Gender Identity on Trial

Reverse discrimination and contradictions in law

Gender identity is typically defined as the personal sense of one’s own gender. I argue that this conception of gender identity, once generalised as a social principle, leads to contradictions and is therefore defeasible. In summary, if your gender identity rests on certain premises, and if you must negate those premises to accomodate the gender identity of another, then anyone compelling you to do so would entail discrimination against your own gender identity, therefore contradiction.

Premise 1: Gender-identity of X consists in being a Woman in virtue of her sense of having a female body, different from a male body. Her deeply felt sense of being different from the male sex is part of her gender identity.

Premise 2: Gender-identity of Y consists in being a Woman with a male body (Transgender).

Consequence 1: For X to recognise Y (a male) as a Woman entails invalidation of X’s own gender identity, expressed by the word Woman. Specifically, X’s acceptance of Premise 2 would amount to denying her ‘deeply felt sense of difference from the male sex’ being part of her gender identity and expression.

Consequence 2: For X to preserve X’s own gender identity necessitates invalidation of Y’s gender identity, expressed by the word Woman, because of X’s ‘deeply felt sense of difference from the male sex’ being part of her gender identity and expression.

Informally, what it means to be a woman for Y is logically inconsistent with what it means to be a woman for X, which either invalidates the concept of womanhood (by violating the Law of Identity) or entails that one of the mutually inconsistent identities is false. Legal protection of the gender identity and expression of one person (or any personal demands to that effect) may thus discriminate against the gender identity and expression of another; the exercise of the law (or social principle) violates itself, which is absurd, therefore false.