Transgender Identity and the Politics of Recognition
An attempt at breaking through the noise
This essay was written in the wake of the devastating school shooting in Nashville, TN. The shooter was identified as Audrey Hale, a female-to-male transgender. And the victims were students of The Covenant School, a private Christian school affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. Hale was one of its former students, and along with his own life, he took away those of three children and three adults. As America is recovering from (yet) another mass shooting on school grounds, the ground opens up for another culture war front - the transgender vs. the Christians. Rod Dreher articulates this in a recent blogpost:
We know that the Ruling Class believes that trans people are Sacred, and that trans violence is excusable — or if not excusable, per se (nobody’s saying that Audrey Hale ought to have shot up that Christian school), then at least understandable. We are seeing more and more that violence and dysfunction, when carried out by the Ruling Class’s favored victim classes, is acceptable. They just look away, or rationalize it.
In another corner of the globe, the firebrand feminist Kellie-Jay Keen, also known as Posie Parker, was mobbed and hounded when she was going on a speaking tour in Australia and New Zealand. Keen, along with a number of prominent feminists such as J.K. Rowling, Germaine Greer, Kathleen Stock and Meghan Murphy, set themselves against the underlying trans ideology due to their shared belief that the inclusion of transgender people in women-only environments (bathrooms, sports competition, even prisons) threatens the very safety of biological women in such environments. In other words, they believe that giving what the trans activist class what they want would bring about the marginalization and exclusion of women. This explains their definition of the term “woman” as “adult human female”, and the exclusion of male-to-female transgenders from using the term for themselves.
In yet another corner of the globe, during the Trump-loving Conservative Political Action Committee, the prominent Daily Wire pundit Michael Knowles made a speech that included these words: “There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing… Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” Fighting words. Even if we grant Knowles the benefit of the doubt - that he is referring to the ideology and not the transgender population - speaking of a set of a set of ideas in “all or nothing” terms should send chills to anyone who wishes to preserve a classical liberal republic like the United States. As provocative as Knowles’s statements are, they address a growing concern: that children are being subject to medical processes that would enable their transitions from one gender to the other. However, as Jonathan Rauch would put it, he also exhibits the trademark fundamentalist worldview:
Those who know the truth should decide who is right. If you believe that truth is obvious, then it is obvious who should settle differences of opinion: those who know the truth. This is the fundamentalist way: rule by the right-thinking, exclusion and (if necessary) elimination of the wrong-thinking.
All three incidents reveal an underlying trouble that plagues every diverse, democratic society - the conflicting need of every identity group to be recognized. Just as much as Christians would like to have their voices heard in an increasingly secularized West, transgender people ask for nothing more than to be recognized as a distinct population.
The overwhelming animosity between these two groups in particular - the alliance against radical trans ideology and the trans activist class - lies in their shared view that the recognition of one viewpoint equals the marginalization of the other. The talk of Balkanization has certainly filled the commentary airspace. It is worth remembering that the different elements of Yugoslavia were held together only by the iron rule of a brutal dictator - Josip Broz Tito - and upon his passing, old wounds were made new once more. In the United States, the transgender question is only one out of the many brewing conflicts between different groups in American society. The black minority vs. the white majority, the coastal elites vs. Americans living in “flyover” states, pro-Trumpers vs. the Resistance, those who took the Covid vaccine vs. those who refused to - these are all dangerous powder kegs waiting for an ignition spark.
More than thirty years on, Spike Lee’s cinematic masterpiece Do The Right Thing has become relevant to a scary degree. The film follows a particularly hot summer day in a Brooklyn neighborhood, where members of various racial groups reside. The underlying disputes between its citizens began as trivialities - for instance, the Italian pizza shop owner only hangs pictures of famous Italian-Americans on his walls, instead of famous American blacks. By the time the sun sets, these seemingly minuscule fault lines have expanded into un-bridgeable gulfs, with the police killing a black man via chokehold, and the subsequent rioters destroying said Italian pizza shop. The comparisons to the summer of 2020 are inevitable - one black man killed by the police, and the subsequent riots claimed multiple businesses and livelihoods. There’s no way to deny this: Americans are living an enlarged version of the Brooklyn neighborhood, and summer’s only getting hotter from here.
A potential solution reveals itself in an essay by the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, titled The Politics of Recognition. The gist of his thesis is: In order to safeguard a viable multicultural, multiracial, and multi-religious society, liberalism is not enough. Within a diverse society, the familiar institutions of classical liberalism - guaranteed individual rights, the rule of law, and the free exchange of goods and services - are woefully ill-equipped to provide an answer to the politics of difference. This leads to the progressive Left’s charge that liberalism itself is not universally applicable, but merely a reflection of a particular cultural milieu. The attacks on the monuments of classical liberal luminaries like Thomas Jefferson and David Hume exhibits the fervor of this particular camp. On the Right, thinkers such as Ryszard Legutko posits that in order to preserve liberal pluralism, diversity of thought is to be sacrificed in order to accommodate members of varying racial, sexual, and religious identity groups:
Pluralism means monopoly; diversity, conformity; tolerance, censorship; and openness, ideological rigidity. In practically all institutions, private and public, in schools and corporations, there are offices of diversity, and all are gruesome ideological agencies, spreading fear and imposing conformity, not unlike their inglorious predecessors in the communist regimes. Those who preach “pluralism” insist upon a monoculture in which everyone must be a “pluralist.” The “open society” means that what came before must be jettisoned and those who hang on must be condemned as moral criminals.
Originally published in 1992 (the same year as Francis Fukuyama’s equally prophetic book The End of History and the Last Man), Taylor’s Politics of Recognition foresees how these troubling developments would put a stop to Fukuyama’s End of History. Taylor’s Canada, much like the United States, is a country of multitudes, thus making the task of devising a nationwide Charter of Rights ever more difficult:
The issue, then, is whether this restrictive view of equal rights is the only possible interpretation. If it is, then it would seem that the accusation of homogenization is well founded. But perhaps it is not…The question had to arise how to relate this schedule to the claims for distinctness put forward by French Canadians, and particularly Quebeckers, on the one hand, and aboriginal peoples on the other. Here what was at stake was the desire of these peoples for survival, and their consequent demand for certain forms of autonomy in their self-government, as well as the ability to adopt certain kinds of legislation deemed necessary for survival.
Thirty years after this essay, although Quebec has tempered its wishes to secede from the Dominion, French Canadians are still clamoring for legislations that respect their cultural differences from the Anglophone mainstream. Just as France has been resisting the tide of wokeness, Quebeckers have put their foot down against social justice ideology, for in their view, le wokisme is as much a threat to their view of meritocracy as it is to their distinctive culture. Here’s Quebec’s Minister for Higher Education, Pascale Déry, speaking:
“We believe that we must base ourselves on people’s competence. We must hire researchers on the basis of competence. We are not saying that the DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) criteria are not good. These criteria must be there, they have existed for a long time, but they must reflect the specificity of Quebec. For equal competence, we can give preference to candidates from diverse backgrounds.” (my emphasis)
Unlike the French Canadians, the indigenous population of Canada have relied on wokeness to assert their cultural differences. Recently, Toronto’s biggest university, Ryerson, has changed its name to Toronto Metropolitan, for it “offers an invitation to be more inclusive, to imagine novel ways of thinking and creating — to open ourselves to new possibilities.” The real reason is because the university’s association with Reverend Egerton Ryerson is now deemed problematic, due to his unsavory history in designing the Residential School System for Indigenous Canadians. Ryerson, like all universities in Canada, have adopted Indigenous land acknowledgements - a social-justice-inspired Penitentiary Act that all students and educators invoke before class can begin. In the case of my own university, Trent, it goes like this:
“We respectfully acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of the Mississauga Anishinaabeg. We offer our gratitude to the First Nations for their care for, and teachings about, our earth and our relations. May we honour those teachings.”
This act of genuflecting, along with the rise in Indigenous Studies courses, the focus on “decolonizing” the curriculum, and the gross misuse of the word “genocide” in describing the history of Canada’s First Nations, is a sign that the Indigenous politics of recognition, though radical, is succeeding. But its success comes at a cost of destroying liberalism, and there is always the likelihood of future social movements drawing on this anti-liberal ideology to sow division within the multicultural society. It is no coincidence that the divisive identity politics of Indigenous Canadians mirrors that of the American Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the growing movement for the mainstream recognition of transgender identity.
The two examples of French Canadian and Indigenous politics of recognition are evidence of what Columbia professor Jonathan Haidt calls the two competing concepts of identity politics. There is the politics of the common enemy, “where you say life is a battle between good groups and evil groups. Let’s divide people by race, straight versus everyone else. Men versus all the other genders and white versus everybody else. So, you look at the straight white men. They’re the problem. All the other groups must unite to fight the straight white man. That’s one of the core ideas of ‘intersectionality’.” Then there is the politics based on common humanity. Examples of its practitioners include Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Pauli Murray, a a gay, black, possibly trans civil rights leader in beginning the 40s. In an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, Professor Haidt describes her message as “when my opponents draw a small circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them. I shall shout for the rights of all mankind.” The Quebecois, in Haidt’s view, emphasize the specificities of their culture while defending their institutions against the divisive DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) ideological umbrella. By contrast, the Indigenous Canadians have successfully adapted the DEI model into their understanding of themselves as well as the society which they live in. As such, while the Francophone Canadians can stand proud of their cultural heritage, the First Nations’ politics cannot go past the black-and-white paradigm of seeing themselves as historical victims, and the larger Canadian society as oppressors.
How does all this relate to the movement for the recognition of trans identity? As far as I can see it, the outrage surrounding the alleged transphobia against the Nashville shooter Audrey Hale and the ignominious promotion of transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney to the role of Bud Light spokesperson, the politics of the common enemy and shaming of the mainstream culture has completely taken over the transgender political landscape. Even if there is fervent opposition to this radical turn, they all either come from the mainstream Right, or gays and lesbians such as Andrew Sullivan and Bari Weiss. The time has come for a renowned transgender personality to conceive of an alternative framework of trans activism that emphasizes common humanity. Thus far, renowned trans figures such as the former adult film star Buck Angel and Caitlyn Jenner have been vocal against the excesses of the movement. However, none among the transgender population has come up with a viable activist agenda for the mainstream recognition of trans identity - one that answers the most pressing concerns voiced by the opposing view while asserting the humanity and dignity of transgender people against a growing tide of exclusion and bigotry from the Right.
Surprisingly enough, this proposed agenda can find its inspiration from Andrew Sullivan, the renowned journalist and gay activist who introduced Americans to the novel idea of gay marriage. In a seminal essay on The New Republic titled “The Politics of Homosexuality”, Sullivan describes the key political positions regarding gay marriage, both for and against, and offers his thorough critique on all of them. One of these positions is deemed “the radical politics” of homosexuality, which states that “[h]omosexuality… is a cultural construction, a binary social conceit (along with heterosexuality) forced upon the sexually amorphous (all of us). This politics attempts to resist this oppressive construct, subverting it and subverting the society that allows it to fester.” According to Sullivan, “[f]or the radicals, like the conservatives, homosexuality is definitely a choice: the choice to be a ‘queer,’ the choice to subvert oppressive institutions, the choice to be an activist.” Therefore, it is not unreasonable for the ‘queers’, largely influenced by Nietzsche and Foucault, to oppose gay marriage: “Its belief that sexuality was only one of many oppressive constructions meant that it was constantly tempted to broaden its reach, to solve a whole range of gender and ethnic grievances.” Thus, the triumph of gay marriage in American public life is not just a victory against the political establishment view, but also a victory against the radical ‘queers’ who viewed a sexuality merely as a marker of their subversion. Like Sullivan, the Brookings scholar (and gay marriage advocate) Jonathan Rauch also views the ‘common humanity’ type of identity politics - in contrast to the ‘common enemy’ view held by radical ‘queers’ - as instrumental in gaining recognition for the gay population at large:
The real point of the gay rights movement is not just to secure equality for homosexuals; it is to maximize all Americans' freedom to be true to themselves — the freedom we were denied. The last thing a movement of former pariahs should seek is to inflict the same agony on someone else.
For those reasons, I said, reasonable religious accommodations are something gay people should embrace as a cause, not resent as a concession.
Unfortunately, the increasing intensity of the trans debate has brought about a revival of a politics of ‘queer’ recognition. We see it in the mainstreaming of the TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney as a trans icon, the hostility of the trans population towards Dave Chappelle and J.K. Rowling, the revisionist history of the Stonewall Protests as started by “black trans women”, and the Stasi-like supervision of minuscule transgressions such as failing to refer to a person by their ‘correct pronouns’ as well as the practice of ‘dead-naming’ - referring to a person by their pre-transition name as opposed to the current name they assume.
The transgender issue is not just divisive among the so-called LGBT+ world - gays like Sullivan and lesbians like Stock are vocal in their opposition to the trans ideologue - but also within the liberal/conservative political landscape of America. While conservatives are quick to believe that this is another manifestation of the LGBT “agenda” imposed on the average American by out-of-touch elites, liberals and progressives see the trans movement as another manifestation of a marginalized group’s struggle for civil rights, much like the Civil Rights movement for black equality and the fight for gay marriage before it. Starting with the infamous Vanity Fair cover photo of Caitlyn Jenner (formerly Bruce) and Laverne Cox gracing the cover of TIME magazine, transgender identity has made its way into the mainstream culture. From a civil rights perspective, I view this as a good thing - no person or group should be marginalized based on their innate characteristics. But until a transgender version of Andrew Sullivan can answer the objections of conservative and gender-critical feminist critics, the trans movement shall continue to be poisoned by its most radical adherents, and the mainstream public will be further alienated. These objections include, but not limited to:
Should the transgender movement accept the age-old gender binary, as opposed to indulging neologisms such as “non-binary” and “genderfluid”? Additionally, should other people be coerced into “affirm” their self-image?
Should children who identify as a member of the other sex receive extensive consultation before undergoing any hormonal treatment?
Matter of fact, should they be undergoing hormonal therapy at all before their 18th birthday?
Must a transgender woman (male-to-female) participate in women’s sports competitions, where she would possess a clear advantage compared to her non-trans peers? Similar objections can also be raised in regards to gender-specific public bathrooms (should transgender women enter into women’s bathrooms?), and gender-specific prisons (should transgender women be allowed in women’s prisons).
Thus far, even transgender people who question the orthodoxy - Buck Angel and Jenner herself included - are subject to vicious criticisms and ostracization from their peers. So a great volume of courage and conviction is required for a trans individual to build a bridge between her group and the mainstream culture. She will incur both criticisms, even attacks, from members of both - the former will perceive her as a traitor, while the latter will see her as just another radical agenda-pusher. But she will likely find a much-needed audience: reasonable, well-meaning individuals, including transgender folks. Eventually, down the line, she will establish a coalition strong enough to push back against the movement’s radical voices, all the while bringing her set of concerns into the mainstream debate. It is then that the onus is on America to prove her adherence to the founding principles of liberty and equality. If such a person emerges from the shadow, I would be happy to feature her on my podcast. I wish her the best of luck!