Gender-Critical Philosophy

Self-ID transwomen cannot logically reject separate spaces

If we assume self-ID as the only criteria for transwomen to claim membership of the category of women (you are if you say you are), the basic logic renders any complaints against separate spaces self defeating.

867 words (4 minutes)


Introduction

There were protests against a separate transwomen's section at a British prison. But what grounds could any transwomen placed there have for objecting? If we assume self-ID as the only criteria for transwomen to claim membership of the category of women (you are if you say you are), the basic logic renders any complaints against separate spaces self defeating.

Argument

Since, by their own dictum, ‘transwomen are women’, the section is holding women, so is a women's section. If you challenge them to explain what exactly is wrong, what can they reply? They would have to point out the differences – but there are by their own definition, none: they are women. Can they oppose the prison or not? Are there differences or not? If transwomen are women they must be in a women's section, so they have no grounds for complaint. If they point out differences, they show they do not qualify for the women's section after all, so they again can have no complaint. There seems to be a hard dilemma here.

But is the prison being contradictory too? No, the prison's position is that transwomen are different, and those differences can be pointed out, and so the prison's actions of separating the sections are consistent and justified. But the transwomen are in a bind. If they stick with their definition (‘transwomen are women’), they cannot have grounds for rejecting the prison's action (since they would be in a women's section), and so must find themselves in agreement with the prison. But if they want to oppose the prison's action, they must show the differences between transwomen and women, and so be forced to abandon their own position (so transwomen are not women), and, again, end up agreeing with the prison. (And indeed, the differences are precisely those that ground the prison's decision.).

Challenges

They might complain that the prison is not treating them the same, because the prison is not putting all women together. But what exactly is their argument? If there were two whole prison buildings alongside each other each with women's sections, would they demand they all be merged into one place? To be consistent they would have to ask to merge all women's sections in the entire world. There can be various reasons to have multiple separate women's sections: geographic, administrative, etc. The prison can reasonably hold those, alongside their primary claim here: that transwomen are different, argued by appeal to physical and social features. But the transwomen are only pointing at whatever the prison say or do and declaring it is wrong. If one is allowed that line, one can object to anything on no grounds. What is the transwomen's reasoning, independent of the prison's, based on the facts? They must cite some difference. One cannot even begin to claim unjust discrimination if one is not pointing out any discrimination at all – if you cannot even tell who is different to who. The transwomen remain stuck in the previously examined logical trap.

Some might challenge this by comparison with segregation by skin-tone. Imagine that the prison puts some such women in separate spaces, who then complain about their differential treatment. The prison replies that their admission of their difference shows the correctness of the separation. One would think that is unjust. Is this not the same as the argument above, and therefore that too is wrong? But this example is not the same, and the crux is the criteria used. Here it is wrong, but not in the main argument. Not only is male/female assumed to be a just ground for separation, but the complainants take it to be so too. Their complaint is not that there should not be such a segregation, but about their place in it. The complainants must accept there is a clear criterion for this segregation, in claiming to be on one side of it. But then they must accept that they do not qualify for the side they claim, when they complain that their very own group is not what they want.

Conclusion

The basic proposition ‘transwomen are women’ is rooted in a contradiction. If the only qualifier is self-ID – that one is granted a status merely by declaring it, despite the objective physical facts opposing it – we have legitimised contradiction. And this is forced into plain view in the case of separate spaces. The putative rationale must explicitly assert A is B, but also A is not B. It requires both: (1) A to be considered the same as B – transwomen are women; (2) A to be considered different to B – transwomen are not a group of women. Self-ID is logically faulty, and cannot support any coherent plan. A person is something only as far as they actually are, and according to that alone can rational policy be constructed.

Further

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Metadata

DC: {
   title: "Self-ID transwomen cannot logically reject separate spaces",
   creator: "Harrison Ainsworth",

   date: "2019-06-19",

   length: "867 words",
   type: "article",
   format: "text/html",

   language: "en-GB",
   subject: "philosophy, morality, gender-ideology",
   description: "If we assume self-ID as the only criteria for transwomen to claim membership of the category of women (you are if you say you are), the basic logic renders any complaints against separate spaces self defeating.",

   identifier: "urn:uuid:0E6EBC37-FF89-4EBC-8852-FFF5F31F78C1",
   relation: "http://www.hxa.name/articles/content/Transwomen-cannot-reject-separate-spaces_avoa_2019.html",

   rights: "Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 License"
}