The He, She, or It that Philosophizes
Without apologies to Kant, an exercise in irrational psychology
Among academic philosophers without anything really interesting to say, a cottage industry of courting the worst parts of the Internet for fame and clout has arisen in the wake of a certain Canadian muppet.
In order to be venerated in the halls of the “Intellectual Dark Web,” as they would like to be called but shan’t, one simply must strike out the truly brave position that they1 will not use the “preferred pronouns” of trans* or other gender nonconforming individuals.
The logic behind the use of preferred pronouns is quite simple: some people would prefer it if you used pronomial references to them in a way they felt matched their qualitative gender experience. I, for example, being a cis male, would really prefer you to use “he” or “him” when referring to me as a pronoun. If you were to refer to me as “it” or “they,” I might not correct you, but if you were to refer to me as “she” or “her,” I would gently remind you that Lane can be a masculine name.
Likewise, my young trans cousin prefers “he” and “him” as well. Out of respect for his wishes (see how I did that), I will use masculine pronouns to refer to him. A trans female friend of mine might ask that I use “she” and “her,” and I will do so, and gladly, because I am not an asshole.
This is functionally no different than if I told you that I preferred to go by my middle name, Andrew, rather than my first name. Or if I told you I had a nickname I really preferred. This is not an uncommon feature of our society. “Call me Ishmael,” after all, begins one of the most important pieces of English-language literature. It is very common when I meet clients for the first time that I tell them to call me Lane rather than “Mr. Haygood.”
So what, then, is the supposedly rational basis for refusal to honor this very small wish? This being philosophical, I will list, and refute, every possible basis.
First, it could be an ontological rejection of the category of gender non-conforming individuals in the first place. However, this is trivial to reject; we know trans* and other gender-nonconformists exist. Therefore, to say that they do not exist is nonsense.
There may be a metaphysical objection, then. Of course gender-nonconformists exist; we’ve all met them. But their gender nonconformity is a false or delusional belief, the Dork Webber replies, and I am not bound to respect false or delusional beliefs.
There is some intuitive pull to this. If I went around declaring myself the Emperor of Rome and requiring that everyone address me as Imperius Rex, you would not want to indulge this delusion.
But the why of this matters. The reason you would not bow and scrape before me as Holy Roman Emperor is because I have no right to that pretension. It would command a level of societal and political respect which has no meaning in our world. Acknowledging someone’s gender, on the other hand, is a courtesy. It demands no more of you than using a different word than you might otherwise have. Or perhaps you would not have; I doubt very seriously anyone objecting to preferred pronoun use has done a chromosomal analysis or a genitalia spot check on the person they’re insisting on misgendering.
What happens when someone says, “I disagree on a metaphysical level that you can modify your gender presentation from that assigned to you at birth,” you are conflating two important concepts — biological sexing and gender.
Sex is of course a matter of biology, whereas gender is a complex of biology, first-person experience, and societal custom and practice. Let’s tackle biology first.
Human beings are, for the most part, two-sexed. There are cases of people being born with various “intersex” conditions that make determination of sex more difficult, such as XX male syndrome, Kleinfelter syndrome, etc. But granting to the Dork Webber that these are edge cases, most people will be assigned male or assigned female at birth dependent on a review of secondary sex characteristics and genitalia.
Gender, on the other hand, is a constantly negotiated and renegotiated matter of first-person experience, presentation, and societal customs that arises as people age and join with other humans in wider society. Several extant societies around the globe, such as those in Southeast Asia or certain Native American tribes, have long recognized a third gender or some other nonconformist option (e.g., the kathoey of Thailand or the hijra of India). So the objection that sex and gender share a 1:1 correlation is historically refuted.
I posit that the reason so many people object to the concept of gender being divorced from or not mapping 1:1 with sex is that they deny the validity and importance of things like first-person experience and relational ontology (e.g., “social construction”). For them, these “softer” concepts without hard and defined edges put them in a state of psychological unease, as they vastly prefer the fantasy of the objective, black-and-white world to which their conditioning has led them.
So to object on the ground of metaphysics to the existence of gender nonconforming individuals is to state that the objecting individual denies the metaphysical and epistemological bases of their interlocutor, and is not willing to grant, ad argumentum, even the courtesy of using someone’s preferred pronouns.
The could be a logical reason for this, if someone were so committed to the proposition of not wavering on any of their philosophical stances that they even wished to speak colleague-to-colleague with even a minimum of consideration given to opposing opinions, but such a person should be seen as impossibly hard-nosed—and, quite frankly, correctly—as an asshole.
We would not, for example, expect that a modern-day rationalist would refer to her empiricist fellow faculty as “so-called empiricists” or “deviant rationalists enamored of the gospel of experience over logic.” Any person engaging in such behavior would be socially shunned as an unrepentant asshole, because we expect a certain degree of decorum and congeniality in approaching those with whom we disagree, even at such fundamental levels. It’s called being professional.
But to insist, as a social more, upon the usage of preferred pronouns is somehow taken as a fundamental attack on the metaphysical position sketched above, as if even indulging a colleague on this matter amounts to a betrayal of the most deeply-held and fundamental beliefs.
This is irrational psychology. It is an unbecoming and insecure manner of approaching one’s own metaphysical commitments. It is knowing, on the one hand, that one’s metaphysical commitment itself sounds like outright bigotry. I would hazard a guess that, psychologically, the Dork Webbers know that denying the validity of the existence of trans peoples’ first-person experience of their gender and insisting on conforming to a gender role assigned to a child via their perceived sex at birth sounds awful. It sounds like the bad old days when racist professors would not sit with their black or Jewish colleagues.
And that is the reason for their insistence that, “no, I cannot give an inch on this, for to do so would be to admit to myself that I hold a bigoted belief.”
I conjecture that it is not inherently bigoted to disagree with the metaphysics of gender nonconformity, no more than it would be inherently bigoted to be a nominalist. But to avoid the charge of bigotry and the social sanction that would accompany it, the person who denies the validity of trans as a category describing human sexuality and gender must, at the very least, admit and indulge their interlocutor’s preferences, just as they must admit and indulge their interlocutor’s preferences regarding chosen name or other forms of address, e.g., “Dr. So-and-So” or the use of a nickname.
We have long reached the point in society where doing something along those lines is considered common courtesy and not beyond the moral reach of any thinking person. To claim that the usage of preferred pronouns is somehow different, and that using them will force someone to deny closely-held and dear beliefs regarding gender, is simply a restatement that one is insecure about their metaphysical position and would rather not be challenged upon it.
While such behavior might be expected from the intellectually craven and servile, like politicians, it is unbecoming in persons of learning, such as academics, professionals, and philosophers. In one swoop, it denies the subject experience of the interlocutor and places the subjective experience and beliefs of the speaker in an unearned, epistemically privileged position, not unlike my claim to be Holy Roman Emperor above. This may be psychologically comforting to those struggling with cognitive dissonance regarding their self-view as open-minded and unbigoted with the ugly reality that their beliefs are exclusionary, but it is not the duty of trans and gender nonconforming folk to handle the fragile irrationalities of their interlocutors with kid gloves, when all the gender nonconformists want is the same courtesy that would be shown any other person with a small ask, such as the use of a preferred cognomen.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there may be a preexisting moral objection to the existence of trans people, as somehow violative of the natural law or natural order of the world. Under such circumstances, where one is commanded by what he perceives to be the dictates of his faith rather than reason, there can be no rational approach taken. If the response is, “God made humans only male or female, and nothing in between, and anyone who acts otherwise or contrary to their created sex/gender is deviant and a sinner,” then all attempts at rational discussion with such a person must cease. Nothing will stir him from the stance he believes commanded by his God. But neither, then, must we afford him the time of day within civil society. He is free to be ostracized by his own choice; if he feels the rules of the world are incompatible with his moral directives, the world is not bound to reshape itself simply to his will. However much he might claim to know the mind of God, he is not God. One who has the courage of the conviction of his faith should not whine and mewl that society disapproves of this stance and has chosen to shun him, rather than attempt to engage with someone who, in good faith, cannot be moved from his present position because it is divinely required.
Eat a gender-non-specific set of individual genitalia, transphobes.