Guest post: The difference between “existential” and “epistemological”
Originally a comment by Papito on The thought-terminating lie.
I think the problem is that people don’t know the difference between “existential” and “epistemological.” I don’t believe that people such as JK Rowling pose an existential threat to transpeople so much as an epistemological threat.
Maybe “existential” sounds more fancy to TRAs, or more dramatic. They want desperately to be validated, but just like stolen library books, they won’t cease to exist because they’re not validated. Nobody is denying trans people (or stolen library books) exist, they’re just denying that trans people know what they think they know. That’s an epistemological quarrel.
The trans religion goes like this: in addition to the physical sex of people, people also have a quality called “gender.” The “gender” is unrelated to the sex of a person, but it is inborn, ever-present, intangible, unmeasurable, and vitally important. The “gender” is more important than sex. Whether a person is sexually male or female is almost irrelevant in trans religion; the important thing is their “gender,” which they are assigned at birth by foolish doctors who get it wrong a lot, and can then later decide to change.
The knowledge of which sex a person is can be gained through objective, scientific measures, such as whether a person has male genitalia or female genitalia, and whether a person has XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes. However, sex is irrelevant if you’re a transgenderist, and the knowledge of which “gender” a person is can only be determined by that person’s feelings and beliefs, not by any external or objective measure. According to the trans religion, “gender” is what makes a person a man or a woman: only bigoted people pay attention to sex, and claiming that sex is what makes a person a man or a woman is transphobic.
The principal dogma of the trans religion is that any person who feels they are a woman – whose sense of “gender identity” is that of a woman – is a woman. Being born of the female sex makes a person a woman no more than realizing at forty, after having two kids as a man, that one is really a woman. That is because knowledge of “gender” can only come from inside. The outside of the body is just an illusion, perhaps a temporary condition.
When TRAs bellow “TWAW,” they are insisting that the cardinal belief of their religion – that it’s “gender” that makes you a woman – must be unassailable. The denial of this dogma would mean that transwomen are not really women, but men dressed up as women. They don’t know they’re women, they just think they’re women. Denial of the result or the process makes their religion untenable. They characterize this denial as a threat to their existence; it threatens their self-concept even more than it would if you were to tell a Catholic that Mary wasn’t a virgin, or that Jesus was just a man.
Transgenderism is a relatively new religion. If it persists, it’s likely to change, as Catholicism has. Anybody remember Limbo? It’s where virtuous pagans used to go, along with unbaptized babies. When I was a little boy in Catholic school, we were encouraged repeatedly to pray for the souls of the poor little babies in Limbo. Limbo was a matter of panic for parents who bore sickly infants. No more, because it wasn’t really central to the Catholic faith. Catholicism dropped Limbo in 1992.
The Gender Identity is not that sort of peripheral belief in the transgender religion; it’s a fundamental tenet of the faith, like the Eternal Soul in Catholicism. Without it, the rest of the structure falls apart. Transgenderism could get rid of all the silly pronouns, or most of the 33 or 58 or however many genders claimed to exist these days. That wouldn’t be important to the faith. What transgenderism can’t get rid of is the idea that gender can only be determined internally, by feelings. Any attempt to assert that external sexual characteristics are important in determining who is a woman and who is a man is an attack on the epistemology of gender identity. When we say “you’re not really a woman, you’re just a man who thinks he’s a woman,” it tears apart their entire religion. It also deflates, for some, their sexual (auto-gynephilic) fantasy.
The degree of the claimed harm in “misgendering” strikes us as absurd. The manager of the building next door referred to me as “Ms…” in an email the other day. Was I irate? Deflated? Did I tweet angry things at his employer, or sob into my couch? No. It’s utterly unimportant to me, far more of an embarrassment to him than to me. Does it anger people that much to have their race mistaken? Based on my multi-racial family, no. It’s annoying if persistent, but more a cause for humor than anything.
That’s because it’s not our religion. I seriously pissed off a devout Catholic once – an educated grown up! – by saying I would have respected the Pope more if he was a go-go dancer when he was young, instead of just staying in the church and doing all that praying and stuff. I like the new Pope better, BTW. I’m not likely to be mad if someone makes fun of Mohammed to me, or the Pope, or Martin Luther, or transsubstantiation, or Ganesha, or the hilarious Book of Mormon. No more than my race is or my sex is, none of these things are my religion. Transpeople are different.
Funny thing: the distinction between “existential” and “epistemological” is the one I made when I was asked [ordered to answer more like] the DO YOU BELIEVE question. I was jeered at for making that distinction, jeered at in terms that equated to saying it was a piffling elitist hair-splitting bit of nonsense. Fucking hell, thought I, what am I even doing here?
I think you’re better out. That place has become a cesspool.
It’s a non-trivial distinction, even the dictionary definitions are substantially different. Good post Papito!
I hadn’t thought of the religion angle. Maybe if they said they were womanish?
I’ve been seeing this in religious terms, too. TWAW is an affimation, a positive statement of faith/wishful-thinking in more or less the same way fundies say, “I’m saved.” It’s part of the power of the statement is that its assertion is non-demonstrable. But TWAW is built on blurring here and policing there the border between sex and gender. And of course, only they may say which is appropriate in which circumstance. So ultimately, TWAW is gaslighting. They get to override everyone’s perceptions by fiat.
I do think a new set of terms could help. Hopefully someone will come up with some in English.
The best insight into religion that I have found is that of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. It can be summed up thus: in any religious ceremony or act, the group is worshipping itself. Religion plays a vital role in group cohesion, acts as a social glue, keeping the group identified and secure. The group that thinks together, stays together. ‘What do we believe on X?’ becomes a valid and vital question.
To the noisiest section of the Trans community, ‘woman’ is a category just like ‘Catholic’ or ‘Presbyterian’. One can apply to join it, or find oneself excommunicated from it, depending on the circumstances.
‘Gender’ was once a purely grammatical term. But it has been siezed upon and used in place of ‘sex’ precisely because the kind of genitalia one is born with is so bloody obvious, and comes from chromosomal data that is rather hard to alter. Wheras ‘gender’ can be a state of mind.
And like religion, they want everyone else to affirm their beliefs. They want to control the conversation, manage the environment so it doesn’t disturb their tranquility. The problem is that, just as with religion, there are some people that don’t accept the core dogma. And in this case, those core people are…women. They are the category the trans-religionists want to be. When a Catholic disagrees with a Methodist, they can dismiss them, because the Catholic has no desire to be a Methodist, and so forth. They can argue about details of the religion, and all of that, but they are in distinct categories.
To be trans is different, because the people that are disagreeing with them are what they want to be, and therefore are an obstacle that must be cleared away. So rather than expanding the definition of woman (you are a woman if you are female), they are actually narrowing it (you are a woman if you feel like a woman). Since most women don’t “feel like” a woman, they just are a woman, that makes it easy to remove us from consideration. We are just “cis” women, and now they are moving the goalposts toward “women” and “cis women”, as we saw in a recent tweet. So now “cis” women won’t be women. Adult females will not be women. Trans women will still be women, in fact the only women. So cleaning out the heterodox, establishing the orthodoxy, and burning (dogpiling) anyone who doesn’t agree.
Omar: A Durkheimian analysis of the trans movement (and all the critical studies–based movements) has long seemed correct to me. Not only in the social reification and reinforcement aspects, but also particularly in the way that the world is separated into a dichotomy of Sacred and Profane.
nualle: One of the most interesting things I’ve learned about the psychology of religions and cults overlaps with social media. When people publicly avow or endorse a claim, they attach part of their psychological identity to that claim. This is why religious practice has evolved to include ritualized profession of basic tenets. Every Catholic mass includes a point where the congregation recites the Nicene creed, for instance. Group profession of the faith binds the faithful with a combination of public reputation and private cognitive dissonance reduction.
Here’s where it gets dangerous. Because cognitive dissonance plays such a strong part, the effect is actually more pronounced the more unreasonable the claims professed. If I announce that universal health care systems are superior to others, this is a small step on my part that has little effect on my other beliefs. While being forced to admit a mistake would be uncomfortable, I would be open to having my mind changed. However, if I announce that wine literally changes to blood, and bread literally changes to flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit, that requires a significant investment. Cognitive dissonance reduction moves me to protect my staked position and adjust other beliefs accordingly. Having reworked my epistemic network to accommodate transubstantiation, I am now highly resistant to having my mind changed. To renounce my position on transubstantiation would require experiencing shame at being wrong and rebuilding my epistemic network. And so the sunk cost keeps me in line with my profession of faith.
I am slightly embarrassed that I rambled on in that comment and didn’t come to a point so much as ran out of breath.I wish very much I had the presence of mind to write as eloquently as Nullius in #8. Yes, Nullius, the sunk cost of absurd public statements helps bind the cult.
The statement “Female-identifying transgender men must be respected and treated kindly” would have nowhere near the power to thicken religious kinship among the trans cult than the statement that “female-identifying transgender men literally are women” (by the magical trans-substantiation of the Holy Gender Identity).
iknclast:
A very good point. Trans humans with male genitalia know what it is like to be male. and don’t like it. They also believe they have an understanding of what it is to be female, and they prefer that state of mind, and want to be in it full-time, particularly when there are rewards to be had in sporting contests with humans born with female genitalia, up to now called ‘women’. Trouble is that the humans born with male genitalia can have a hard time looking like genuine females, as a rule to which there are admittedly exceptions. The Gilbert and Sullivan line “she may very well pass for forty-three in the dusk with the light behind her” is I think apposite here.
Nullius:
I wonder if that is what really goes on. In my days as an Anglican communicant, I accepted the symbolism and the story of the Last Supper without actually believing down to the bedrock of my consciousness that the bread was anything other than bread and that the cheap plonk in the communion chalice was anything other than that. To take it too literally and without enough tongue-in-cheek is to step across the threshold of sanity, and into a crazy reality where anything goes. As you say, dangerous if believers took it literally. But I don’t think they do. They manage to hold the antagonistic propositions that they are being invited to partake of 1. the body and blood of Christ and 2. white sandwich loaf fresh from the local bakery and a cheap sherry. Simultaneously. Without going bonkers. Pretty amazing stuff, what the mind is capable of.
Omar, since Protestants don’t have to believe that (they are free to believe it is symbolic), that reduces the amount of believers having to accept literal transubstantiation. I was brought up Protestant, and found it weird the first time I encountered a Catholic who insisted it really, really was. I think a lot of Catholics also consider it symbolic, but there still seem to be some who accept the literal transubstantiation; otherwise, why would believers get so upset when someone doesn’t treat a communion wafer properly? They may not believe it consciously, but may have internalized some of that belief subconsciously, just like I don’t consciously believe I am inferior to male bodied people simply because I am female, and yet often find myself reacting in situations as if I do believe that. Shards that are buried in our brain at a very young age can be tough to dig out, even now as I near 60 (so near, I can see it on my calendar).
iknklast, yes, it is easy as an Anglican to dismiss transubstantiation. But Anglicans are not Catholics. Intense belief in something we see as absurd can be surprising. I was also surprised when my friend became so very angry at me about what I thought of as a humorous comment regarding Mr. Ratzinger. I was challenging the idea that the Pope should be infallible. This was deeply blasphemous to someone who believes the Pope to be holy and infallible. I thought I would find a more human pope more relatable. I should probaly have kept that to myself.
Omar: As far as I know, Anglican/Episcopalian theology accepts something like consubstantiation (symbolic) or corporeal/pneumatic “presence” of Christ in the sacrament. This is one of the points that separates Protestant from Catholic faith. Catholic theology holds that the Host literally becomes the body of Christ during Communion. Of course, this change is said to manifest in the thing’s “essence”, which is an artifact of Aristotelian metaphysics. (Every object has an essence to which properties adhere.)
Now, there certainly are a lot of Catholics who didn’t really pay attention in Sunday school, so they don’t know this. However, there are also many who did and so do. Similarly, there are transcultists who pay attention and know that sex denial is a real phenomenon.
Papito:
And the trans cult benefits from the fact that the latter claim is not the entry point. I’m pretty sure this is related to why successful cults (e.g., Scientology) don’t tend to lay out the entirety of their dogma at the outset. Regardless of whether the convert gets there slowly or quickly, the epistemological effect is the same, and going slowly makes each step easier.
For the trans cult, this means that the casual believer—that is, the well intentioned normie—can feel comfortable and genuine while defending the faith from the motte. To them, it really is about treating people with respect and dignity, so they aren’t being disingenuous or cynical. The objections made by those who are accustomed to dealing with bailey claims seem reactionary and misguided, because of course no one is denying the anatomical reality of sex. For a feminist to mention biological reality suggests that the feminist believes trans rights activists are crazy people, and that’s insulting and condescending.
It’s the same as with the Eucharist. Those Christians who believe in consubstantiation have a hard time accepting the claim that other Christians actually do believe in transubstantiation. The same is true, as we all know, for most “moderate” or “liberal” Christians relative to fundamentalists, whether the subject be the age of Earth, the inerrancy of the Bible, or even the historicity of Jesus. If there are those who believe such claims, they insist, they must be a small, inconsequential minority.
I certainly remember having many conversations in which I had to say, “Hold on. These people really do, no joke and honest-to-God, seriously believe what they say they believe.”
Some of my more liberal catholic friends tend to believe in consubstantiation, and feel that transubstantiation is a uniquely Protestant belief. Weird, I know, but, well, they will also claim that the church allows birth control, and doesn’t have a problem with euthanasia, and the abortion thing? Well, the pope has a point, doesn’t he?
On the other side, my Unitarian friends seem to be similarly poorly situated, with one of my friends, a man in his 70s, saying in all seriousness one day that he had never heard such an idea as an angry, vengeful god. Good gods, doesn’t this man listen to the news? Is he unaware of Westboro Baptist Church? I know he is aware of the pro-life movement, and approves of it up to a point (that point being rape, incest, or health of the woman). So how is it he can’t know about the god these people believe that drive their abhorrent ideas?
Same with trans. When I talk to trans, it becomes clear that they are either unaware of or willfully ignoring a large body of evidence. I am told such things as “no one expects lesbians to have sex with these men unless they have had surgery, and they already established a relationship, and then find out they are trans, and are icked by it, then they are bigots” (even put like that, it is distasteful to suggest that lesbians can’t change their minds about sex after consent) or “no one is telling gay children they are trans” or “no one is suggesting men be allowed in women’s rooms, only transwomen, who are women, and there has never been any instance of a transwoman attacking a woman, in a bathroom or elsewhere”. If tind these statements to be on a level with the willful ignorance of my liberal Catholic/Unitarian friends.
iknklast: Those are some decidedly heretical Catholics.
But the Unitarian who’s never encountered the idea of an angry, vengeful god? Like, bwuh!? That’s so literally, actually incredible that I find it hard to credit. Has he never heard the Noah or Moses stories? That’s the sort of ignorance that forces me to rejigger my paradigms of what people can reasonably be expected to know. If he exists, how can I respond sardonically to someone’s trying to tell me about how The Jeebuz DIED for my SINS? I want to say, “No, really? Who is this ‘GEE-ZOOS-UH’ of whom you speak? Here I’ve been living in America my entire life and never seen this person on the news. When did this happen?” But if people really are as ignorant as Chick tracts depict …
Mind: blown.
Yeah, Nullius, my mind was blown too. I just…looked at him. I didn’t know what to say. I know this group of people tends to live in their gated community isolation bubble, and often find the plays I write impossible to decipher because they deal with the kind of people I live with, and not the fancy uptown folks they write about, but seriously? I mean, when I was a kid, I was taught that God did a good thing in drowning everybody, but not that he wasn’t angry and vengeful. He was just…right. Why? What did they do, I asked? They sinned, they answered. How? I asked. Go wash your hands for dinner, they answered.
I can see having never believed in an angry, vengeful god. I’m down with that. But never hearing of it? But…these people never heard of the term feminzai. They never heard the term TERF. They don’t know about the Hobby Lobby case that did so much damage for birth control. They are, literally, out of touch with the people, as liberals are so often accused of being.
I mean, I’m pretty out of touch myself, to be honest. But … TERF, I can understand not encountering, but how do you never hear “feminazi”? That one’s embedded in popular culture. Do you just never read a book, watch a movie, or speak to another human?
Like, ever?
The only way I can imagine that happening is in a community so insular that consanguinity between any two people approaches one.
iknklast, be fair. They’re Unitarians; it’s not like they read the Bible or anything.