Frivolity, Choices, and Decisions

Hi,

Prologue:

I wrote this some weeks ago for the F word blog site. Recent family events in my personal life have lead to me deciding to post the article here. 

I changed my name almost 2 years ago now, and informed various people in and around my family of the decision to deal with my own experience of the trans gender phenomenon. This resulted in a a general use of feminine pronouns, obviously the decrease in use of my old details and some positive changes. 

Two years down the line, I have a good relationship with the majority of my family, my Daughter is more interested in Skype, Minecraft and an impending visit to insomnia in august than in what she suggests are rather obvious questions of gender. (Kids.. don't you just love em?) And rightly so. 

However:

There are those who would paint themselves as LGBT friendly via social media etc, yet still refuse to use my actual legal name. I have let this pas on many occasion up to this point, since my focus was often elsewhere, but things change. Now OK, mistakes happen in verbal conversation. But not in written. This wilful and frankly dishonest variance between public and private actions is damaging.

Damaging, but not as you might think, to me. Rather it is damaging to one about whom I care deeply, and who cares for me, via disparaging and dismissive remarks around trans gender and me specifically. Remarks that come to the ears of one who is by virtue of circumstance bound through family ties to both sides of the argument.  

As regular readers may know, I'm a philosophical sort, open to discussion, and aware that multiple opinions exist.  However when one hides behind the flag of inclusion, yet denigrates that which it stands for and the principles upon which it was envisaged, then one forfeits the privilege of being taken at face value in any discussion. 

Why? because one has shown a lack of integrity. So with that in mind there are limits to my patience, and understanding. 

So in a departure from my usual general comments i'll make an aimed and specific one. By all means disagree with me. But be aware, your opinion is not universal, and your decisions and actions in choosing how and when to voice it leave much to be desired. Like all of us, those decisions, and actions will have consequences. I suggest next time you're tempted to voice things of this nature, you are mindful of that fact. 

So, since it seems relevant to the point at hand, here is an edited version of the article from a few weeks ago: 

Is “Trans Gender” a frivolous endeavour?

Recently Fay Weldon added her opinion to the ever increasing morass of views on the “trans gender debate” Suggesting that trans women choose their direction in life based on frivolous judgments and a perception that life is easier as a woman.

Gender is currently a fiercely divisive topic, and not least on the point of whether there should even “be” a debate on the issue. The temptation and indeed reaction from the trans population to recent comments from Fay Weldon, Jenny Murray, Julie bindel, and Germain Greer plus others like them is often derision, scorn and shouts of “trans phobia” and “exclusionary” rhetoric. The recent spate of “no platforms” at universities is evidence of the spreading “moral outrage” at these challenging views being given a stage from which to state their case.

But let's step away from the “outrage” and “knee-jerk name-calling” for a minute.

Consider that the latter two in the above list are long time contributors to the debate on gender as a whole, of which trans is simply one part. Both are noted academics and thus are not unthinking people. Arguably the other proponents of their views are less academically lauded, but non the less Fay read psychology and economics at St Andrews, and Jenni Murray is a long time served reporter.

The common thread here is age. And experience of the historical feminist shift in societal view. To dismiss out of hand the opinions of the contributors and founders of those early discussions is in my opinion to invoke a mistaken kind of moral relativism.

Many many years before our current crop of thinkers were born, another walked the athenian streets. He spent his time there questioning, thinking and criticising. At his death he postulated:

“The unexamined life is not worth living”

This man was Socrates, arguably the founder of modern philosophy and critical thought. So for the proponents of trans gender legitimacy to cry foul and disengage from the debate on the basis that these things should not be examined because they are “too important” or “already known” is perhaps not only erroneous logic, but also counter productive, and a little arrogant. So with that in mind, I decided to explore the question “Is trans gender frivolous”? 

To answer that one really has to consider “why, and how, does one transition?

In researching this article I came across a video of Germain Greer on a discussion panel in 2016. In it she acknowledges that the older interpretations of human sexual biology are perhaps too simplistic, and that some of her former arguments no longer stack up to new evidentiary rebuttal. (She alluding to research and knowledge of the oft misquoted xx/xy chomosomal sex dichotomy)  However the interesting point for me, is that she then went on to say the following:

“…...The interesting thing to me is this, if you decide because you're uncomfortable in the masculine system, which turns boys into men often at great cost to themselves, if you're unhappy with that, it doesn't mean that you belong at the other end of the spectrum”

At this point the chair intercedes, and there follows some discussion with a follow up from Greer that one can't know “what the other sex is”

I find this engaging because if one takes the first statement it seems to make the case for the genetic legitimacy of the `none binary” phenomenon. A perhaps surprising viewpoint for one such as Greer.

though not an unwelcome one.

Many trans people however, do begin at this place of discomfort that she describes. The prevailing pro trans argument over the last few decades has been that this was evidence of “always” having been what society describes as a “man” or a “woman” in-spite of outward appearances. The following sentence might fly in the face of a pro trans argument, but it would not seem unreasonable to question this, and examine the logic behind it. 

One is not born 'man” or a “woman”. One is born a child with a genetic composition that leads to a certain set of developmental outcomes. In some individuals that is “classically female”, in others “classically male”. However there are a significant proportion of the population that have a combination of both. This phenomena is called “intersex”. Not inter-gender. And with good reason, for it specifically relates to developmental biological factors. "Gender" although synonymous with "sex" is not quite the same thing.

Thus consider someone who was assigned “male” at birth (AMAB) due to examination of outward physical appearance, and who subsequently transitions. It is fair to suppose that despite initial appearances to the contrary, their genetic or internal anatomical composition may not therefore be “classically male” in this sense. It could be hypothesised that this difference is the driver for the transition to occur. I'm alluding to anatomical brain studies here, and the simple idea that “intersex” may actually include people of a trans gender nature to a greater or lesser degree.

What does this mean? Well it means that a trans woman wasn't “always a woman” nor a trans man “always a man” Since that's an over simplification and ignores valid societal developmental influence. (nature and nurture) Also the terms “man” and “woman” really belong to the field of gender, not to the field of biological descriptors, thus to use them as such is in my view confusing and wrong.

What the intersex argument may actually mean is that they were always themselves and then at some point decided to do something about how they felt. The cause of the feelings being the anatomy and physiology described above. After which they remain themselves. Knowledge of biological factors is now suggestive of a male/female continuum rather than dichotomy, as professor Greer seemingly accepts, thus it opens the door for yet more discussion on this point. In my view that's a good thing.

Gender: the new schrodingers cat?

The second point of “knowing” is also very much a philosophical context. A point Professor Greer makes during the panel in question.

Professor Greer isn't actually wrong in her comments here. Philosophically we can only “know” ourselves and cannot know or experience the life of others as they do, for we are not them.

It is this single point that sits at the heart of all debates on gender, sex, biology, human behavioural biology and genetics. What we might broadly group together as “The questions of the human condition”

We humans only “know” our own lives. Indeed, for many years pre transition I repeatedly returned to this same question in my mind. “how do I know what I feel like, for I always feel like me?”

I'm one of those people that professor Greer cites often in her arguments. An early 40's transitioning individual who came to a realisation about their own lived experience a little later than some. Singular narratives are always slightly limited in scope and applicability, but I know for myself the reason(s) why I transitioned were not merely clothes, or because of a perception of life being easier etc as Fay weldon might suggest. It was a long long long process of introspection and questioning, of consequential thought and “what if's”. Consideration of family, friendships, physical and mental health to name but a few. It was also a decision taken in the knowledge that society deems it questionable, stigmatising people as a result. Suggesting therefore that such a decision is frivolous would seem to be both illogical and false. 

With her comment regards "knowing" however, Professor Greer misses the bullseye by a mere inch, since in stipulating that a trans person “cannot know” what the/an other gender(s) feels like, she purports to “know” something that she advocates cannot be known, namely a lived experience of a human other than herself. A better premise would be to advocate that others cannot know what a trans person knows or perhaps more accurately, feels. 

This then is the Schroedinger's cat analogy of gender. One cannot prove what is or isn't known to another person by what one knows about oneself. The questions of perceptions, their validity and causality, and of the horizon between mind and body have kept philosophers busy for centuries, dualists and physicalist arguing about to what degree our minds are the sum of our parts.

The simple truth is we “do not know” how trans people feel, or why they feel it, except for that which they can communicate in respect of those feelings. I only know my own experience, it is mine, no other person has it and I cannot have theirs. Thus the way to gain a better understanding of the trans phenomena as part of the human condition is for trans people and cis (non trans) people to engage in debate.

Indeed Julie bindel herself makes this point in an article way back in 2007. She was part of a panel debate which considered the necessity or otherwise of “gender confirmation surgeries”. The debate considered the argument that these surgeries are performed in great numbers in countries where being gay or lesbian in illegal, and thus are used as societal tools to render people as “heterosexual”. We of course know the conflation of gender and sexuality to be a false one, but that doesn't mean certain countries, in this case Iran, have stopped using it as a basis for their societal ends.

Why is this important and relevant? Because it opened the future debate into questioning “why?”. How do we in the western world justify these confirmation surgeries and are they being used effectively? By monitoring the results of interventions and looking at results. These justifications regarding the improvements to a persons life resulting from surgeries and the arguments for those surgeries being the most ethical medical treatment route (when compared to reversion therapy) are still valid today. If society didn't have the debate we wouldn't have gathered data and thus could not prove it to be so.

So, to return to the title and the question raised by Fay weldon. Is trans gender frivolous? We've looked at why people feel the need to transition, and how people might arrive at that point of decision and action, but often once that decision is made I'd admit there can be an outward air of frivolity, or to put it another way the flood gates open and the world suddenly seems fun after years of feeling confined by unseen forces. I'd liken it to a bull who has spent their entire life in captivity chained up in a pen unable to move, and is then set free into a field and paddock. Im sure you've all seen the video's on you tube or Facebook, they go a bit nuts for a while, then eventually calm down. “kid in a sweet shop syndrome”

This is of course a part of an individuals journey in life and their own lived experience, thus informing the overall debate on gender issues, but its not the whole story. The gender debate is part of our questioning of the human condition, both individually and societally. To once more quote the old man in the athenian marketplace as written by one of his students - Plato:

“Know thyself”

In striving to do so I believe one can obtain a greater understanding, though not knowledge of, others as result. For some people, Knowing themselves is a life's work, and includes an element of gender transition. That is in my view, and despite ascertains to the contrary, is a very very long way from a frivolous undertaking.

Sarah Ellis

 twitter: @cycle_sol

Epilogue

To "know ones self" is the essence of what we teach our future generations. By placing upon them the burden of our prejudices coupled with an expectation of a shared viewpoint, we stifle not only our own lives, but theirs too.