Thread by @DanielHadas2

The strain of critique of the trans project which seeks to distinguish between “biological” sex and “socially constructed” gender seems to me largely misguided, because its premises are nearly identical to those of the project it opposes.

Both sides start by accepting a radical separation between the biology of the body and the social meaning of being a man or a woman.

While the trans project is often accused of biological denialism, it in fact comports a form of biological absolutism.

To replace “woman” with “uterus-haver” and man with “sperm-producer” (vel sim.) is to discard the whole social and spiritual weight of the terms “man” and “woman” in favour a of purely biological perception.

The trans project then reclaims “man” and “woman” as terms that refer 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘺to social and spiritual aspects of our being, with this sphere conceived as entirely separate from the biological one.

In that sense, the trans project agrees with the radical feminist critique that “gender is bullshit”. Only the latter seeks to discard the bullshit entirely, while the former sees its immaterial essence as meaning it to be up for grabs for whoever wishes to grab it.

Of course, there is then an incoherence in the trans project’s pushing modifications of the body: why is 𝘢𝘯𝘺 material, fleshly basis to the statement “I am a man” or “I am a woman” needed?

And in fact the project answers that they are not 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘥: hence the rule that no bodily modification or characteristic is required to claim to be a man, a woman, or something else.

Rather, bodily modifications are embraced by granting to some aspects of the body the same fluid, up-for-grabs aspect as is granted to the social and spiritual concepts “man” and “woman”.

This is a falsehood, but the deeper falsehood is that the distinction between “biological sex” and “gender” is meaningful for humans ...

... that we have some sort of purely "biological" nature that can be separated from the social and spiritual significance of being in the world as men and women.

A mother is not a womb-haver, or a birth-giver, or a feeder-by-lactation. A father is not a sperm-contributor. A mother is a mother. A father is a father. To seek to reduce these terms to a “biological” significance is to negate their true meaning.

Gender is protean and mysterious, but it is not bullshit. The belief that this protean mystery can be abolished or solved is the source of all the other derangements.

https://twitter.com/DanielHadas2/status/1610622482330828802?s=20