Trans

The existential debate no one realizes they're having

There is a risk that comes with wading into the “trans issue”, that no matter what I say it will be perceived as transphobic, but my sense is this perspective is much needed in an otherwise vapid cultural conversation. I will not discuss the scientific legitimacy of gender dysphoria, the science of sexual reproduction, nor the harms of trans denialism/transphobia. These topics, besides being fraught, are fruitless, and I don’t have anything particularly novel to add to those conversations. Instead, I want to state a hypothesis for why the trans debate has become so deeply meaningful in our culture. This essay is about what trans represents, not what it is. This distinction is something that I think nearly everyone has failed to notice. It is also one that I think is important for our culture to realize for wellbeing’s sake.

[I use trans interchangeably with transition, the decision to change one’s gender, though I acknowledge trans technically refers to the prefix in transgender, meaning opposite.]

Before Charles Darwin postulated the theory of evolution by natural selection, humans were considered distinct from the animal kingdom. Human beings were created in the eye of God, had the ability to access divine communication, and experienced conscious states, such as suffering, that no other creature experienced. It is now known that humans belong to the great apes, and our most common living relative are chimpanzees. Darwin’s theory showed that humans were not special in the animal kingdom – we are simply another animal in the tree of life. Because evolution does not progress in the direction of improvement, it simply produces species good enough to survive and reproduce in a given point in time and space, humans are not measurably superior to any other species on Earth. Among those who accept Darwinian evolution, there is a divide between those who find evolution and its implications for humans too unpalatable to accept wholesale and thus pick and choose the bits to believe (biological denialists), those who accept that evolution is undeniable but believe that its constituent implications for humanity are inescapable and must be accepted wholesale (biological determinists), and those who accept that evolution and its constituent implications are undeniable but believe that we can figure out how to work around these constraints to improve humanity (biological realists).

The potential implications of evolution are numerous: everything that humans do, the sum of all human behaviour and psychology, the entirety of the human experience, is the result of hundreds of millions of years of amoral evolution. The uncomfortable truth is that the most depraved and horrific human atrocities are, at their root, the result of evolution. Take the salient example of racism; the conclusion from evolutionary theory is that racial prejudice is expected, and the biological determinist would thus say there is nothing that can be done about it, and we should therefore not judge people for being racist. The biological denialists would hold each individual responsible for their racist predispositions, as if those people had evil souls that deserved judgment and reprobation, and would deny any underlying biological explanation for the behaviour. The biological denialists are literally wrong, but morally right: we are not each responsible as individual souls for the cognitive architecture we have inherited that makes us racially prejudicial, but we must overcome our biological wiring in pursuit of justice and equality. Those who adopt this formulation are the biological realists.  Oftentimes, the biological denialists think the biological realists are biological determinists in disguise.

Another useful example to illustrate these three camps is rape. Most biological denialists will acknowledge that rape is widespread in the animal kingdom, and they may even grant that there is an innate predisposition for rape that is rooted in our biology. Most would stop there, though, and would fail to acknowledge that this provides a path to understanding why men rape. To the biological denialist, one’s decision to rape is in and of itself evidence of an evil soul. In contrast, the biological realists believe some amount of rape is inevitable, but that it can be reduced in our society by way of influencing social norms and cultural axioms. A biological realist is less concerned with the moral implications of rape, and more concerned with solutions. Biological realism postulates that men rape because it is in our DNA to do so, but that it must be prevented at the societal level, and that men who rape should be educated on how to treat women so they do not repeat their crimes. A man does not rape because he has an immoral soul, he rapes because he is the ancestor of thousands of generations of males who passed on their genes via rape. Likewise, a man who lacks the inclination to rape is the product of a different evolutionary strategy, not the product of a good soul. The biological determinist might mistakenly conclude that rape is inevitable, nothing can be done to prevent it, and therefore we should not regard it in terms of good or bad. The biological determinist is prone to making the naturalistic fallacy, that is because something is, it must also be good, or at least not bad.

The debate around the trans issue can be seen through these same lenses. The biological determinist might know that sex is determined by one’s gametes, and believe the human mind lacks the ability to overturn this decision, and therefore may see gender dysphoria as an untreatable and unfortunate mental illness. The biological denialist will reject the biological origin of sex, and may perceive the human mind as the tool that determines sex, and therefore will conclude that we must take someone at their word to understand what their sex is. The biological realist will acknowledge that sex is determined by one’s gametes, the human mind lacks the ability to overturn this decision, but that gender dysphoria is also a product of evolution, and therefore we must reconcile this contradiction in some way.

The biological determinist and denialist both do harm to society: one by never encouraging us to strive beyond the shackles of our evolutionary programming, and the other by convincing people to live in a falsely constructed reality that will inevitably collide with true reality. The reason we cannot pretend that biological sex is not real is because there will come a day for every trans individual that they will be confronted by their reality, and our having played along with the charade will have done them no favours. We could ignore the suffering of those with gender dysphoria living inside a body that does not match their conscious reality, and leave them to live a life of constant suffering. In my estimation, these are both bad options.

The biological denialists are dominating the conversation by swarming anyone who detracts from their ideology. However, rather than dismissing them it is worth trying to understand their perspective. (One might criticize my analysis of an ideology from the outside rather letting its proponents dictate what their motives are, but I would argue the motives behind an ideological attraction are rarely consciously known, and rationalized post hoc through self-deception, thus the only way to understand an ideology is from an outsider’s perspective.) The reality that biological denialists reject as it relates to the topic of trans is that humans do not choose their sex and have no conscious control over it. It is worth asking then, what do we lose by acknowledging that human sex is the product of biology and outside the realm of conscious control? We lose the illusion that we are free to become whatever we wish to be. Even the most ardent biological denialist must acknowledge that there is a limit to what human will can accomplish, but where is that line? If we cannot choose our biological sex, what else are we shackled to? To the biological denialist, our biology is our prison. It is for this reason that the concept of the blank slate is deeply revered in these circles – the idea that all humans are born equal and have equal potential to become whatever it is we choose. Of course, this idea is preposterous, but just how preposterous is it?

The truth is, we don’t know, and that uncertainty is troubling because of what exists at the other end of the spectrum from the blank slate. Those on the other end of the spectrum, such as philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris, believe that each human being lives within a very narrow scope of possibility, determined by a combination of genes, environment, and random chance, and that free will is an illusion, leaving us as witnesses of our lives, lacking conscious control over ourselves. (The spectrum between a blank slater and Sam Harris might seem to map onto the aforementioned spectrum between biological determinists and biological denialists, but it is not the same thing. For example, one can believe humans lack free will but still take the biological realist approach to overcoming our biology, though I personally find this position to be irrational.) The idea that we lack free will, that we are the product of our circumstances, lacking any agency to exert any control over our lives is, understandably, unsettling. It is not hard to see how such a belief could easily lead one down a path of nihilism. It is not hard to see, then, why one would be attracted to blank slatism.

Whether or not we have free will is a question deeply pondered by philosophers since forever, and it is probably not one we will have any conclusive answer on anytime soon. In 2008, an experiment proved our brains were making simple decisions before our consciousness was aware of them, and this study has been bandied about to prove that we do not have free will. In my opinion, this argument is a bit of a red herring, because the more important question is, ‘what can we become by force of will?’ It is this question, I believe, that is at the heart of the trans debate, and it is one worthy of careful consideration. The next time you find yourself perplexed by someone decrying biological sex as a made-up oppressive concept, consider this belief might be the dam holding back an existential crisis. What, then, does transitioning really represent?

Transitioning represents the experimental proof that humans have the ability to exert free will over their biological reality.

Firstly, yes the proof is flawed. For even if one were able to change one’s sex, it need not mean one has exerted free will to do so, as the choice to transition may itself be an illusion in Sam Harris’ view. Setting that caveat aside, what does this prove? If we accept the presupposition that human free will is at least not zero, it makes sense to test what its limits are. Where does free will end and inescapable biological reality begin? Some human features are clearly beyond the control of human agency, and thus make no sense as places to test this limitation. For example, age. It makes no sense to test one’s ability to modify one’s age to explore the limit of free will. Someone would have to be certifiably insane to think they could change their age through conscious effort. The ambiguity of sex, on the other hand, makes it the perfect candidate trait for this test.

In the eyes of the biological denialist, if one can change one’s sex, one has proven that the shackles of biology are illusory, and that free will is real and effective. What it means to change one’s sex is not an easy thing to figure out. Does doing traditionally feminine tasks make one a woman? Does possessing a penis make one a man? Take this article that does its best to muddy the waters about what sex is:

The myth that men and women have different characters and are suited to different social roles makes it seem like there is one thing going on here – biological sex – which has all sorts of natural implications. Some feminists have suggested that it’s better to think instead that there are two things going on: biological sex, and also gender, which can be thought of as the social upshots of having a biological sex in a society that’s in the grip of the myth I just described.

But whether we think in terms of one thing (sex) or two things (sex and gender), this is far too simple. Gender/sex is actually a complex, multifaceted cluster of things that interrelate and interact in myriad ways.

This debate over the definition of biological sex is the battlefront where this ideology is being confronted by reality. The biological denialists claim that biological sex is a made-up term used by evil people to deny the very existence of trans individuals. In actuality, what they are arguing for is a definition that permits one to transition. If the definition of sex is sufficiently convoluted, who’s to say one cannot change sex?

Furthermore, the biological denialist might argue that sex is non-binary, and therefore attempts to categorize someone’s sex as male/female is unnecessarily oppressive. If sex is binary, it is by definition an imposition on those who wish to become anything they want. If sex is a spectrum, one can exist anywhere along the spectrum, and is thus freed from constraint. Trans activists have, correctly, observed that the categories ‘male’ and ‘female’ contain remarkable intrinsic variation, but have incorrectly concluded that this means the categories are thusly spurious. They also, correctly, intuit that people should be free to express any ‘gender roles’ they wish, but have incorrectly concluded that sex constraints are strictly social in nature, as opposed to mostly biological.

This begs the question: what do we do about the constraints of biological sex? Biological sex is a real constraint, and no matter how much we try to will it away, there is no escaping the clutches it has had over us for hundreds of millions of years. But gender dysphoria is also real, and as a culture we should encourage self-actualization, and traditional gender roles are constraints on this process. The solution is, I think, a bittersweet pill to swallow: we must relinquish our desire for a blank slate.

What if our range of possibility wasn’t infinite, but neither are we self-aware minds trapped in bodies we have no agency over? What if we have access to only a modest range of experiences, and it is a combination of our agency, our biological nature, random chance, and our environment that determines our actuality? I believe this is not only true, but paradoxically more liberating than either alternative. Lacking free will is obviously slavish and unappealing, but there is something covertly liberating about constrained free will. Constrained free will is the idea that human agency is limited in scope and affect, and the individuals we become is largely driven by factors outside of our agentic control. So, how could it be that the constraints imposed on us by our genetics, such as our biological sex, are liberating?

To illustrate this point, I am going to use a form of casuistry I typically try to avoid: appeal to emotion. Consider a time when you witnessed true greatness. Sports, generally speaking, are appealing because we get to witness greatness. When 35 million people tuned in to watch Usain Bolt run the 100 metre dash at the Rio Olympics, it was to witness greatness. There is an intuition that not only was Usain Bolt built to run fast, but that he was meant to run fast. Usain Bolt is appealing to us because he is an individual who found the thing he was meant to do, and then mastered it. Most people probably recognize they weren’t meant to compete at the Olympics in the 100 metre dash, but might not know to extrapolate this logic further. The scope of things Usain Bolt was meant to do is probably very narrow, but since he discovered it, we say he is successful. This is a better way to live than to hope the scope of things you are meant to do is infinitely wide, spend your life floundering trying to achieve everything, never discovering something you are meant to do, and thus never succeeding.

By accepting that we are each unique, we acknowledge there exists a space in which we can each excel. We relinquish the idea that we can become anything we put our mind to. We intuit this truth in those who have achieved success in some domain, but it can be a crippling blind spot in our own lives. There is no way to reconcile uniqueness with the capacity to become anything we wish: it is one or the other. Either we can each become anything we want and thus we are all fundamentally the same, or we are unique and each of us has a specific niche we can prosper in. There is no evidence that we are the same, thus we must be idiosyncratically capable of being excellent and shitty at certain things. Being graceful about that which we innately suck at, means we are on the path to discovering where we might prosper. How does this extend to the trans debate? Being born a male or a female is a natural constraint imposed on our range of possibility, but there is more beauty in that revelation than there is imprisonment.

Yes, human society has historically imposed undue oppression based on one’s biological sex. At the extreme end, this has taken the form of conscription into the military for men, and the inability to own property for women. It is for these reasons that sex is perceived as oppressive, and rightfully so. However, as individuals, we enslave ourselves by denying our biological reality. Instead of pursuing a self-actualized life that is in resonance with our biology, denialists are condemned to mistake their failings in certain domains with societal oppression. Yes, we must resolve to abdicate the shackles of anachronistic societal gender norms, but we must do so in a way that protects and emboldens our individual idiosyncrasies. From where I’m standing, I foresee a future generation forever chained to the illusion that they can be anyone they want, and the inability to accomplish their goals is a reinforcing proof of societal oppression, rather than graceful revelation of their innate limitations.

If there’s one thing I want for everyone, it is self-actualization. The denial of not just biological sex, but our innate individuality, is a dead end. Understanding and accepting ourselves, our drives and our idiosyncrasies that we have no control over, our weaknesses and our strengths, is the only path towards self-actualization. And a self-actualized existence is a most prosperous one.