the fundamental validity of transgender identity
If we follow Judith Butler, gender is 'just' a performance, and genderfluidity plus non-binary identities routinely trash and cross the binary gender divide. Why the essentialisation of some trans identities at the expense of others?
How can we be certain that transgender identifying people won't experience a shift in their gender identities over their lifetimes? Eddie Izzard seems to have gone from genderfluid and using male and female pronouns to just using female pronouns, as he approached the age of 60. Others seem happy under the broader transgender umbrella and less restricted by the specifics of declaring themselves a transwoman or bothering to transition medically.
There are conversely a non-negligible number of detransitioners, women who once identified as trans men but who now identify as lesbians or simply as women, rather than as trans, the identity they adopted in their teenage years or early adulthood. I can accept all of these identities as 'valid' (as in: use the right name and pronouns), but to call them 'fundamentally valid' seems a stretch
when they have changed.
Historicising gender identities shows that a number of specific trans identities bloomed only very recently, the upsurge of teenage girls identifying as trans boys is extremely recent and has flipped the numbers at gender dysphoria clinics.
But historicising gender identities is also essential to understand how medical interventions have changed and continue to change. Sweden now won't prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to under-18s, a simple comparison between countries shows the Dutch have been more cautious and less uncritically gender-affirming than some English-speaking societies about child and teenage gender dysphoria. It remains to be seen whether transmen continue to identify as transmen for the next 60-80 years or if a lifetime of medical intervention drastically shortens their lifespans, as a matter of actuarial average.
It seems unlikely that there will be as many teenage girls identifying as trans boys in the future as have been doing so in the past 5-7 years, even if the bursting of the bubble doesn't take the number back twenty years. Sweden has already reported a decline in 2018/2019 among girls referred to gender dysphoria clinics, after an upsurge that began in 2013. The graph in the link show quite the decline.
https://genderreport.ca/the-swedish-u-turn-on-gender-transitioning/
It is quite easy to affirm someone's gender nonconformity and place under the transgender umbrella, another to necessarily agree with their specific self-identification under the broader umbrella. I looked up Alex Drummond on Google, she attracted much press in 2015 as a Stonewall rep and a self-proclaimed bearded lesbian. Her Twitter account hasn't been updated since 2017, the profile pic shows a very androgynous mix of long hair, feminine stylings and a beard. She worked as a therapist and some links to her talks discuss genderfluidity and the possibility of switching identities back and forth. The last media mention of her was in 2019, when she was 54. No idea if she passed away in the Covid-19 pandemic or reinvented herself yet again, but her search results look like those of someone who is no longer with us, literally or metaphorically.
Which is a shame, as I'd be very curious to know how she might have felt about the backlash to her self-identification as a lesbian transwoman (with a beard and no surgery). Her genderfluidity and transgender identity is beyond all reasonable doubt, but there's been enough pushback at transwomen trying to breach the 'cotton ceiling' with 'girldicks' that I noticed various trans communities discussing this with eye-rolling while looking down the search results. Transwomen aren't all either androphilic or gynephilic, they include both sexual orientations (as well as many who might become more asexual after transition, as part of relieving their gender dysphoria). But gynephilic transwomen shouldn't be identifying as lesbians, when the very definition of lesbian is someone who rejects men and male genitalia in their sexuality. There are enough other words, including for any lesbians who are persuaded to slide down the Kinsey scale by entering into relationships with transwomen, that they don't need to appropriate that one.
Hopefully, trans communities, LGB communities and the rest of society will look back on the 'cotton ceiling' nonsense as an embarrassing overreach by literally dickish men who got too carried away with their new gender identities back when it all began. No means no, and there is no human right to sex on demand with exactly the people you might want to have sex with, if they don't want to have sex with you.
Similarly, self-ID might work nicely for socially recognising gender non-conforming identities under the broader trans umbrella, and account for the range of transition efforts different trans people undertake, but even if one recognises these identities as a continuum, sooner or later one
must exclude some as 'fundamentally invalid'. Such as men preying on women and hiding behind their self-ID as 'women', or paedophiles. The current mess with Mermaids stinks of the 1970s attempts at entryism by paedophile networks into the gay community. It helps no one if the right wing can point to paedophile supporters and rapists who are associated institutionally or by self-identification with the trans community.
Not recognising the possibility of cultural change to identities and further cultural change to identities over time seems like the worst kind of narcissistic presentism.
Transgender identities have drastically changed in the past two decades, and they'll undoubtedly change again in the next two decades. The same goes for lesbian and gay identities over the past 50 years, as well as heterosexual identities. There are shared sexual practices across orientations and genders (e.g. kinks and BDSM) as well as targeted or specialised forms of pornography (TS porn, gay porn, heterosexual porn, anime porn, etc) which have also evolved in the same time-frame, and their influence is far from negligible. BDSM received a massive boost in publicity just over a decade ago and became mainstreamed; that has now ebbed somewhat, and there is greater awareness of how some BDSM practices can be abused (eg in 'sex play gone wrong' defenses if the partner ends up dead after being choked), especially by violent men on women. The right - or lack of social pressure -
not to participate in any form of kink and not to be exposed to porn or have to have pornified sex seems like it should be asserted, rather than assuming everyone is on board with YKINMK. It's a hell of a lot easier for the younger generation to be accepting of multiple gender identities, but they also have to work out how to avoid bad sex or indeed a lack of sex, or if they're okay with not having sex, because their gender identity matters more. There also needs to be a lot of change regarding the prosecution of rape and sexual violence, as well as overcoming rape culture. That might dwarf trans inclusion as a social problem, but that in turn doesn't give trans communities an out to brush anything under the carpet.
