Is There a Conservative Case for Transgenderism?

 

Go ahead and call it a ridiculous question, but if transgender activists ever want broad social acceptance, they had better figure out the conservative case for it.

The case of gay marriage is instructive.  Gay marriage was once considered a radical, extremist notion.  It has since gained broad acceptance.  And I think the reason is that the conservative case for gay marriage has always been there.  When gays first came out of the closet, they were not widely accepted and tended to live in gay ghettos, engaged in unrestrained promiscuity and extravagant lifestyles.*  What ultimately led to widespread acceptance of gay marriage was its underlying conservatism.  It meant that a same sex couple could integrate into the general population and live a convention life -- except for being a two-husband or two-wife couple.  

The next big battle was over who could be compelled to participate in a gay marriage and led to massive controversy over cake bakers, photographers, website designers and the like.**  The Supreme Court actually reach a very satisfactory resolution and persuaded champions of gay marriage by appealing to a basic liberal principle -- that no one should be compelled to engage in speech they disagreed with.  Anyone merely selling prefabricated wedding materials must sell to all comers, but if there was an "expressive" element, such as a written message, no one could be required to take part.  The controversy ceased.

And consider the biggest change to come out of Black Lives Matter -- police wearing body cameras.  I assume that this has become widely accepted because the police ultimately concluded it was not anti-police, or at least not inherently so.  No doubt body cameras deter a certain amount of police misconduct and make it easier to prosecute when it does happen.  Police cameras also clear the police of false accusations of misconduct.  They reinforce evidence of crime.  And the footage can be useful simply for refreshing memories and making sure stories are accurate before going into court.  

So, my advice to anyone wanting society to make a clear rule that gender is a matter of subjective self-identification had better figure out the conservative case for it if they want to make it stick

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*Then AIDS came along and wiped the whole lifestyle out, but that is a different story.
**The one group everyone agreed could not be compelled to participate was the clergy.

Transgenderism and Polydactyly

 

To understand what normies (myself included) find so annoying about transgenderism, consider the case of polydactyly (having more than five fingers). Rates polydactyly are similar to rates of intersex development.  For polydactyly it is between four and twelve per 10,000 births (one in 2500 or .04% to one in 833 or .12%).  For intersex development estimates range from .018% to .05% to as high as 1.7% if one counts exceptions to the XX or XY chromosome rule.  

Certainly, I agree that intersex babies should not receive surgery without their informed consent to force them to be male or female.  Likewise, if a movement arises among polydactyl people to stop amputating a sixth digit and to treat polydactyly as a variant on normal rather than a deformity, I would support it.

At the same time, I also think that acting as if everyone has five fingers -- or as if everyone is male or female -- is a perfectly good working generalization.  I do not share the view that all generalizations are bad.  Generalizations are necessary to our understanding of the world.  They become oppressive only when people stop treating generalizations as general rules with some exceptions and instead treat them as absolutes that everyone must be forced to conform to.   Some people are polydactyl.  Some people are intersex.  Some people are transgender, which is not the same as intersex, even if people sometimes conflate the two.

It oppresses polydactyls to treat them as social outcasts or bar them from opportunities offered to everyone else or make fun of them for being different.  It may arguably oppress polydactyls to amputate the sixth digit or call the condition a deformity.  But it does not oppress polydactyls to generally not think about them and to simply assume that everyone has five fingers.  I don't think this is verry controversial.

I am left-handed myself and sometimes resent the degree to which things are built with the assumption that everyone is right-handed.  I wish more desks had an extension to write with the left hand, left-handed scissors were of better quality, and so forth.  But there are some activities (playing a string instrument, driving a car with a manual transmission) where left-handed people just have to suck it up and adapt.  Likewise, no doubt there are things that can be done to make society more accommodating to people with six fingers.  

But now suppose that polydactyls went beyond calling on everyone not to treat polydactyly as a deformity or amputate the sixth finger, or even make, say, hand grips easier for people with six fingers.  Suppose polydactyls demanded that other people not refer to the hand as having five fingers because it "says that we don't exist," "erases our existence," and is even "genocide."  Suppose polydactyls cried oppression when Sesame Street had characters sing, "Oh, I've got five fingers on my left hand.  Five fingers on my right."  Suppose they insisted that anatomy classes stop teaching about hands with five fingers and insisted that they teach five or six.  Suppose they denounced terms like index finger, middle finger, ring finger, and pinkie as oppressive because they exclude people with six fingers.  Hell, suppose the more radical ones even demanded the end of Base Ten as oppressive to people with twelve fingers.

Don't you think that this would engender a certain degree of resentment among the vast majority of the population who have five fingers?  In short, asking not to be mocked and treated as social outcasts is a thing every liberal should get behind.  Asking to be treated as equals is a just demand.  Asking for some degree of accommodation from society is reasonable.  But there are limits to how far society can reasonably be asked to go to accommodate a miniscule portion of the population.  At the very least, the degree of accommodation is a proper topic of democratic debate.  And for a minuscule portion of the population to demand that the broad society rearrange itself to accommodate them, and treating every demand as a matter of basic human rights that permits no compromise is a sure-fire way to incur the resentment of people who otherwise would be willing to live and let live.

Some Unfashionable Thoughts on Transgenderism

 

I have no idea where to find the quote, but someone commented the one of the left's least endearing behaviors was a tendency to stake out a radical and highly controversial position and treat it, not just as settled fact, but as something no right-thinking person could dissent from.  

Such was the case with gay marriage; such is the case now with transgenderism.  Rod Dreher once commented on gay marriage that liberals would always dismiss the matter of whether people could be compelled to take part in a gay marriage as too minor an issue to be upset about, to why he would respond that if it is such a minor issue, why are you unwilling to concede it.

Much the same applies to transgender sports.  People on our side dismiss it as such a minor issue as not to be worth getting upset about, mostly because the numbers are so small.  But somehow, they are never willing to concede this very minor issue.  

When people get so worked up about so minor an issue, with neither side willing to make any concessions, it strongly suggests that the minor issue is the tip of the iceberg, standing for something much larger.  In this case, the real underlying issue is how one defines gender at all.

To avoid confusion, let me clarify my terms.  For purposes of this discussion, I will use the following definitions:

Gender:  The state of being a man, woman, boy, girl, male, female, or whatever other gender one can come up with, regardless of how that state of being is defined.

Sex/biological sex:  A biological and medical classification as male, female or intersex.

Natal sex:  Biological and medical sex at birth, as defined by one's genes and reproductive system.

Gender identity:  One's subjective sense of one's own gender.

The real issue underlying the question of transgender athletes is whether gender (the state of being male or female) is defined by objective biological and medical facts, or by subjective state of mind.  In other words, is gender determined by natal sex, biological sex or by gender identity.

This frequently gets conflated with another issue -- whether biological sex is binary or a spectrum.  The underlying assumption, seemingly accepted by both sides, is that if biological sex is binary, then gender must be determined by objective biological sex, but if biological sex is a spectrum, then gender identity must prevail.  I don't see that this follows at all.   

Let's start with some basics.  Intersex people exist.  This is not seriously disputed.  People disagree how exactly being intersex is defined, some defining it more broadly than others.  Certainly, there are edge cases that are not easily classified as male or female.  Some people say that even these edge cases can still be classified as either male or female depending on whether their gonads are geared toward producing eggs or sperm.

I say, so what?

Most transgender controversies do not involve these edge cases.  They involve cases in which gender identity conflicts with clear-cut natal sex. 

I do not see it logically follows from the existence of some edge cases that do not readily classify as biologically male or female that being male or female is always and necessarily a matter of subjective identification rather than objective biology.  

It is perfectly possible to believe that:

1. Intersex people exist;
2. Reasonable minds can differ on how intersex is defined;
3. Some edge cases don't readily classify as biologically male or female;
4. Outside of this very small number of edge cases, being male or female is nonetheless a matter of objective biology.

I suppose it is also possible to believe that:

1.  Biological sex is defined by gametes and is binary;
2. Gender exists independent of biological sex and is subjective.

Next point:  Intersex people have been around for a long time.  Whether to classify them as legally male or female has been seen as important because historically, men and women have not been equal in the eyes of the law, so the individual's rights depended on classification.

Well, our society views things differently.  We see men and women as equal, except in certain matters where biological and medical status compels a distinction.  Women used to be denied the right to vote, to own property, to contract and sue, to serve on juries, etc. etc.  And well after that, women were denied credit cards, car rentals, certain types of jobs, etc.

We don't take that viewpoint anymore.  We believe that men and women should be treated equally in employment, housing, access to credit, etc. etc. In other words, in most contexts, we have concluded that it should not matter whether one is biologically or medically male or female, they still should have the same rights.  And in such cases, one doesn't really have to worry too much whether we equate gender with subjective self-definition or objective biology.  Either way, transgenders should be treated the same as anyone else.

Admittedly, equal legal and commercial rights are not the whole picture.  Men and women may be legally and commercially equal and still be socially treated differently.  Examples might include what subjects it is acceptable to discuss, how expansively one expresses one's self, what jokes may acceptably be told and the like.  Inn terms of social interaction we might treat men and women differently, but the difference is based on outward presentation, rather than biology.  In other words, transgenders who present as their gender identity rather than their natal sex can reasonably receive the sort of etiquette that is normal for their gender identity.  Bodies are still not what matters.

But there is simply no denying that there are times when bodies do matter.  Examples might include sports, changing rooms, other places where nudity is common, rape crisis centers, medical care, prisons, or sexual relationships.  These things are still sex-segregated, even to this day, because bodies and biological status really do matter, and because it really is significant that men are bigger and stronger than women and women need to be protected. 

So far as I can tell, the usual transgender response in those cases is distinguish natal sex from biological sex.  Yes, there are biological and medical differences that give men an advantage.  Those differences are the result of hormones.  Taking hormones removes the advantage that natal males have over natal females.  I am a little unclear whether that means that natal males turn into biological females when they take female hormones, or that biological sex can be rendered irrelevant by hormone treatment.  But so far as I can tell, most transgender advocates don't parse these fine points.  They simply say that transgender women are women and to question that is a violation of the most basic human rights.

In other words, they are taking a radical and highly controversial position and treating it, not just as settled fact, but as something no right-thinking person could dissent from.  And, as mentioned at the outset, this invariably leads to major resentment.