Understanding Transgenderism

Stephen Kershnar

The Conceptual Difficulty of Transgenderism

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

January 30, 2019

           

On a current theory, transgender people have a gender that differs from their assigned sex. Traditionally, sex refers to one’s biological category, whereas gender refers to socially constructed norms that tell people how to behave. On this theory, binary people are exclusively male or female. Non-binary people are not so exclusive.

This theory asserts that some non-binary people are located on a gender continuum between pure male and pure female. On this theory, there are still other possibilities. Some people have two genders, some have no gender, and some change gender. Transgenderism is independent of sexual orientation in that transgender people can be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or asexual.

On an even more fashionable theory, a transgender person’s sex (as opposed to gender) is assigned at birth rather than being a biological feature. On this theory, a person’s gender depends on identification. If a person identifies as a woman, she is a woman. If that same person identifies as a man, he is a man. On this fashionable theory, there is no objective standard for sex or gender. Such a theory holds that factors such as genes, body parts, reproductive function, and hormones do not make someone a man or woman.

Transgenderism has given rise to moral, medical, and legal issues. Writing in The Weekly Standard, Kevin Williamson points out that in sports, transgender individuals are dominating, winning events, and setting records in cycling, marathons, mixed martial arts, softball, track, volleyball, and weightlifting. In mixed martial arts, a transgender fighter seriously hurt her opponent.

In medicine there is an issue as to whether transgender people have a mental disorder. In psychiatry, gender dysphoria is a disorder that involves gender non-conformity that causes significant distress. Distress in transgender people is a serious matter given that a 2011 study by a UCLA think tank found that 41% of transgender people have attempted suicide.

In law, President Trump prohibited transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. This past month, the Supreme Court allowed the prohibition to go into effect while the lower courts consider it. In 2016, the Obama administration required schools receiving federal money to allow transgender individuals to use the bathroom matching their gender. The Trump administration eliminated this requirement.

The above transgender picture of the world is a conceptual mess. First, consider what gender is. Ryan Anderson, author of When Harry Became Sally, notes that if a person is a woman when she identifies as a woman, we still need to figure out what it means to identify as a woman.

If a person identifies as a woman when she sees herself as having a female gender, we’ve gotten nowhere in understanding what it means to identify as a woman. We still need to know what it is to see oneself as having a female gender. If, instead, identifying as a woman involves seeing oneself as biologically female, then gender depends on sex. On such an account, a transgender person might be wrong if she is mistaken about her biological sex. If gender depends on identifying with a set of features that society has arbitrarily said make someone a woman, then what makes someone a woman is arbitrary. This is implausible. The features are there for a reason.     

If biological sex is not an objective fact but a status assigned at birth, as fashionable theorists now claim, this raises the issue of how and why society assigns a sex to a newborns. Again, it is implausible that this was done for no good reason and on an arbitrary basis. If, instead, people have an objective biology-based sex, then biology is not assigned at birth. Rather, it is recognized at birth if not earlier.  

Second, there is the issue of whether a person is infallible with regard to her gender. To see this, consider whether an individual gets to choose what it takes to be a woman. If the individual chooses this, then absurd results occur. Being attracted to members of the same sex cannot make one person a woman and another a gay man. Yet if the individual gets to choose what sort of identification makes her a woman, such an odd result could occur.     

Third, as University of Warwick philosophy Rebecca Reilly-Cooper points out, if there is a gender spectrum, then everyone is transgender. This is because no one is purely male or purely female in terms of having exclusively masculine or feminine thoughts, behaviors, and values. It is implausible, though, that everyone reading this column is transgender. Such a conclusion would horrify the muscled up gorillas at Darwin’s gym.

Even if there are people who have male and female body parts (consider intersex people) or unusual genetics, this doesn’t show that male and female are not biological categories. It doesn’t do so any more than the existence of cubs from a lion and tiger (for example, ligers) shows that lions and tigers are not objective biological categories.

Fourth, if the fashionable theory were true, human beings would be at odds with the rest of the animal kingdom. Reproductive function explains a lot about animals’ genes, bodies, and behaviors. This is also true for human beings. For example, the Y chromosome is inherited only from one’s father. Other material (ribosomes) are inherited only from one’s mother. The genetic, bodily, and behavioral differences of males and females across much of the animal kingdom are significant and not socially constructed. If animals have an objective biological sex, then human beings likely do so as well. After all, we’re just apes.   

Perhaps as a way of respecting transgender people, we should allow for such a conceptual morass. We might want to allow for seemingly unfair athletic competitions, medical disorders that depend in part on whether the underlying condition causes suffering, and bathroom use depending on identification. We should be careful though. Incoherent metaphysical pictures of the world tend to slop over into other areas of thought.

On the Edge of a Revolution: Automation and Technology-Improved Human Beings

Stephen Kershnar

The Coming Revolution

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

December 23, 2018

            When people in Europe enjoyed the end of the Belle Époque, they had no idea of the massive change to people’s lives that would accompany World War I and its aftermath. Similarly, in the next two decades, the degree of change and the speed with which it will occur will usher in radical change.

  

            There are two changes that will rock our world. First, improving machinery (including artificial intelligence) will vastly reduce the number of workers needed and the amount of work required of each worker. Second, genetic engineering will make human beings smarter, faster, and better in ways previously unimagined.

            In 2013, Oxford University professors Carl Frey and Michael Osborne estimated that nearly half of U.S. jobs could be replaced with automated machines in the next two decades. This is a mind-boggling 80 million unemployed people. The jobs most at risk of automation are those that are routine, that is, performed according to explicit rules. This includes manual jobs (for example, truck driver) and cognitive jobs (for example, cashier). Harvard economist Lawrence Katz estimates that in transportation alone, five million people (3% of the work force) could be unemployed as the result of driverless vehicles. Consider, for example, delivery vehicles, long-haul trucks, and taxis.  

California Polytechnic State University philosopher Ryan Jenkins points out that even jobs requiring strategy, cunning, and context-sensitivity not only will be replaced, but already are being displaced. Consider that many stock trades are already handled by machines.

Jenkins points out that massive technological unemployment will have large effects. First, he predicts it will lead to extended unemployment. Tens of millions of people unemployed in a short period of time will likely cause many to suffer the social ills that plague the long-term unemployed underclass. Consider, for example, alcoholism, depression, opioid abuse, out-of-wedlock births, suicide, and violence. Second, he argues, because many people find life meaningful in part based on the work they do, there will be a dizzying change in values as tens of millions of people no longer contribute to society through their work. They will have to decide how to occupy their days. Third, he notes, with so many people unable to contribute in the marketplace, fellow taxpayers will have to expand the amount of welfare in terms of cash, food, housing, medical care, etc. for those whose jobs have been automated away.  

Second, and perhaps later than the automation of jobs, genetic engineering will make people far better in a few generations. Drew University philosopher Thomas Magnell argues that genetic engineering will make people smarter, faster, stronger, and morally better. He further argues that the rate of improvement will accelerate. This is part because machines will improve people through selection of better gametes, gene repair and replacement, better mate selection, and so on. This is also in part because people will improve machines as each generation of smarter people will build better machines. Large numbers of brilliant people working with ever more powerful computers will discover and design dazzling things. Nor is this Jules Verne speculation. As it is (at least in part due to changes in nutrition), people’s IQs are increasing and genetic counselors are increasingly able to warn people of maladies some are likely to face.

By analogy, 19^th Century intellectuals, let alone most people, could only foresee the changes in chemistry, philosophy, and physics in crude and imprecise terms. They likely didn’t foresee the computer revolution at all. There is a good chance that the changes coming our way will be just as radical as those experienced by someone living from 1865 to 1965. 

  

A world with vast unemployment, levels of economic efficiency and luxury barely imaginable, and new and improved people will change the world in the same way that other revolutions did so. Consider, for example, the agricultural, industrial, and computer revolutions and changes that accompanied the Civil War and World War I.

An interesting question is whether our current values should continue to guide us. Most people find value and meaning in their families, jobs, community, and religion. Leaving aside people’s commitment to families, it is unclear which of the other things will continue to provide value and meaning. As many people become unproductive because they cannot efficiency produce things, work will cease to be so important to people’s lives. Many people will be increasingly be like Florida retirees only with an earlier start.

Religion is already declining in importance in Europe and the U.S. As the metaphysical claims on which religion rests (consider, for example, free will, God, and souls) and the specific content of particular religions (consider, for example, atonement, chosen people, and Muhammad and Joseph Smith as prophets) become increasingly less plausible, today’s religions will likely fade in a way similar how the Greek and Roman religions faded away.

The effect on community is harder to predict. Contrary to what many intellectuals predicted, societies continue to emphasize tribalism. This can be seen in wars and increasing balkanization of countries. This can also be seen in the international revulsion at the U.S. and European elites’ attempt to flood their countries with poor-and-uneducated third world immigrants, many of whom have different values and loyalties. See, for example, Brexit, Donald Trump, and the rise of nationalist European parties. It is unclear if the accelerating change will strengthen or weaken tribalism.

Nor will people be able to hold off these changes. Societies that attempt to adopt Luddite-like rules to hold off such changes will become increasingly worse off relative to their competitors. Market-like pressures and the desire of people to see their children flourish will limit communities’ abilities to hold off these revolutions. Similar to the Amish or Hasidim, contemporary Luddites will likely exist but mainly on the fringe.  

It is both exciting and disturbing to sit on the edge of a revolution. Exciting because we’re about to see a new world. Disturbing because what we want and value will likely change.Aut

The War on Christmas: Is the truth of Christianity relevant to it?

Stephen Kershnar

Original Sin and the War on Christmas

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

December 10, 2018

            The war on Christmas is an attempt by the government and private companies to avoid mentioning Christmas or its religious content. Schools, stores, and advertisers are soldiers in the war. Partly in response to the war, some religious folk encourage people to keep Christmas focused on Christ. An interesting issue is whether the war is justified.

   

            Christianity has a number of problematic doctrines. Examples include atonement (Christ can be punished or, perhaps, pay for other people’s sins), transubstantiation (all of Jesus can be located in each of many different wafers), and the trinity (the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are distinct and yet only one person).  

            Perhaps the most bizarre religious doctrine, though, is the doctrine of original sin. The Catholic version (seen in Catechism of the Catholic Church and Catholic Encyclopedia and other places) holds that through his sin, Adam caused the human race to face not only bodily death, but to also have evil desires that produce a tendency to sin. Adam’s sin was so monstrous that not only did he lose holiness and justice, but he lost it for almost everyone else. This sin so stains humanity that infants have to be baptized to wash it out of them. The original sin that Adam brought about is not universal, though. The Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin.

Some Protestantism lines adopt a similar position. This was true of some of its leaders. Consider, for example, Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-1564). Nor was this position plucked out of thin air. It is a plausible interpretation of the Old Testament (see Psalms 51:5) and New Testament (see Romans 5:12-21 and Corinthians 15:21-22). Mormons and most Jews reject this doctrine, but have plenty of other problematic doctrines.  

            St. Augustine (354-430) believed that original sin was so serious that unbaptized infants who die early go to hell. However, the Catholic Church’s current position is that it does not know what happens to them. It instructs members that they can hope that such infants go to heaven rather than in Limbo or to hell. Still, a grieving parent can’t rule out that her miscarried or aborted fetus or tragically dead infant might be in Limbo or Hell, perhaps even permanently.

            The doctrine of original sin has problems. First, what did Adam do that was so bad that he stained not only himself, but also humanity? He (and, perhaps also, Eve) was disobedient to God and consumed forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It is hard to see why this is a sin given that he wasn’t blameworthy for doing it. He wasn’t blameworthy because he didn’t know disobedience is wrong. He didn’t know it was wrong because such knowledge requires his knowing good and evil (and this came about from eating the fruit).

            Second, even if it were sinful to eat the forbidden fruit, it is hard to see why this result in future people being in a fallen state when they didn’t perform the sin. In general, one person cannot be blamed for what another does unless both are part of a conspiracy. People today did not conspire with Adam. Even if a fallen state is not strictly speaking sin, it is unclear how Adam could have done something that resulted in people thousands of years later lacking holiness, justice, and (sanctifying) grace.

            Third, even if Adam did sin and a son can be blamed for his father’s sin, one wonders why God would not simply give people holiness, justice, and grace. That is, did God have a good reason to deny them these things? If he did have a good reason, then it is this reason, rather than Adam’s sin, that explains why they are in a fallen state. If God does not have a good reason, then he harms them or, at least, refuses to benefit them for no good reason. We expect more from him.    

            Fourth, science gives us no reason to think that there ever was a Garden of Eden, tree of knowledge of good and evil, or that early humans or apes were free of envious, lustful, and violent desires. Thus, the doctrine fits poorly with science.

            Should the problems with Christianity provide a justification for the war on Christmas? The motivation for the war in the context of government rests on concerns about the separation of church and state. In the private sector, its motivation is not causing unnecessary offense. It doesn’t rest on whether Christianity is plausible.

There is nothing wrong with government or businesses using their resources to make people happy even if it does so by catering to an implausible worldview. Still, if large number of people believed in the moral views of the Westboro Baptist Church or the metaphysical views of Mormonism or Scientology, it would seem that the destructive or false nature of such belief systems might be a good reason not to cater to them.

If this is correct, and I am not sure it is, then perhaps whether the government or businesses cater to Christianity should also be evaluated with regard to whether it is destructive or false. The doctrine of original sin suggests that some lines of Christianity would not fare well when evaluated for truth. It is less clear if Christianity is destructive. The religion’s costs and benefits are so complex and extensive that is nearly impossible to determine whether people would have been better off without it.  

Still, Christmas is a joyous and beautiful holiday. It would be a shame for businesses and other private groups to tamp it down merely to avoid offending hyper-sensitive babies. Perhaps a good rule might be that if promoting a holiday makes many people happy, then in the absence of a strong evidence of a comparable cost, it is fine to promote it.