Social rather than sovereign

Suzanne Moore asks a crucial question in a post on the Tavistock ruling.

Again, we must ask what is causing this misery for girls and why suicide rates are rising. Why are female bodies such an uncomfortable place to be?

That question needs to be thrown back to society and not always located in the psyche of the individual. This is why I find parts of trans activist discourse so totally conservative. There is no analysis of how gender operates, of how bodies and definitions do not exist in isolation, how the notion of a true self may itself be false.

Very likely is false, from what I’ve read of psychology and philosophy. The self isn’t a thing, and it ebbs and flows and mutates constantly, so preaching about a “true” or “authentic” self just doesn’t mean very much.

So much thinking that underpins the trans ideology of selfhood, is that selfhood is sovereign rather than social. It has much more in common with right wing thinking than it does with left wing thinking. That so much of the left has rushed to embrace it is a sign of the times.

Yessssssssss. That’s the quote of the day.

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