Dangerous transgender questions

            Dangerous transgender questions

 

Transgender identity is objectively real. In this essay I pursue the implications of that to some dangerous medical, political, and philosophical questions, which I ask here. I apologize in advance for all of my prejudices and misunderstandings, here exposed.

I focus not on trans-genderism in general, but specifically gender dysphoria. Transgender people who are content with their anatomy pose no philosophical puzzles. But in gender dysphoria, the dysphoria is evidence that the condition is objectively real. Therefore gender dysphoria is an ailment, with bio-medical correlates and causes, which in theory could be medically treated. But to do so would require deep biological understanding of the condition, and trans-genderism is not well understood in terms of medicine.

Historically, medicine tends to pass through three stages in its treatment of a poorly-understood condition: Palliation, Intervention, and Cure.

Palliation: non-intervention, counseling, placebos. Requires little knowledge. Cheap, ineffective.

Intervention: aggressive attack on symptoms. Drugs, radiation, surgeries. Expensive, lengthy, painful, risky.

Cure: targeted intervention into root causes. Requires deep knowledge. Cheap, quick, painless, effective.

 

Applied to gender dysphoria:

Palliation: Counseling, support groups, transvestism.

Intervention: Drugs, hormones, surgery.

Cure: ???

What would constitute a medical cure for gender dysphoria? That’s a dangerous question, both politically and philosophically. I speculate that it would involve, not altering the body to fit the mind, but altering the mind to fit the body. After the injection, the patient’s brain rewires itself to identify its body’s gender as its anatomical sex. That cures the gender dysphoria.

In the Star Trek, Next Generation, 3rd season, 17th episode, “The Outcast”, Soren of the post-gender J’naii expressed female gender, with Riker’s help; but expressing specific gender is forbidden under J’naii law, so Soren was forced to take “psychotectic therapy”. This cured Soren of female gender, despite Riker’s objections.

There are political problems with this. Would society impose cisgender injections by force? Or bribery, or stigma? Similar issues apply to other gender minorities. Even gender majorities could, theoretically, suffer medical discrimination.

The medical question is, how would such an injection work? What brain structures are involved in gender identification, and how? We do not know enough, or really anything at all, about this particular mind/body problem, so intervention is not consistent with the Hippocratic Oath.

But some montebacks have tried. Here I am not discussing quack ‘conversion therapy’; I am asking, what if some gender-adjustment treatment really did work as advertised? What if there were “psychotectic therapy”?

The questions I ask here are philosophical. For instance, suppose a dysphoric trans person takes the cisgender injection, turns cis, and is no longer gender dysphoric. Is that the same person as before? How deeply is gender part of identity?

To achieve true cure, medicine needs to find an ailment’s material cause. What is the material cause of gender dysphoria? Perhaps some chemical pollutants in the modern urban environment? Or a breakdown of social conditioning? Or perhaps a long-ago-evolved response to population pressure? Whatever answer science proposes would create a free-will / materialism dilemma.

And in general, how real is identity? I submit that identity has little to do with an individual’s choices, but instead is mostly assigned by society. The government sends an identity card to you; you don’t send one to it. So I say that identity politics is a politics of control, not a politics of liberation. Identity politics does not ask “how will you escape stereotypes?”; instead it asks “to which stereotypes will you conform?”

For liberation, I recommend universality politics. That’s because liberty is not an entity; it is a universal. Identity politics is for some but not all; universality politics is everyone equally; that is, for all or none.

So... Liberty for everyone equally! Freedom to all or none!