, in certain democratic political systems, especially in continental Europe, the political opposition sometimes consists of multiple parties that have widely differing views on policy.

Accordingly to Britannica, 'Butler contended, somewhat paradoxically, that not only gender but sex itself—the fact of being biologically male or female—is “to some degree” a performative social construct.'

Judith Butler, despite being an English speaker, appears to be a continental philosopher.[14]

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Mental disorder

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As per BBC 2019, "Transgender health issues will no longer be classified as mental and behavioural disorders under big changes to the World Health Organization's global manual of diagnoses."

One can ask whether mental disorder is a real thing or a highly culture-dependent thing (as suggested e.g. by Robert Pirsig), and to what extent psychiatry is a science or something else altogether. This would be a different, even if rather related, discussion. Even if the concept of mental disorder is highly culture-dependent, the notion that there is no such thing at all appears implausible. What is plausible is that the boundaries of the concept are very unsharp/blurred and what behaviors a culture accepts and what behaviors it rejects and tries to discourage by pushing them into the mental disorder category is highly culture-dependent.

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The term transgenderism

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The term "transgenderism" sees some criticism from the adherents of transgenderism. It is not clear why: Marxists do not seem to complain about the term "Marxism", Darwinists about "Darwinism", libertarians about "libertarianism" and determinists about "determinism". Thus, the suffix "-ism" does not seem to be necessarily pejorative when used to create the name of a set of ideas relating to the base word, whether the construction is via eponymy ("Marxism", "Darwinism") or not ("libertarianism", "determinism").

Objections to the term "gender ideology" are easier to understand since the word "ideology" is often used in a pejorative way. On the other hand, Merriam-Webster online does not label "ideology" as pejorative, and nor does AHD. Oxford Learner's Dictionaries say "sometimes disapproving".

According to Wikipedia: 'Although the term "transgenderism" was once considered acceptable, it has come to be viewed as offensive, according to GLAAD. In 2020 the International Journal of Transgenderism changed its name to the International Journal of Transgender Health "to reflect a change toward more appropriate and acceptable use of language in our field.' However, this appears to be a different sense of "transgenderism", referring not to the theory and the sociopolitical program but rather to the property (whether considered a "condition" or not) of being a transgender person.

According to GLAAD[2]:

TERM TO AVOID:
“transgenderism” “gender ideology”
These are not terms used by transgender people. These terms are used by anti-transgender activists to dehumanize transgender people and reduce who they are to “a condition” or a “dangerous ideology” that threatens “free speech.”

However, the fact that the terms are not used by transgender people does not matter since they are not an authority on terminology. Moreover, the statement that the terms are used "to dehumanize" is not substantiated in any way and is implausible since "-ism" in reference to theory and program does not identify a condition and since "ideology" is a term that does not dehumanize anyone (to the contrary, it is humans that have ideologies) and the term "ideology" does not automatically lead to the adjective "dangerous". As a marginal note, GLAAD states that it is "a non-profit organization focused on LGBTQ advocacy and cultural change", hardly a neutral or objective source[3].

Transgenderism as ideology

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This article uses the terms "gender ideology" and "transgender ideology". One can also find "gender identity ideology" in use. Are these terms appropriate? Are they misleading or pejorative?

Merriam-Webster defines "ideology" as multiple senses, two of which appear most applicable:

  • "b : the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program"
  • "c : a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture"

Both definitions seem to apply reasonably well. Transgenderism is not like, say, Einstein's special relativity, presenting testable scientific theory running the risk of being refuted by experiment or observation; rather, it aims to change law as well as social norms and is a sociopolitical program. It also involves at least one key concept, of gender, and related concepts, e.g. cisnormativity, about human life and culture. However, this reading of the definitions is possibly naive; dictionary definitions are often insufficient to properly understand an unintuitive concept.

Not only is the term "transgender ideology" in use but also "anti-transgender ideology". This use meets definition M-W b in so far as the opposition to transgenderism aims at affecting laws and regulations and to some extent already succeeded in doing so.

The superficial impression is that both sides of the debate use the word "ideology" as a pejorative one; it is not clear how to formally verify this hypothesis. Nonetheless, Google searches of "transgender ideology" and "anti-transgender ideology" are suggestive: the former term seems to be used predominantly by opposition of transgenderism whereas the latter term seems to be used predominantly by supporters of transgenderism. If the word is in fact seen as pejorative, it may be worthwhile to avoid the word "ideology" and use a more neutral one in media aimed at neutrality, unless the word is of a hard-to-replace cognitive value.

What other terms can one use? One can speak of "transgender theory", but the word "theory" does not point to there being a sociopolitical program, in contrast to M-W:ideology sense b. One can speak of "transgender philosophy", but again, the word "philosophy" alone does not reveal that there is an associated sociopolitical program. One can speak of "transgender program", but this term does not point to there being an associated theory, unlike M-W:ideology sense b. One can use "transgenderism", which uses the fairly generic suffix "-ism" covering both theories and programmes, but some media oppose the term as non-neutral as mentioned in section The term transgenderism.

Further reading:

Transgenderism as sociopolitical program

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Doubtless, transgenderism is a sociopolitical program rather than only a theory, scientific one or humanities-type one. Since, it aims to 1) change laws (political program) and 2) change prevailing cultural norms (social or cultural program, e.g. leading to dismissal from workplace for expressing anti-transgenderism views or refusing to use the novel transgenderist pronouns).

Scientific tolerance of dissent

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In science proper, tolerance of dissenting views is a desideratum, and is fairly often adhered to. For instance, Einstein is noted for his rejection of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics championed by Bohr. Instead of being ostracized or attacked as backwards anti-Bohrist, Einstein was celebrated as a genius and humanitarian until the end of his life.

However, tolerance is not always the case. For instance, Kronecker disagreement with Cantor concerning the then new set theory is reported to had gone beyond a mere tolerant academic disagreement in its intensity.

There is the following Plack's adage: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it ...". If transgenderism or transgender theory is right and the opposition is wrong, and if the field is anything like physics, one could expect transgenderists to have to wait until the opposition dies out and new students of sex and gender accept the modern theory. However, as pointed out, a key part of transgenderism is a sociopolitical program stating as its aim the lessening of the suffering of the oppressed, and it does not intend to wait until the opposition dies out.

Scientific character of transgender theory

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The transgender theory does not seem to run the risk of being refuted by observation or experiment (being "falsified"), and thus, following the falsificationist standard, does not qualify as science. Especially suspect is the fact that the central entity, the gender (as opposed to gender expression) has no fixed manifestation or ties to phenomena detectable by an external observer, other than certain linguistic behavior, namely a gender-establishing utterance like "I am a woman". However, one can argue that there are valid fields of inquiry about humans for which falsificationism is too stringent a standard. Finding good further reading on the subject would be worthwhile.

Let us emphasize that the question is not whether the theory or the field of gender studies is an academic field but rather whether it is science. An example of an academic field that is not science is philosophy and humanities like literary studies.

Further reading:

Bigotry

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The words "bigot" and "bigotry" sometimes appear in transgender debates. As per Merriam-Webster, a bigot is:

": a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices
"especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance

That constitutes two definitions. One may ponder to what extent transgenderists and anti-transgenderists meet these definitions, and by what actions.

Further reading:

  • bigot, merriam-webster.com

Body integrity dysphoria

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International disease classification ICD-11 registers an entity that it calls "Body integrity dysphoria". The people having this disease or condition desire to be disabled. They are sometimes called "transabled". They sometimes have their limb amputated on request, as per Wikipedia.

There appears to be some general conceptual connection to transgender cases in which the person requests a medical intervention that leads to loss of biological function, i.e. loss of fertility or breast-feeding ability.

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Encyclopedia Britannica

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Encyclopedia Britannica's entry on personal pronoun states: "personal pronoun, any of various descriptive nouns that reflect an individual’s gender identity."[15] This shows that Britannica treats transgenderism as the standard theory: not only has it an article on gender identity that takes no reservations to the theory but it incorporates its concept of gender identity into an article on grammar.

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Anti-transgenderism as protected philosophical belief

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Some sources take the position that opposition to transgenderism, sometimes called gender critical beliefs, are protected philosophical beliefs.

As per Gender critical beliefs are protected philosophical beliefs, lewissilkin.com:

  • "The Employment Appeal Tribunal has ruled that “gender critical” beliefs are protected philosophical beliefs for equality law purposes, while confirming that a belief in “gender identity” is also a protected characteristic. This means that it is unlawful to discriminate against someone because they do or do not hold either of those beliefs."

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Quasi-religious belief

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It should be investigated whether transgenderism is a quasi-religious belief. Since, one is reminded of the religious practice of something becoming so merely by an act of utterance.

The following quote from Dawkins 2023 is suggestive[4]: 'Catholic (but not Protestant) theologians declare that consecrated wine actually becomes the blood of Christ. The dilute alcohol solution that remains in the chalice is but an Aristotelian “accidental”. The “whole substance” (hence the word “transubstantiation”) is divine blood in true reality. In the new religion of transsexual transubstantiation, a “woman’s penis” is just an “accidental”, a mere social construct. In “whole substance” she is a woman. A trans-substantiated woman.'

Catholic Church

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The Catholic Church positions itself against gender ideology.

Further reading:

References

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  1. ↑ CAS Executive Summary 5794.pdf
  2. ↑ Written evidence from Professor Alan Sokal (FOE0110), parliament.uk
  3. ↑ Ben Shapiro: US commentator clashes with BBC's Andrew Neil - BBC News - YouTube
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Why biological sex matters by Richard Dawkins, 2023, newstatesman.com
  5. ↑ Gender Insanity, Ricky Gervais & J K Rowling - Richard Dawkins | Heretics podcast 9, youtube.com
  6. ↑ Rishi Sunak tries to save PM bid with attack on ‘woke culture that wants to cancel women’, August 2022, thepinknews.com
  7. ↑ Rishi Sunak tacks to right with comments on sex education and transgender rights, October 2023, independent.co.uk
  8. ↑ The World's Most Canceled Man - IT Crowd Creator Graham Linehan | Heretics podcast 1, 2023, youtube.com
  9. ↑ Richard Ayoade praises 'brilliant' book by anti-trans activist Graham Linehan, 14 Oct 2023, thepinknews.com
  10. ↑ LGBTQ+ stigmatization in the Czech Republic: A worrying trend among local politicians, 2022, globalvoices.org
  11. ↑ Maya Forstater: Woman gets payout for discrimination over trans tweets, 2023, bbc.com
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 What Are the 72 Other Genders?, 2022, medicinenet.com
  13. ↑ Here's a List of 58 Gender Options for Facebook Users, 2014, ABC News
  14. ↑ Is Judith Butler a continental philosopher?, philosophy.stackexchange.com
  15. ↑ personal pronoun, britannica.com

Further reading

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Further reading or listening:

Wikipedia:

Non-Wikipedia articles or textual posts:

YouTube:

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