"If transition is about becoming your true self, why is there so little focus on being and so much focus on appearing, seeming, passing, and pretending?"
Transitioners so often appeal to the inherent virtue of authenticity as justification for blatant inauthenticity. Lea Thomas is a poster child for that bad faith claim. But where exactly…
"If transition is about becoming your true self, why is there so little focus on being and so much focus on appearing, seeming, passing, and pretending?"
Transitioners so often appeal to the inherent virtue of authenticity as justification for blatant inauthenticity. Lea Thomas is a poster child for that bad faith claim. But where exactly does that "true self" reside? Is it in the heart? The kidneys? The spleen? Or, as Descartes supposed, in the pineal gland? How big is it? How much does it weigh?
The entire enterprise of trying to find one's "true self" is as flawed as searching for the end of the rainbow. Self, whether true, false, or simply confused, is a product of an embodied brain in an intricate and lifelong dance with its environment. Anything else is just superstition. Sadly, we live in societies that have, virtually universally, elevated such superstitions to the highest possible seats of power and influence. The greatest tragedy of transgenderism is its service as a trojan horse. It has become the vehicle for subverting science, by injecting this superstition of the true self into its "heart": the reasoned debate whereby true claims are winnowed from false.
"If transition is about becoming your true self, why is there so little focus on being and so much focus on appearing, seeming, passing, and pretending?"
Transitioners so often appeal to the inherent virtue of authenticity as justification for blatant inauthenticity. Lea Thomas is a poster child for that bad faith claim. But where exactly does that "true self" reside? Is it in the heart? The kidneys? The spleen? Or, as Descartes supposed, in the pineal gland? How big is it? How much does it weigh?
The entire enterprise of trying to find one's "true self" is as flawed as searching for the end of the rainbow. Self, whether true, false, or simply confused, is a product of an embodied brain in an intricate and lifelong dance with its environment. Anything else is just superstition. Sadly, we live in societies that have, virtually universally, elevated such superstitions to the highest possible seats of power and influence. The greatest tragedy of transgenderism is its service as a trojan horse. It has become the vehicle for subverting science, by injecting this superstition of the true self into its "heart": the reasoned debate whereby true claims are winnowed from false.