THERE IS NO TRANS IDENTITY?
Trans experience is very individualistic. One person might see it as their identity and another might see it as their choice.
As trans rights are human rights, total control over your body and ownership of it and its parts is for everyone.
WPATH therefore in 2022 is to be applauded for recognising the rights of eunuchs to body modification.
There is nothing sacred about the way nature delivers the body. A trans person might see their experience and surgery as sacred but this risks empowering those who will ruin their rights. They will reason that, "If everything is sacred nothing is sacred! So some trans affirmation if not all goes too far." That will always be in the back of their minds.
Many trans worry about the hatred they get. Brave trans are clear that they would rather be hated for who they are than loved or respected for who they are not. This reminds us of the existentialism of Soren Kierkegaard who said that the most common form of despair is down to you not being who you are. These things show the importance of unquestioning affirmation of anyone who knows they are not the sex observation says they are. Their self-observation determines who they are. These things show the importance of affirming the person who knows that gender is not their biological sex and overrides it. Do not expect any two trans to be the same or trans in the same way. Trans who do not fit into either of the boxes we have looked at and who do not have gender dysphoria but who simply ask to be considered to be a sex other than we would take them for are valid. You have no business assuming what sex or gender anybody is.
Trans to me means your biological sex comes from the sense of identity nature has made in you. I support self-id. A woman is a woman if she says she is. A man is a man if she says she is. The body proves nothing. Who you are is connected to your biology, something in the mind. Only the person herself or himself can tell us who they are. It is possible that your sense of who you are is rooted in your biology so gender identity should matter more than any test of biological sex. It is your biological sex but it is up to you to reveal it not your body or anybody looking at you.
Religion expends most of its transphobic hate on those who say we must create ourselves and who respond in a trans way. Those people do not regard a creator as having any say and may deny there is a creator. So they assert that their sense of who they are, their identity, does not come from the universe or others. Trans or not, we must make out identity and impose meaning and value and our sense of self on the world. We must overcome anything that impinges on this. We must affirm our autonomy and stand in defiance of nature or anything else that tries to invalidate us.
Religious views that endorse a God who we must obey must go. Why can't we have a God who affirms and supports our choices?
Also Christian doctrine is that God is existence and is real and the reality behind all reality says that God is identity. Who we are comes from God. This invalidates trans who say it is up to them to decide who they are. Trans who do not have dysphoria see their trans journey as their choice rather than something innate. Not all trans are the same.
Even if as some say that trans identity is a notion that must be gotten rid of, it remains that God belief should not be a reason for that stance. Keep it about the person. Listen to the person.
OBJECTION: "If your body is wrong or needs lining up to who you are then surely the brain cannot be trusted to tell you that? It is part of the body too!"
The trans person needs us to put who their mind tells them they are before what their body says. If you are formed in the wrong body, that means your mind can't be right either. You are born with the wrong brain.
The reasons we affirm the person regardless of this include:
Who says that anybody's brain is that reliable? Reliable or not your brain is all you have. You have to listen to it. It is worse to let other brains tell you to listen to them. You remain the only one who can decide.
Bodily autonomy is firmly asserted here. Right or wrong your choice is to be respected. Whoever refuses you money and gender affirming treatment is an oppressor. Bodily autonomy protects several rights not just trans rights. The right to terminate a pregnancy for any reason is a common example. A person has the right do do what they will and demand affirmation of who they are.
OBJECTION: "The best stance in relation to trans is that trans is not an identity. It is a process, a task."
No. It can be both. The trans person who needs a process is living with and forming and affirming their own identity. There is a right to choose to be trans even if you do not have gender dysphoria.
The person assigned the wrong gender at birth if male may be female or nonbinary. Or if assigned female is male or nonbinary. If that happens a process is needed. Their gender is their identity. The process is part of who they are. All identities are a work in progress.
OBJECTION: "Putting a feeling before objective reality means you have nowhere to draw the line. Communities will come apart. Children will be confused."
But to argue that you should hurt or downgrade or mock somebody who does this is already tearing communities apart. A community built enforced identities is not a community.
An identity that is created regardless of others or without anybody else or independently is limited to how you see you. This is very hard to do and will make your life very hard. It will not seem real or to have any value unless it gives you a place in society. You need to deal with those who say that an identity that is unrelated to what others think is not an identity at all but is only something in your head. No reinvention or no discovery of an identity you did not know you had can happen without the social context. You need others then to affirm your identity. To be who you are you need to be connected to other people not necessarily all other people. Identity then is not for an island. Others need need to affirm who you are. The problem with accept is that it implies, "Something is wrong here so I will just put that out of my mind." Affirm is celebrating your identity.
Some say that if you dream up an identity to identify as, you are degrading yourself by turning yourself into thoughts and feelings when you are so much more. They warn that makes you blame yourself and get others to blame you for any horrible thoughts, any emotional devastation and any health consequences that come. They say it is too much of a huge thing to carry. I would answer that none of this is relevant in a culture that lets people be who they are and celebrate that.
A big concern is that if you affirm a child who feels they are not the gender their bodies look like that you are a child-abuser in the eyes of some. They say you are putting the child on a path of lifetime medication and harrowing surgeries. But if the child has a body that they feel does not truly belong to them then there is clearly no abuse.
Finally, who says that your sense of self is mere feelings? There is more to it than that.
OBJECTION: "While we reject trans being an identity, we consider it the truth if a person is male or female or nonbinary. They have a gender identity not a trans identity."
I like that.
OBJECTION: "To tell a child they are born trans and not born in the wrong body or at least with the wrong parts and wrong physical prospects ignores how the child will hate body parts and hate their body in parts. Trans is not an identity but a need. Your inner self is male and that is your identity no matter what kind of body you are born with. Your inner self is female and that is your identity no matter what kind of body you are born with. Your inner self may be genderless and so on."
But being an identity implies a need to live it and be it. Trans is both gender/sex identity and a need. But in some cases it is about a want and not a need but that is fine.
