Daniel Junas: Could you comment on the question of whether feminism, by downplaying sex differences between men and women, created or at least contributed to the ideological precondition for the emergence of transgender ideology?
I agree with what LP has laid out here, but the idea overall always sounds completely backwards to me. Yes, trans ideology relies on the idea that changing sex is possible. But doesn’t it also rely on the idea that the sexes are innately and drastically different from one another? How else could you “be a woman” inside a man’s body? How could trans ideology survive if people didn’t believe that men and women were categorical opposites such that liking feminine things means you might not even be a man? (For a personal anecdote, a trans friend of mine once suggested that I, a stereotypically feminine female, might be trans because I have a style of joking around that he usually only hears from men...)
To conclude: from my perspective, the central idea in trans ideology is not that the sexes are basically the same but that they’re fundamentally different--which feels counter to the ideology of radical feminism. I still agree that feminism created the environment of slippage between the sexes that makes actual transition possible.
I wonder what you (as well as Louise Perry) think of this idea. That when the two ideologies -- radical feminism and transgenderism -- confront each other, they expose the fundamental contradictions in each ideology.
On the one hand, when radical feminists, having insisted that there is no fundamental difference between men and women, are confronted with men who want access to women’s spaces, are now in the position of having to claim that there are fundamental differences, rooted in biology, and that those differences matter for the sake of women’s sex-based rights.
On the other hand, transgenderism, insists that biological reality doesn’t matter, but that what does matter is a non-material gendered “soul.” The contradiction here is that transgenderism seeks an alteration of biological reality as a means for realizing the requirement of this non-material soul, thereby tacitly acknowledging the salience of biological reality.
The solution to both these contradictions is the plain recognition that yes, there is such a thing as a material biological reality, and that it actually matters.
Is it not bizarre, as it seemed to me forty years ago when I was first exposed to this feminist current, that this fundamental reality was ever called into question?
I recall in particular a conversation with a feminist who argued that we must reject the idea of innate biological differences, because if we did not, their existence would be used to argue, as it already had, that one sex was inherently superior to the other. What I was not sophisticated enough -- perhaps not courageous enough -- to respond was that it did not matter so much how an idea would be fallaciously deployed, but whether or not it was true.
That feminist is correct, though, that any difference we are willing to acknowledge will absolutely end in the conclusion that men are simply better in every way except at caretaking and housework, as it always has. Though, I agree that on the population level, men and women are different psychologically, no one will ever dare suggest that women may have *strengths* men don't have, which might make us well suited for tasks outside of caretaking and housework. For example, however much women are influenced by "negative emotions," it's not usually women who get really wound up in rage and commit violent acts, yet we have configured anger into "not an emotion" so that doesn't count in a lot people's minds.
Absolutely? Forty years ago I absolutely did not draw the conclusion that mean “are simply better in every way except at caretaking and housework,” and now, with forty years of life experience I absolutely do not draw that conclusion. I’ve also encountered an endless number of people who do not draw that conclusion.
You are exceedingly rare then. I mean, for centuries "women are only good at having sex and making babies" has been used to deny us access to even the most basic education and such.
I agree. I don't really see transgenderism as an heir of radical feminism except insofar as radical feminism articulated that there is biological sex and the social experience of living as a certain sex, which is true -- even among two female persons, if they live in different places or times, the experience of being a woman and what being a woman means will differ between contexts even though both are equally women and equally female. Trans ideology instead embraces the idea that each person has a gendered "soul" and the heart of that soul is how closely they conform to socialized gender stereotypes. Far from wanting to undo those stereotypes and free people from them, they want to cage people in them utterly.
The basic issue here, as with any theory is is it prescriptive or descriptive. Does transgender ideology theorise that a world of no biological sex ought to exist or does it already exsist? What they’d probably say is something like is how things ought to be.
To go even deeper many theories (especially social science theories) suffer from an overemphasis on Plato’s theory of forms. I’m guessing in the minds of transgender ideologues, a world of no biological sex brings us closer to the true ideal ‘forms’, while differences between the sexes are merely the distortions of the true forms/ shadows on the cave wall.
Behind the transgender ideology lies a longing for a utopia, a heaven on earth, an ideal world, where we are free of biological constraints of any kind. To use Spenglerian terms, the utopian longing is unfortunately a very deep impulse within the Faustian soul (the soul of western civilisation)
Yes, it seems like transgender ideology relies on the idea that gender stereotypes are what make a person a man or a woman. The pinker the sundress, the more woman the wearer, essentially.
This is the insane thing to me. Like, I still wouldn't agree with a postgender worldview that our primary sex characteristics aren't important, but it would at least be logically consistent. But the existing transgender movement seems to insist that while primary sex characteristics aren't that important, but that secondary characteristics are even more important than the traditional importance placed on the primary ones.
Yes, essentially their thinking is that my uterus and other natural female sex characteristics do nothing to make me a woman but if they are able to achieve some aspects of female anatomy via hormones and/or surgery, that DOES make them "more woman." Also, the whole concept of "passing" -- if you're a woman simply because you feel you are inside, then why the need to "pass"? And to "pass" as what? A biological female person. The body matters a lot to them but only THEIR bodies -- natural male and female bodies are irrelevant. It is beyond incoherent.
The "tragic liminal state" that transgender people live in - very well formulated.
I think feminism, both radical and liberal, has done enormous damage by positing that "gender roles" are nothing more than social constructs, which are "toxic" and need to be dismantled (unless men want to wear dresses, in which case they can be as misogynistic as they wish). As though those "social constructs" came out of thin air and were not based on real biological differences.
This blank-slate ideology has paved the way to trans ideology which says that men could be women - man and woman are only social constructs after all.
I think it's possible to be nuanced here. Too many people conflated "socially constructed" with "doesn't actually exist." Of course, if you believe social constructs are not real things, I take it you will not object to me emptying your bank account - money is only a social construct, after all!
There's a similar fallacy wherein people conflate "social construct" with "unnatural, and therefore bad". Once again, imagine me emptying your bank account. You might hope that anti-theft laws would protect you and retrieve your (socially constructed) money, but - d'oh! - criminal law is also a social construct! If you really held it as a sincere principle that all social constructs were bad you'd just accept your fate.
I don't think we can or should discount how very masculine the whole trans movement really is, especially if we are talking about innate sex differences. At least from the male-to-female side, it appears to be driven almost entirely by sexual paraphilia and an overexposure to (ever weirder) pornography, and there is only one sex, in aggregate, so sex-obsessed as to be willing to irrationally change their entire life in pursuit of sexual gratification: Men.
My point here is that while I agree feminist thought about the sameness of men and women may have provided an ideological and intellectual framework for transgender ideology, I actually don't think, at the end of the day, it matters very much in practice. As we have seen with rape, prostitution, porn, etc. men will pursue their sexual gratification by any means necessary; they don't NEED to intellectualize it -- that's just a "nice to have" rather than a strict requirement.
So, I agree providing the medical means to change secondary sex characteristics -- and the porn to suggest this is all very, very hot -- is really all that was strictly necessary for this phenomenon to take root.
Sorry, I keep pressing send too soon. My ultimate conclusion is that trans thought didn't need to be intellectualized. All that needed to be in place is for men to find something hot, for them to have the means to achieve it, and then society does what it tends to do: Cater to the sexual interests of men.
I agree with what LP has laid out here, but the idea overall always sounds completely backwards to me. Yes, trans ideology relies on the idea that changing sex is possible. But doesn’t it also rely on the idea that the sexes are innately and drastically different from one another? How else could you “be a woman” inside a man’s body? How could trans ideology survive if people didn’t believe that men and women were categorical opposites such that liking feminine things means you might not even be a man? (For a personal anecdote, a trans friend of mine once suggested that I, a stereotypically feminine female, might be trans because I have a style of joking around that he usually only hears from men...)
To conclude: from my perspective, the central idea in trans ideology is not that the sexes are basically the same but that they’re fundamentally different--which feels counter to the ideology of radical feminism. I still agree that feminism created the environment of slippage between the sexes that makes actual transition possible.
I wonder what you (as well as Louise Perry) think of this idea. That when the two ideologies -- radical feminism and transgenderism -- confront each other, they expose the fundamental contradictions in each ideology.
On the one hand, when radical feminists, having insisted that there is no fundamental difference between men and women, are confronted with men who want access to women’s spaces, are now in the position of having to claim that there are fundamental differences, rooted in biology, and that those differences matter for the sake of women’s sex-based rights.
On the other hand, transgenderism, insists that biological reality doesn’t matter, but that what does matter is a non-material gendered “soul.” The contradiction here is that transgenderism seeks an alteration of biological reality as a means for realizing the requirement of this non-material soul, thereby tacitly acknowledging the salience of biological reality.
The solution to both these contradictions is the plain recognition that yes, there is such a thing as a material biological reality, and that it actually matters.
Is it not bizarre, as it seemed to me forty years ago when I was first exposed to this feminist current, that this fundamental reality was ever called into question?
I recall in particular a conversation with a feminist who argued that we must reject the idea of innate biological differences, because if we did not, their existence would be used to argue, as it already had, that one sex was inherently superior to the other. What I was not sophisticated enough -- perhaps not courageous enough -- to respond was that it did not matter so much how an idea would be fallaciously deployed, but whether or not it was true.
That feminist is correct, though, that any difference we are willing to acknowledge will absolutely end in the conclusion that men are simply better in every way except at caretaking and housework, as it always has. Though, I agree that on the population level, men and women are different psychologically, no one will ever dare suggest that women may have *strengths* men don't have, which might make us well suited for tasks outside of caretaking and housework. For example, however much women are influenced by "negative emotions," it's not usually women who get really wound up in rage and commit violent acts, yet we have configured anger into "not an emotion" so that doesn't count in a lot people's minds.
Absolutely? Forty years ago I absolutely did not draw the conclusion that mean “are simply better in every way except at caretaking and housework,” and now, with forty years of life experience I absolutely do not draw that conclusion. I’ve also encountered an endless number of people who do not draw that conclusion.
Absolutely? Absolutely not.
You are exceedingly rare then. I mean, for centuries "women are only good at having sex and making babies" has been used to deny us access to even the most basic education and such.
I agree. I don't really see transgenderism as an heir of radical feminism except insofar as radical feminism articulated that there is biological sex and the social experience of living as a certain sex, which is true -- even among two female persons, if they live in different places or times, the experience of being a woman and what being a woman means will differ between contexts even though both are equally women and equally female. Trans ideology instead embraces the idea that each person has a gendered "soul" and the heart of that soul is how closely they conform to socialized gender stereotypes. Far from wanting to undo those stereotypes and free people from them, they want to cage people in them utterly.
The basic issue here, as with any theory is is it prescriptive or descriptive. Does transgender ideology theorise that a world of no biological sex ought to exist or does it already exsist? What they’d probably say is something like is how things ought to be.
To go even deeper many theories (especially social science theories) suffer from an overemphasis on Plato’s theory of forms. I’m guessing in the minds of transgender ideologues, a world of no biological sex brings us closer to the true ideal ‘forms’, while differences between the sexes are merely the distortions of the true forms/ shadows on the cave wall.
Behind the transgender ideology lies a longing for a utopia, a heaven on earth, an ideal world, where we are free of biological constraints of any kind. To use Spenglerian terms, the utopian longing is unfortunately a very deep impulse within the Faustian soul (the soul of western civilisation)
Yes, it seems like transgender ideology relies on the idea that gender stereotypes are what make a person a man or a woman. The pinker the sundress, the more woman the wearer, essentially.
This is the insane thing to me. Like, I still wouldn't agree with a postgender worldview that our primary sex characteristics aren't important, but it would at least be logically consistent. But the existing transgender movement seems to insist that while primary sex characteristics aren't that important, but that secondary characteristics are even more important than the traditional importance placed on the primary ones.
Yes, essentially their thinking is that my uterus and other natural female sex characteristics do nothing to make me a woman but if they are able to achieve some aspects of female anatomy via hormones and/or surgery, that DOES make them "more woman." Also, the whole concept of "passing" -- if you're a woman simply because you feel you are inside, then why the need to "pass"? And to "pass" as what? A biological female person. The body matters a lot to them but only THEIR bodies -- natural male and female bodies are irrelevant. It is beyond incoherent.
The "tragic liminal state" that transgender people live in - very well formulated.
I think feminism, both radical and liberal, has done enormous damage by positing that "gender roles" are nothing more than social constructs, which are "toxic" and need to be dismantled (unless men want to wear dresses, in which case they can be as misogynistic as they wish). As though those "social constructs" came out of thin air and were not based on real biological differences.
This blank-slate ideology has paved the way to trans ideology which says that men could be women - man and woman are only social constructs after all.
I think it's possible to be nuanced here. Too many people conflated "socially constructed" with "doesn't actually exist." Of course, if you believe social constructs are not real things, I take it you will not object to me emptying your bank account - money is only a social construct, after all!
There's a similar fallacy wherein people conflate "social construct" with "unnatural, and therefore bad". Once again, imagine me emptying your bank account. You might hope that anti-theft laws would protect you and retrieve your (socially constructed) money, but - d'oh! - criminal law is also a social construct! If you really held it as a sincere principle that all social constructs were bad you'd just accept your fate.
I don't think we can or should discount how very masculine the whole trans movement really is, especially if we are talking about innate sex differences. At least from the male-to-female side, it appears to be driven almost entirely by sexual paraphilia and an overexposure to (ever weirder) pornography, and there is only one sex, in aggregate, so sex-obsessed as to be willing to irrationally change their entire life in pursuit of sexual gratification: Men.
My point here is that while I agree feminist thought about the sameness of men and women may have provided an ideological and intellectual framework for transgender ideology, I actually don't think, at the end of the day, it matters very much in practice. As we have seen with rape, prostitution, porn, etc. men will pursue their sexual gratification by any means necessary; they don't NEED to intellectualize it -- that's just a "nice to have" rather than a strict requirement.
So, I agree providing the medical means to change secondary sex characteristics -- and the porn to suggest this is all very, very hot -- is really all that was strictly necessary for this phenomenon to take root.
Sorry, I keep pressing send too soon. My ultimate conclusion is that trans thought didn't need to be intellectualized. All that needed to be in place is for men to find something hot, for them to have the means to achieve it, and then society does what it tends to do: Cater to the sexual interests of men.
"Amorphous gender goo". This phrase needs to be better known.