Yes, "Reasonable Compromises" on Trans Rights are Transphobic

On what is not being said beneath the debate over Democrat backpedaling on trans rights.

Jonathan Chait at the Atlantic recently published another contribution to what has become an alarming list of think-pieces in the wake of the 2024 election recommending that Democrats ought to moderate on the subject of transgender rights. A number of writers, columnists, and theorists have ably responded to these ideas ( Here, Here, and Here) and so that is not what I intend to do in this piece. Instead I want to look at the assumptions behind the questions and I think Chait’s article is especially helpful on that front as representing what I am going to call the “cis-liberal perspective” on transgender rights and I want to contrast it with a transgender perspective on the subject of our rights.

In the article Chait claims that

The major questions about trans rights are: Do some people have the chance to live a happier and more fulfilling life in a different gender identity than the one to which they were born? Do some of these people need access to medical services to facilitate their transition? Do they deserve to be treated with respect and addressed by their chosen names and pronouns? Do they deserve equal protections from discrimination in employment, housing, and military service? Must society afford them access to public accommodations so as not to assault their dignity?

and says (and I believe he means it sincerely) that “the moral answer to all of these questions is a clear yes”.

In contrast, Chait also argues (or sometimes just states) that certain other topics are are “politically toxic” and that Democrats should concede the ground on them. Chait is a little vague as to whether he thinks such a concession is a matter of good political tactics or of the larger trans community simply being wrong on these counts; I am not entirely sure the difference has occurred to him. Specifically the three topics Chait wants Democrats to moderate on are: 1. Whether or not (and under what conditions) trans women should be permitted to participate in women’s sports; 2. “allowing adolescent and preadolescent¹ children to medically transition without adequate diagnosis”; 3. Providing medical transition healthcare to incarcerated trans people.

What stood out to me about Chait’s initial list of questions is not how nice it is that Chait supports trans people on so many different levels but rather what his choice of those questions says about his paradigm for thinking about trans people and trans rights. In short (hold on to something here allies because this might irritate you) Chait’s questions and his project in this piece suggest to me that, while Jonathan Chait wants to support vital trans rights, he is operating from a place of subconscious transphobia.

I am not saying that Jonathan Chait is a Bad Person™ and if you have been thinking that his suggestions seem tactically prudent and reasonable please don’t read this as an attack on him or on you². What I am saying is that many cis people (and not a few trans people) operate out of a set of assumptions which, without their necessarily realizing it, are rooted in cisnormativity—the unexplored assumption that cis-ness is the natural default and that society is justified in building itself around the needs and expectations of cis people.

Two Paradigms

In order to explore what I think is going on with Chait’s piece (and with the other think-pieces and opinion segments that functionally mirror it) I want to explore the difference between two social paradigms regarding trans people: the trans accommodation³ paradigm and the trans affirming paradigm. What these two have in common, and what has led to significant confusion and (I hope) unnecessary hurt and misunderstanding is that, to their credit, both paradigms affirm many vital social and legal rights for trans folx. In order to highlight the differences between the two I will define each one and then look at how that paradigm engages with Jonathan Chait’s three topics.

The Trans Accommodation Paradigm

The trans accomodation paradigm begins from the assumption that trans people are people who experience an intense psychological need to present and be experienced as a particular gender in society. This paradigm frames trans people as being members of a particular “natal sex” but recognizes that trying to enforce a corresponding gender identity or presentation on them is harmful and cruel and therefore holds that trans people should be accommodated. Thus the trans accommodation paradigm rightly sees the provision of legal, medical, and social transition to trans people as a matter of justice. It holds that it is necessary for our well being and flourishing for us to be accommodated as members of a gender class which does not correspond to the sex category we were assigned to at birth.

Working from this paradigm the three topic Chait raises—women’s sports, childhood medical transition, and state sponsored transition for incarcerated trans people—are all prima facie complex topics worthy of discussion, exploration, debate, and compromise. The trans accommodation paradigm would likely structure the questions as follows:

1. How should a just society balance the potentially competing interests of trans women to operate in their gender identities in as many arenas as possible with the interests of cis women to compete on a level playing field with one another? The complexity and nuance of sexual development as well as the fact of intersex women certainly ought to be incorporated into this discussion. Ultimately it comes down to questions of how far trans (and intersex) women can be accommodated without infringing on the rights and interests of cis women, and of what the demands of justice are in a messy situation. We should also remember to account for issues of broader historical and cultural marginalization when exploring this thorny topic.

2. The question of when and to what extent medical transition should be made available to minors needs to recognize the fact of desistance and should take into account overall questions of regret rates in order to determine whether or not medical accommodation in the form of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and gender affirming surgeries are in the long term interest of trans children. This question needs to be driven by the best and most up-to-date medical and psychological research in order to decide which medical and social interventions at what stages are likely to yield the best outcomes for children who experience gender dysphoria.

3. The question of whether or not the state should pay for medical transition for incarcerated trans people is one based on larger questions of reasonable medical accommodations. The state should certainly be expected to provide necessary and life saving healthcare to incarcerated people so the relevant question here is whether or not a given medical intervention is medically necessary for the survival of the trans person in question or whether they would be able to survive their term of incarceration without it.

Note that all three of these questions are framed around the question of reasonable accommodation in the context of a pluralistic society with occasionally competing interests and needs. Further I would certainly argue that trans rights can be effectively advocated for from within this paradigm—I am convinced that there are persuasive, cogent, and valid arguments in support of trans rights that are being made on the grounds that these questions establish. However I also believe that it is ultimately not the correct (most accurate) paradigm for thinking about trans rights and that it is inappropriately limiting for the purposes of trans liberation.

The Trans Affirming Paradigm

The trans affirming paradigm is likely more familiar to many simply because it is so frequently repeated in its most basic form: trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary people are real and valid. The trans affirming paradigm begins with the belief that trans people really are who we say we are; it it gender identity forward rather than “sex assigned at birth” forward. In this paradigm trans women are women who, at birth, were not recognized as the women that we are and were mischaracterized based on the sex category we were assigned to; trans men are men who at birth were not recognized as such and were mischaracterized based on the sex category they were assigned to; non-binary people are variously neither men nor women, or are some combination of those two or are without gender altogether (agender) but who, at birth, were not recognized as such and were therefore mischaracterized at birth based on the sex category they were assigned to; gender fluid folx are people whose gender changes from time to time but who were mischaracterized at birth as statically chained to a particular gender based on the sex category they were assigned to at birth. Working from this paradigm, the disability (if any) that trans women experience is based not on having a psychological need to live as women (that would be the trans accommodation paradigm) but is based on our bodies not reflecting our womanhood in ways that resonate with who we are such that (sometimes) we and (more frequently) society fails to recognize us⁴.

Working from the this paradigm Chait’s three topics may still be complex but are going to be framed very differently and the degree to which it is even reasonable to raise them in a society which purports to guarantee basic human rights is itself the first question of reasonable discussion. The trans affirming paradigm might structure these topics like this:

1. When it comes to women’s sports, should some women be prevented from participation and if so, on what grounds is it just to prevent some women from participation while allowing the participation of other women? This question hinges on how society might justify denying to some members of a particular class (women) the right to engage in an activity which purports to be for women.

2. In the field of children’s medicine, is it just to force a child to experience a puberty which does not align with who they are? What medical interventions and guardrails can and should be in place to ensure that as few children as possible are forced to experience the mental and physical trauma of a puberty that is out of alignment with who they are? Here the question is how to ensure that harm is not done to children (trans or cis) by coercively withholding or actively forcing a particular physiological change on them.

3. Regarding medical transition (and specifically gender affirmation surgery) for incarcerated trans people the question is whether it constitutes a violation of human rights to withhold medically necessary treatment from a prisoner. In the framing of this paradigm there is no question regarding the degree of suffering that a trans person will endure if denied medical transition; the basic right to conform one’s body to one’s gender as best we can is a settled matter of human dignity. Just as the coerced castration of cis men and forced testosterone injections on cis women would already constitute clear and horrendous violations of 8th amendment protections, withholding necessary transition care from prisoners is also a violation of their 8th amendment protections.

Notice that in the shift from the trans accommodation paradigm to the trans affirming paradigm, the questions change in relation to the postulates that arise from the paradigm. Once we have internalized the fact that trans women are women just as cis women are women, that trans men are men just as cis men are men, and that non-binary people are real and valid, we stop thinking in terms of accommodating psychological or medical insufficiencies and we begin thinking in terms of guaranteeing the clear and obvious right of each person to live as who they are.

And this is what I mean when I say that proposed “reasonable concessions” to popular opinion are necessarily transphobic. It is not that these concessions seek in any way to actively harm trans people; rather it is that they operate out of an assumption that trans people are not really quite who we say we are. If, having never heard of the existence of trans people, you heard that some women’s bodies masculinize to the point that they are routinely taken for men and that society is now debating the degree to which they should be permitted to function as women, whether or not they should be forced to experience masculinizing puberty instead of a feminizing one in order to ensure that no men accidentally engage in said suppression of masculinizing puberty, and whether or not—if incarcerated—the state should be permitted to withhold feminizing medical procedures from them, you would be appalled that society at large is even entertaining such questions.

But those operating out of the accommodation paradigm are not appalled at the fact of the discussion because, at some level, they do not yet see trans women as women to the same extent that they see cis women as women. They do not see trans men as men to the same extent that they see cis men as men, and they do not see non-binary people as valid and real in the same way that they see binary cis people as real and valid. This is where the terms “transwoman” (in contrast to “trans woman”) and “transman” (in contrast to “trans man”) become especially revealing. Transwoman and transman as single words give the impression of separate categories from woman and man. Many people who still operate out of the accommodation paradigm have adopted “trans woman” and “trans man” as accommodations but transwoman and transman remain representative of their approach to us. We are, to them, pseudowomen and pseudomen, while non-binary people are caught as confusing somethings who are generally thought of as “men or women but we don’t call them that because it makes them sad”.

And while all of this is better than the rank, cruel, overt attacks on trans legitimacy that we are encountering from the political right these days and we are not too proud to accept political support in nearly any form it arrives, the cold fact that remains is that the suggestion that Democrats ought to entertain reasonable compromises on trans rights is only able to be perceived as reasonable or prudent by those whose paradigm for us remains more accommodationist than affirming.

1. I have absolutely no idea what Jonathan Chait is referring to in even raising the possibility that preadolescent children might be medically transitioning. There is no form of medical transition that is currently available to preadolescent children nor, to my knowledge, has such a possibility ever been serious suggested. Certainly it is not a topic for which any trans rights group or organization has ever advocated.

2. I find the “Bad Person™” framing problematic to begin with since I am fully convinced that the way forward for any person is to first look our flaws “in the face” and not pretend they are anything less than they are, to integrate the fact of them into the story that we are, to renounce them and to work to become better. The tendency to explain away faults as “not who we really are” does not help us to become people who do not enact those faults. And at the same time, the idea that we can or should have nothing to do with flawed people cuts off the possibility of growth, improvement, and redemption.

3. I have chosen the term accommodation intentionally here as I believe it represents a particular and characteristic misunderstanding of trans people and borrows from certain disability paradigms in order to make sense of us. While there is much fruitful work to be done exploring the intersection of transness and disability; the trans accommodation paradigm fundamentally misplaces the locus (to the extent than any exists) of disability in the trans experience.

4. At this point I want to note that, like many truths, this paradigm is more complex and nuanced than the accommodation paradigm. Gender is itself a complex phenomenon and the ways that we and our society construct meaning around particular physical characteristics can cause intense suffering (dysphoria) when those meanings do not align with the meaning (to ourselves or to society) of our gender. Not all trans people feel any need to medically transition and are quite happy to own their bodies as women’s bodies which happen to conform to social expectations of maleness. On the other hand many trans women experience deep distress around the fact that, prior to transition, our bodies read to us and to society as typical of men. That is also entirely valid and our right to modify our physiology to align more closely with our own experience of our gendered selves is indeed a matter of basic human right.