Social rather than sovereign
Suzanne Moore asks a crucial question in a post on the Tavistock ruling.
Again, we must ask what is causing this misery for girls and why suicide rates are rising. Why are female bodies such an uncomfortable place to be?
That question needs to be thrown back to society and not always located in the psyche of the individual. This is why I find parts of trans activist discourse so totally conservative. There is no analysis of how gender operates, of how bodies and definitions do not exist in isolation, how the notion of a true self may itself be false.
Very likely is false, from what I’ve read of psychology and philosophy. The self isn’t a thing, and it ebbs and flows and mutates constantly, so preaching about a “true” or “authentic” self just doesn’t mean very much.
So much thinking that underpins the trans ideology of selfhood, is that selfhood is sovereign rather than social. It has much more in common with right wing thinking than it does with left wing thinking. That so much of the left has rushed to embrace it is a sign of the times.
Yessssssssss. That’s the quote of the day.
The idea of an immutable internal characteristic is ripped right from the pages of religion.
The fundamental CONSERVATIVENESS of Trans identity politics. Especially the self presentation (frilly dresses, very conservative clothing, “sexyness”) has always struck me.
Okay, I was just filling out a survey that asked me some demographic questions; in the open space for other in gender, I told them female was a sex, not a gender (my only choice that would fit me I would not select – cis female – but this is a theatre group, and theatre people are the wokest of the woke).
Then I got to a question that really knocked me over:
Do you identify as a veteran or active service member?
What happened to are you? If I started “identifying as” a veteran or active service member, the US government might get peeved at me. It might be illegal, for all I know, to “identify as” a veteran or active service member when you are, in fact, neither (unless I count as an active service member of the gender wars, I suppose).