The middle-ages model was based on the principles of Ptolemy, and hundreds of years of celestial observation. Everything worked perfectly well until Copernicus and Galileo gave us the new and exciting heliocentric model. Copernican thought was revolutionary, but then we had Newton, and then Einstein, Bohr and Hawking. We keep observing the universe, and we keep changing the model to fit the observation, not ignoring the data that doesn’t fit. We could also still use geocentrism if we wanted – we would be able to predict solar and lunar eclipses, roughly, but nothing would work properly.
The model of male and female is based on thousands of years of observation of genitalia and the binary qualities of sexual attraction and reproduction. Those were the externally observable facts. They correlated. And, yes, we could remain happy with that.
But now we are gathering observations from people who feel profoundly uncomfortable presenting as the gender they are classified in. We know that somewhere between 0.3% and 0.5% of the world’s population experience gender dysphoria and don’t feel they “fit” with a binary model. Are millions of such people wrong? Or is the current model wrong? [...]
The ancient model that divides us into two distinct “sexes” is deeply ingrained. As a trans person, I prefer an “all human” model: we all identify individually. We should accept this. If we have to adjust the words we use or build our toilets differently, then we should. I cannot believe that kids should be suicidal because I, as a taxpayer, don’t want schools to change some of their facilities. We know that isn’t the true reason for resistance. It’s because we don’t want to believe the model is broken. We don’t like change. These are structural things. It is this fear of change that manifests in our newspapers each week as a desire for trans people not to exist at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment