I have my account back for the weekend as usual, but still don't intend to tweet much. I see some disagreements over whether or not "born in the wrong body" is a core belief of trans activism of the Critical Social Justice kind.

The argument seems to have arisen because of the Department of Education guidelines saying that schools should not encourage the 'born in the wrong body' position as an explanation for gender nonconforming children or use resources from organisations that promote it.

This has been received well by many people who have been very concerned about the rush to diagnose gender nonconforming (GNC) children as trans & particularly by gender critical feminists who have consistently opposed gender roles & expectations more broadly.

In response to this, many trans advocates, most notably 'mermaids' have responded not only that they don't accept or use the concept 'born in the wrong body' but that doing so is actually a cisnormative (assuming that its normal to ID as the sex indicated by genitals) narrative.

This position looks to many like a hasty & dishonest backpedal on the part of trans advocacy groups who fear their influence will be much reduced by this. Many believe that 'born in the wrong body' is a core CSJ position & denial of this is just cynical damage control.

As usual, I am about to piss everybody off.

Two things are true at the same time & underlie this seeming inconsistency.
1) ‘Born in the wrong body’ is often used as a simplistic explanation for gender dysphoria by trans activists who advocate medical transitioning & accepting people as the gender with which they identify.

2) “Born in the wrong body” is inconsistent with the CSJ trans activism that draws on queer theory and has long been criticised by them as perpetuating cisnormative assumptions that break people into biological categories.

That is, for someone to be born in the wrong body, there has to be a stable categories of people called men & women as defined by their bodies. Queer theory-based trans scholars and activists do not accept that there is. This enables them to speak of things like 'female penises.'

Generally, when you hear people speak of 'born in the wrong body' you are hearing the view of someone who is sympathetic to trans people's gender identity but accepts that there are two sexes rather than a spectrum & that this is biology & not a social construct.

Trans activists used to argue this more commonly leading some of them to take issue with Judith Butler in the 1990s saying that by breaking down categories of sex, gender & sexuality & making it all a performance, she was essentially saying trans people could not exist.

Butler responded to their criticisms simply by saying she accepted their validity and did not mean to suggest trans people's gender identity was not real. She did not explain how gender identity can be real & a performance based on social constructs at the same time.

This is further confused by the fact that queer theory-based trans activists will often amplify trans people, including youth, saying they feel like they were born in the wrong body and using these feelings to argue for affirming the gender identity of the dysphoric person.

This does not mean, however, that they actually believe that there are right and wrong bodies for any gender identity. Another example of them not believing this is when they say that "genital attraction" is transphobic.

I myself have been accused of perpetuating a cisnormative & transphobic narrative of 'born in the wrong body' by queer theory trans activists whenever I say anything that indicates that I believe there is a biological & probably neurological explanation for why some ppl are trans

However, I still suspect mermaids and other trans advocacy groups & individuals to be performing a motte & bailey move here rather than just accurately presenting the standard queer theory objections to 'born in the wrong body' concepts of gender identity.

I think they are seizing on the phrasing of the DoE to argue that they don't technically do the forbidden thing while they do actually do the thing the DoE want to stop happening in schools - interpreting gender nonconforming children as trans & encouraging them to do this.

I fear the debate around this will now get stuck in a stalemate with people arguing about whether or not the advocacy groups believe people can be born in the wrong body rather than whether or not they urge understanding GNC children as trans which is the actual issue.

I can see that I now have a lot of notifications and suspect that some of these will be people showing me examples of trans activists saying children can be born in the wrong body. I know there are plenty of these.

I also know that people who attempt to support trans people's gender identity with these words are likely to be shat upon from a great height by trans activists accusing them of biological essentialism.

Some of you are likely to also be pointing out the logical inconsistency of believing that trans identity can be real & require surgery to bodies AND believing that bodies are not intrinsically male or female.

I assure you that not only am I fully aware of this, but so are the theorists and logical inconsistency is a feature not a bug. They actually believe this kind of incoherence to be a form of activism to break down the categories people think & thus free people who don't fit them.

In Cynical Theories, we give examples of queer theorists saying precisely this and show how 'to queer' & 'queering' is often used a noun to describe the process of making things incoherent and accepting contradictory claims at the same time.

OK, time to check notifications.