Transphobic Arguments are Incoherent

Example 1 of about 7000

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Over the past year or so, I have started several essays on the broad topic of “biological sex” and transgender identity, and then set them aside for various reasons, not least among which is the fact that other writers here on Medium have made most of the points I wanted to make in those essays.

I’m now drawn to the topic once again, for two reasons. First, that I was asked to write a response to the part of Jerry Coyne’s article in the July/August 2023 issue of Skeptical Inquirer that addresses the “sex as a spectrum” issue (Coyne, J. A., & Maroja, L. S. (2023, January 1). The Ideological Subversion of Biology. Skeptical Inquirer, 47(4), 34–47). Second, that Tucker Lieberman’s excellent articles on Richard Dawkins’ transphobia pushed me, as it were, over the edge.

Epistemic Boundaries

In this brief note I just want to call attention to one point, namely, that transphobic arguments based on “biological sex” invariably rely for their persuasiveness on inferences drawn across what I am tempted to call “epistemic boundaries.”

Does the sun rise in the east?

Here’s a simple example (from a different arena) of the sort of thing I’m referring to: I say, “The sun rises in the east.” But…