Why We Speak Past Each Other on Trans Issues

We’re not just speaking different languages — we don’t even understand our own.

Photo from Peter Conlan on Unsplash.

Contributor Johan Pregmo has a new piece in Queer Majority arguing the case for Pride as a universal celebration of sexual and romantic freedom: “Pride is Universal.”

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In his 2016 sci-fi thriller Quantum Night, Robert J. Sawyer explores the hypothetical question, “What if philosophical zombies were real?” What if there were people who walk among us, who look and sound like us; who hold jobs, raise families, and chat up their neighbors, but aren’t actually conscious, instead being mere automatons bereft of that ineffable spark that differentiates algorithm from person? In this imagined version of our world, the existence of these zombies explains a range of phenomena we don’t fully understand, such as why some people succumb so easily to mob psychology while others do not.

I can’t help but recall this novel when observing the ways in which trans discourse has hijacked our minds. Out of all proportion to its real-world impact, issues related to gender-nonconformity have come to dominate the political landscape. From the pages of major publications to the comment sections of social media posts, people are drawn to this subject with the same mindless irresistibility that drove Sawyer’s zombies to melt into hive minds. Amid our total inability to shut the fuck up about trans issues, we have produced an environment not civil enough to be called “discourse”, nor structured enough to be considered “debate.” It’s a chaotic battle royal of hysterical voices shrieking past one another without ever really communicating. Part of this is the generic brain-rot that comes with all culture wars, but with respect to trans, it goes deeper than that. There are fundamental differences and mutual confusions over the very nature of transgenderism/trans-ness that are too seldom acknowledged in plain language. Too many people appear not to understand the other side’s views — because they do not understand their own.

The Landscape

The right-wing position on trans issues is the simplest and most universally understood, and so can easily be shunted out of the way. They believe that trans is a mental illness and deviant perversion that should be given no quarter. It’s a stance of straightforward, crystal clear bigotry that leaves no ambiguities. No one wonders what Matt Walsh really means when he says that it should be illegal for anyone of any age to electively undergo surgical transition, or when Michael Knowles rhapsodizes about wanting to “eradicate transgenderism from public life.” Whatever else can be said of the right-wing position on trans, it’s not a source of confusion — right-wingers know exactly what they believe and so does everyone else. For that reason, the hard right can be put to one side for our purposes. Moderates and the far left, however, are another story.

Within the scale of opinion on sex and gender, the far left are hard-liners who accept virtually every element of the dominant left-activist narratives surrounding trans issues. They’re a small slice of society, but loud online, educated, and institutionally well-connected. Then there’s the moderates, a large umbrella representing the viewpoints that fall in between the far left and right, characterized by a generally small-l liberal attitude toward trans rights, but with major objections when it comes to youth gender medicine or the areas where trans rights seem to conflict with those of other groups. These two cohorts are so often at each other’s throats, but nested beneath the animosity is a profound breakdown of understanding. John Stuart Mill once wrote that “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.” When it comes to trans issues, the reverse also appears to be true. There is a two-way disconnect between moderates and the left grounded in delusion and incoherence. But neither understands their own views well enough to comprehend the other’s.

The Moderate Disconnect

The moderate confusion chiefly concerns the nature of their own views. Boiled down, many moderates do not believe that trans is real. That is to say, they do not believe that a man can become a woman, or vice versa. They do not believe that trans people are what they say they are. They do not regard a trans man or woman as being an actual man or woman. They view trans people, to put it plainly, as mentally ill. Most moderates nevertheless conceive of themselves and their positions as being pro-trans, and will likely object to being characterized in such blunt language.

To understand these moderates, we must understand how they see themselves. These are folks who, ten years ago, were considered culturally progressive. They supported same-sex marriage and ending the War on Drugs — issues once considered left-wing but which both now enjoy massive support across the political spectrum. But their socio-cultural views remained mostly static as the zeitgeist shifted past them to the left. They still think of themselves as liberals, in the John Locke and/or the Obama-Democrat sense, just as many middle-aged people still identify with their more youthful past selves despite the faces they see staring back at themselves in the mirror. Moderates conceive of themselves as being generally pro-trans; as more or less beginning from the same premise as the far left — protecting the vulnerable and the downtrodden¹ — but arriving at different conclusions. This is a delusion. 

On the contrary, moderates begin from the same premise as the right and arrive at different conclusions. Whereas the right’s rejection of the notion that a man can become a woman leads them to overt bigotry, it leads moderates to a position of qualified sympathy. They believe that trans people should not be discriminated against in housing or employment, and support the right of consenting adults to do what they please with their own bodies. They believe that we should humor these unfortunate souls and be kind to them out of a simple humanitarian concern for alleviating suffering — right up until the point that any trade-offs occur, which is when their sympathy appears to hit its limit. This isn’t being pro-trans. That’s not a value judgment, it’s merely a fact. If you only support something when it’s easy and costs nothing, then you don’t really support it, just as only supporting the free speech you like isn’t supporting free speech.

There’s no mind-reading required here; we know this as a matter of simple math. The number of people on the political right are dwarfed by the number of people who reject the most foundational claim of transgenderism. Donald Trump won just shy of 47 percent of the popular vote in 2020. About 30 percent of US adults identify as Republicans, and 36 percent as conservatives. 60 percent of Americans, by contrast, reject the proposition that a person can have a gender different from their biological sex. So depending on which figure we use as an indicator of the size of the political right, we know that between 13–30 percent of society who aren’t on the right also don’t think trans is real. And in nearly every trans edge case, it shows. The moment costs are introduced into the bargain, the reality of what moderates believe — or don’t believe — bleeds through.

Source: Pew Research, 2022

Suppose we discovered how to do actual body swaps, like something out of the 2003 film Freaky Friday, where a mother and daughter wake up to find themselves transposed into one another’s bodies. Suppose a Japanese grandmother’s mind was swapped into the body of an NFL linebacker. Would this person be a woman, despite having the body of a man? I think most people’s intuition would say that yes, this is a woman. And it would therefore follow that this brawny granny should be permitted to use women’s bathrooms, changing areas, shelters, and most other women-only spaces. It might cause some complications, yes, but we would see this person as a woman — we wouldn’t just be humoring them out of kindness. 

If you believed that “trans women are women”, to invoke the mantra — that is to say, if you believed that a biological male who identifies as a woman and has at least socially transitioned is, in some psychological sense, a woman on the inside² — most of the edge case “trade-offs” appear to fall away. Return to our hypothetical Japanese grandmother. If a trans woman is a woman, then a woman participating or being in women-only spaces does not conflict with women’s interests… because a woman is a woman. It seems tautological, but this point is absolutely central to everything related to trans. As I’ve previously written, trans is either real or it’s not. You can’t be pro-trans without believing it’s real, and attempting it will only be an exercise in cognitive dissonance. Until moderates acknowledge this, both openly and to themselves, they will continue not only speaking past those further to the left, but misinterpreting the criticism they receive as well.

Moderates tend to find their views under attack from the left. While the cultural right is usually content to build coalitions around points of agreement instead of focusing on areas of divergence, the far left generally has nothing but scorn for moderate positions on trans. Moderates themselves misdiagnose this leftist hostility as being the sole product of authoritarian zealotry. To be sure, there is more than enough of that to go around in left-activism, but that’s not the whole picture. These two camps come from different premises. Many moderates believe that while the suffering experienced by people who identify as trans is real, trans-ness itself is ultimately not. The far left, however, begins from the premise that trans is real (more on this later), and they perceive quite clearly that many moderates do not share that view. The fact that many moderates are either coy about or perhaps unaware of what they truly believe shades everything they have to say with an added element of untrustworthiness from the leftist point of view.

As stated, the moderate cohort is an umbrella under which a range of views exist. There are some moderates who do believe that trans is real, but whose reservations stem from other considerations. These include concerns over bad actors gaming overly permissive systems; disagreements over what standards should be used to constitute trans-ness; skepticism of kids’ ability to give informed consent to body-altering medical treatments; or the blurring line between ordinary gender-nonconformity and being trans. Because of the cacophonous nature of trans discourse, where the extremes hijack the conversation and everything descends into superlative-laden tribal food fights, these intra-moderate nuances are hardly ever recognized or hashed out.

The Far Left Disconnect

The leftmost faction’s confusion stems from a lack of coherence. Taken as a whole, their views make no sense. They follow no internal logic. They cannot be defended in any rigorous one-on-one setting where the other person can’t be shouted down by a mob or blocked with the click of a button. For example, the far left’s criteria for what constitutes trans-ness is simple self-identification (sometimes abbreviated to “self-ID”) — whatever you say you are, you are.

This presents obvious problems that spring immediately to mind. What if someone just declares themselves to be another gender to game the system, as some male criminals appear to have done to gain access to women’s prisons? What about someone who identifies as trans for purely political reasons but doesn’t actually feel themselves to be a gender different from their sex? To make matters worse, this primacy of self-ID and “lived experience” is a rather selective affair. The “lived experience” of detransitioners — those who transition, change their minds, and transition back — don’t seem to matter. The far left views detransitioners as the Taliban views apostates. Nor does the lived experience of autogynephiles — males who transition their gender not because of dysphoria, but because they are sexually attracted to being a woman. Such people are widely reviled, denigrated, and erased in leftist circles.³

That’s only the beginning. The far-left cohort also tends to peddle unscientific misinformation that rejects biological sex by casting it as a spectrum (it isn’t). They employ an inhuman and clinical newspeak that weirdly erases women — but not men. Ever the champions of consumer protections and government regulations, the far left suddenly become libertarians when it comes to youth gender medicine, decrying all limits and restrictions to medically transitioning children as intolerable tyrannies. Even arguing that children should be well-assessed as trans by qualified professionals before undergoing serious treatments that can have irreversible effects is regarded as tantamount to fascism. And these side effects themselves? Just hand-waved away.

Asked the now-infamous question “What is a woman?”, leftists struggle to produce an answer. At her 2022 confirmation hearing for her lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson refused to answer this question, stating “I’m not a biologist.”  

Like moderates, the far left imagine themselves to be pro-trans. And like moderates, the nature of their beliefs renders that assertion unworkable. You cannot be pro-trans without knowing what trans even is. If sex is whatever, and gender can’t be defined, and lived experience only matters when you say it does, and science is only reliable when you agree with it, then “transgender” has no meaning. The premise that the right and many moderates begin from is “trans is a mental illness.” The far left, however, has no premise, because they cannot even define their terms. Without clearly-defined terms grounded in science and logically consistent principles, what is a transgender person transitioning away from? What are they transitioning toward? We are left with nothing but political Calvinball — a game with no rhyme or reason whose rules are invented and revised on the fly to suit the whims of its creator. The notion that any form of human rights can be built atop a foundation that flimsy is a proposition only Sawyer’s zombies could accept.

The far left decries society’s transphobia, but they have made believing that trans is real almost impossible for so many people. On its own, trans is a counterintuitive concept. The far left’s contribution to the discourse has only been to saddle it with additional layers of unnecessary baggage that makes getting on board that much harder for moderates, who now see trans as part of a package deal whose other components are nonstarters. The left have failed to realize that they cannot effectively advocate for something they do not understand. They have failed to recognize how deranged it makes them appear in the eyes of others. And they have misinterpreted skepticism of their arguments, whose premises they themselves are confused about, as the sole consequence of unadulterated bigotry and hate.

The problem is, they don’t care. The far left are not interested in persuasion or coalition building. They don’t give a fuck about “respectability politics.” Their ultimate disconnect is about what it takes to actually achieve progress. High on their own fumes of revisionist history that glorifies radical activism, street movements, and political violence, leftists are convinced they can bypass politics altogether and simply seize progress and carry it off like an unprosecuted shoplifter in a San Fransisco Rite Aid. But it doesn’t work that way. You can’t bully your way to a better future. You can bully your way to backlash, though — and that’s precisely what they’ve done.

Through all of this, it’s trans people themselves who are left without true allies.

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There are no easy solutions. Our avenues of information amplify the worst of us, and the worst in us. Polarization is stratospheric. Institutions are politicized and ideologically captured. Identitarianism is rampant. I am under no illusion that any one person, thing, or event will resolve the trans debate. Introducing some clarity, however, cannot but improve the situation. If we are to rebuild the many bridges we have collectively burned, construction must begin on a solid base of understanding. Ideas matter. If you do not understand what you believe, you cannot understand what others believe. If you do not understand what others believe, you cannot communicate with them — only at them. Without communication, there can be no persuasion. And without persuasion, there can be no progress. We can all continue mindlessly clawing at each other’s faces like agitated mobs of zombies, or we can break the spell with a little clear thinking.

See also: “Trans Is either Real or It’s Not”

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1. This is the premise that moderates of good faith tend to ascribe to the far left. As we will see, this is not the case.

2. Some hard-liners proclaim that trans women are literally women in every conceivable sense, but that level of extremism isn’t required to reasonably agree with the statement “trans women are women.”

3. I recently edited a fantastic deep dive into autogynephilia by the autogynephilic writer Phil Illy. You can read it here.