Basically - truth manifests despite the efforts of ideology, power and the mode-of-production . There is no transgender ideology - but rather the trans tipping point (like other tipping points) came when scientific truth exceeded the capacity of ideological forces to contain it.

Basically, Foucault et al never argued that science is all bullshit, but rather the objective truth is very difficult to get to as power relations (ideology, mode of production) often confront truths that threaten the status quo (i.e. evolution), often by formally corrupting its method.

Also: the biological materially precedes the historical/social (unless you are an idealist) and mostly epistemically mediated by socio-historical forces. Basically, the material world science describes is usually censored by ideology/economy, or disrupts it as "the Real".

I should add here that I am not against historical or social contingency - but the historical and social are always mediated by the biological and are also contain both immutable, difficult-to-change and highly contingent elements.

Guess I am trans studies theorist again. Hopefully this helps non-transitioning transgender people understand transsexuals (and why we have been so mad recently) a lil better from a metaphysical and neuroscientific angle. 🧵

Biological sex may be an elaborate dynamic matrix of millions of variables, however only when biological sex becomes aware of itself as gender can this occasionally ascend to the status of being immutable - where change necessarily costs a pound of flesh.

PSA: conversion therapy only exists for traits that are immutable. it's aim is a form of lobotomy without direct physical brain trauma. you can tell something is immutable if conversion therapy exists for it. it necessarily fails in its stated aim, as its real aim is punishment and genocide.

So - transgender people who don't need to transition, please simply take our word for it that we must. What is mutable for you isn't for us. Same with my fellow orientation-critical bisexuals. Please listen, and stop misquoting Butler or Deleuze - neither of who would disagree with the above.

It's similar to why white ppl need to defer to PoC when it comes to experiences of racism/anti-blackness/colonialism - I cannot have that qualia, and the horrors of that I can only deduce from my white perspective. It is an absolute knowledge to know I can't. Hence the importantance of listening.

this solution here isn't trying to transmit qualia directly (one of the functions of art) as there is always information loss and it can never be 100% verified as the same. the solution is to not assume even your most fundamental phenomenological experiences are universal, a epistemic humility.