You Can't Just Say The Effort Doesn't Matter

The government is apparently considering legislation that would change the definition of gender to the genitalia you were born with.

Before arguments are made, hear me out on this, because as ever, I strive to be a reasonable individual.

Please read the entire thing, because I cover both sides of the argument here.  Also, despite the language I use here, it applies to both directions (male to female, and female to male), and the language isn't the point, so please don't pull out your pitchforks over something so petty.

Before I argue against it (because I will), let me say that I can see why the government would consider such a measure.  Science and facts are always important, and *medically* speaking, you remain what you always have been, regardless of what you now have or how you define yourself.  Though I disagree with Ben Shapiro on very few things (his attitude regarding transgender individuals being one of the things I disagree with him on), I do agree with him that if you are male, you cannot just magically transform into a female.  Nothing you could possibly do to yourself will ever make you ACTUALLY 100% female.  This is fact, whether any of us like it or not.  If you go to the hospital, some things affect *biological* men differently than women.  Your original biological affiliation therefore remains a matter of importance as needed, even when to the rest of the world at large you are considered female.

There is also the matter of, when a transgender individual makes changes in their lives, or to themselves, in order to transition, when can we say they have changed?  Even ignoring the matter of what they started life with, when can we say they are well and truly the opposite gender?  This is what the government, which needs clear definitions to function properly, is up against.  Is a transgender individual their new gender when they first say so?  When they go get their name and gender formally changed?  When they start changing their style of dress?  When they go get gender reassignment surgery?  Some combination of those and/or other things?  When can the government really go "okay, you're the opposite gender now"?

However.

Although the government needs to be able to have clear definitions of things to function properly, I do believe that it is also the government's job to define difficult-to-define things rather than just run away and regress, which is what I think they're considering doing here - taking steps *backward*.

Rather than go by science and fact - which is something I'm generally very happy to do myself - the government must in this case realize that making such a decision is not going to make transgenderism go away.  All such a decision would serve to do would be to make a WHOLE LOT of people VERY angry.

You see, science and fact are all well and good, but when you feel you were born as the wrong gender, and you spend YEARS of your life changing yourself physically, possibly changing how you dress, how you act, changing your very *person*, in order to become as close to what you believe yourself to be as you can possibly manage, I don't think it's FAIR to say to that person "no, you're still the gender you were born with."  Because while science says that's true, you are doing what you can, what you feel you need to do, to change yourself physically and mentally.  You are changing what you can of your makeup to get closer to the gender you feel you are.  Just as people work hard at jobs for a living and you don't just go "you didn't work today," I feel the same way about transgender individuals - they haven't just stated one day "okay I'm the opposite gender now" and done nothing: they have worked very hard, likely through huge amounts of opposition and stress, in order to secure the means to change.  It is unfair to tell such individuals "the work you have done to this point now means nothing."

The difference is the effort.  If indeed you make a statement tomorrow, it changes nothing about you.  Not yet, anyway.  It is the effort to make yourself into that which you claim that makes the difference.

Even being a person who believes in science and fact myself, I cannot see a good reason to tell those who have made *notable efforts to change* that their efforts mean nothing.  Maybe you were a guy before, but now you've been on HRT for years, you've had reassignment surgery, you've had your name and gender officially changed, and for most intents and purposes, including the purpose of *actually having sex*, you're now a girl.  Not because you want to pretend for a while, not because you want to mess with anyone, but because you believe firmly with all your heart that your birth gender was wrong and you wanted to fix it.  It's a serious change.  Sure, your *genetics*, your chromosomes, still disagree, but what matters here isn't the frikkin' *genetics*.  People can't *see* genetics.  They can *see* actions, they can *see* physical presentation.  It's all in the firmness of your disagreement with what you were born with, the changes made, the realness with which you present what you claim to have changed into - others' experience that you HAVE actually transformed in a meaningful way (which was what you were shooting for in the first place anyway, to have the changes you've made recognized).  THAT'S what matters.

If nothing else, shouldn't those efforts and changes be recognized?  I certainly think so.