It is always so good to read your clear, detailed, rational and considerate arguments. Your writings are so useful and enlightening, for anybody I believe who struggles with this mess of competing irrationality.
And what amazes me, and I truly admire, is your ability to maintain a cool mind, and a generous, understanding and liberal attitude, towards positions that make me so furious as to wish them and their holders erased from the face of the Earth. I hope I will always baulk at enacting such wishes or endorsing who does, but it is hard. Your words help with that.
Great unpacking of the issue! In my undergrad (2001-2005) and grad school (2005-2012) years I was consistently surrounded by people with a liberal attitude to gender. There were still areas of disagreement, but a lot of area of agreement that could be broadly taken for granted. It's a bit disorienting to observe that the past 15 years have featured a simultaneous surge in both conservative manosphere-type ideas on the one hand and authoritarian queer gender ideology on the other. It feels like us liberals haven't had the upper hand lately. Do you think this is likely to improve, though? Perhaps the appeal of the various illiberal ideologies will flame out?
This is my hope, yes. That people will get so sick of the extreme irrationalism, illiberalism and detachment from reality that they develop an appetite for reason, evidence and individual liberty.
I share your liberal sentiment, but I don't think today's "genderqueer" faction will ever be able to exist within this framework. Their chosen identity fundamentally depends on affirmation by others. Their "identity" cannot be realized by simply being allowed to express themselves in gender-bending ways like David Bowie, they demand to be recognized as actually being part of the opposite sex class. They cannot afford others the freedom not to believe that they actually are and not to treat them as if their claim was true. If they did, they would concede that their identity isn't what they believe it is [i.e. that that their identity isn't based in objective truth]. A liberal framework is intrinsically incompatible with their self concept and their belief system, which necessitates authoritarian domination of everyone around them to be practiced. Their claim that a failure to affirm another person's 'gender identity' "represents a denial of the trans-identified individual’s right to exist" is not an extremist version of today's "genderqueer" stance, it is intrinsic to it.
You appear to be saying that you don’t think people who ascribe to authoritarian trans activism with all the demands and beliefs and rhetoric associated with that will be able to hold liberal beliefs that are contrary to that, but that’s just obviously true and tautological. People who are “A” cannot be “not A”. It applies to every group. Authoritarian social conservatives cannot hold liberal values either. That’s just definitional.
I hope to be talking to a European liberal LGBT group next month. They’ve invited me to talk about my book, Cynical Theories, which is about the authoritarian CSJ movement and how it developed and which is in keeping with their values. It’s this piece that has prompted them to invite me. I have also written for Queer Majority which is a classically liberal organisation that objects to authoritarianism consistently and have just published a book about the problems with authoritarian queer theory.
“They cannot afford others the freedom not to [affirm their beliefs] because then they’d concede that their identity isn’t what they say it is.” is a description of an authoritarian mindset. Liberalism requires that you defend other people’s right to believe things contrary to your own beliefs.”
E.g., I am a Christian but defend your right not to be.
In the same way, a liberal stance on queerness or trans identity is “I believe trans people’s gender identity is legitimate but defend your right not to believe in it.” I support those people.
I hope it was clear that I agree with you that liberalism requires defending other people's right to believe things contrary to your own beliefs. Now the question is, what does it mean to defend someone's right to believe that they are the opposite sex? Does defending this right require accommodation in the spaces of that opposite sex? Does it mean that I have to use the "preferred pronouns" and indulge their fiction? I don't think it does, because doing these things is more than just allowing someone to believe what they want, it is partaking in the practice of the belief. The problem is that unlike other belief systems, transgenderism by definition requires this sort of participation, because the belief that one is the opposite sex cannot be practiced without it. Unlike being a Christian, being "trans" is inherently about social roles that need social recognition, and that is what appears to make it incompatible with a live-and-let-live approach.
The entire controversy about "trans rights" is about those demands for social participation in someone else's belief, since civil rights for trans people are already secure. And these demands manifest not only on the policy level, but at the private level as well, where they are enforced not by way of laws, but through social and moral pressure, which is equally authoritarian. Even if I am doing it to be kind, it's a fine line between that and just fearing the social repercussions of speaking what I believe is true.
Now the question is, what does it mean to defend someone's right to believe that they are the opposite sex? Does defending this right require accommodation in the spaces of that opposite sex? Does it mean that I have to use the "preferred pronouns" and indulge their fiction?
Well, no. Liberalism is the right to believe, speak, live as one sees fit provided it harms no-one else nor denies them the same freedoms.
Things like taking women's sex-based rights away and medicalising children does harm. Things like forcing others to affirm your beliefs denies them liberty.
It is like Christianity. It's just that we've achieved a society where Christians are no longer allowed to force their beliefs into every space or make others affirm it. Some will still claim that not being able to do this oppresses them but we ignore this as an extremist position. We need to do this with authoritarian trans activism too.
I absolutely take this comparison when debating against radical trans/queer activism. People can be the religion or adopt the sexual persona they wish, they just can't expect others to adopt the personal worldview that their belief is based on. Evangelists are annoying in the way that pushy salesmen are annoying, regardless of what is being sold (550 mg of a wonder drug, 50 mg of testosterone blockers, or 50 mg of salvation).
I figured your answer would be "no". But what then is left of "trans rights" as conceived of by most trans-identified people? How do they not take this as a complete capitulation? If demanding recognition as the opposite sex, on either the legal or the private, personal level, is considered an extremist position (and I agree it is), isn't any demand for special "trans rights" that are not just the civil rights everybody enjoys extremist? Without such social recognition of their claim to opposite-sex status, their self-ID becomes meaningless. Unlike someone's Christian belief, which doesn't depend on anyone else sharing it.
"But what then is left of "trans rights" as conceived of by most trans-identified people?"
Trans authoritarians are told "No."
"How do they not take this as a complete capitulation?"
They would. That's their problem. They need to deal with it. Like everybody else who recognises that they don't have the right to impose their beliefs on anybody else.
"
isn't any demand for special "trans rights" that are not just the civil rights everybody enjoys extremist?"
Yes
"Without such social recognition of their claim to opposite-sex status, their self-ID becomes meaningless."
No, voluntary communities in which these beliefs are shared can continue to exist, again like religion. This was also the case with transsexuals/transvestites in the 90s and this was accepted. The culture then was not remotely fragile and demanding of validation. Transsexuals, transvestites, drag queens were typified by being tough and mouthy and you still see this persona in drag queen performances. They'd respond to insult with insult and humour. Anybody who wants wider society to be compelled to accept their identity is just told no.
"Unlike someone's Christian belief, which doesn't depend on anyone else sharing it."
That's the case now, because Christianity has been subjected to liberalism. The people who don't accept that other people can reject and openly criticise or mock their faith now, in my country, are authoritarian Muslims. They are the ones who want to ban criticism of Islam and justify violent responses to it and punishing apostasy legally or socially. We must not stand for that either.
The question I am trying to get answered is what a classical liberal approach to transgenderism could look like in practice, both at a policy and a personal level. What are "trans rights" from a classical liberal perspective?
Let people believe, speak, live as they see fit...
(You can believe what you want, say what you want, wear what you want etc.)
provided it does no material harm to anyone else...
(no self-IDing of men into spaces where women are vulnerable or into their sporting categories or medicalising children too young to give informed consent)
or denies their liberties
(other people remain free to disbelieve in gender identity and say so)
No, I am saying that the self-concept of "being trans" is incompatible with liberalism, because it fundamentally depends on societal affirmation. Therefore, there is no way to integrate transgenderism as it conceives of itself into liberal society and discourse. Maybe that's obvious (I agree it is), but there are plenty of people (see for instance Jamie Paul's recent piece, or Jonathan Cowan's Politico piece) who are searching for a "middle-ground" on this issue. My point is that the idea of transgenderism itself is fundamentally authoritarian, because it goes beyond defying gender norms and demands a denial of biological reality. Social conservatism can be authoritarian, but it can also be practiced by individuals without validation from others. I don't think transgenderism can be practiced without such validation.
To give a mundane example, when my sister angrily demands that I use identity-based pronouns for her daughter's trans-identified boyfriend (whom I have never met) while talking to her about him, that is authoritarian. If I ever met him, I would surely be expected to play along with the fiction that he is a woman, and if I don't, it would be extremely offensive to him, my niece, and everyone else present, because I would be dispelling the illusion he is trying to uphold and hurt his feelings (and in this situation, I would probably play along just to keep the peace and not offend anyone). The people in my family don't know anything about the theoretical foundations of gender ideology or would consider themselves radicals; their expectation to play along is built on their belief in the truth of an innate gender identity and the desire to be kind and inclusive. They consider affirming his "gender identity" to be of the same liberal nature as accepting someone's homosexuality, when I would perceive it as an authoritarian demand to affirm something I don't believe is true. Maybe this situation just illustrates the capture of normal people by radical activist ideology, but beyond that I think it demonstrates the necessity of societal affirmation for transgenderism to be practiced.
No, I am saying that the self-concept of "being trans" is incompatible with liberalism, because it fundamentally depends on societal affirmation.
Well, it doesn't. No more than any other belief. The fact that people have claimed it does indicates that they are authoritarian and we must say 'no' to them.
You are conflating holding a belief or self-conception oneself with imposing it on everyone else. That's what we need to separate and what liberalism does separate.
No belief about sex or gender works is inherently authoritarian. You have to impose it on others in an authoritarian way. You correctly observe that gender conservatism can be practiced without validation from others but it wasn't for centuries, was it? Women weren't allowed to vote and own property or take positions of power or prestigious jobs. Even if they did not hold views that restricted women to the domestic sphere themselves, they were imposed on them by people who did. Now, people can absolutely form voluntary marriages and communities who hold those beliefs but not impose them on anybody else.
You are rightly objecting to authoritarianism and pointing out that people can be socially pressured to validate certain ideas without being ideologues themselves. You have a personal experience of this. I do too, but it probably won't surprise you to learn that none of my four trans-identified friends take this stance. All but one of them found their way to me via my writing on liberalism which they support (well, one is an anarcho-capitalist which is a much more radical idea of freedom).
I also understand why it can be hard to separate an idea from the authoritarian imposition of an idea when you've only seen the idea imposed in an authoritarian way. I'm not sure where you are, but I am in England. Following Bloody Mary bringing the Inquisition to England in the 1550s, it was believed that Catholicism could only be practiced in authoritarian ways and it was banned for centuries. People started to be allowed to be Catholic again in the 19th century and were gradually allowed to attend universities and take position of power, although the monarch was still not allowed to marry a Catholic until this century. We now accept that it is quite possible to be Catholic without making everybody else affirm it but for a long time, it was claimed that this was not possible and Catholicism was inherently authoritarian.
We need to be able to separate the holding of a belief from imposition of that belief even when prominent proponents of that belief are authoritarian and this gains public acceptance. We ultimately have two choices about what we oppose - the ideas or the authoritarian imposition of ideas. That looks like this in this case:
1) Banning people from believing in gender identity and expressing that belief in their speech or their presentation. Essentially making them pretend not to believe in it and affirm that it is not true.
2) Preventing people from imposing that belief on others and telling them they can believe in gender identity and say so and dress and present as they wish but other people can continue to regard them as, say, a man in a dress and say so. Single sex spaces are protected and so are children's bodies. They can decide on transitioning when they are adults if they so choose.
The liberal stance will always be the second one. The trans activists will act as though preventing them from imposing their beliefs on others is the same thing as denying them their beliefs because they cannot separate holding a belief and imposing it on others either but it is not the same thing and liberals must be able to maintain this distinction. Then we can push gender identity back to where it belongs - as a belief that some people hold but which has no power or status in society and which others are in their right not believe. Exactly like religion.
This exchange was very illuminating. I found myself feeling agreement with both of you, despite your disagreement.
I see Kate's point very clearly: that this belief in gender identity rests on social affirmation of the idea/identity, and this seems to necessitate a different response than simply "live and let live." By way of example: I can affirm people's right to believe that vaccines cause harm even while disagreeing that vaccines cause harm. But to affirm people's right to believe in gender identity seems to demand that I affirm their stated gender identity. Using their preferred pronouns feels like participating in and/or affirming the belief. So it seems like, by virtue of accepting that some people believe it, one is affirming the belief.
But I think I see what you're saying too, Helen. That these two things are distinct: affirming one's right to hold a belief is not affirming the belief itself. I just don't always know how to embody this in practice. Because telling people "no" by simply refusing to use their preferred pronouns, at least where I live in Canada, would come across as blatantly confrontational, dehumanizing or stigmatizing, would certainly have significant social costs, and in Canada, may even have legal and financial costs. So it's hard to draw a distinction between the idea and its authoritarian expression at this time and location in history.
Not sure if I've understood both of your positions correctly, but this was my takeaway anyway. Thanks for the exchange!
“ I just don't always know how to embody this in practice. Because telling people "no" by simply refusing to use their preferred pronouns, at least where I live in Canada, would come across as blatantly confrontational, dehumanizing or stigmatizing, would certainly have significant social costs, and in Canada, may even have legal and financial costs. So it's hard to draw a distinction between the idea and its authoritarian expression at this time and location in history.”
Quite. It is not easy and the fact that it is not easy reveals clearly the lapse in liberalism. We need to fix this by fighting for the liberalism. It is not harder than fighting for an alternative form of authoritarianism. Either way, we have to stand up to the bullies and change the systems which protect them.
What's crazy is people disagree with each other all the time over strongly held beliefs that provide a stable sense of self, such as religion and politics without suffering social consequences. The point of liberalism is that we prefer disagreement to physical blows, after all. Yet as you point out, in places like Canada, being trans is some exception to this rule. It shouldn't be.
People who disagree with gender self-ID aren't saying the other person isn't human or doesn't exist. They only disagree with what sort of human they exist as: birth sex versus self-identified gender...and I would argue it's for fair reasons. It's not a matter of "discrimination", it's classification. The whole claim of "stigma", "attacking", "dehumanizing" and such comes across as emotional manipulation, and people claiming those should be seen as bad actors and not victims. Classical liberal democracies require people with emotional regulation and fortitude to tolerate disagreement.
The difference between the belief of someone that they are the opposite sex and a deeply held belief in, say, Christianity is that a belief in "gender identity" is fundamentally about social roles/relationships and the way other people perceive and address you, which real religions are not. The social perception/role in everyday life and the pronouns ARE the religious practice. A fundamentalist Christian isn't demanding, or even hoping for someone to alter their speech in a way that may conflict with the other person's perception of reality when they address them, but the "trans" person is.
Picture a family reunion where a trans-identified person shows up, as well as a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim. It seems easy to set aside the latters' religious beliefs during the time spent together by simply not talking about them. The same is not really possible with the trans-identified person's beliefs, because for that person to practice their belief, they need others to participate at all times, in a way that is not the case with the Christian or Muslim. Even if nobody explicitly demands the use of preferred pronouns, the social pressure to conform will be enormous for everyone in attendance, and non-compliance will create animosity. That's why I think that transgenderism is intrinsically illiberal, because it is a belief that is practiced in everyday life, not in a house of worship, and it's practice depends on the participation of everyday contacts.
2. Gender roles - defined but socially negotiable in my view
3. Gender stereotypes - often true on average (Lee Jussims work) - Rouglhly 50% biology, 50% environmental influence. At extremes of the distribution the stereotypes are often overwhelmingly true (basic science)
4. Gender affirming, dangerous to those wiith ROGD, unscientific, hints of religious zeal in supporters who think they are being nice to young trans when they might just be horrific to young lesbians. Data is mounting against them.
The taxonomy is the most useful thing in here — particularly the observation that 'gender critical' has been colonized by people who are actually gender conservative, and that the original left-wing feminists who built the framework now feel alienated from the movement they started. That distinction gets collapsed constantly in this debate, and naming it cleanly is doing real work.
What the essay doesn't do — and I think it's the next necessary step — is ask what happens when one of these three ideologies gains institutional traction while the other two are still arguing about definitions. The liberal framework you're describing depends on a deliberative space in which competing views can be expressed, tested against reality, and allowed to coexist. That space requires friction. What's been documented in several countries is the deliberate engineering away of that friction — legislation passed in the slipstream of more popular reforms, press coverage minimized, opposition branded before it could organize. The taxonomy you've mapped is exactly what that process was designed to prevent from surfacing.
The conclusion — live and let live, argue without being penalized — is right. But it arrives without accounting for what happens when one party to the argument has already moved the furniture while the others were still finding their seats.
I really don’t know what you mean? This isn’t an essay describing the effects of institutional capture. It’s arguing for recognising that there is more than one gender ideology.
I have addressed that quite a lot, though. If you have a look at the Grievance Studies Affair, this is a project in which colleagues and I investigated the ‘wokeness’ problem in academic journals. Then Cynical Theories looks at how these ideas evolved and the impacts of them on scholarship but also (in one chapter) more broadly. The Counterweight Handbook is an indepth look at how they affected people in schools and workplaces.
You're right, and I was overreaching. I read the essay as the whole argument rather than as one piece of a larger body of work — and clearly that body of work addresses exactly what I was pointing at, in considerably more depth than a Substack comment deserves. I'll look at the Counterweight Handbook. The Grievance Studies Affair I know, and it's exactly the kind of thing I had in mind. Apologies for pushing on a door you'd already opened.
I like it that you are bringing back into discussion the concepts of "feminine" and "masculine", that is a question that needs to be asked more often: what is the difference between "butch, masculine woman" and "non-binary"? And I think the answer is that the first is a description and the second is an identity: a club membership.
I distinctly remember the version of liberalism when the cool thing was to keep one's identity small, mostly national and religious identity small. I watched up close how the Serbs and Croats were killing each other over what seemed to me very small differences, and it was just so sad and stupid. Basically the same language with a different script, and going to different versions of Christian churches, except, like most people after 40 years of Communism, they were not even going to church much... and it takes like a month in a classroom to learn to read the other script (I can still read Russian fairly well), so what is the big deal? Just stop... so the cool thing was to not do identity much. I still think like that, I don't even tell people where I am from, as it is not really simple, and would not describe me predictably, I am a sort of a half-orc well assimilated to Hobbiton now...
But it turned out, getting rid of identity is a kind of a privileged thing. Less privileged people - not white, not cis and so on - cannot escape their identities so easily, so they sort of leaned into it as a kind of support network.
So I guess right now people are really fighting over club membership... which mostly seems just semantics to me, but maybe there is something more...
Every society has to deal with its outliers, and since some outliers are benign and others not, a one-size-fits-all approach to deviance will not do. I see this dynamic with the various approaches to gender you describe.
The pitfall of social conservatism is that it refuses to see the outliers, the tails of the bell curve, and dismisses them as wrong or non-existent. This constrains and ignores the inevitable diversity of human experience and perspectives, which are incredibly valuable for innovation and ensuring the flourishing of all.
The pitfall of social liberalism/progressivism is when it refuses to see the baseline norm, the middle of the bell curve, as legitimate. This has the opposite effect of destroying the behaviors that most people in society seem to need or want, and which provide the firm foundational scaffolding on which the outliers can successfully function.
One of the points of the gay rights movement was that there are many ways to be a man or woman, which recognizes the existence of outliers. Queer theory seems to claim the opposite, refusing to see nuance and claiming a man who isn't the exact stereotype of masculinity as some unique gender, and arguing that its widespread...thus ignoring the norms.
Likewise, I don't think most people would care if someone wants to act or appear more like the opposite sex (outliers, likely extreme ones); the problem has come when people and social institutions are forced to accommodate that person's worldview, there are no guardrails, and when that transitioning is extended to children (degrading the norms).
Reading this is somehow like getting into a well made bed after a long hectic day. Helen- you fold ideas, like they are neat tucked corners, and nothing tugs too much in one direction or the other. I can at last relax enough to sink into deep contemplation and think about things clearly. It is a masterful skill- thank you!
This whole argument falls down when it misrepresents feminist ideology. Your criticism of radical gender ideologies actually depends on the idea that feminism is based on “demonising” and “pathologising” men - this is a straw woman argument which is patently false. It’s based on popular media distortions and caricatures of a sub group of feminism from the 1970s which is routinely used to stereotype all radical feminism. While you make the point that all radical critical feminists don’t demonise men - your emotive use of this argument plays into a stereotyped misrepresentation of feminism which is used to politically derail discussions of the real cause and effects of gender inequality and to demonise feminists. Your argument relies on emphasising this misrepresentation in quite emotive and sensationalist language - which undermines the whole discussion and makes it look like a culture war justification for existing inequalities. While it may be true that some women (often liberal feminists blame men and mistake patriarchy for individual psychology, in fact), you must know that the actual arguments of critical feminists do nothing of the sort?
You do not explain how women came to be economically, socially and politically subordinated - or why they are still subordinated in the majority of cultures globally? Perhaps this is down to evolution, if not culture, it’s not clear? If it’s evolutionary then that would be a justification of women’s subordination by appealing to a natural order which is exactly what gender theorists critique. If it’s historical and cultural, what sustains and maintains it and how do you justify it?
By misrepresenting feminist arguments for equality and freedom as an attack on men’s freedom - you are hiding a huge ideological bias behind claims of commitment to a higher “truth”, which somehow lies outside of ideology. In the end the effect of the whole argument is to deny that gender inequality really exists by obfuscating its causes and thus supports the unequal status quo as the liberal ideal - which you portray as “above” politics and ideology.
Thank you Helen. This was incredibly helpful and clarifying. I've been trying to figure out my own stance on this, and this really helps me clarify things.
But also, damn it Helen. I've had this on my reading list for two weeks, and only just now sat down to read it. And now, instead of being caught up, I have 6 more articles you referenced that I now want to read.
It is always so good to read your clear, detailed, rational and considerate arguments. Your writings are so useful and enlightening, for anybody I believe who struggles with this mess of competing irrationality.
And what amazes me, and I truly admire, is your ability to maintain a cool mind, and a generous, understanding and liberal attitude, towards positions that make me so furious as to wish them and their holders erased from the face of the Earth. I hope I will always baulk at enacting such wishes or endorsing who does, but it is hard. Your words help with that.
Great unpacking of the issue! In my undergrad (2001-2005) and grad school (2005-2012) years I was consistently surrounded by people with a liberal attitude to gender. There were still areas of disagreement, but a lot of area of agreement that could be broadly taken for granted. It's a bit disorienting to observe that the past 15 years have featured a simultaneous surge in both conservative manosphere-type ideas on the one hand and authoritarian queer gender ideology on the other. It feels like us liberals haven't had the upper hand lately. Do you think this is likely to improve, though? Perhaps the appeal of the various illiberal ideologies will flame out?
This is my hope, yes. That people will get so sick of the extreme irrationalism, illiberalism and detachment from reality that they develop an appetite for reason, evidence and individual liberty.
Ain’t no biological woman ever impregnated no biological man, no nevertime.. said Alice to the March Hare.
Thanks Helen.
This is excellent.
I share your liberal sentiment, but I don't think today's "genderqueer" faction will ever be able to exist within this framework. Their chosen identity fundamentally depends on affirmation by others. Their "identity" cannot be realized by simply being allowed to express themselves in gender-bending ways like David Bowie, they demand to be recognized as actually being part of the opposite sex class. They cannot afford others the freedom not to believe that they actually are and not to treat them as if their claim was true. If they did, they would concede that their identity isn't what they believe it is [i.e. that that their identity isn't based in objective truth]. A liberal framework is intrinsically incompatible with their self concept and their belief system, which necessitates authoritarian domination of everyone around them to be practiced. Their claim that a failure to affirm another person's 'gender identity' "represents a denial of the trans-identified individual’s right to exist" is not an extremist version of today's "genderqueer" stance, it is intrinsic to it.
You appear to be saying that you don’t think people who ascribe to authoritarian trans activism with all the demands and beliefs and rhetoric associated with that will be able to hold liberal beliefs that are contrary to that, but that’s just obviously true and tautological. People who are “A” cannot be “not A”. It applies to every group. Authoritarian social conservatives cannot hold liberal values either. That’s just definitional.
I hope to be talking to a European liberal LGBT group next month. They’ve invited me to talk about my book, Cynical Theories, which is about the authoritarian CSJ movement and how it developed and which is in keeping with their values. It’s this piece that has prompted them to invite me. I have also written for Queer Majority which is a classically liberal organisation that objects to authoritarianism consistently and have just published a book about the problems with authoritarian queer theory.
“They cannot afford others the freedom not to [affirm their beliefs] because then they’d concede that their identity isn’t what they say it is.” is a description of an authoritarian mindset. Liberalism requires that you defend other people’s right to believe things contrary to your own beliefs.”
E.g., I am a Christian but defend your right not to be.
In the same way, a liberal stance on queerness or trans identity is “I believe trans people’s gender identity is legitimate but defend your right not to believe in it.” I support those people.
I hope it was clear that I agree with you that liberalism requires defending other people's right to believe things contrary to your own beliefs. Now the question is, what does it mean to defend someone's right to believe that they are the opposite sex? Does defending this right require accommodation in the spaces of that opposite sex? Does it mean that I have to use the "preferred pronouns" and indulge their fiction? I don't think it does, because doing these things is more than just allowing someone to believe what they want, it is partaking in the practice of the belief. The problem is that unlike other belief systems, transgenderism by definition requires this sort of participation, because the belief that one is the opposite sex cannot be practiced without it. Unlike being a Christian, being "trans" is inherently about social roles that need social recognition, and that is what appears to make it incompatible with a live-and-let-live approach.
The entire controversy about "trans rights" is about those demands for social participation in someone else's belief, since civil rights for trans people are already secure. And these demands manifest not only on the policy level, but at the private level as well, where they are enforced not by way of laws, but through social and moral pressure, which is equally authoritarian. Even if I am doing it to be kind, it's a fine line between that and just fearing the social repercussions of speaking what I believe is true.
Now the question is, what does it mean to defend someone's right to believe that they are the opposite sex? Does defending this right require accommodation in the spaces of that opposite sex? Does it mean that I have to use the "preferred pronouns" and indulge their fiction?
Well, no. Liberalism is the right to believe, speak, live as one sees fit provided it harms no-one else nor denies them the same freedoms.
Things like taking women's sex-based rights away and medicalising children does harm. Things like forcing others to affirm your beliefs denies them liberty.
It is like Christianity. It's just that we've achieved a society where Christians are no longer allowed to force their beliefs into every space or make others affirm it. Some will still claim that not being able to do this oppresses them but we ignore this as an extremist position. We need to do this with authoritarian trans activism too.
I absolutely take this comparison when debating against radical trans/queer activism. People can be the religion or adopt the sexual persona they wish, they just can't expect others to adopt the personal worldview that their belief is based on. Evangelists are annoying in the way that pushy salesmen are annoying, regardless of what is being sold (550 mg of a wonder drug, 50 mg of testosterone blockers, or 50 mg of salvation).
I figured your answer would be "no". But what then is left of "trans rights" as conceived of by most trans-identified people? How do they not take this as a complete capitulation? If demanding recognition as the opposite sex, on either the legal or the private, personal level, is considered an extremist position (and I agree it is), isn't any demand for special "trans rights" that are not just the civil rights everybody enjoys extremist? Without such social recognition of their claim to opposite-sex status, their self-ID becomes meaningless. Unlike someone's Christian belief, which doesn't depend on anyone else sharing it.
"But what then is left of "trans rights" as conceived of by most trans-identified people?"
Trans authoritarians are told "No."
"How do they not take this as a complete capitulation?"
They would. That's their problem. They need to deal with it. Like everybody else who recognises that they don't have the right to impose their beliefs on anybody else.
"
isn't any demand for special "trans rights" that are not just the civil rights everybody enjoys extremist?"
Yes
"Without such social recognition of their claim to opposite-sex status, their self-ID becomes meaningless."
No, voluntary communities in which these beliefs are shared can continue to exist, again like religion. This was also the case with transsexuals/transvestites in the 90s and this was accepted. The culture then was not remotely fragile and demanding of validation. Transsexuals, transvestites, drag queens were typified by being tough and mouthy and you still see this persona in drag queen performances. They'd respond to insult with insult and humour. Anybody who wants wider society to be compelled to accept their identity is just told no.
"Unlike someone's Christian belief, which doesn't depend on anyone else sharing it."
That's the case now, because Christianity has been subjected to liberalism. The people who don't accept that other people can reject and openly criticise or mock their faith now, in my country, are authoritarian Muslims. They are the ones who want to ban criticism of Islam and justify violent responses to it and punishing apostasy legally or socially. We must not stand for that either.
The question I am trying to get answered is what a classical liberal approach to transgenderism could look like in practice, both at a policy and a personal level. What are "trans rights" from a classical liberal perspective?
The same as everybody elses.
Let people believe, speak, live as they see fit...
(You can believe what you want, say what you want, wear what you want etc.)
provided it does no material harm to anyone else...
(no self-IDing of men into spaces where women are vulnerable or into their sporting categories or medicalising children too young to give informed consent)
or denies their liberties
(other people remain free to disbelieve in gender identity and say so)
No, I am saying that the self-concept of "being trans" is incompatible with liberalism, because it fundamentally depends on societal affirmation. Therefore, there is no way to integrate transgenderism as it conceives of itself into liberal society and discourse. Maybe that's obvious (I agree it is), but there are plenty of people (see for instance Jamie Paul's recent piece, or Jonathan Cowan's Politico piece) who are searching for a "middle-ground" on this issue. My point is that the idea of transgenderism itself is fundamentally authoritarian, because it goes beyond defying gender norms and demands a denial of biological reality. Social conservatism can be authoritarian, but it can also be practiced by individuals without validation from others. I don't think transgenderism can be practiced without such validation.
To give a mundane example, when my sister angrily demands that I use identity-based pronouns for her daughter's trans-identified boyfriend (whom I have never met) while talking to her about him, that is authoritarian. If I ever met him, I would surely be expected to play along with the fiction that he is a woman, and if I don't, it would be extremely offensive to him, my niece, and everyone else present, because I would be dispelling the illusion he is trying to uphold and hurt his feelings (and in this situation, I would probably play along just to keep the peace and not offend anyone). The people in my family don't know anything about the theoretical foundations of gender ideology or would consider themselves radicals; their expectation to play along is built on their belief in the truth of an innate gender identity and the desire to be kind and inclusive. They consider affirming his "gender identity" to be of the same liberal nature as accepting someone's homosexuality, when I would perceive it as an authoritarian demand to affirm something I don't believe is true. Maybe this situation just illustrates the capture of normal people by radical activist ideology, but beyond that I think it demonstrates the necessity of societal affirmation for transgenderism to be practiced.
No, I am saying that the self-concept of "being trans" is incompatible with liberalism, because it fundamentally depends on societal affirmation.
Well, it doesn't. No more than any other belief. The fact that people have claimed it does indicates that they are authoritarian and we must say 'no' to them.
You are conflating holding a belief or self-conception oneself with imposing it on everyone else. That's what we need to separate and what liberalism does separate.
No belief about sex or gender works is inherently authoritarian. You have to impose it on others in an authoritarian way. You correctly observe that gender conservatism can be practiced without validation from others but it wasn't for centuries, was it? Women weren't allowed to vote and own property or take positions of power or prestigious jobs. Even if they did not hold views that restricted women to the domestic sphere themselves, they were imposed on them by people who did. Now, people can absolutely form voluntary marriages and communities who hold those beliefs but not impose them on anybody else.
You are rightly objecting to authoritarianism and pointing out that people can be socially pressured to validate certain ideas without being ideologues themselves. You have a personal experience of this. I do too, but it probably won't surprise you to learn that none of my four trans-identified friends take this stance. All but one of them found their way to me via my writing on liberalism which they support (well, one is an anarcho-capitalist which is a much more radical idea of freedom).
I also understand why it can be hard to separate an idea from the authoritarian imposition of an idea when you've only seen the idea imposed in an authoritarian way. I'm not sure where you are, but I am in England. Following Bloody Mary bringing the Inquisition to England in the 1550s, it was believed that Catholicism could only be practiced in authoritarian ways and it was banned for centuries. People started to be allowed to be Catholic again in the 19th century and were gradually allowed to attend universities and take position of power, although the monarch was still not allowed to marry a Catholic until this century. We now accept that it is quite possible to be Catholic without making everybody else affirm it but for a long time, it was claimed that this was not possible and Catholicism was inherently authoritarian.
We need to be able to separate the holding of a belief from imposition of that belief even when prominent proponents of that belief are authoritarian and this gains public acceptance. We ultimately have two choices about what we oppose - the ideas or the authoritarian imposition of ideas. That looks like this in this case:
1) Banning people from believing in gender identity and expressing that belief in their speech or their presentation. Essentially making them pretend not to believe in it and affirm that it is not true.
2) Preventing people from imposing that belief on others and telling them they can believe in gender identity and say so and dress and present as they wish but other people can continue to regard them as, say, a man in a dress and say so. Single sex spaces are protected and so are children's bodies. They can decide on transitioning when they are adults if they so choose.
The liberal stance will always be the second one. The trans activists will act as though preventing them from imposing their beliefs on others is the same thing as denying them their beliefs because they cannot separate holding a belief and imposing it on others either but it is not the same thing and liberals must be able to maintain this distinction. Then we can push gender identity back to where it belongs - as a belief that some people hold but which has no power or status in society and which others are in their right not believe. Exactly like religion.
This exchange was very illuminating. I found myself feeling agreement with both of you, despite your disagreement.
I see Kate's point very clearly: that this belief in gender identity rests on social affirmation of the idea/identity, and this seems to necessitate a different response than simply "live and let live." By way of example: I can affirm people's right to believe that vaccines cause harm even while disagreeing that vaccines cause harm. But to affirm people's right to believe in gender identity seems to demand that I affirm their stated gender identity. Using their preferred pronouns feels like participating in and/or affirming the belief. So it seems like, by virtue of accepting that some people believe it, one is affirming the belief.
But I think I see what you're saying too, Helen. That these two things are distinct: affirming one's right to hold a belief is not affirming the belief itself. I just don't always know how to embody this in practice. Because telling people "no" by simply refusing to use their preferred pronouns, at least where I live in Canada, would come across as blatantly confrontational, dehumanizing or stigmatizing, would certainly have significant social costs, and in Canada, may even have legal and financial costs. So it's hard to draw a distinction between the idea and its authoritarian expression at this time and location in history.
Not sure if I've understood both of your positions correctly, but this was my takeaway anyway. Thanks for the exchange!
“ I just don't always know how to embody this in practice. Because telling people "no" by simply refusing to use their preferred pronouns, at least where I live in Canada, would come across as blatantly confrontational, dehumanizing or stigmatizing, would certainly have significant social costs, and in Canada, may even have legal and financial costs. So it's hard to draw a distinction between the idea and its authoritarian expression at this time and location in history.”
Quite. It is not easy and the fact that it is not easy reveals clearly the lapse in liberalism. We need to fix this by fighting for the liberalism. It is not harder than fighting for an alternative form of authoritarianism. Either way, we have to stand up to the bullies and change the systems which protect them.
What's crazy is people disagree with each other all the time over strongly held beliefs that provide a stable sense of self, such as religion and politics without suffering social consequences. The point of liberalism is that we prefer disagreement to physical blows, after all. Yet as you point out, in places like Canada, being trans is some exception to this rule. It shouldn't be.
People who disagree with gender self-ID aren't saying the other person isn't human or doesn't exist. They only disagree with what sort of human they exist as: birth sex versus self-identified gender...and I would argue it's for fair reasons. It's not a matter of "discrimination", it's classification. The whole claim of "stigma", "attacking", "dehumanizing" and such comes across as emotional manipulation, and people claiming those should be seen as bad actors and not victims. Classical liberal democracies require people with emotional regulation and fortitude to tolerate disagreement.
The difference between the belief of someone that they are the opposite sex and a deeply held belief in, say, Christianity is that a belief in "gender identity" is fundamentally about social roles/relationships and the way other people perceive and address you, which real religions are not. The social perception/role in everyday life and the pronouns ARE the religious practice. A fundamentalist Christian isn't demanding, or even hoping for someone to alter their speech in a way that may conflict with the other person's perception of reality when they address them, but the "trans" person is.
Picture a family reunion where a trans-identified person shows up, as well as a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim. It seems easy to set aside the latters' religious beliefs during the time spent together by simply not talking about them. The same is not really possible with the trans-identified person's beliefs, because for that person to practice their belief, they need others to participate at all times, in a way that is not the case with the Christian or Muslim. Even if nobody explicitly demands the use of preferred pronouns, the social pressure to conform will be enormous for everyone in attendance, and non-compliance will create animosity. That's why I think that transgenderism is intrinsically illiberal, because it is a belief that is practiced in everyday life, not in a house of worship, and it's practice depends on the participation of everyday contacts.
Thank you!
Traditional Gender Liberal
1. Sex - 2 Gametes ( sorry CAH does not count)
2. Gender roles - defined but socially negotiable in my view
3. Gender stereotypes - often true on average (Lee Jussims work) - Rouglhly 50% biology, 50% environmental influence. At extremes of the distribution the stereotypes are often overwhelmingly true (basic science)
4. Gender affirming, dangerous to those wiith ROGD, unscientific, hints of religious zeal in supporters who think they are being nice to young trans when they might just be horrific to young lesbians. Data is mounting against them.
Well laid out. Every time a challenge arose from one paragraph it was addressed in the next one.
C'est brilliant.
The taxonomy is the most useful thing in here — particularly the observation that 'gender critical' has been colonized by people who are actually gender conservative, and that the original left-wing feminists who built the framework now feel alienated from the movement they started. That distinction gets collapsed constantly in this debate, and naming it cleanly is doing real work.
What the essay doesn't do — and I think it's the next necessary step — is ask what happens when one of these three ideologies gains institutional traction while the other two are still arguing about definitions. The liberal framework you're describing depends on a deliberative space in which competing views can be expressed, tested against reality, and allowed to coexist. That space requires friction. What's been documented in several countries is the deliberate engineering away of that friction — legislation passed in the slipstream of more popular reforms, press coverage minimized, opposition branded before it could organize. The taxonomy you've mapped is exactly what that process was designed to prevent from surfacing.
The conclusion — live and let live, argue without being penalized — is right. But it arrives without accounting for what happens when one party to the argument has already moved the furniture while the others were still finding their seats.
I really don’t know what you mean? This isn’t an essay describing the effects of institutional capture. It’s arguing for recognising that there is more than one gender ideology.
I have addressed that quite a lot, though. If you have a look at the Grievance Studies Affair, this is a project in which colleagues and I investigated the ‘wokeness’ problem in academic journals. Then Cynical Theories looks at how these ideas evolved and the impacts of them on scholarship but also (in one chapter) more broadly. The Counterweight Handbook is an indepth look at how they affected people in schools and workplaces.
You're right, and I was overreaching. I read the essay as the whole argument rather than as one piece of a larger body of work — and clearly that body of work addresses exactly what I was pointing at, in considerably more depth than a Substack comment deserves. I'll look at the Counterweight Handbook. The Grievance Studies Affair I know, and it's exactly the kind of thing I had in mind. Apologies for pushing on a door you'd already opened.
I like it that you are bringing back into discussion the concepts of "feminine" and "masculine", that is a question that needs to be asked more often: what is the difference between "butch, masculine woman" and "non-binary"? And I think the answer is that the first is a description and the second is an identity: a club membership.
I distinctly remember the version of liberalism when the cool thing was to keep one's identity small, mostly national and religious identity small. I watched up close how the Serbs and Croats were killing each other over what seemed to me very small differences, and it was just so sad and stupid. Basically the same language with a different script, and going to different versions of Christian churches, except, like most people after 40 years of Communism, they were not even going to church much... and it takes like a month in a classroom to learn to read the other script (I can still read Russian fairly well), so what is the big deal? Just stop... so the cool thing was to not do identity much. I still think like that, I don't even tell people where I am from, as it is not really simple, and would not describe me predictably, I am a sort of a half-orc well assimilated to Hobbiton now...
But it turned out, getting rid of identity is a kind of a privileged thing. Less privileged people - not white, not cis and so on - cannot escape their identities so easily, so they sort of leaned into it as a kind of support network.
So I guess right now people are really fighting over club membership... which mostly seems just semantics to me, but maybe there is something more...
Every society has to deal with its outliers, and since some outliers are benign and others not, a one-size-fits-all approach to deviance will not do. I see this dynamic with the various approaches to gender you describe.
The pitfall of social conservatism is that it refuses to see the outliers, the tails of the bell curve, and dismisses them as wrong or non-existent. This constrains and ignores the inevitable diversity of human experience and perspectives, which are incredibly valuable for innovation and ensuring the flourishing of all.
The pitfall of social liberalism/progressivism is when it refuses to see the baseline norm, the middle of the bell curve, as legitimate. This has the opposite effect of destroying the behaviors that most people in society seem to need or want, and which provide the firm foundational scaffolding on which the outliers can successfully function.
One of the points of the gay rights movement was that there are many ways to be a man or woman, which recognizes the existence of outliers. Queer theory seems to claim the opposite, refusing to see nuance and claiming a man who isn't the exact stereotype of masculinity as some unique gender, and arguing that its widespread...thus ignoring the norms.
Likewise, I don't think most people would care if someone wants to act or appear more like the opposite sex (outliers, likely extreme ones); the problem has come when people and social institutions are forced to accommodate that person's worldview, there are no guardrails, and when that transitioning is extended to children (degrading the norms).
Reading this is somehow like getting into a well made bed after a long hectic day. Helen- you fold ideas, like they are neat tucked corners, and nothing tugs too much in one direction or the other. I can at last relax enough to sink into deep contemplation and think about things clearly. It is a masterful skill- thank you!
What a marvellous and encouraging compliment! Thank you!
This whole argument falls down when it misrepresents feminist ideology. Your criticism of radical gender ideologies actually depends on the idea that feminism is based on “demonising” and “pathologising” men - this is a straw woman argument which is patently false. It’s based on popular media distortions and caricatures of a sub group of feminism from the 1970s which is routinely used to stereotype all radical feminism. While you make the point that all radical critical feminists don’t demonise men - your emotive use of this argument plays into a stereotyped misrepresentation of feminism which is used to politically derail discussions of the real cause and effects of gender inequality and to demonise feminists. Your argument relies on emphasising this misrepresentation in quite emotive and sensationalist language - which undermines the whole discussion and makes it look like a culture war justification for existing inequalities. While it may be true that some women (often liberal feminists blame men and mistake patriarchy for individual psychology, in fact), you must know that the actual arguments of critical feminists do nothing of the sort?
You do not explain how women came to be economically, socially and politically subordinated - or why they are still subordinated in the majority of cultures globally? Perhaps this is down to evolution, if not culture, it’s not clear? If it’s evolutionary then that would be a justification of women’s subordination by appealing to a natural order which is exactly what gender theorists critique. If it’s historical and cultural, what sustains and maintains it and how do you justify it?
By misrepresenting feminist arguments for equality and freedom as an attack on men’s freedom - you are hiding a huge ideological bias behind claims of commitment to a higher “truth”, which somehow lies outside of ideology. In the end the effect of the whole argument is to deny that gender inequality really exists by obfuscating its causes and thus supports the unequal status quo as the liberal ideal - which you portray as “above” politics and ideology.
Thank you Helen. This was incredibly helpful and clarifying. I've been trying to figure out my own stance on this, and this really helps me clarify things.
But also, damn it Helen. I've had this on my reading list for two weeks, and only just now sat down to read it. And now, instead of being caught up, I have 6 more articles you referenced that I now want to read.
(smiles smugly)
Unfortunately the evolution of the term “gender” was and is to hide actual sex, by primarily men who mimic women.
All discussions of the term, such as the article, simply rotate around that fact.
“Gender ideology” is the politics of hiding male sex with the term gender.
The world is full of meaningless euphemisms which hide obvious reality.