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"What if someone thinks they're a cat?" "Suppose some guy wants to be a tree." "What about
people who think they're actually dolphins?" "How is this any different from someone who
believes they're Napoleon?" Does any of this sound familiar? If so, you probably know what's
going on here. These are just some of the hypotheticals that people have compared with
being transgender, in order to portray trans people as similarly absurd or delusional.
This argument shows up all over the place, arising independently among people who apparently
come up with it on the spot. For some reason, this is one of the biggest go-to tactics of
people who think being trans isn't a real thing. Not only is this the territory of random
uninformed internet commenters and people who write in to the Straight Dope column,
but even bioethics experts like Alice Dreger have joined the party. In an article for The
Stranger, Dreger criticizes people who supposedly rush gender-nonconforming children into a
path of medical transition that may not be right for them. She points out that most of
these kids will grow out of identifying as another sex, and compares this to children
who like to pretend they're train engines. Now, however easy it may be to dismiss kids
and their wild imaginations, most of the adult world is not quite so casual about gender.
Indeed, it's common for people to regard gender identity with the utmost seriousness. In their
words and in their actions, most people will agree: it does matter what gender someone
is. We see this in the insistence of religious conservatives that a proper marital and ***
relationship can only consist of "one man and one woman", coming together to create
a "one-flesh union". It's easy to see that these hardliners probably wouldn't be so receptive
to the notion that gender is such a trivial thing and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Would they really be swayed from their fixation on gender by the argument of "Well, what about
that guy who wants to be a cat?" Of course, religious conservatives are hardly representative
of society in general, but their focus on gender certainly is. For most people, gender
is a criterion for their intimate relationships, and it's usually a pretty strict one. It's
unlikely that a heterosexual man would be convinced to date outside of his preferred
sex on the grounds that, hey, gender isn't that important. After all, some people think
they're Napoleon! In contrast to the dismissive arguments that are wielded against trans people,
most of the world does recognize that gender is pretty significant. It's a central feature
of people's identities: To men, it's important that they're men, and to women, it's important
that they're women. However inconvenient and uncomfortable the different social norms applied
to each gender may be, this still doesn't drive people to identify as another sex. Their
gender identity is simply a part of who they are, for better or worse. So just how convincing
does it sound when we try to use these arguments on men and women who value their identities
as men and women? Does it seem at all appropriate to treat their genders as no more meaningful
than people who want to be dolphins? Should we see their genders as nothing but a phase
that they'll probably grow out of? Is it possible that wanting to be a man or a woman is really
just some kind of *** fetish or mental illness they're suffering from? Deciding to
live as a man or a woman is a pretty serious choice to make, you know. Are they really
sure about this? Some people have regretted it, after all. And yet most people are content
to continue identifying as the gender they're most comfortable with. They know who they
are, they know who they want to fall in love with, and they know that this isn't anything
like wanting to be a cat. Even Alice Dreger acknowledges that children whose cross-gender
identification dissipates usually grow up to be gay. Acting like this is just as irrelevant
to the development of their identities as wanting to be a train is ridiculous. Gender
matters to children. Gender matters to adults. And when it's that important to people's lives,
what sense does it make to declare that a certain class of people shouldn't have their
genders taken seriously at all? I simply don't believe it. If gender was really so insignificant,
we wouldn't see people insisting that trans women are really men, or freaking out over
the possibility that one of their partners might have been trans and didn't tell them.
Why would they care? We wouldn't see straight people or gay people. We wouldn't even see
men or women at all, since gender is just some nonsense like people who want to be trees.
If gender really doesn't matter, I expect people to start acting like it. I'm waiting.