I feel your pain.

You’ve probably heard about that leaked memo from the Trump administration. You know, the one that wants to legally define “sex” strictly in terms of being either assigned male or female at birth, rather than the more expansive definition of the Obama administration that included “gender identity”.

The effects could potentially be devastating for the trans community. It would essentially be the government of the United States weighing in on the metaphysics of gender and decisively saying that gender identity does not exist.

Think about it. The government is saying that gender identity does not exist or is not relevant in the legal documentation of gender. Philosophers have been debating about the sex/gender distinction for a long time. This is a not an easy philosophical/metaphysical question to answer.

What is gender identity anyway? It’s a sense of being one’s gender. But how does it exist? Many theorists believe it is realized in the brain. But anti-trans activists would say the gender identity of a trans person is realized as a delusion.

But you can’t detect delusions or genders with measuring tools. Not directly, anyway. We essentially have to go on behavior or subjective reports from the person with the delusion/gender. We can also do neural correlation. But if you open the skull and look at the brain you won’t see them.

This is why transphobes think their side has “science” behind them. They think they can better order society by grounding it in a very specific version of scientific metaphysics that says the concept of “sex” refers to what the doctors write on the birth certificate, which, essentially is tying the concept to the presence or absence of penises. If there’s a penis present, it’s male. If not, then female.

And doctors then use surgery to “fix” all intersex babies to conform to this arbitrary rule of what it means to be an “M” or an “F” on a birth certificate. Intersex activists have been protesting this barbaric practice.

These anti-trans activists think that because this system is easily measurable it is somehow more scientific than the concept of gender.

But why should the undetectability of gender count against it? We can say the same thing about pain. The dentist has no way of knowing whether his patient is in pain except through the behavior of the patient or what the patient tells them. They can’t see or measure the pain directly. We always have to go on something else, usually the subjective reports of the patient.

In fact, there are a lot of psychological constructs in science that depend on subjective report for their conceptual coherency. And it’s not necessarily clear what the metaphysics of these constructs are or how they are realized in the brain.

To disregard gender identity as being unscientific because of how it is measured you have to basically say most if not all of psychology is also unscientific.

Take consciousness itself. Most theorists agree it is subjective. Deeply personal. Cannot be directly measured. But it is nevertheless real and can be studied by scientists.

Gender is no different. We actually already have done brain studies on gender identity and almost all the literature reviews on the subject suggest that gender identity is real. Of course, we didn’t need science to tell us that. Just like we didn’t need neuroscience to tell us that pain was real. Cavemen were stubbing their toes long ago.

So what we have is the US government, influenced by the evangelical Christian right, essentially doing the equivalent of denying the pain of millions of people, telling us our pain doesn’t matter, that it doesn’t exist, and that any of the legal documentation we’ve gotten to prove that our pain exists is not valid.

Can you see how ridiculous that is?

Trans people are real. We’re not lying or delusional about our genders. Gender is not defined by our genitals at birth. Biology is not destiny. The concept of “sex” is an operational concept in science and the issue of whether gender identity is real is a distinct theoretical question. And the answer is a resounding “yes”. Gender identity is real. It is possible to have a gender that does not match the gender/sex that was assigned to you at birth.

Millions of people around the world, and throughout history and across cultures, are testament to the reality of trans/queer identity. We have always existed and we will continue to exist.

#WontBeErased