My background is in psychoanalysis and psychodynamic theory, and while, granted, to every person with a hammer, every problem is a nail, I do believe that there's a psychoanalytic approach to the trans rights debate that explains the level of energy in perceived attacks against the TR movement, and the need to mobilise to silence any question that they are right and their opponents are wrong. And when you see it this way, you begin to understand why arguing facts is pointless and doesn't work - why no matter what logic is brought into the debate, the resistance remains, and in fact increases, along with a certain sense of hysteria.
I work regularly with clients who are in problematic relationships with others. I note often that these relationships are defined by a dynamic that is so powerful that it runs the risk of destroying everything else - namely, a "fight to the death". But a fight about what? And against what?
The fight, in one form or another, is typically an existential fight where the party is 'hooked into' their perceived opponent: they believe they are fighting for their very existence; they need a hook to hang this on to; and one of the strongest and most destructive hooks is envy.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, there are many men out there who envy women to the point of hatred. At its most extreme - and there is nothing more extreme than a dysfunctional relationship with woman, i.e. "mother" - the envy goes so deep that, theoretically, there is an unconscious desire to 'consume' the other. In this case, for someone to consume "woman". The theory goes that by becoming her, she no longer exists, the protagonist takes her place, vengeance is exacted, and pain assuaged.
In other words, this is theoretically an unconscious drive to take womanhood and motherhood over, and to have a new ruler in her place. To obliterate anything to do with woman by overlaying something that looks like her, but is a facsimile of her. This might explain why there is so much new language around reproduction and menstruation - the one thing where a man may feel that he is shut out.
I understand that to many people this is foreign. But I've lived, eaten, and breathed the world of the unconscious for years, and it has offered an enlightening perspective on several radical movements going on right now (each with a different, but linked, explanation). And I thought I'd offer it here, because I'm not political, but I am deeply interested in the motivations of a person's psyche, and well versed in subtexts that operate therein.
So: facts are irrelevant. This isn't factual. It is emotional and psychological ... and for the most part unconscious, which means it is very hard to get to, because you are attacking a person's deeply entrenched defences - and those defences are there for good reason: to hold back childhood pain and devastation. I write this final sentence as a reason, and not an excuse, for what's happening. Because another piece of the puzzle here is a prevailing inability to take responsibility for one's past, and therefore one's present actions.
Individually and collectively, we are reaping what our forebears sowed.