Fish don’t exist. Not as a biological category, at least. Yes, you can say, “I know what a fish is, it’s basic biology!” But that doesn’t mean it’s basic biology. Bony fish, or Osteichthyes, are the descendants of animals that include most species which we consider “fish”. There are two types: lobe-finned and ray-finned. Ray-finned fish contain the usual suspects (eels, salmon, tuna), but lobe-finned fish have the lungfish, coelacanth and tetrapods. A tetrapod is every descendant of the tiktaalik; any four-limbed vertebrate. If we want to define fish as “any Osteichthyes”, then reptiles, birds, and you would be fish. “Fish” is a word that is perfectly acceptable in day-to-day discussion, since we all have an unspoken definition of what they are. But this is separate from what actually differentiates organisms biologically. This is the problem with attempting to insert socially constructed concepts into biological contexts. Just like the idea of “woman”!
Transgender people are under some of the worst attacks on our rights in recent history. The UK Supreme Court has recently ruled that the usage of “women” in the 2010 Equality Act is only applicable to “biological women”. It’s a choice entirely made in hatred for trans people, because if we look at the facts, there is no tangible difference in how trans and cis women behave. There is no statistical basis for trans women being a “threat” more than cisgender women. In fact, this fixation on “protecting real women” by targeting anyone who doesn’t fit the expectations of white Western womanhood threatens the well-being of every woman. The onslaught of legislation against transfeminine individuals is another extension of our society’s violence against women. This is especially the case for those who deviate from the picturesque ideal of the 1950s white American housewife. This extends to transmasculine and nonbinary members of the community, albeit in a different way. We, transgender men, are viewed by cisgender society as “lost” women; mentally unstable and “trend followers”. For nonbinary people, it’s 50/50 whether people tailor their bigotry to you as if you’re a woman or a man, and it is entirely dependent on which makes it okay to be discriminatory.
This fixation on bioessentialism is founded on the idea that sex is fixed. However, the expression of sex characteristics is not fixed, instead being controlled by a whole host of factors like sex hormone levels, nutrition, genetics and environment, all subject to change. Being assigned as ‘male’ or ‘female’ at birth doesn’t automatically make you either a “strong, powerful abuser” or a “helpless, fragile caretaker”. However, this is essentially what legislation based on assigned sex at birth implies. The most difficult thing to get through to cisgender people, including allies, is that transmisogyny is misogyny. Transgender individuals are just seen as a more socially acceptable target for it. The transgender women in my life experience magnitudes more scrutiny than I do on the basis that they are women.
Biology, in reality, is anything but basic. Unfortunately, transgender and intersex people are simply too complex (the scientific term is “fucky”) to jam into Angus and Ethan, who took year 11 biology to cut up frogs. This doesn’t mean that whatever’s beyond the high school curriculum doesn’t exist. Biology is a beautifully infuriating science: the platypus lays eggs but is a mammal; there are over 900 species of Eucalyptus; the bluestreak cleaner wrasse, barramundi, and clownfish change sex as they mature and live in harems. Western science is not an end-all justification for everything. It’s subject to change, overwriting itself as we come to understand the world around us more.
Finally, the most irritating part, transitioning, is overwhelmingly the remedy for gender dysphoria. A review from Cornell University showed that 51 of the 55 available studies found that gender transition improved trans individuals’ overall well-being. Gender-affirming surgery has some of the lowest regret rates of any surgery available.
These gender transition studies exist in spite of the health field’s biased funding and samples, especially for women and other minorities. Research in medicine is famously filled with racial biases that lead to worse health outcomes and poorer treatment decisions. Similarly, trans people are famously understudied, and most studies that have been conducted have small samples. This, in turn, affects transgender healthcare, with even worse outcomes for transgender individuals of colour. I’m sure if you’re reading this and are on hormonal replacement therapy (HRT), you’ve heard the line: “Could this be a result of the hormonal replacement therapy?” The last time this happened to me, it was acid reflux from eating pasta with lemonade. Our bodies are still barely understood by the wider medical field, and it feels like there isn’t an effort to try and understand.
I wouldn’t be here if I were made to wait any longer for testosterone. If I didn’t get to socially transition at 16, I wouldn’t have graduated high school. My whole adolescence felt like being cocooned in black hoodies and r/asktransgender posts, and my friends were in the same boat. Transitioning saved our lives, hopefully letting us become slightly less maladjusted young adults. But transphobes don’t give a shit about us. Most haven’t even seen a trans before. We’re simply an easy scapegoat to distract from wider-ranging structural issues in society. Genocide is ok, but if Madeline gets to play casual soccer on a women’s team, the end times are coming and the American empire will fall. Gender ideology is coming for your kids, so vote for the coalition and have books banned, First Nations flags removed, and $9 bottles of milk. Good god, I’m exhausted, what the hell did we do?
The coelacanth didn’t wait until it was found alive to keep existing. The clownfish doesn’t need a troupe of specialists to change sex. Why do I need my existence to be peer-reviewed?
