But who is right? Tabby or Justine? A lot of people have accused Natalie Wynn, the creator of ContraPoints, of siding more with Justine.

Justine’s viewpoint has been described as “truscum”. But I don’t think that’s accurate. The truscum debate is about whether being trans is defined in terms of the medical condition of having gender dysphoria. It’s unclear whether Tabby has dysphoria but I would assume she does. So she’s clearly “truly trans”. The question is instead of whether she should put more effort into being feminine.

The debate really comes down to passing politics i.e. the politics of assimilation. When trans women go around threatening violence against women who are TERFs, is this really a “good look” for trans women as a whole? Does each individual trans woman have an obligation to act feminine in order to make us seem “less manly” so that we are, on the whole, more accepted by society? After all, that seems to be the only type of trans woman that is widely accepted.

I want to go back to the discussion of gender as performance. Justine argues that identity without action is meaningless. In other words, a pre-everything trans woman is not “as womanly” as a trans woman who passes flawlessly and has been post-transition for ten years.

But I think Justine is wrong. And I actually have an essay about this in my upcoming book. I disagree with Justine: you don’t have to act feminine to be a “real” woman because there are plenty of women (cis and trans) who don’t act feminine. That’s an obvious rebuttal. But I also disagree with Tabby: you need more than just an identity. Justine thought it was action = womanhood. Tabby thinks it’s identity = womanhood. But I actually think the right equation is : identity + desire = womanhood.

My view is that it’s impossible to be trans and not have at least some desire to change something about yourself or how you’re perceived by society in a matter that relates to gender/sex. It doesn’t have to be about your body, necessarily (that’s the truscum view). It can be small things like wanting a pronoun change. But in my view, it’s conceptually incoherent to be trans and have zero desire to change any aspect of yourself or how you’re perceived by society.

So, in my view, both Tabby and Justine are half-right. Justine is wrong to ignore the importance of identity. But Tabby is wrong to focus just on identity. You need both identity and desire. If there is identity without desire, it is passive, but desire without identity is blind.

Another thing that I feel like the dialogue didn’t address was cross-cultural differences in “The Aesthetic”. What it means to be a woman differs from culture to culture and has meant different things across historical time. And why can’t it continue to evolve and change? We have a much more expansive view of womanhood in 2018 than we did in 1958.

Many of Natalie’s fans have been confused by this video. They don’t know if she really agrees with Justine. But I think people are right to accuse Natalie of siding slightly more with Justine. She’s talking about being a public figure as a trans girl. That is Natalie. She is a very public trans woman with over 300,000 subscribers on YouTube. And you can clearly see she cares about passing/makeup/femininity. And the Tabby character is slightly portrayed as a joke, a gag.

But trust me, I sometimes have the same gut intuitions as Justine. It makes me feel weird when trans women act in ways that could be construed as violent or masculine for fear of how that reflects on me and the broader trans community.

But there are two things to consider here. One is the well-known leftist critique of tone-policing. For example, we shouldn’t tell people of color how to respond to their own oppression. It’s easy for white people to be like “Oh, you’d make such a better argument if only you were calm!” But I imagine it’s hard to stay calm while trying to live in an extremely racist society.

And the same is true of being trans. I personally would not advocate violence against TERFs but if that’s how a trans person wants to express their anger at living in an extremely transphohic society, who am I to tell them they are wrong? What would it even mean to say they are not justified in their anger?

All we can say is that it’s “bad optics”. But as Tabby points out, is it really bad optics? Bad for whom? It looks bad to society. But many things that are morally good look bad to a diseased society. In essence, we have to hold ourselves to a higher moral standard than the perceptions of a society rooted in racism, sexism, transphobia, etc.

But what is the framework of morality here? If we use utilitarianism, then it becomes incredibly hard to calculate the expected utility of being violent toward TERFs because nobody can predict all their future consequences of their actions. It’s entirely unclear of Tabby’s tendency to smash will ultimately lead to more happiness for a greater number of people. Maybe her standing up to TERFs and being unafraid of their accusations of manliness is what’s necessary to advance this world into a better world. Or maybe it won’t. One might think this is just a problem with utilitarianism. But none of the other moral frameworks really give a solid answer here either.

We see the same discussions about the rise of Fascism and the “Punch a Nazi” debate. For centrists, punching Nazis is “bad optics”. But when has centrism ever been on the moral vanguard? The Left says “fuck optics — we are fighting a real war here.” And besides, to the Left, punching a Nazi is great optics.

In the end, I think Justine is right when she said “Being somebody other than yourself is a bad look.” If you’re a combat boot-wearing, non-passing, trans, communist cat girl who expresses her frustration with society through metaphors of violence, then you do you. But if you’re like me and repulsed by the idea of ever punching anyone, then we have to make our difference through other means (I like writing).

But the essential contradiction of Justine’s position is that she says “Everything is aesthetics” but then seems to assume there is a Truth about what the “best” aesthetic is for trans women to adopt. But if everything is aesthetics, then Tabby’s aesthetic is equally valid as Justine’s. The cis woman who chooses to rock facial hair is just as valid as the stereotypically feminine cis woman. This should have been obvious if Justine had considered the reality of cross cultural anthropology.

So it’s not all about aesthetics. Identity is real. Desires are real. Authenticity is more than just a habitual performance. It’s about staying true to your deepest vision of how you want your life to go.