Queer theorists do not believe that transwomen exist
Paul Tyson on the contradictions at the heart of gender theory
A gotcha word-trap played by queer activists is to ask sex-realists if they believe that transwomen and transmen really exist. If you say they do not exist, then you are denounced as genocidally transphobic, seeking to wipe all trans people from the planet. If you say they do exist, then you must say that they really exist, meaning that a transwoman is, without any caveat, a real woman. But this is an entirely disingenuous language game, because it is queer theorists who do not believe that trans people really exist.
Judith Butler, for example, celebrates the fact that gender theorists display no consensus on what gender means. This is because gender itself does not actually exist in the world, gender is a linguistic performative construct, simply dreamed up by our own imaginations, and then politically projected onto others as normative conventions. Of course there will be no consensus about the meaning of gender. The same is true for sex. Butler believes that sex is a linguistic construction that does not exist in objective reality. This is because, being a good postmodernist, Butler believes either that reality itself is unknowable, or that what we call material reality is itself without any meaning, and it is only our performative words that give it a meaning.
So here is the interesting thing. Butler does not believe that there are real males and females in the world. To Butler ‘male’ and ‘female’ are not real natural meanings describing real natural facts, for meaning itself does not exist in objective reality. Not even humans exist in reality, as to Butler ‘humanity’ is a linguistic construct, not a real natural kind. The only ‘things’ that exist (if anything does) are without meaning in themselves. So we simply make meaning up. What Butler objects to about sex-realists is that they believe there really are such things as human females in the world, and that there really are such things as human males in the world. Butler cannot understand how sex realists can be so ignorant, so backward, so bigoted, as to believe that our words about male and female sex genuinely reflect an actual natural reality.
So if you want to play the linguistic genocide game, then it is Butler who does not believe that there are any real males and females, or humans in the world, and she wants to linguistically destroy everyone who delusionally thinks of themselves as real biological male or female humans. And indeed, this is what the designation ‘cis’ aims to do. If you accept that, say, you are a cis-woman, this means that you accept that a biological woman is not actually a real female. This then makes a cis-woman and a transwoman identically (that is fictitiously) female.
To Butler a transwoman does not exist as a reality in the world. A transwoman is a gender-identity construction, as – so she insists – are all gender identities, and all sex categories. So if we mean by ‘exist’ something like ‘objectively real’, then queer theorists do not believe transwomen exist. By their own polemic logic, they are genocidally transphobic. But it is not only transpeople that gender theorists do not believe exist, it is all males and all females, and indeed, all humanity, that queer theorists genocidally disbelieve in. And that seems to me to be about right. The queer gender-identity movement is a misanthropic movement that denies the real existence of male and female humans. So the real question here is, how did these misogynist and misandric lunatics get to run the asylum?
Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position. For more on Genspect, visit our FAQs.
Like What You’ve Read? Join Genspect Live and In Person in September!
Checkout our latest list of speakers and sessions here.
Good Lord, Butler is a jackass.