This is the 3rd draft of my attempt to make a first post. I started out by getting into the weeds of the political histories of “left” and “right,” and finally decided that if I really want to bore you with that, I’ll make it a future post. Suffice to say that I only hesitantly refer to left and right for convenience on certain issues, but consider them to be very one-dimensional descriptions of complex issues.
It is a mistake to write off objections to a trans-gender claims as being a right-wing objection based on fear or distaste. I understand why that is done, and I think it is a clever bit of propaganda that takes advantage of “poisoning the well.” It has to do with the forced-teaming of the transgender issue with LGB rights. Same-sex marriage is an issue that has been to the fore in our minds for the last two or three decades, and gender non-conformity does place prominently in the social climate that clouds the issue of gay rights.
In my observation, social conservatives object little to the actual sexual acts of lesbians and gays and would prefer not to think of it. The objection is to crossing the boundaries of gender expectations. Gay and lesbian couples do not fit with a conservative view of extended coupling. Lesbians report being randomly confronted with ignorant questions such as “which of you is the man?” Gay couples walking hand-in-hand, like lovers are supposed to, get threatened with violence and called nasty names. Even solo gays and lesbians are hassled for not conforming, assumed to be femme or butch against norm. This cuts both ways, as straight people who violate these norms are assumed to be gay.
We do have a serious problem with gender in our society. And who have been the women struggling and fighting against gender for centuries? Feminists have been. They have been pointing out the confines of gender. Gender is not a synonym for sex. Sex is actually, factually, biological in nature. Gender is the way that we assign the roles, social adaptations, and social expectations based on sex. Sex is observed at birth. And while this observation does place gender expectations on a child, the development of personality is a function of growth and socialization. Leaving the “nature” and “nurture” argument to the side, during the childhood development phases kids explore and learn and often rebel against the restrictions that have been placed on them by gender due to their sex.
It is conservative to assume that there are fixed gender roles that are pre-determined naturally. When I was a Christian teen our youth leader told us that male hair is limited in growth to 17” biologically because God had determined that men should have short hair and be able to grow beards, while women should have long hair and not beards. Also, since women had the reproductive capacity for bearing children, God had made women as helpmeets to take care of the house and kids.
In my writing I am often driven by the desire to go on tangents. If you can accept these asides, you and I will get along well in our writer-reader relationship. Discussing bioessentialism is another that topic will have to wait for a future post. The previous paragraph does give a hint of what it is versus what people claim on the internet that it is.
The traditionalist view of gender is that males should be masculine and females should be feminine. Trans teaching is that if one does not fit in as masculine or feminine to match their sex, then they are trans. These views fit together, and gender non-conforming youth are being steered into a belief that society is right about them in being “wrong” for their body. This is a conservative view, for a body and gender personality to match.
So, you may wonder, why does it seem that most of the transactivists identify with the left? I’ve been wondering that myself. I have been identifying politically on the left since I was an early teen and George McGovern was running against a man who had authorized a burglary at a hotel in Washington. And I continue to mostly identify as left-leaning for many other reasons. Yet, I am very skeptical of the notion that transgender people are the sex of the gender set that matches their personalities. I think it’s an extraordinary claim that shouldn’t be accepted on declaration.
Political and social beliefs are far too complex to be confined to a single scalar measure, as in “far left” to “far right.” Labels are limiting, and those who accept them often base their issue perspectives on their self-perceived label.
Support for LGB civil rights, to marry, to lease apartments, to buy property as couples, and to generally avoid discrimination as a protected class, is staked out as the liberal position. Objection to granting those rights, especially on tradtionalist religious grounds is staked out as the conservative position. Tacking the transgender codes at the end of LGB seems natural because of the traditionalist objection to gender non-conformance, making commmon cause.
The causes are not as common as most people assume they are, but lumped together they are. When people use “LGBTQIA” the community is assumed, but it isn’t genuine due to some very deep conflicts over what effects gender has on sexuality. However, it is useful for appealing to liberals who are focused on civil rights and see traditionalists as being in the way of everyone’s happiness. It’s a matter of jumping on coattails to own the libs. That is, to own their loyalty.
Most of the people who read this are probably already in agreement with what I am saying, but I think it’s important to discuss this openly because for the most part this causes confusion. For those people who rely on their own labels to filter their standing on issues, they want to do the right thing but prevent themselves from opening up to to the possibility that feminism and homosexuality are in conflict with transgender ideology. If they, out of kindness, accept that transwomen are women and that to object is based on bigotry, then they will vociferously stand for trans ID males as being among their tribe against the dastardly conservatives.
If we can somehow get them to listen and read with critical minds to see how gender is the structure that radical feminists have been fighting to tear down, and those women that they assume have suddently allied with role traditionalists are in fact trying to bust the cages, then perhaps we can begin to break the hold that this extension of gender restriction has on us.
I hope you enjoy my writing style enough to return to this substack in the future. I promise to get better at it.
I don’t claim to any credentials, but I am thoughtful. I have no hate for anyone who believes themselves to be trans, but I would rather see them freed of the hold that gender has on them. People need to tear down their own roadblocks and gain better understanding, and taking sides hinders that rather than helps.
Thank you! I would describe myself as a materialist leftie but I think we often demonise people with conservative views and, in the U.K, at least, many Conservative voters would not be out of place at a Democratic convention. We over emphasise divergent views at our peril. Most Conservative voters want an NHS free at the point of use. a majority consistently support nationalisation of the railways. Many are appalled at homelessness and the rise of poverty /foodbanks. They just disagree about how to remedy these societal ills.