Objectivity and Subjectivity

Whose facts matter?

It is terrifying that the world is inexplicable. People like to believe we can understand and control it, so believe in the existence of facts, objective truth, and Right and Wrong, all of which they imagine they know. So we argue past each other. In reality, Objective Truth about anything human cannot be known, only approached or approximated. Each person is marooned in their own subjectivity, their values and desires influencing how they see the world. That, or trapped in someone else’s, which is worse. How can we even talk to one another, when our experience and needs are so different?

I am Trans. I have been going on about this quite a lot lately, as it is denied. I am not a person “questioning my gender”, I know my gender quite well. I do not suffer from gender dysphoria, but have Trans Joy, because I have transitioned. I am not a “believer in gender ideology”, I know precisely what gonads I had, what they do, and what I did to them. I am trans. People are- hundreds of thousands in the census, tens of thousands on gender clinic waiting lists, thousands with Gender Recognition Certificates. There have been trans people for ever, and we exist all round the world in every culture. Some people are trans is about as Objective as you can get about people, just as objective as that people can be gay or left-handed or aphantasic.

I have always been trans. You don’t “become trans” when you embrace your nature, you just are trans, even if you try to present as your sex at birth despite how miserable it makes you.

And trans is subjective. Nobody would know that I am trans if I did not act like a trans person and say I am trans. Any diagnosis is based on what I say, though a psychiatrist might check if I were psychotic, and might try to see if I were lying. Someone might lie, and pretend to be trans, though outside prison it will gain them nothing.

In a free society, my subjectivity matters. I “pursue happiness” by, among other things, transitioning. My example of being authentically myself blesses other people.

The pretence that sex is biological and this is objective truth, or even that it matters apart from issues of reproductive biology, is a lie. Sex- what sex a person is and how that affects their life- is almost entirely cultural.

Other people’s subjectivity matters to me. If a woman is frightened when she sees me in a woman’s loo, that matters, but the answer is not just excluding all trans people.

So much of the argument against trans inclusion is sloganeering, triggering and mystification, as objective as Mein Kampf. Take the slogan “Sex-based Rights!” It is designed to trigger, to make women angry that their right to services with no men is being taken away by trans women and trans allies. Mystification: the anti-trans demand trans exclusion, without mentioning trans. The announcement of the NHS consultation talks about trans exclusion in ten paragraphs, and mentions “transgender patients” once.

I am not the Faceless Threat, the Others that the Tories want decent people to unite against. That’s as subjective as can be. I am a person. I matter as much as cis people do.

Whose facts matter? Everyone’s. Not their lies and bullshit, just their subjective facts, perceptions, needs, desires. Mine, as much as anyone else’s.