Your reference to Kathleen Stock drew my attention to where you are likely coming from. She is a controversial figure about whom I am somewhat ambivalent. The tone of your comment suggests that your own views align at least somewhat with hers. Before I go any further, in the interest of full and fair disclosure, I should tell you that I am a passable, postop trans woman. My views do not align with those of the most radical trans activists on the left, who think do not even consider the possibility that self identification may not always be appropriate and that anything should go. Nor do I agree with the positions of the Gender Critical crowd and TERFs trying to create a subclass of women for trans females. To use your description, my position is more nuanced than either. Indeed, it is even more nuanced than Kathleen Stock who unfortunately has become more reactionary over time as she has been subjugated to stronger attacks from the left. In all fairness it appears to be a defensive response on her part rather than driven by changing ideology.
Much of the current debate is driven by confusion regarding the meaning of the terms gender and sex. There is further confusion, even among those who differentiate the two, in properly defining gender itself as a term. To muddy the waters further, sexuality is often left out of the discussion or tossed in as an aside without much thought as to how it impacts the analysis. As to the basics, there is a difference between sex, gender identity, social presentation, and sexuality. They are independent concepts. This is where the most virulent debates find their origin.
Among the most bigoted, the assumption is made that gender and sex are the same thing. To the extent that someone identifies with a gender different than their external sex characteristics, they must be confused, sinful or mentally ill. This in fact has been proven not to be the case. Gender is a very real, innate sense of identity which is unrelated to physical characteristics. More is being learned every day, but it is becoming clear that the brain does not always develop in a way that is congruent with physical characteristics. When it is different, the phenomenon of being transgender arises. Being transgender is not a choice. People cannot be groomed or converted into being transgender. One either is or is not. If one is, they cannot be talked out of it. This is where the root cause of gender dysphoria arises as society at large continually bombards all of us with the idea that gender and sex are indistinguishable. It communicates to the trans individual that they are defective or don’t deserve to exist. This occurs even without the name-calling from the bigots. It represents a real existential challenge which threatens the very lives of trans individuals.
The debate is further confused by the agenda of feminists who take the position that gender is a social construct. Essentially, they are saying that there are no roles (or modes of dress for that matter) which are natural to women and not men and vice versa. Anyone should be capable of doing anything they want and living any way they want. I have no problem with this as far as it goes. That is the way it should be. The problem is that this approach lacks precision. There is a difference between gender identity and gender roles. Gender is real and not just a social construct. What the feminists are complaining about are gender roles, not identity. The fact that so many sociologists have picked up on this terminology and concept does not help to clarify the discussion.
If I were to ask you and the vast majority of people, are you a man or a woman, you would have no problem giving me an answer. You would say I am a woman or I’m a man. If I then asked you how you knew you were a woman, for instance, you would likely say at some point because I look like one (have the physical sexual characteristics of a woman). You might even bring sexuality into the discussion to confuse it further (“I like guys.”), even though it is an independent concept. If I persisted further and asked how you would feel about yourself if you lost your female physical characteristics and they were replaced by male anatomy, you would likely say that you would still feel like a woman. And you would be right. The sense of being a man or a woman, or neither for that matter (which gets into the whole area of gender nonconforming people), is innate to the mind of an individual and unrelated to physical characteristics.
This has been demonstrated in the historical attempts over half a century ago to try to reassign intersex children and male babies who underwent botched circumcisions as physically female and raise them as such. The results were disastrous. The affected children knew something was wrong and resisted the attempt to socialize them as something they weren’t in spite of their physical appearance. This is just one of many examples of the evidence that supports the concept that gender is innate in the brain and not a matter of socialization. The same phenomenon applies to trans female children who are assumed to be male because of their physical characteristics.
So what do we do with people whose innate gender is female, but who have male characteristics? It is a conundrum to be sure. This appears to be the starting point of Kathleen Stock in raising questions as to the rights of transgender people in women’s private spaces when the dispute first started. Again, the original observation was quickly muddied with irrelevant emotional points masquerading as facts. Calling trans women a threat to women and who as merely disguising themselves to sexually assault women, is a fiction designed to create fear that has no basis in reality. Intellectually honest people know that trans women are not a threat. It is absurd to think that men would dress up as women to gain access to women’s spaces for the purpose of assaulting them. Men already engage in this behavior without going to such ridiculous lengths.
This brings me to what should be the real debate. From the standpoint of trans women, they feel most comfortable in women’s bathrooms and locker rooms just like cis women. Other than appearance, they actually are women. From a purely logical standpoint, that should be the end of the debate. Trans women are women. They belong in women’s spaces, and that should be the end of it. However, it is not that simple.
People can be logical, but they are also emotional beings. It is perfectly understandable for women in a private women’s space to feel uncomfortable if someone who looked like a man came in and undressed or used the bathroom. In my opinion, it is a quite normal reaction to feel uncomfortable. Does this mean that trans women should be excluded from women’s spaces, at least if they did not look like cis women? This is a possible solution. Trans women are welcome in women’s spaces if they look like women and have had bottom surgery (essentially the transmedicalist argument). The problem is that it is exclusionary to a large portion of the trans community, whose identities and physical appearance are equally as valid as those who have done everything possible to become passable, but whose mere presence would make cis women uncomfortable. There is also the problem of who is the arbiter of whether a trans woman is passable enough. The situation is not as straightforward as it might seem at first blush.
There are no easy answers. The best solution that I can see at this point in time in our society is for people to try to put themselves in the place of those with whom they are in tension. If cis women were to accept that trans women arre in fact women and try to understand their position , they might find that they are more tolerant in certain situations. For instance, in women’s bathrooms, where there are individual private stalls, they might find that the presence of a male appearing trans woman is not really a problem when they think about it in this way. In a similar vein, if a preop trans woman wanted to enter a woman’s changing room, they might think twice if they understood that it might make the women present uncomfortable, and that theirs was a legitimate concern as well even though primarily an emotional reaction. The best solution I can see is to engage in a bit of give-and-take in an attempt to understand one another better. The solution is not perfect, but I suspect it would help. A little respect for the feelings of others goes a long way, but can only be achieved with better clarity of terms in discussing the issues.
