More Conceptual Confusion in Trans Ideology

A Response to the National Center for Transgender Equality

This is a follow-up to my last post pertaining to some important definitions within transgender ideology. Here I want to examine some more definitions, ones offered by the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), just to further demonstrate the conceptual confusion in trans ideology.

What Is “Gender”?

Let’s start with the following definition:

Transgender is a broad term that can be used to describe people whose gender identity is different from the gender they were thought to be when they were born.

This definition need not be taken to be circular (even if “transgender” has “gender” in it), and it tells us that a transgender person is someone whose gender identity differs from the gender he was thought to be at birth. Still, it could use some clarification. In particular, what exactly are “gender” and “gender identity”? Here is how NCTE defines the latter:

Gender identity is your internal knowledge of your gender—for example, your knowledge that you’re a man, a woman, or another gender.

Again, this tells us something, that gender identity has to do with one’s knowledge of one’s gender. It introduces something new, namely, the concept of knowledge. Still, what exactly is it knowledge of? Gender identity is supposed to be knowledge of one’s own gender, but in order for it to be sufficiently meaningful, we need some definition of gender. The problem, though, is that NCTE does not provide a definition of gender.

To be fair, even if NCTE doesn’t define what gender is, it at least gives us some examples. Maybe these will elucidate the meaning of gender identity (. . . or maybe not). In the above definition, we are told that being a man and being a woman are two examples of genders (and it tells us there are other genders as well). The problem, though, is that for NCTE, “man” and “woman,” along with “male” and “female,” refer to different kinds of gender identity. In a parenthetical note, they write:

(Note: NCTE uses both the adjectives “male” and “female” and the nouns “man” and “woman” to refer to a person’s gender identity.)

These terms, rather than referring to biological categories, such as sex (as per normal use), they are used to refer to gender identities. This means, then, that someone who has the gender identity of a woman/female is someone who knows that she is a woman/female, and that someone who has the gender identity of a man/male is someone who knows that he is a man/male. More generally, given NCTE’s definitions, someone who has the gender identity of x is someone who knows that he is an x. But then what is a woman? And what is a man? And what does it mean to be a gender other than these two? The NCTE does not say. Ultimately, they have left us with uninformative definitions. Unless they provide us with informative ones, they ultimately fail to provide a meaningful definition of “transgender,” which is ironic, since they are the National Center for Transgender Equality. What, then, are they a centre for?

“Sex” vs “Gender”

Elsewhere, the NCTE says this:

Everyone—transgender or not—has a gender identity. Most people never think about what their gender identity is because it matches their sex at birth.

What is interesting here is that the NCTE admits that one’s gender identity is something that can match one’s sex. But we were told earlier that a transgender person is someone whose gender identity doesn’t match their gender, not sex. What should we make of this? How should we think about the relationship between sex and gender? Here are some options:

(1) Sex and gender are identical, and both refer to biological sex.

The upside of this is that we solve the problem of uninformative definitions. If gender just is biological sex, then gender identity is the knowledge of one’s biological sex. However, those who affirm transgender ideology, typically want to distinguish between sex (a biological category) and gender (allegedly a subjective category or a social construct). Furthermore, if biological sex and gender are identical, then gender identity cannot be knowledge of one’s gender. Knowledge implies truth (e.g., if I know that Phobos and Deimos are the moons of Mars, then it must be true that they are), and so one cannot coherently identify as, say, a woman while being biologically male. A person whose gender identity (now as merely a belief or sense, rather than knowledge) doesn’t match his biological sex is actually wrong, then. A transgender person is wrong to think that he is any gender (or sex) other than his biological sex.

(2) Sex and gender are identical, but do not refer to biological sex.

In this case, we are left in our earlier uninformed state. What is sex supposed to be if we don’t even know what gender is?

(3) Sex and gender are not identical, and “sex” refers to biological sex.

Even if sex and gender are distinct, the use of the term “sex” as biological sex is much more informative than the vague “gender,” and so it should be preferred in defining our terms. We can meaningfully distinguish between transgender and non-transgender people using the notion of biological sex, but not with “gender.” A non-transgender person is someone who has a gender identity (a belief about one’s sex) that matches his actual sex, while there is a mismatch for the transgender person. However, if we use biological sex to define what it means to be transgender, then transgender people are wrong for thinking that they are any sex other than their biological sex.

(4) Sex and gender are not identical, but “sex” does not refer to biological sex.

What, then, is sex? In this case, we’ve just added one more uninformative term into an already nebulous mix.

Anyway, I hope this has helped to further show how badly formulated transgender ideology can be.