How to describe trans activism?
I got permission to share this email I got from a fellow grad student, a doctoral student in philosophy we’ll call Foster:
I wanted to email because I have recently been interested in trying to construct a general-purpose description of trans activism's distinctive aims and claims. More specifically, it can be difficult to bring out the radical nature of trans activism without relying on terms that might be unfamiliar (e.g. "biological women") or premises that are too familiarly in dispute (e.g. "all adult human males are men"). The following description is my attempt to meet this challenge. I hope that it might be of some interest? At any rate, I would be curious what you thought.
One distinctive aim of trans activism is to advance the interests of heterosexual adult males who are sexually aroused by simulating being female. Some of trans activists' distinctive claims are as follows:
Humans have no common words for human males or human females.
There are male women and male girls.
There are female men and female boys.
There are heterosexual male lesbians.
Female people should not have their own spaces or activities.
Everyone should act as if some male rapists are women.
Some healthy children should have their sexual development prevented.
Some healthy adolescents should have their penis and testicles removed.
Some healthy adolescents should have their breasts, ovaries and uterus removed.
Further, given that some minors have in fact had their sexual development prevented and their breasts or genitals removed, trans activists are committed to the claim that such medical interventions have some track record of success. On the present evidence from several countries, even if success is measured by the standard of psychological (rather than sexual) health, they do not.
What would you say? What general-purpose description of trans activism’s unique aims and claims would you craft?
Perhaps I'm just tired, but I'm not sure what Foster is asking of you. He or she seems to be asking, what is the purpose of transgender ideology? Here is a quote from one of my own articles:
"Trans people have developed an entire ideology which is designed to justify their existence. I’m not saying that they NEED to justify their existence, but that is apparently how THEY feel given that their ideology has no other discernible purpose." (I'm using capital letters here because I can't do italics.)
When you get right down to it, that's what I think is going on. They have redefined "gender" to mean "how you feel about yourself". So, if a man feels like a woman, then that magically makes him a REAL woman! What they don't understand, of course, is that how you feel about yourself is just how you feel about yourself; it doesn't change what you are. But since people in Western society want to be polite, we go along with the pretense. But going along with the pretense doesn't make it is true.
Everything in transgender ideology is dependent on this redefinition of the word "gender". For example, trans women moving into women's sports would not be happening if no one believed that trans women were actual women. To the extent that trans women ARE moving into women's sports, it is only because liberals have adopted this redefinition of "gender" and don't want to hurt the feelings of trans people (lest they commit suicide en masse).
It's my hypothesis that transgender ideology has made such inroads into liberal society because this time, liberals want to "get it right". We liberals DIDN'T get it right on racial justice. We gave lip service to it, but then excluded blacks from our neighborhoods and jobs. We have given lip service to a lot of progressive ideas, but didn't live up to our words.
I think that another reason liberals are taking trans people so seriously is that they are pitiful. Fifty years ago, all that a comedian had to do to get guffaws was to put a dress on -- Milton Berle, Flip Wilson, Harvey Korman never got more laughs than when they were wearing pearls. It seems that the more pitiful a group is, the more we must take them seriously, lest our true prejudices show. Now that trans activists are making more and more demands on society, they may not be laughed at any more, but they WILL be hated.
They are doomed to fail, of course. Biologists determine the gender of animals by inspecting animals' reproductive systems, and there is no escaping the fact that human beings are animals.
I would boil it down even simpler (edited to refine my thoughts):
1.) Subjective feeling about identity trumps physical reality.
2.) The way you feel now is how you will always feel; feelings never change.
3.) In accordance with points 1 and 2, engage in revolutionary upheaval of both your body and society. The sooner and more dramatic the better.