Can "Trans" Be Coherently Defined?
Some say "trans does not exist"; are they right?
What does it mean to be trans? Can the word “trans” be defined for those of us who do not buy into Gender Identity Ideology?
Trans activists typically define “trans” as follows:
“A trans person is anyone whose gender identity is different from their assigned gender at birth.”
This is supposed to be a unifying definition that includes “binary” trans people, nonbinary trans people, those with dysphoria, and those without dysphoria.
But what if you are skeptical about the concept of gender identity and liken it to belief in gendered souls or other such irredeemably subjective and non-falsifiable entities?
The challenge with providing a single definition of “trans” is that we need to provide a coherent definition that successfully unifies the heterogenous phenomena of:
Autogynephilic males
Homosexual males who are naturally feminine
Homosexual females who are naturally masculine
Young adolescent females with rapid onset gender dysphoria
It does not seem like there is a singular thing called “trans” that provides a unifying essence shared among all four of these diverse phenomena. Accordingly, Many Gender Critical folks are for this reason skeptical about the existence of “trans” and say things like “trans does not exist.”
But I do not think we should give up so quickly.
I propose the following definition:
(1) Trans refers to the collective community of people who utter the words "I am trans" when asked "Are you are trans?", which picks out a definite subset of people in the world.
The most obvious objection to this definition is that the definition includes the word “trans” in the definition, thereby making it circular. The argument is similar to critiques of how trans activists circularly define woman: “a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman.”
My definition is very similar insofar as a trans person is “anyone who identifies as a trans person.”
The concern is that this definition does not really tell us what a trans person is. But it does in fact provide useful information: it tells us that trans people are the type of people to utilize the modern Western vocabulary of “transgender” to describe their personal experiences, which definitely picks out a distinct subset of people, because only a certain subset of people are willing to use such modern Western vocabulary to describe themselves.
Circularity is not in fact a defeater for my argument precisely because the reason why the circular definition does not work for “woman” is because “woman” is best defined as an objective, mind-independent biological fact about whether you are an adult human female. Therefore, on this account, whether someone is a woman or not is not just an arbitrary matter of adopting a certain linguistic label for yourself.
But the key point I want to make is that trans is quintessentially a socio-cultural phenomenon, and therefore this style of definition is perfectly appropriate because it captures the socially constructed nature of the phenomenon and provides a unifying definition across all four diverse phenomena described above. Because trans is a social-constructed category it can actually be coherently defined in terms of arbitrarily adopting a certain linguistic label for yourself, because only a specific type of person is willing to adopt that specific linguistic label for themselves.
The fact that it’s arbitrary doesn’t matter because only a definite subset of people are willing to use that specific arbitrary cultural label to describe themselves. It is a socially constructed, self-bootstrapped phenomenon.
In other words, the thing that unites all trans people is their willingness to use the language of “transgender” to describe themselves.
The circular nature of the definition is fitting precisely because “trans identity” is a socially constructed phenomenon and not a mind-independent fact like whether someone is biologically male or female.
This is why the questions about who is “truly trans” and whether you have to be a dysphoric medicalized transsexual to be “true trans” miss the mark: the nondysphoric nonbinary trans people are “true trans” because they assent to use the word “trans” to describe themselves and therefore become part of the socially constructed phenomenon.
Take another socially constructed identity: evangelical Christian. Whether you are “truly” an evangelical Christian is arbitrary. It’s not a well-defined social category. The best way to know whether someone is an evangelical Christian is to ask them: “Are you an evangelical?”
Now does that mean that there is not a family resemblance between all these evangelical Christians such that they share certain things in common? No. There are definitely certain commonalities and generalizations that can be made. But there’s no sharply defined definition because it’s socially constructed and defined by a community of people who collectively self-select into that self-description.
The same thing can be said of “trans”: despite the diversity of how the phenomenon manifests there are still some commonalities shared loosely between all four of the phenomena.
Nevertheless, the singular thing that unites them all is the conscious decision to use the vocabulary and language of “trans” to describe their experiences, lumping themselves into the modern socially constructed category of “transgender,” which is a recent socio-cultural phenomenon that has created new shared narratives for understanding their diverse experiences and lumping them under a single category.
Now, at this point, some skeptics will say there’s still no “there there” and the fact that the trans phenomenon is socially constructed is proof “trans does not exist.” This is a coherent position, but my problem is both pragmatic and philosophical.
Pragmatically, even if trans does not exist it is still a useful and convenient shorthand term to refer to a particular set of distinct phenomena and the meaning of terms is defined by their use, and as the late Wittgenstein told us, “trans” can become part of a definite language game based on its pragmatic usage even if we cannot provide clear necessary and sufficient conditions to define it.
Philosophically, the value of money is also a social construction and while one could coherently say it “doesn’t exist” if you prefer your ontology to be sparse, but if you are like me, and don’t mind messy, multi-level ontologies, then there is no metaphysical problem is saying socially constructed identities are real.
In conclusion, I do think “trans” exists but not as a mind-independent natural kind with an intrinsic, shared essence, but as a socially constructed phenomenon of self-selecting individuals consciously deciding to use the vocabulary of “trans” to describe their experiences, which share a fuzzy family resemblance.
Indeed, trans* identities are inherently coalitional. I've observed that two people can have quite similar trans experiences structurally, but render them and ascribe meaning to them in vastly different ways for a variety of reasons. And THEN you add the heterogeneity of phenomenon that can fly under the flag, and it becomes quite bewildering.
The outcome of this is not only extreme heterogeneity within the broad ideological/political coalition, but also extreme tribalism between different renderings of "trans" experience. In this respect, the comparison to sectarian religious identities seems apt.
That being said, I think we can point to four features common to all trans* experience:
1 - Some kind of underlying material cause(s) (genetic, epigenetic, neurological, hormonal, etc). These are not very well understood.
2 - Behavioral and/or psychological manifestation of gender variance
3 - Naming and recognition of the lived experience of 1 and/or 2 as "trans"
4 - The experience of social marginalization as a result of 1-3
This doesn't provide a coherent definition, but it does remove some of the self-referentiality. It also differentiates from religious identities, which tend to be organized around beliefs and behaviors. There are beliefs and behaviors associated with "being trans" -- to be sure -- but it seems to me that the primary driver of trans identities is the discovery that one's sense of differentiation is rendered more intelligible under some kind of "trans" heuristic.
Also consider different ethnic identities within groups of people who look very much alike. Ethnic identities, or even tribal identities, are real in the sense that any kind of identity formation is real in the human psyche and plays a very important part of our lives. Our conceptual-gestalt-theoretical models (whatever you want to call them) of our ethnicity give us a certain class of explanatory power about our lives and can help us predict the outcomes of certain classes of actions while interacting with certain kinds of people. We need identities as humans! We naturally create such identities, even if the contents of these identities are cybernetically constructed in interactive fashion using interactions between us and our environment. Some people place more or less importance on ethnic identities, but they are real and they are important. Ethnic identities certain give us a sense of who we ARE. “I am Jewish” can be core to a person’s identity and it seems some people couldn’t function without such an identity. This is so well understood that we do not question it. Sure, the “trans” identity is a recently developed western invention, but like ethnic identity formation, once it takes hold in a young person, it can become just as important or even more important than an ethnic identity. As a human psychological phenomenon, trans identification is real and should be taken seriously as we accept deeply held ethnic identities. Identity formation is a natural process for humans and a necessary process. Yes, like in the trans case it can go wrong, making things worse for a person than better. However, if we understand it for what it is, then perhaps we can get better at treating the problem more effectively rather than just screaming, “trans is not real!” Some rather cosmopolitan people would argue that ethnic identity are bogus as well. Perhaps so, but you cannot simply wish away ethnic identity formation in human beings.