Trans Is either Real or It’s Not
Committing crimes doesn’t change that.
The past ten years have been a whirlwind for transgender issues. The number of people identifying as trans or non-binary has dramatically increased. During this time, trans has taken on an outsized role in the political discourse and culture wars as the premiere virtue signal, bogeyman, and wedge issue, whipping anti-trans bigots into frenzied moral panics, and trans activists into cancel-hungry mobs. Amid all the screaming, hypocrisies inevitably emerge, such as the argument that while trans people should generally be recognized as their preferred gender, if they commit a sex crime, they somehow lose their trans status. This position is unprincipled and incoherent.
Whenever news spreads about a violent or sexual crime committed by a person who identifies as trans (specifically a trans woman), a certain sentiment materializes in comment sections and social media timelines across the internet. Namely, that the suspect or perpetrator has “lost their pronoun privileges” and no longer “deserves” to be acknowledged as their preferred gender, much less incarcerated in a prison corresponding to it. Putting the specifics of any individual case aside, this raises a fundamental issue that demands resolution: Are trans people trans, or aren’t they?
Some people simply do not accept the trans identity whatsoever. They regard it as a straight-up mental illness, akin to psychiatric patients who proclaim themselves to be Napoleon Bonaparte. It makes sense why such people would vehemently oppose incarcerating trans women in female prisons. I disagree with their underlying beliefs about trans, but their stances are at least internally consistent. Those who do accept that trans is real, however, and will generally use people’s preferred pronouns and names, but who suddenly pull an about-face when sex crimes are involved, are contradicting themselves. If you don’t accept trans, then you don’t accept trans. It is what it is. But if you do accept trans, then you have to accept trans. The freedom to be trans is either a right or it doesn’t exist — it cannot be a privilege. It cannot be like driving a car, which can be taken away if you drive drunk. It cannot be conditional on good behavior.
Imagine that a Jewish convert has committed a horrible crime. Would it be reasonable, on the basis of their crime, to negate this person’s religious identity? Should they be excommunicated by public fiat? Should they be disallowed from the same religious freedoms all other prisoners are afforded? Should it be okay to call them a kike? This is an imperfect analogy, but it gets the point across: we need clear principles and logical consistency.
There are two counterpoints people will raise. The first is the suspicion that some of these convicts do not have gender dysphoria and are merely pretending to be trans as a ruse to gain access to female prisons. The other is that housing trans women sex offenders in women’s prisons will endanger the other inmates. These concerns deserve to be taken seriously. Exploiting loopholes and gaming the system are human universals, and in any event, the average differences in size and physical strength between biological males and females is pertinent. Steps should be taken to differentiate people who are in fact transgender from those who have a last moment “deathbed transition” to curry sympathy or a prison transfer. Accommodations may also be prudent to house trans prisoners in single cells instead of with another person. Even if you grant these worries no credence personally, they’re prevalent enough to warrant being addressed if for no other reason than to allay public outrage.
There is a bit of a motte-and-bailey fallacy going on here, however. It’s one thing to make nuanced arguments for new rules and protocols to mitigate the risk of abuse; it’s quite another to treat the freedom to be trans as a provisional privilege to be tolerated under certain circumstances and jeeringly shat on otherwise. What we see in the discourse is a torrent of anti-trans derision in these cases, and the nuanced policy concerns only manifest when these attitudes are confronted, after which they revert to their original state.
A clearly defined choice has to be made, and this facet of the trans debate may end up forcing it. You can view trans and trans rights as real, or you can view them as bogus. Placing conditions is just another way of saying the latter. If that’s your view, then just say it. You’re entitled to believe that. It’s a free country. But the real ruse here isn’t whatever actual or hypothetical percentage of convicts are gaming the system by posing as trans — it’s pretending that people have a right to be themselves, but only if they behave.
See also: “Trans Activism Is the Worst”
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I agree with you. Trans activism states that self-identification is all that one needs to be trans. What I think people struggle with here is nuance. One can be part of a group seen as marginalized, yet still do something that would be considered immoral. Even trans activists have failed to see this, as they reject the Club Q shooting suspect's claim of being non-binary. I wrote about it here:
https://societystandpoint.substack.com/p/the-court-system-is-not-non-binary
Both sides of this culture war would be helped by nuance.
I think you are making an error in positing a strict binary, "trans people are either trans or not". I would recommend Kathleen Stock on this topic, it really benefits from a rigorous philosophical approach. What does "really trans" mean here? If the only answer you'll allow as satisfying this is "trans is just an adjective like in 'tall women' or 'thin women'", skip the rest and simply note my agreement with your point.
Every sane person will admit that sex is real, and not dependent on self-declaration or identity. But I'm sympathetic to the argument that given enough medical intervention (think bottom surgery, hormones etc.), it is possible to functionally change sex. So even in terms of prisons, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to distinguish between a post-op trans woman and biological females.
The question is, what about trans women with a penis? Stock's point, with which I agree, is that saying they are simply "women" is a kind of useful societal fiction. If it doesn't hurt anyone, and greatly improves someones life, there is a moral imperative to treat them as they want to be treated; that doesn't mean you agree in principle that the presence of a penis or vagina is inherently irrelevant for the category "women". Which gives you a straightforward case for legal protection from discrimination etc. And of course, gender dysphoria is real and further bolsters that case, since it raises the harm of not adhering to their preferences.
However, in that view treating someone as their identified gender is still fundamentally a courtesy. A required courtesy in most cases, but a courtesy nonetheless. This doesn't mean denying that they are "really trans", which I would merely take to mean they really, truly, honestly identify as their chosen gender. But it does give you some leeway to abandon that fiction when the benefits no longer outweigh the harms, as for the "penised individual who raped a woman". Sure, that person will still feel better when treated as a woman, but other women (and especially the victim, who might have some understandably conflicted feelings about the perpetrator) might feel worse at the forced inclusion of a raping penis amongst them, if only linguistically included. It also simply makes activism against sexual assault easier and more forceful if you don't need to hedge your words at all times; the threat of rape for women (trans and cis alike) almost exclusively comes from "people with a penis", and replacing that construction with "men" makes for better and clearer campaigns. Insisting that a person with a penis who doesn't identify as a man is a woman seems to have a negative benefit/cost tradeoff in some edge cases, which I imagine is what sets off people like JKR in those cases, since it values the concerns of some people with a penis higher than those of some people with a vagina.
Can this view be described as believing trans women aren't really trans? It's not "trans women are women", but I would say it's "trans women are trans women". Which should in most cases be taken to just mean "women", but not as a dogma that supercedes all other considerations. And in my opinion that is a perfectly consistent view that simultaneously acknowledges that people can be "really trans", at least in my interpretation of that word.