When I started this blog, I never thought I’d be wading into a topic as fraught and controversial as identity. That said, I also started this blog as a practicing Jew. How times have changed.
We’ve all heard the cultural bleating about “identity politics” from both sides of the political spectrum, but it’s worth exploring what exactly happens when we resort to identities and labels to describe something. As soon as we use an identity label to describe something, the discussion about that thing is over. The problem, though, is that an identity is a box; it doesn’t tell us anything about what’s inside. Let’s go through some examples.
“We need to stop racism.” What is racism? What is inside the racism box? What conditions do we need to fix? What specific beliefs need to change? What fears do we need to address? And, most importantly, what policies do we need to enact?
“I have OCD.” What is OCD? What do you experience? Oh, you experience extreme anxiety due to repetitive thoughts, and you require rituals in order to alleviate said anxiety? Okay, that’s helpful. That’s what’s in the OCD box. We can work with that.
“I’m transgender.” What are the components of transgenderism? You don’t believe you as a person fit into our narrow social constructs? Okay, how so? What would you like to be able to do or express that society’s gender expectations prevent you from doing? How do we make it easier for you to do or express those things? Do you have body dysmorphia? Okay, what is in the body dysmorphia box? You experience significant dissonance between your physical body and your internal conception of yourself. Okay, let’s focus on that specific experience instead of a label.
Our identity-centric mindsets have neutered all social debate in our civilization. We need to go a step further - if we want to solve these tensions, if we want to provide full social integration to everyone equally, we need to break each and every -ism and identity into its components.
The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to believe that, at its root, identitarianism is caused by an overidentification with our material world, which in turn is because we lack a sufficient belief in reincarnation. Some of our religions believe in reincarnation, but even those rarely use it as a central way to organize their worldview. Herein lies the problem.
I sound crazy, right? “We have identity politics because we don’t believe in reincarnation enough!”
Stay with me for a second. I believe in reincarnation. I honestly can’t imagine how, in 2024, with our knowledge of the vastness of the universe, we could both be alone out there AND only have one life to live. Each major religion has two sides to it: dogmatic and mystical. As far as I’m aware, every mystical side of every religion believes in reincarnation.
Because I have a reincarnation-centric mindset, I believe I’ve been MANY beings before. I’m sure I’ve been an alien. I’ve probably had tentacles. I’ve probably been born on a unisex planet. I’ve likely spent at least one lifetime as a man. Throughout each of these experiences and lifetimes, I’m still me, because intrinsically, “me” has nothing to do with my body or how well I fit into the social norms attached to my body.
If I woke up tomorrow as a man, I’d probably go through a period of mourning. Not because I have anything against men, but because I enjoy being a woman. I like my distribution of hormones and the level of emotionality my social upbringing has allowed me to cultivate, and I derive great joy from the eventual prospect of motherhood.
Even so, I’d adapt. For example, I’d be interested in pushing my body as far as it could go. I think I’d enjoy inheriting the social urge to be a protector. Despite my initial disappointment, the experience would ultimately give me a wealth of learnings and perspectives.
You can probably see where this is going, so let’s just dive in, shall we? Trans people believe they’ve been born in the wrong body. But if we’re going to have an honest discussion about this topic, we have to start by defining terms. What does it mean to be born in the wrong body? What would be the root cause of someone being born in the wrong body?
If you approach these questions from the lens of reincarnation, the answer is obvious: it comes from an overidentification with the body. I hesitate to use the following phrase because it mostly comes from hippies who don’t know what it means, but it’s true: I am not a body, I am a soul in a body. I can switch bodies like switching clothes, and it makes no difference to me apart from the different lessons each body provides.
To identify a soul with one particular type of body is to have too rigid of a definition for what a soul actually is. A soul is fucking INFINITE! A soul is every manifestation of nature, all packed into one entity. When you incarnate, your personhood is a mere sliver of your infinite soul - a flavor, if you will. Different circumstances (facilitated by different incarnations) allow you to unlock each piece of your soul. To attach your self with your current iteration of your body is to limit your perspective!
I was born with a broken body. I’ve written before about how I’ve dealt with severe health problems throughout my life and still experience pain from those problems. There were many times when my body was a prison.
Was I born in the wrong body? No. Even when I was at my most angry, it never occurred to me to think I’d been born in the wrong body, because I didn’t attach my personhood to my body.
The fascinating part about this trans debate is that both sides use the same argument of sex essentialism. Sex and gender somehow intrinsically matter. The unspoken admission is that your gender/sex is somehow connected to who you are as a person. It might influence your characteristics, it might have had a hand in your value system or how you grew up, but ultimately, it just doesn’t matter.
Okay, so I’m sure I’ve pissed off the liberals. Now it’s time to piss off the traditionalists.
If I believe that bodies (including sexual characteristics) are basically just fancy meat suits, if existentially they really are nothing more than a change of clothes, then we should be able to change our bodies as easily as clothes.
The best way to settle this whole issue once and for all is for science to come up with a way for us to switch bodies whenever we want. If we could click a button and poof! Try on a man’s body, either for a lifetime or for a day, and poof! Revert back; it would go a long way toward people realizing that our bodies have nothing to do with who we are.
Being a guy for a day would be so interesting! I’d love to be a guy for a day and have my boyfriend switch into a girl’s body for a day so I could experience his point of view. And then switch back because, as far as I know, I prefer being a girl. Some people might choose one body over another. Some people might decide they want to spend a decade in one body before switching back. Who cares?
Perhaps we were reincarnated into this specific body to learn certain lessons. While I can appreciate the logic of this possibility, things can change. Yes, you might learn some lessons if you’ve been a girl for five hundred incarnations and finally agree to try a male life, but you might also learn some lessons if, while incarnated, you say, “fuck the rules” and blow up the rule book.
Again, who cares? You have literally infinite incarnations to learn the lessons you were going to learn by being incarnated as a boy. As long as you don’t do any fucked up shit, the stakes are low.
Right-wingers are probably mad at me right now - partly my fault; I might’ve catfished them a bit with the article’s intro. However, it wouldn’t just be traditionalists who would be mad at me for saying any of this. Much of the trans community would also have a problem with my proposed solution because it undercuts their claims to essentialism just as much as the right-wing claims. If genders and sexes are nothing more than a more complex version of clothes, there is no “born in the wrong body.” Everyone is simply born in A body, a vehicle for this incarnation’s lessons. The identity piece of it disappears.
Okay. This is all well and good when talking about root causes, but it doesn’t help us figure out what to do now that we’re in this other, more antagonistic place. The truth of the matter is that we have two belief systems whose opinions are diametrically opposed. What do we do?
In the spirit of identifying terms, what do we mean when we ask, “What do we do?” Ultimately, we mean: what is the state’s role in enforcing any of this?
Here’s my answer: in a healthy society, the state would have no role in this. Zero. Zip. Zilch.
Are we not adults? Can we not figure this out without state intervention?
Western governments have assumed the responsibility of regulating inclusion. Our anti-discrimination laws seem like a good thing until we realize that the only reason we even need anti-discrimination laws is because the state doesn’t provide equality of opportunity!
(On the other hand, we also have governments who cut off your hand if you’re gay. No innocents here.)
Say you’re rejected from a job at a restaurant because of your identity. In our society, you can sue, and many people would. Of utmost relevance is the fact that our society also doesn’t have job guarantees. You face a very real chance of homelessness or other hardship if you don’t get the job.
Now let’s say you get rejected from the same restaurant in a healthy society. You know you still have housing, food, healthcare, and education, even while unemployed. This society offers many options: you could interview at another restaurant. You could go to culinary school to brush up on your skills. You could even go to the government to get funding to start your own restaurant! If you’re feeling petty, you could open your restaurant on the same block as the one who rejected you and serve the same cuisine, thereby taking all their business.
The same goes for sports. We have so much cultural controversy over whether trans people should be included in sports, but guess what’s at the root of the controversy? Money. Olympians need to be in the Olympics because it’s their only way to make money.
A healthy society where athletes never have to worry about food and housing would have a plethora of sports organizations. If one excluded certain people, those people could make another one, maybe even a better one.
Last example, I promise. It’s the proverbial Christian baker who refuses to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. This case went all the way to the Supreme Court, people! In their long, meandering journey through the US court system, did anyone ask the couple why they’d even want a wedding cake from someone who didn’t want to bake them one? There are thousands of bakeries in the US who would be overjoyed to bake them a cake. Why would they want to go to the one person who resented it?
The state just shouldn’t get involved. This push to use litigation as a way to force people to do our bidding is infantilizing. We’re basically using the state as a way to “tell mom.” People need to be able to disagree, offend each other, and work it out amongst themselves.
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