Re: This Transgender Debate Got Me Thinkin

Scholarships, preference in jobs, but especially private spaces reserved for women- schools, locker rooms, gyms, bathrooms, etc. Somehow, I don't think the people who created those things had people of different sex in mind, as those people can only ever experience a surgical and personal approximation of what it's like to be a woman. No amount of surgical intervention will ever change a woman's reproductive system into a man's, and no amount of imitation of whatever someone thinks a man or woman should act like will make the way they act anything more than a caricature. So men who want to be women and then take advantage of things available only to women take the spots of the people those things were intended for, and end up giving men more authority over who women are.

And that's not even getting into the problem with destroying the expectation of privacy from people with opposite sexed bodies. While it's true that there can't be absolute sexual privacy since some people are homosexual, it's also true that the separation of sexes for privacy is based on the assumption of heterosexuality. I'm not sure that we should get rid of that assumption just because we know there are exceptions, since the assumption works for the vast majority of people (ie. there's real problem with the status quo), and since getting rid of sexual distinctions in private places where we might want privacy would be a problem for far more people than keeping them would be.

Finally, if the whole trans thing were just about helping people with gender dysphoria try to live a normal life, then it wouldn't be a major social issue. Instead, it's become a part of the LGBT political movement and the radical queer feminist attack on gender and sex distinctions, and thus "transsexuality" is making a claim for social recognition and affirmation. That's why problematic laws are being discussed and passed like the anti-discrimination measure in Charlotte, and it's why so many people feel compelled to discuss an issue that wouldn't be our business if it was just a matter of mental health.

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All based on the myth of autonomy

Apr 21, 2016, 3:59 PM

Your last sentence, I think, encapsulates the problem: people want to be able to "identify" themselves, but to self-identify always means to be the source of your own authority. Subjectivity isn't negative, per se, but it becomes a problem when it's the source of authority. So if you self-identify in some way or another, I can ask why I should care, or whether you have any evidence (intelligible to me) other than your assertion. You end up with arguments for a right to recognition of subjective identities versus demands for objective arguments for why your subjective identification should compel me (and other people) to go along with whatever you say. If you want to claim that people should just be given recognition for whatever they identify as, then you're claiming that people just are whatever they say they are- people are autonomous self creators. But, in that case, your only real public reason for recognition is that people need it to feel nice/ esteemed as whatever they identify as. The presentation of any objective evidence is offensive to the right to recognition, since it denies people's autonomy.

I'm still not quite sure where you're coming from in (2). You seem to be saying that the body is important, but only inasmuch as it can cause someone discomfort if it conflicts with what somebody wants it to be. That's what's implicit in the APA's statement: if somebody's gender identity conflicts with their body, but their gender identity doesn't cause them discomfort; and it's determined that surgery to make their body look more like their preferred gender; then there must have been some discomfort present, since no treatment would be needed otherwise. But since we know that their discomfort isn't from their gender identity, then it must either be from their body being "wrong" or from discrimination. The APA completely leaves out the body option (probably because trans people want to avoid identifying any body as being naturally male or female), and says that the only real obstacle is a social one- people just need to treat the trans person according to whatever they identify as. Problem solved. What you seem to be saying at least acknowledges that the body is part of the problem, but you locate the problem entirely in the body which must be changed to look more like the person's subjective identity. Either way, the body is secondary and malleable.

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This Transgender Debate Got Me Thinkin

I identify as a Clemson football player.

Elizabeth Warren was way ahead of you on this one.***

Maybe...