Continuing its quest to take the wrong side of every issue, the Trump administration is announcing an attempted new policy to recognize gender as an immutable assignation based on one's genitalia at birth, essentially ending federal recognition of trans people. Just another kick in the balls like every morning brings nowadays.
But like a lot of terrible Trump policy, this one feels like society not so much regressing as getting pulled back like a rubber band. Liberal orthodoxy has had a good, relatively unopposed run for a few decades. Some of it should probably be challenged and have its integrity tested, in order that it appear more socially legitimate and progress be made permanent.
Trans rights are one area where integrity is lacking. The movement has gotten way out ahead of its skis, and demanded (and gotten) more adaptation on the part of society, more quickly, than any other movement I've seen. Contrary to a process of consensus-building, the tactic is to shame anyone who questions the latest claim or notion and thus anoint its validity, even before a process of peer review is able to complete. As a result, I feel like there ends up being as much internecene fighting as external, and much more dissonance than solidarity.
Example: I remember reading an article that ambushed some celebrity on a late-night talk show who had used an incorrect term. I think maybe they had said "transvestite" or "sex change" or something — it wasn't "tranny" — but it wasn't a malicious thing. The article was relentless in its criticism, and pointedly corrected the transgression with the preferred term. Then you scroll down to the comments section, and you find a debate raging between trans commenters on how actually, that is not the term that represents me. Etc. So instead of building community, they alienate tons of people (pretty much anyone who resents rather than bows to accusations of thought crimes) on the back of a term that doesn't even have an accepted definition yet.
Another example is the TERF question. The last time I saw something about this, a super-woke woman was saying that "TERF is not a hate crime" or something, indicating that... I guess she thought trans exclusion was proper for feminism? Idk, I have no idea. They don't invite me to the meetings. My point is, a lot of this is far from any kind of definition, let alone settled theory.
My reaction to the notion of transsexuality has always been the same: it needs guardrails. It needs rules. This proposed Trump policy is exactly why.
I don't really understand transsexuality, but I want to. I know it's an authentic experience some people have. And the standard liberal orthodoxy is that this is the only thing we need to know to legitimize the concept. If someone feels it, they should be considered it.
On a comity level, in terms of my personal judgment, fine. Allowing someone to define themselves is a natural, humanistic choice. But I think that because this is obvious on an individual level, it's assumed that it also properly applies on a systemic and statutory level. I disagree. I think that standard is vastly insufficient.
The relativistic, emotion-based movement to assert transhood often seems to overlook just how big a project it's undertaking. If you were trying to introduce the concept of homosexuality to the world, you could plausibly demand that we should simply let everyone fuck who they want to fuck. The only construct you're abolishing is the presumption of predictable preference. And even if you think in heteronormative terms, a vast range of idiosyncratic sexual behaviors precedes this one particular quirk.
But the binary nature of sex is not a construct; it's a biological fact of every species that pollinates. Violating that system requires a substitute system of biological bedrock in which to root our identities. It is not society's judgment or caprice that imposes the assignation of sex; no one has to seek its construction. Gender, sure. But this is a physical trait closer to height and hair color than predilection or personhood.
It's nothing for me, an individual, to respect your own modality of individuality. But to expect society writ large — a mass of people and institutions bound by codified laws — to respect that modality, it cannot remain an individual thing. It has to work on the systemic level, and that requires codifying the rules of transsexuality.
It requires building borders around the identity just like other identities get. It requires definition, and constancy, and stability. It needs rules.
The Trump proposal is hopefully going to provoke the establishment of those rules. It's a troll-like challenge to come up with a system as bulletproof as the traditional (and more obvious) one: if you have male sex organs, you're a man. Etc.
The thing is, I'm comfortable saying / requesting this partly because I believe there is science to back up transsexuality. We know a lot about intersexuality and disorders of sexual development. Why not let what we currently consider "trans" to consist of partly a biological condition and partly a preferential one?
Ultimately, settling on the science of transsexuality will help people adhere to their psychological preferences in a more systemically protected way — invulnerable to bigoted trolls like the ones currently in power.
No comments:
Post a Comment