Philosophical issues with transness are a symptom of dysphoria

Sometimes trans people have deep philosophical problems with transness. “Am I, in some sense, metaphysically a woman?” they ask. “Are my personality and interests drawn from the same distribution that cis women’s are? What definition of ‘woman’ is there that includes me? What does ‘nonbinary’ even mean? When I ask someone to see me as ‘nonbinary,’ what the fuck am I asking them to do?”

Now, these philosophical problems are real and legitimate, and I’ve talked about them on this blog before. But if you find these questions distressing, if you ruminate on them all the time, if you break into tears thinking about how really women are the ones who produce eggs and so you will never truly be a woman—

Okay. I am just one man, and I have my own personal experiences. I don’t have any kind of peer-reviewed study or randomized controlled trial here.

But in my experience if you find these questions viscerally upsetting, one of two things is wrong:

1. You’re on the wrong hormones.
2. People you care about misgender you.

And so instead of reading transfeminists or trans theory or trans-exclusive radical feminists or God help us 4Chan’s lgbt board, when you find yourself facing these problems, you should ask yourself:

• If I want to take HRT, am I on HRT?

• If I’m on HRT, am I forgetting to take my HRT dose?

• If I’m on HRT, is my HRT dose too low?

  • You might want to ask your doctor for a blood test. Don’t be afraid to politely advocate for yourself if your hormones are in the low range for a cis person of your target sex; many doctors chronically underdose trans people.

• [If transfeminine] Do I need to make other changes to my HRT regimen, such as adding progesterone or using a more effective antiandrogen?

• If I don’t want HRT, are there signs that my sex hormones are out of whack?

  • If assigned female at birth: should I take an antiandrogen? Have I been screened for polycystic ovary syndrome? If I have polycystic ovary syndrome, is it adequately treated? Should I go on or go off hormonal birth control, or switch to a different formulation? If postmenopausal, have I considered postmenopausal HRT?

  • If assigned male at birth: do I have low testosterone?

• Am I out as my identified gender to my friends and loved ones?

• Am I closeted to someone who is important to me whom I’m afraid wouldn’t accept me if I told them? Such as my parents?

• Do my friends misgender me?

  • Think beyond the pronouns! It is very common for people to screw up your pronouns and still see you as your gender, or get your pronouns right and misgender you in more subtle ways. Are you being treated as “one of the girls” or “one of the guys”? If you’re transmasculine, do people (say) assume that you like babies? If you’re transfeminine, do people (say) assume you don’t know anything about makeup?

  • There are woke ways to misgender people too! If you’re transfeminine, do people talk about your male privilege? If you’re transmasculine, do they talk about how you’re not like a cis (implicitly, real) man? If you’re non-binary, do they want to know your assigned sex at birth or which gender you’re “aligned” with?

If none of those are the problem, then maybe your problem is the metaphysics of gender.

Look, I’m not going to say that the definition of gender isn’t interesting. But in my experience, if your hormones are on point and you’re generally seen the way you want to be seen, then it’s not a big deal if you’re in some abstract philosophical sense your assigned sex at birth. You might prefer to be in some abstract philosophical sense the gender you identify as, but it doesn’t cause you persistent unhappiness. If the philosophy genuinely troubles you, then the problem is probably something else.

Further applications of this principle to other life problems left as an exercise for the reader.