Introduction
We are two cis philosophers seeking to understand and convey trans realities. Our book, Real Gender: A Cis Defence of Trans Realities is the first book to present a cis defence of what it means to be a transgender person: man, woman, or genderqueer (nonbinary, bigender, pangender, gender-fluid, agender, etc.).
Our book addresses major aspects of the debates surrounding trans issues, but no prior knowledge of these is required on the reader’s part. It seeks to clarify the cis-specific perplexities and combat the cis-specific prejudices that clash with the intellectual liberalism and principled openness of the book.
We expose, confront, and debunk the putative arguments of people who encourage cis prejudices and injustice, including so-called trans exclusionary radical feminists.
Replete with trans testimonials, the book is primarily aimed at cis people who are struggling to think clearly about trans realities and may be confused by anti-trans rhetoric and related fearmongering, but it should also be of interest to anyone with an interest in philosophical and socio-political issues surrounding the gender wars.
Real Gender does not seek to provoke or attack, but to unequivocally defend the rights of trans people. If you are keen to have a closer encounter with the realities of being trans and a better understanding of the divisive discourse surrounding gender, then this is the book for you. We believe that not only the concepts ‘woman’ and ‘man’, but also the concept of ‘gender’ stand in need of re-examination. Such conceptual elucidation, we think, is key to alleviating the lack of acceptance experienced by trans people.
Biological Reality
Contrary to many people on both sides of the debate, we maintain that the affirmation of trans rights does not require the denial of either biological or sexual reality. We also delve into the various factors which make many trans people’s experience of their gender (or lack thereof) as natural and unquestionable as that of cis people.
The idea that gender may be reduced to the sexual organs with which one was born needs to be challenged.
While recognising the undeniably social aspects of gender, we equally allow that gender has biological underpinnings. Trans people may choose to publicly transition or not, but they do not simply choose to be (or not be) a certain gender. Gender is not dependent on sexual characteristics. One can be born with a penis, and yet be a woman; with a vagina, and yet be a man or, indeed, neither one nor the other.
We expose, confront, and debunk the putative arguments of people who encourage cis prejudices and injustice, including so-called trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs). We hope that, in reading us, some of them will desist; but, most of all, we hope that people who have been misled by their rhetoric will come to realise that what is needed is a more liberal understanding of our gender concepts, one which would prevent us from confusing diversity with pathology.
Chapter Synopses
Our opening chapter, ‘The Woman Question’, challenges the widespread claim that only ‘adult human females’ are women. In Chapter 2, ‘False Alarms’, we rebut various alarmist claims brandished as reasons to be trans-exclusionary across a range of domains, from restroom spaces to competitive sports. In Chapter 3, ‘I say, Therefore I Am?’, we defend the validity and authority of being trans as a phenomenon whose authenticity must be respected by default.
Chapter 4, ‘Trans Kids’, considers the source of gender certainty in young children, initiating our examination of the allegedly exclusive social nature of gender. We also endeavour to distinguish facts from falsehood on topics such as peer influence and detransitioning. We further probe the existential nature of gender certainty in Chapter 5, ‘Bedrock Gender’. This chapter introduces the concept of the negative certainty of ‘not being cis’, that is experienced by many trans people who might otherwise be unsure or even confused about their gender. The often-rejected notion of ‘feeling one’s gender’ is also discussed.
Conceptual change is conditioned by lived experience.
In Chapter 6, ‘Gender Born and Lived’, we delve further into the biosocial nature of gender and argue against the popular idea that trans people, by definition, deny the reality of biological sex. Catchphrases such as ‘sex is real’ and ‘biology is real’ have become transphobic dog whistles, intended to distract us from the fact that biology is all-too-real for the many trans people who choose to have gender-affirming surgery.
The idea that gender may be reduced to the sexual organs with which one was born needs to be challenged. At the same time, while natal sex does not in any way determine one’s gender, it does not follow that gender is a mere social construction. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that it is the combined outcome of both biological and social factors.
In Chapter 7, ‘Gender Across Time and ’Place’, we explore gender concepts across different cultures, past and present alike, addressing the diversity of its manifestations from both an evolutionary and an anthropological perspective. The final chapter, ‘Reconceptualizing Gender’, demonstrates that our concepts of gender are not fixed but, rather, evolve alongside human practices and behaviour. We also warn against some well-intentioned but ultimately misguided attempts to abolish gender concepts altogether.
Living Concepts and Authenticity
There is no point in philosophising about concepts in the abstract: conceptual change is conditioned by lived experience. To that effect, we interviewed trans people, read a great number of trans testimonies and autobiographies; and dived into socio-psychological studies involving trans kids, teens and adults. We slowly began to fathom, to the extent that cis people can, the vicissitudes endured by trans people.
Many trans exclusionary feminists are gender essentialists: they believe that each of us has either a male or female “essence” which is determined by our sex. They believe that this essence is shared by all women at all times and therefore refuse to accord to trans women the status of ‘woman’ or they ask them to ‘prove’ they are women using that essentialist biological concept as a benchmark.
In contrast to this essentialist view of gender, we argued for a lived concept of gender. We thought in terms given to us by Existentialism and Enactivism: it is existence and action (or behavior) – not some biological essence – that define us. This would be the main leitmotif of the book: we must allow life and lives to shape our concepts, not the other way around.
We realised – as expressed in Chapter 3 of our book – that the determination of authenticity would be key here. Authenticity, as we discuss – drawing from Wittgenstein’s concept of indubitable or ‘hinge’ certainty – is embedded in how we live; in how we, personally, cannot but live. It became clear to us that, in most cases, there is as little existential room for a trans woman to question her womanhood as there is for a cis woman to question hers.
Just as we would not, by default, question a cis woman’s certainty of herself as a woman, we should not, by default, question a trans woman’s certainty of herself as a woman. The same default trust goes for all genders (trans men; bigender etc.) or absence of gender. It became clear to us that people who are not cis may be as hinge certain of their gender as cis people are (usually) certain of theirs.
The Concept of Gender
Sally Haslanger writes that:
What began as an effort to note that men and women differ socially as well as anatomically has prompted an explosion of different uses of the term “gender”. Within these debates, not only is it unclear what “gender” is and how we should go about understanding it, but whether it is anything at all’ (2000, 32).
In other words, an option put on the table today is the elimination of the concept of gender altogether (and, by the same token, of the concepts ‘man’ and ‘woman’). We are not in favour of this. For, the elimination of gender would leave us with the bland alternative that we are all, and only, persons. This would suppress a whole range of vivid, lived, and enjoyed differences in human life. The problem, after all, is not in the differences, but in our acceptance of them; and in our acceptance that conceptual boundaries are porous and transitable.
As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein made clear, many important concepts in our life are not closed, but open concepts; concepts that are not restricted by necessary conditions, but that admit of fluidity and variation. The concepts of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are susceptible of sensitive extension. For such an extension to occur – not only in the philosopher’s study, not only intellectually or in principle, but as a matter of fact, in everyday interaction – we must alter the conditions for gender perception.
This can only be done through the normalisation of LGBTQ+; and normalisation requires repeated interaction. Repeated interaction with genders of all ilk will be encouraged and made smoother for all if we accept that gender is not always aligned with biological sex. So that biological sex does not determine gender.
Conclusion
So where are we today? We believe that the optimism that prompted what Katy Steinmetz called, in Time Magazine 2014, the ‘transgender tipping point’ was premature. Samantha Allen was right to ask a few years later in the Daily Beast: ‘Whatever Happened to the Transgender Tipping Point?’; and to say that we were wrong to think a critical threshold had been crossed.
As Allen wrote: ‘Wherever you look, transgender people may be more visible but they are still facing the same problems in 2017 as they were in 2014 ‘. We believe that, for the most part, this is still right in 2025. Let us, however, close this brief introduction with Allen’s more optimistic spirit of 2019:
This may seem like a strange time to feel optimistic about the future of L.G.B.T. rights in America. But as a queer transgender woman who has spent most of her adult life in red states, hopeful is exactly how I feel. … America’s queer center of gravity is moving toward the middle. Before we know it, this country will have become L.G.B.T.-friendly not from the outside in but from the inside out. There are plenty of reasons for L.G.B.T. Americans to feel despondent right now. But hope is just down the road. (Allen 2019).
This is the kind of situation in which philosophy has a clarificatory and therefore salutary role to play. Though Real Gender contains some philosophical arguments, it is addressed to a wide readership, including the parents and teachers of trans children; people who work with transgender youth, whether they be health professionals, clinicians, psychotherapists, or support group workers and organisations; as well as teenagers and young adults, be they cis or trans.
We also hope our book will provide help and reassurance to people exploring their own identities as well as those of their friends and wider social groups. We seek to support the unsupported, inform the uninformed, and convince the unconvinced.
