The so-called “wisdom” of the world is rife with incoherencies. One of the more trendy and pernicious examples of our time is transgenderism. Like relativism, transgender philosophy looks compelling, maybe even commonsense, on the surface. But when you examine it closely, you discover that it devours itself, like the Ouroboros, the ancient symbol of a snake devouring its own tail.
It’s important to keep in mind that in exposing the incoherence of contemporary gender ideology our intention is not to belittle those who really do feel that they are a woman trapped in a man’s body, or vice versa. We acknowledge that such an experience is difficult and should not be trivialized. Nor do we intend to poke fun at those who may not experience gender dysphoria but nevertheless agree with transgender thought. Our intention here is to focus on transgender philosophy’s logic, or lack thereof.
Let’s start with transgenderism itself, or at least the commonest form of it in contemporary gender ideology. It claims that an individual’s gender identity—that is, his innermost concept of self as male [or] female” or “how you feel inside”—can be in conflict with the biological sex that he was conceived with. A biological male, so it’s argued, can have a female gender identity (and vice versa).
A few names are representative of this version of transgender thought: Caitlyn Jenner, Lia Thomas, Jazz Jennings, and Rachel Levine, all four of whom are biological males who think their gender identity is female. As Jenner put it in a 2015 exclusive interview with Diane Sawyer, “For all intents and purposes I’m a woman.” He identifies his inner self as the place where his female identity lies: “My heart and my soul . . . it is part of me . . . that female side is part of me.” Given this perceived gender identity, Jenner assimilated the female form. Initially, he did so through dress and behavior. But in 2017 he underwent so-called sex reassignment surgery.
Contradiction and incoherence
Here’s where the Ouroboros begins to devour its tail. Insofar as Jenner thinks he is female when he is biologically a male, he denies the connection between his biological sexual form and his gender identity. That is to say, he thinks his biological maleness doesn’t indicate his gender identity. But at the same time, he seeks a connection between his gender identity and biological sexual form insofar as he identifies with and seeks to take on the female form to match his female gender identity.
What does this amount to? A contradiction: there’s no connection between biological sex and gender identity, and yet at the same time and in the same respect there is a connection.
Now, an advocate of transgenderism might counter, “Well, for some, it’s not the biological female form that the man might identify with, but rather the female form that’s socially constructed: the wearing of high heels, makeup, long hair, and a curvy figure.”
But the same logical problem arises. If the socially constructed male form (the wearing of flat shoes, short hair, robust figure, etc.) is not indicative of one’s gender identity—and this must be so, because many transgender people such as the men listed above claim to have been female on the inside all along—then the socially constructed female form would not be indicative of one’s gender identity either. And if that’s the case, then in principle, there is no way for the man to identify with the socially constructed female form because such a form isn’t connected to a female gender identity.
So, in this scenario, like the above, we would have to deny the connection between gender identity and socially constructed maleness or femaleness and affirm that same connection at the same time and in the same respect. That’s a contradiction, which no one, including advocates of transgenderism, should accept. Our dignity as rational beings requires that we reject it.
There’s another away in which transgender philosophy is logically incoherent: it can’t define a woman, or what it means to be female.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted in April 2022 to change the legal definition of woman to include men who consider themselves women. If Supreme Court Justice Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson had been on the board, she might have gummed up the works, since the prospect of defining woman tripped her up during her confirmation hearings in 2022.
Asked by Sen. Martha Blackburn, “Can you provide a definition for the word woman?”, Jackson replied, “No, I can’t. Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.” Days later, a handful of the Biden administration’s federal agencies, including the departments of Justice and Education, refused to define the term.
Judge Jackson’s answer, like the San Diego Board’s vote, was geared to appease the transgender movement. But it wasn’t helpful for that cause, because it underlines the problem advocates of transgenderism face when it comes to defining the terms man and woman.
They have a few options—and the board tried one—but they can’t actually adopt any of them and keep their transgender creed.
Definition #1: Biology
A transgender advocate could appeal to biology and define a man and a woman in light of the generative powers each has. This approach centers on human reproduction and a woman’s role in it.
Let’s try this admittedly technical definition: A woman is a member of the human race who reproduces, or co-generates, in the self rather than in another. In other words, if your body is biologically structured to produce oocytes (ova or egg cells), perform the role in the sex act of receiving semen in a way that’s directed to conception, and gestate a baby, you’re a woman. (There’s a reason why we’re not mentioning chromosomes. It has to do with some philosophical issues that are interesting but not necessary to hash out for our purposes here.)
But transgender advocates can’t appeal to biology because, as we saw above, the whole transgender movement is based on the idea that biological sex is not expressive of whether someone really is male or female—that role, so it’s commonly argued, belongs to gender identity (the inner sense or feeling of being a man or woman).
In fact, Jackson sells the farm by even insinuating that she might be able to define woman if she were a biologist. That’s an appeal to biology, which is not kosher according to the transgender creed.
Definition #2: The inner sense
With biology out of the way, we can drill down on gender identity—the inner sense or feeling of being a man or woman. Here’s how that one goes: A woman is someone who has the inner sense or feeling of being a woman.
Again, we don’t deny that some people experience real emotional distress when they think that they’re a woman even though exteriorly (biologically) they’re a man. Our focus is on the reasoning that’s involved when advocates of transgenderism try to define a woman in terms of the inner sense or feeling of being a woman (gender identity).
One problem with this path is that it’s not kosher for right reasoning because it entails a vicious circle: you can’t define something using the term you’re trying to define.
Another problem is that this way of defining the term woman makes it entirely private and subjective with no way to publicly verify that someone really is a woman. The judgment as to whether the inner sense or feeling really is of the kind being a woman is dependent entirely on the individual’s judgment. Several bad consequences ensue.
For starters, we gut the term of all meaning, since, as philosopher Sophie Allen puts it, “‘woman’ has no meaning if it can mean different things to different individuals in virtue of private, subjective feelings when no-one has a way to ascertain whether the feelings reported by different people are of the same type” (“If transwomen are women, what is a woman?”, medium.com).
Another bad consequence of this private path, as Allen points out, is that it becomes difficult to know if a person is sincere or not, or perhaps just mistaken. It’s not hard to imagine a fourteen-year-old boy, his teenage hormones raging, claiming to have an inner sense or feeling of being a girl, just so that he can have access to the girl’s locker room; or a serial rapist claiming to have an inner sense or feeling of being a woman just so that he can be put in a women’s prison.
It’s also not hard to imagine how easy it would be for a man to identify as a woman due to social pressures, cultural environment, and the attitudes of peers and others. Defining a woman in terms of a private feeling makes it almost impossible to determine whether such influences are responsible for a man feeling like he’s a woman.
Given the reasons above, appealing to the inner sense or feeling (gender identity) of being a woman to define the term woman is a dead end.
Definition #3: Societal norms
How about societally forced roles or norms associated with male or female bodies? These can include appearance, fashion, and practices.
This option does have something going for it because it’s often the case that gender identity is defined not only as the inner sense or feeling but also how one expresses his perceived gender identity. Planned Parenthood, for example, defines “gender identity” on its website as “how you feel inside and how you express those feelings.”
So let’s try this: A woman is someone who identifies with social norms that are viewed as expressive of a woman.
But a transgender advocate, if he wants to remain consistent with the transgender creed, can’t go with this option either.
To begin, socially constructed norms aren’t innate or permanent. Such norms are by definition extrinsic and come from society—so as societies come and go and change, so do those norms. Not to mention that norms vary from society to society, so a person ends up being a man and a woman as he goes from one society to another with different norms.
But many claim that gender identity is innate and immutable or fixed, and if that’s the case, then a woman can’t be defined by her relationship with societal norms.
Those who claim to be gender-fluid might be okay with this. But many in the transgender community subscribe to something permanent. So someone’s belief is going to be excluded, because they both can’t be true. This puts transgender advocates in a pickle because they often pride themselves in being exemplars of the superior virtue of inclusivity.
Here’s another problem: who determines what the consensus is such that this or that female gender expressive form is what constitutes a woman? Is it the “elites” in the culture? Is it the majority opinion? Neither has a great track record for setting cultural norms. After all, the elites and the majority once supported eugenics, slavery, and racial segregation, so maybe it’s not advisable to look to them to define something as foundational as manhood and womanhood.
Definition #4: Whatever the individual decides
Well, sure—as long as we’re cutting into the metaphysical roots of what constitutes the sexually dimorphic human race, an arbitrary and subjective “definition” is worth a try.
How about this one then? A woman is whatever anyone wants a woman to mean at any given time.
Guess what: the transgender advocate can’t go there logically either. If we can define woman to mean whatever we want, then in reality it means nothing. It’s unintelligible, which means no sense can be made of any person claiming to be a woman. No sense could even be made of the claim that someone is gender-fluid or non-binary.
Gender-fluid is defined as a person who does not identify with a single fixed gender or has a fluid or unfixed gender identity. The gender identities of male and female must refer to something—must be intelligible—in order for a person to say, “I’m one of those things at one point in time and not at another.”
Non-binary is defined as a person who identifies as being both a man and a woman, somewhere in between, or as falling completely outside these categories. But, again, there must be some intelligibility to the terms man and woman in order for a person to say, “I’m both man and woman” or “I’m somewhere in between being a man and woman” or “I’m neither a man or a woman.” To say I’m not a smoker implies there’s such a thing as people who smoke cigarettes.
If we can determine whatever we want the term woman to mean, then we aren’t be obliged to accept “Caitlyn” Jenner’s claim to be a woman—nor the claim of Lia Thomas, Jazz Jennings, and Rachel Levine—since their definition of woman is just that: theirs. We could say that he’s a man and not get fined out of existence or arrested or banned from whatever media platform exercises unjust censorship.
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A transgender advocate can’t go with any of the above definitions for defining man or woman lest they contradict the transgender creed. Therefore, they’re at an impasse when it comes to defining such terms. No wonder Ketanji Brown Jackson was stumped when it came to the question “What is a woman?” The transgender creed doesn’t allow for one.
It’s important to emphasize, again, that the above critiques are aimed at the ideas or the ways of thinking that transgender philosophy embodies. They are not aimed at the individuals who may have legitimate confusion regarding their sexual identity. Our hearts go out to these people. And it’s precisely because of our Christian love for them that we expose the logical incoherencies of the transgender philosophy.
We are made for truth. And that’s the only thing that will make us truly happy.
…Then Nothing Means Anything
The logic that undergirds contemporary gender ideology opens wide the door of total relativism, the view that states there is no absolute truth whatsoever.
Consider that transgender people don’t just discover their inner sense or feeling of being female; they make a judgment that it is a feeling of the kind being female. It’s here, in this judgment, where relativism emerges. Given that there is no objective way to ascertain whether the feelings reported are really of the kind being female, the truth as to whether such feelings really are of the kind being a woman is dependent entirely on the individual’s judgment.
And it’s not just the feeling of being a woman that becomes relative. The meaning of the term woman itself becomes relative to the individual’s judgment. This is so because the inner feeling or sense of being female is what really determines what a woman is, at least according to the transgender creed.
If the reality of a woman is determined by the individual’s judgment, then what other aspects of reality can be determined by an individual’s judgment? According to transgenderism, it can definitely determine the reality of what a man is. So, if a man and a woman, then what else?
It would seem there’s nothing in principle to restrict the individual’s judging power only to determining the reality of what a man or a woman is. It’s simply arbitrary to say that an individual can determine reality only with regard to the identities of what a man and a woman is without any principled reason.
If an individual can determine the reality of what a man and a woman is, then they can determine the reality, or truth, of other things too (e.g., race, age, weight, height, bodily condition, species, etc.). The door becomes wide open for anything.