A science of trans?
If we look, what will we find?
Imagine two people of non-specific gender living in opposing tenement buildings somewhere. They’re arguing good naturedly through their open kitchen windows, between which are strung washing lines laden with damp garments. Whatever they’re discussing, they can never agree. Why not? Because they’re arguing from different premises. Boom, boom.
That’s contemporary discourse around sex and gender, that is. Biologists and philosophers in the analytical tradition put the case for strong sex categories based upon scientific method underpinned by entlightenment reasoning. New-US-postemodernist-turn-type-theorists condemn the oppression implicit within such reasoning and insist instead upon the wholesale public acceptance of principles derived unchallenged from their own theory. Here, it’s not that biologists are wrong about observable human traits, according to the theorists (although some seem to say they are), it’s that the categories they create, like sex, are functions of unexpressed power relationships.
This latter sort of reasoning, in the tradition of Judith Butler, in the end seems to lead to post-sex and post-gender ideals, rather than the transgender and non-binary imperatives which dominate discourse at the moment. But, for now, it’s worth remembering that since pretty much everything is a combination of nature and nurture in some way, then gender seems likely to have a genetic influence.
Biologists sometimes talk about a gene for this or that. Mainly, they’re using the word ‘gene’ like folk in the UK use ‘fleet street’ to refer to the UK press. That is, genetic effects are mainly highly dispersed across the genome. Similarly, the UK press used to be based in London’s Fleet Street, but then technology was invented and they dispersed all over the City. So while ‘a gene for’ and ‘fleet street’ each denote a thing, they connote something else biologists and journalists respectively understand very well. ‘A gene for’, therefore, usually refers conversationally to a trend for thousands of identified SNPs to correlate with, and perhaps help explain, specific human traits.
In this sense, then, might there be trans or non-binary genes? And if there are, is it worth looking for them? Might it help diagnose, or indeed controvert a diagnosis of, gender dysphoria? Might it help prepare people earlier for their own probable future? Or would it all do more harm than good?
One way or the other, and in the context of people arguing from different premises, isn’t it at least worth a thought?
