It is also interesting that this guy does not mention how the medical establishment, particularly psychiatry, has long supported transgender ideology, which has led to it being seen as legitimate by many more people outside of academia. Or the fact the medical establishment and their ethics committees have decided that it is ethical to change one’s body to reflect one’s personality. This guy also ignores that the more the sex roles are enforced the more likely people are to believe they are the opposite sex if they do not conform to them. As another poster said transgenderism cannot exist if the sex roles are not enforced and males can be ‘feminine’ boys/men and females can be ‘masculine’ girls/women without the assumption this makes them somehow like the opposite sex.
He also ignores the role gay men have played, not only through their creation and promotion of queer theory, but also historically gay men have supported the idea that there is something biological about them that is similar to heterosexual women. This has also added legitimacy to the idea of ‘sex changes’ and trans ideology. For example, as far back as the 19th century, gay men such as the lawyer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs argued that homosexual men have a ‘female soul’ trapped in a male body, and claimed liking things associated with the opposite sex was further evidence of this ‘feminine essence’, or ‘female psyche’. Another gay man Magnus Hirschfeld a sexologist claimed homosexuality was a form of hermaphroditism. (Both these men are widely celebrated by queer theorists.) They weren’t alone in their beliefs, many sexologists held similar views, and some in the medical establishment accepted these theories at the time.
However, there were also those who rejected this and thought homosexuality was acquired in one way or another. Indeed, the medical establishment split off into two directions in the late 19th/early 20th century, those who thought homosexuality was acquired and sought to ‘cure’ it by psychological and behavioural methods, e.g. psychoanalysis and aversion therapy, and those who viewed it as as a biological condition, and sought to ‘cure’ it by physical means, e.g. reproductive organ implantation and rudimentary ‘sex change’ surgeries. This progressed to giving testosterone to gay men in the 1940’s to try to make them attracted to women, when this didn’t work they were given female hormones in the 1950’s to try to lower their sex drives. More gay men were also being given ‘sex change’ operations at this time. These ‘cures’ were given, as homosexuals were thought to be somehow biologically like the opposite sex, i.e. that homosexuality is some kind of intersex condition. It is not difficult to see how transgender ideology has been developed from this.
By the late 1960’s and 1970’s many in the gay liberation movement, and many lesbians in the women’s movement rejected the idea that homosexuality was innate. They also argued that regardless of whether it is acquired, innate or a choice homosexuality should not be subject to the medical establishments ‘cures’ of psychotherapy, aversion therapy and sex change surgeries. They did not endorse sex changes, and saw them as the establishments way of turning homosexuals into pseudo heterosexuals, and as an extreme way to eliminate sex role non-conformity.
By the 1980’s gay men were going through the aids crisis, and public acceptance was low, it is around this time that we see a resurgence of gay rights groups arguing in favour of ‘born this way’. There are a number of discredited studies from the 1980’s and early 1990’s claiming to scientifically prove homosexuality is innate, due to homosexuals being more like heterosexual members of the opposite sex in various biological ways. For example, in 1991 a gay man Simon LeVay claimed his study found that gay men’s brains are similar to heterosexual women’s, the study had more holes in it than colander. However, it was still widely touted as proving homosexuality is innate, and that gay men were biologically similar to heterosexual women.
This demonstrates that although some gay men argued from a biological essentialist viewpoint, in the hopes of gaining more social acceptance, it has bolstered the idea that sex role stereotypes are innate and paved the way for transgender ideology. For example, if one accepts that sex role stereotypes (and homosexuality) are innate, then it makes transgender ideology seem more logical and acceptable to many people. It also explains why many see transgenderism as non-threatening to women, as if you believe in ‘born this way’ and think most are gay men, then you are more likely to feel sympathy. Moreover, ‘sex changes’ have been given to homosexual men to superficially ‘cure’ homosexuality for a very long time. The veneer of legitimacy that pseudo-science gives to the idea that sex roles are innate, enables the medical establishment to continue performing ‘sex changes’, without just seeming sexist or homophobic. Therefore, far from social constructivism, it is biological essentialism that has led to transgender ideology being accepted by the medical establishment. In the final analysis I would say it has been a two-pronged approach, where some males of the establishment have used social constructivism for their own gains, e.g. to say biological sex does not exit, whilst others have used biological essentialism when it suits them, e.g. to say that sex roles and/or sexuality are innate. Both are used for political purposes and that is to further whatever best suits males purposes at the time.