I’m a transhumanist. I believe in morphological freedom. If someone wants to change sex, that’s a valid desire that Society should try to accommodate as much as feasible given currently existing technology. In that sense, anyone can choose to become trans.
The problem is that the public narrative of trans rights doesn’t seem to be about making a principled case for morphological freedom, or engaging with the complicated policy question of what accommodations are feasible given the imperfections of currently existing technology. Instead, we’re told that everyone has an internal sense of their own gender, which for some people (who “are trans”) does not match their assigned sex at birth.
Okay, but what does that mean? Are the things about me that I’ve been attributing to autogynephilia actually an internal gender identity, or did I get it right the first time? How could I tell? No one seems interested in clarifying!
actually growing up in Seattle my experience has been that people’s narratives of trans rights are in fact making a pretty principled case for both morphological freedom and some kind of more abstract self-labelling freedom. which you can see in how big like, nonbinary and agender self-identifications are, and also a heavy overlap between online trans communities and eg DID and furry communities. so maybe this is just a problem with your generation, or something?
I don’t think it’s a generational thing, because I do object to the self-labeling freedom. Yes, it sounds bad to be against something called “freedom”, but it is necessary unless you want to bite the bullet in favor of things like “freedom to make up whatever beliefs you want without evidence”—which is what I think is ultimately at stake here.
I want shared maps that reflect the territory. We want people to have the freedom to modify their body and social presentation in the territory, but I don’t think this (not even the social presentation part) implies the abstract self-labeling freedom that many people seem to want, because I think labels are supposed to objectively describe something in the territory. I like words like “transfeminine”, because they point to a specific meaning with truth conditions (male people who have undergone interventions to become more female-like).
actually growing up in Seattle my experience has been that people’s narratives of trans rights are in fact making a pretty principled case for both morphological freedom and some kind of more abstract self-labelling freedom. which you can see in how big like, nonbinary and agender self-identifications are, and also a heavy overlap between online trans communities and eg DID and furry communities. so maybe this is just a problem with your generation, or something?
I don’t think it’s a generational thing, because I do object to the self-labeling freedom. Yes, it sounds bad to be against something called “freedom”, but it is necessary unless you want to bite the bullet in favor of things like “freedom to make up whatever beliefs you want without evidence”—which is what I think is ultimately at stake here.
I want shared maps that reflect the territory. We want people to have the freedom to modify their body and social presentation in the territory, but I don’t think this (not even the social presentation part) implies the abstract self-labeling freedom that many people seem to want, because I think labels are supposed to objectively describe something in the territory. I like words like “transfeminine”, because they point to a specific meaning with truth conditions (male people who have undergone interventions to become more female-like).