That ideologically-caged cleverness

I just watched Cluniac’s video where he responds to FTM vlogger Jackson Bird’s rambling disquisition on trans doubt. It’s worth watching. Bird’s video has haunted me since I first saw it, not just the dissembling, but because when I listen to Bird I hear my FTM friend, who binged on videos just like this before coming out as trans. They have same broken voice, but more alarmingly: the same expressions, the same tones, the same turns of phrase, the same show of ideologically-caged cleverness.

We had conversations about doubt (my friend had a lot of doubts) where my friend recycled these exact talking points. At the time, I'd never seen this video, and I wondered where on earth my friend came up with this stuff that was somehow senseless and yet so compelling, a line of questioning that worked like a raging flood, sweeping away the foundations of every possible critique.

This way of thinking left my friend no solid ground to stand on. After all, if you believe you've been wrong—deluded, really—about the most basic facts about your identity—whether you're a man or a woman—who are you to ask questions?

I can't forget the experience of watching my friend's off-the-charts intelligence turn on itself in the process of embracing a trans identity. At every turn, my friend 'outsmarted' their doubts ("Really, the world wants you to doubt yourself when you're trans...").

Resistance, doubts, scruples (‘internalized transphobia’) are part of the story arc that leads to accepting your trans identity and embarking on transition. It’s too hard, you couldn’t possibly transition, and then you simply must, you can't live without it.

This viral blog post, The Null HypotheCIS, captures exactly the convoluted, overly-clever twists and turns friends of mine who came out as trans took:

Everyone, even the most confident, assured, outgoing and proud members of our community were at one time just as unsure, still struggling to work past the baggage of self-denial we’d carried along, and so meticulously constructed, for most of our lives.

What’s interesting, and where this again, for me, sheds a lot of light on the amazingly strange ways that belief and doubt operate in the human mind, on what beautifully irrational little things we are, and feels like an important touchstone for skeptics to explore, is that a lot of this irrational denial can itself be framed as the due, logical level of skepticism that such a drastic decision demands.

After all, surely if we’re going to risk so much, put so much at stake, in such a monumental “decision”, we should approach it carefully, and make sure to be certain, right? Shouldn’t we be looking for proof that we’re trans before gambling our whole lives on that being the case?

Well, maybe… if proof of being trans was even really something possible, beyond the simple proof of subjectively experiencing your identity and gender as such. But more importantly: we never ask ourselves for “proof” that we’re cis.

Cis is treated as the null hypothesis. It doesn’t require any evidence. It’s just the assumed given. All suspects are presumed cisgender until proven guilty of transsexuality in a court of painful self-exploration. But this isn’t a viable, logical, “skeptical” way to approach the situation. In fact it’s not a case of a hypothesis being weighed against a null hypothesis (like “there’s a flying teapot orbiting the Earth” vs. “there is no flying teapot orbiting the Earth”), it is simply two competing hypotheses. Two hypotheses that should be held to equal standards and their likelihood weighed against one another.

When the question is reframed as such, suddenly those self-denials, those ridiculous, painful, self-destructive demands we place on ourselves to come up with “proof” of being trans suddenly start looking a whole lot less valid and rational.

The harder it was for my friend to accept that she was "really trans," the more complicated the rationales, the longer the lists in favor and against, the more doubts and hesitations and anxiety she experienced—and the more convinced she became.

The ways in which the decision to identify as trans and transition mirrors an authentic journey of self-discovery makes it harder to question, too.

All the while you tell yourself you're questioning everything, that you didn't stack the deck first.

The idea of "internalized transphobia" is particularly insidious: your questions and doubts become something you have an ethical responsibility to overcome because internalized transphobia doesn't just hurt you and isn't just a sign of being trans—it hurts other trans people.

Watching my friend struggle with doubt and tell herself it was just 'internalized transphobia' was like watching a fly caught in a spider's web: every effort entangles.