Twitter thread
Why dialectical materialism isn’t compatible with trans ideology: 🧵 First it is important to note that dia-mat is a formula that can be used to deconstruct popular beliefs & attitudes into more or less systematic doctrines. (1/13)
Marx used it to combat both German idealism & the beliefs held by the Church. Today the church has been replaced by postmodernism. Materialism seeks the conditions (material, economic, social) that make for such possibilities (systems, ideas, trends). (2/13)
I argue that trans/gender ideology is idealistic & irreconcilably opposed to materialism. Dualism is a philosophy that separates the material world from the spiritual. Descartes popularized this view in the 1600s with his first principle “I think therefore I am.” (3/13)
Trans ideology encapsulates this because it views the mind and body as separate entities; one is born male but thinks he is a woman because of how he feels. This sort of idealism asserts that the material world is dependent on the spiritual. (4/13)
Materialism opposes this because it teaches that matter is objective reality existing outside & independent of the mind and that everything mental/spiritual is a product of material processes. In Lenin’s “Materialism and Empirio-critcism” he thoroughly rejects the idealist (5/13)
elimination of the ‘dualism of mind and body.’ Idealism implies that one should not place reliance on science and encourages us to not believe things despite having evidence. (6/13)
Trans ideology rejects observable reality, it suggests that doctors assigning sex at birth (which is based on observing genitalia) is not grounds for determining sex. They will argue that intersex condition is ’the exception that proves the rule.’ (7/13)
But disorders of sexual development do not prove that sex is neither a material concept or a social construction. If anything, DSD are indeed exceptions that prove the rule that: humanity is composed of men & women (and such anomalies prove that there is a standard). (8/13)
Calling those who critique this ideology “mechanistic materialist” is also incorrect. Mechanistic materialism reduces the understanding of things to parts, this dogmatic view rejects the processes of things. In approaching trans ideology with dia-mat, (9/13)
no one denies that social conditions (such as, but not limited to: homophobia and misogyny) have created the possibility in which people acquire postmodern identities. (10/13)
But like the dia-mat approach to evolution; which is that things develop continuously and are not static, one cannot prove that sexual organs are capable of evolving into the opposite. (11/13)
Like so with claiming we are metaphysical thinkers, when metaphysics in itself is an abstract way of thinking that disregards essential detail; such as material reality; such as biological sex. (12/13)
As a Marxist, it is important to be critical of such an ideology because it is currently being pushed by multi-billion dollar corporations that are neither interested in the health of trans individuals, children and most certainly the rights of women. (13/13)
yeah uh i thought we already figured out empirically that gender affirming care has better outcomes than trying to force people into the assigned box?
i don't really understand what gender is but other people tell me they have it and I don't see any ethical option other than believing their self-report
We're far from really understanding it, but we can do brain scans of people with dysphoria and identify certain patterns that they have that people without it don't have, so there's definitely materialist evidence for being trans (and even if there wasn't, that wouldn't mean it was fake or bad).
Similarly, there's a certain structure in the brain that's a different size on average between gay men and straight men. I think that all of the stuff that happens in our head is reflected in some way in the physical connections of our neurons, even if the patterns are more complex than we can understand.