Rather than a legitimate feeling

One of the comments allowed to remain on the American Booksellers Association’s Facebook post yesterday captures the eccentric nature of the ideology:

The book is a ploy for people to see gender dysphoria as a trend rather than a legitimate feeling. It’s ideology is one where being transgender is a “fad”. Someone’s gender identity is not a debate. It’s not something to question or say isn’t true based or crap science or psychology. The simple answer to the author’s “mysterious” question as to why gender dysphoria is more widely acknowledged is because society is finally opening up to discuss and talk about it. Not because it didn’t ever exist before. Society has purposefully been heteronormative and forced people with gender dysphoria to remain silent and stuck. This isn’t new. Gender dysphoria has existed as long as humans have. As have transgender individuals. And what they decide to do with their bodies is their choice.

First claim: gender dysphoria is a legitimate feeling.

Sure it is. There must be lots of kinds of dysphoria and they’re all legitimate feelings, because what would an illegitimate feeling be? You feel what you feel. But that doesn’t mean what you feel reflects a truth about the world, or that what you feel imposes some kind of obligation on everyone else.

Second claim: the book’s ideology is one where being transgender is a “fad”.

Yes, and? Of course it’s a fad. Its faddishness is reflected in the comment itself. It’s reflected in the melodramatic language of the ABA’s apology. It’s reflected in the numbers. It could be a harmless fad, or a benign fad, or a wonderful fad that will reverse climate change – but it’s clearly a fad.

Third claim: Someone’s gender identity is not a debate.

That’s the core mistake. Yes it is. If someone’s [___] identity contradicts external reality and has an impact on other people then yes it is [up for] debate. Absolutist libertarianism about something called gender identity is not reasonable except for the single occupants of desert islands.

Third claim restated: It’s not something to question or say isn’t true based o[n] crap science or psychology.

Yes it is. It’s something to question based on a number of things, including our own perceptions. We’re not required to perceive other people as the sex they aren’t simply because they order us to. We’re not required to and besides that we can’t – we can’t override our perceptions that way.

That’s the core issue, that third claim – that people’s internal fantasies about themselves are a mandate for the rest of the world. The wack nature of that claim is why the whole movement is so absurd and bonkers and hyperbolic and melodramatic. We can’t do that, we can’t believe personal claims that deny reality, and a pseudo-political movement that tries to force us to is doomed to drill its way into the center of the earth and expire.

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