The best model for trans rights, in my opinion, is one of religious freedom. A person’s faith can determine how they dress, the name they take, and the ideas they express. I support everyone’s right to live their convictions when they don’t infringe on the rights of others.
I’m reflecting a lot on how I want to focus my writing and activism in 2020. I am working on a book (working title is “You’re Not Helping” if anyone’s curious), and I’m just about ready to launch a personal website. But gender is a massive, sprawling topic. Focus is necessary.
My GC activism is aimed at a progressive-to-moderate audience. I’ve learned that it’s crucial to express not only what rights you won’t compromise for trans-identifying people, but also how you envision protections for this population. My answer is to treat it like a religion.
Genderism wouldn’t fit the legal definition of religion, but religious freedom does fit as a model to protect both the practitioners and the skeptics. A Catholic is free to pray and preach, but, a M. Berns pointed out, we aren’t under obligation to call a priest “father.”
Thinking of it as a belief system also brings the level of entitlement equal to other groups with quirky personal expressions or lifestyles. We don’t ask why. We don’t challenge the validity of their beliefs or self-perception. We give them reasonable accommodations.
As a feminist and amateur philosopher, I have a lot of interest in the ideological workings of transgenderism. But, from a personal freedoms perspective, none of that matters. I don’t have to identify a belief system as just or enlightened to respect the rights of its members.
All of my concerns about how women’s rights and spaces are affected are addressed in the religious freedom model. A man whose belief system tells him he’s a woman wouldn’t have any additional access rights to women as a man who doesn’t practice genderism.
I’m musing about this because a there’s a lot of new momentum behind the GC movement, but none of it will matter if people outside the movement aren’t given some idea of what protections we do support for trans-ID’d people. They exist and aren’t going anywhere.
And the sexism and homophobia of genderism pisses me off. Don’t think for a minute that it doesn’t. But I’m not just here to rant. I need goals. I need a vision of how this conflict could actually reach a respectful resolution. When I think of it as a religion, I can see it.
I’m laughing at myself because, yes, it will be SO DOABLE to reframe the issue after decades of science/medicine track being put down. But we really need to. Because you can QUESTION a belief system or philosophy. That’s allowed. That shift would bring real critical thinking in.
I mean, we do this all the time within LGB communities, and it’s healthy. These debates are good for us when we’re actually allowed to reach our own conclusions, when we’re not intimidated and lied to. This is how we figure out what we really believe. It’s good.
This might feel like a stretch, but, guys, it’s already happening between religious conservatives and LGBs. WE believe that this is who we organically are, but THEY believe we’re living according to a belief system they don’t share. This is the model they use to tolerate us.
And, like with the genderists, I do find it offensive when someone tells me about my sinful lifestyle choices. But mostly I’m just glad we’ve come up with a system that allows me to live my life and them to live theirs, neither of us compromising what we believe to be true.
