It Figueres
Fish and Chips by Mal Burton
The Citizens' Assembly Statement on transexuality referenced by Mr Bob Rotund was in Spanish. I don't speak much Spanish, but I was chatting to my pal from Figueres the other day. She works in the chippy, and she was ordering a new deep frying spoon when I walked in – a solid stainless steel spider strainer skimmer spoon she read out from the website and we both laughed. Hahahaha, ahahaha. I leaned over so I could see her phone and I faux-seductively asked her if she wanted me to spank her with the solid stainless steel spider strainer skimmer spoon. I was expecting her to laugh again. But she remained quiet for a few seconds and then said softly. I said what and she said it again. Softly. So one thing led to another, and a few days later she agreed to help me with the translation.
Yes, I know Catalan's different to Spanish, and it does seem she's contemporarised the text and converted a lot of it into dialogue and perhaps added some detail too, but I'm sure the essence of the statement's still in there.
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Shabba. In the beginning there were two sexes. But on one Sunday evening in the United States of America in the year whenever it was, hundreds of millions of Super Sunday Ball viewers witnessed the pop star Janet Jackson sprint across a corner of the pitch to flash her left nipple at a broadcast camera. Offended, appalled and aghast, the American television audience grabbed their patriotic sofa cushions to cover their eyes. Maize snacks were abandoned to sofa crevices, thousands of hectare of carpet were very slightly stained by light beer, and many a grateful canine did dine on fallen processed meat.
Shabba. By the Friday a gazillion letters of complaint had been written, and the country's representatives had been lobbied to immediately revise the category of sex to gender. The leader of the lobbied representatives made an announcement. Enough of this double meaning! Enough of these allusions to sexy times! All county sheriffs and buddy cops will be working overtime this weekend to prepare the paperwork. On Monday our people will have gender from the get-go!
Shabba. The conceptual cladding upgraded the two sexes to two genders. Hooray, most Americans said. Hmm... s'pose this is okay, some people said. And hmm... this is kind of okay but actually not really, a few said, adding that if they were now clad in gender, should they not be considering the experience of being so clad, and therefore is gender not more than categorical – is it not experiential, they asked – is it not truly about how we feel in relation to being male or female?
Shabba. Oh it so is, some people answered, and thus was born gender culture. Days of celebration were enjoyed by the excited vanguard of this new culture, and when they eventually tired of their looping two hour playlist, they offered their assurances to the rest of the world that the potentially infinite number of cultural genders would not in any way be confused with the two gender categories.
Shabba. Word of the linguistic turn soon reached transexual people and they were like, what the fuck – this is not helpful at all – we have enough day to day problems in this backward world to deal with without...
Shabba. But the sherry merry gender culturalists had a better idea than listening to the thoughts of transexuals on the subject of transexuality, and that was to declare that henceforth if a person wished to change sex, this equated to changing gender, which was the same as changing clothes, and that this could be done at any time of that person's choosing, and, furthermore, if another person was to observe that the said metaphorical clothes changing had occurred, it was only necessary to say that the clothes, and therefore the gender, and therefore the sex, had been worn this way since, like, way before birth, and that it was hateful to suggest otherwise.
Shabba. To this the transexual community rhetorically asked the gender culture vanguard how the people of this backward world would likely react if they went along with this - would they not be ridiculed, would they not be even more marginalised?
Shabba. No, the transexuals affirmed to the gender culturalists - it would be impossible for us to accept self-identification as the foundation of transexuality. Have fun with your new culture, but no, we won't be joining in.
Shabba. A subsequent conversation went something like this:
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Self-ID is totes the best thing ev-ah. Gender culture's awesome.
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Do you want to know what scientism means?
Sure. Did I tell you that I've started doing the haddock? What you do is you cover it in flour then hold it by the tail and submerge it in the batter. Then you lift it out and wait till the excess batter drops off before you lower it slowly into the oil. You turn it over once and when it's done you lift it out with the spoon. The strainer spoon. We have a new one. My amazing Catalan colleague bought it from the internet.
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Super. I'll tell you what scientism means. It means an unwarranted application of science.
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I can't see you getting on with the scientism people. They're forever using the word reality.
Ah. Got you. Uurgh. Just is, just is, just is.
Yep. This is determinism.
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You should know that they don't have a very high opinion of transexuality based on self-identification. If you talk to them they'll say that the sex you're born, you are forever – they'll say that you're always a man or a woman – and they'll say that it's not possible, and never will be possible, for a person to change sex.
Oh my - these scientismers are so wrong – we'll be sure to keep well away from them.
You can't. It's a widespread philosophical stance.
This is awful – what can we do?
You need to have something to say to them. We've been talking about this for some timenow, and we've come to the conclusion that if you want to help transexuals, here's what to say to scientism people – you say they're confusing impossibility and improbability.
Right.
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Say it.
You're confusing impossibility and improbability.
Yes, because the probability that there are people who will be able to change sex in their lifetimes is not zero. It's very improbable today, but the probability isn't literally zero. To say so would be to say we have perfect knowledge of the world.
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When you get into a debate about this, they'll reply by saying things like oh, that has never happened, or oh, you do realise that would mean all the cells in your body changing, or oh, the idea of a brain transplant is fantasy, it's science-fiction.
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And it is science fiction, but that doesn't mean the probability of a person ever changing sex is zero. Science-fiction writers imagine future possibilities. Our citizens' assembly discussed many works of science-fiction during our deliberations and the ones we found to be the most useful were the books of Iain Banks. He wrote about a society in which sex changes are commonplace. They take around a year, and occur from the person entering into a trance state - people there essentially change sex by thinking about it.
Yay! That's what we think. You decide to be the other sex and then you are. It's like changing clothes. So we agree! Would you like a chip butty?
No, we don't agree. You believe in transubstantiation, a magical and arguably religious instant transformation unaffected by biology or bad faith. Sure, you can preach to people to convert them, to try to get them to think so too, but it doesn't help transexuals.
And your philosophy does?
Yes
How?
First of all, lets consider what the phrase thinking about it means.
Fine, but I'm starting early tomorrow. I've to come in before we open to clean the fryer. How long will this considering take?
About ten minutes.
Okay.
Banks said thinking about it. It's a little vague. In trying to be more precise, what we found to be important is intentionality. An intention to do something. The intentionality to change sex.
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It's more than important - it's essential. In the world Banks imagined and in ours. A person has to develop an intention to change sex before they can change sex. And so the next conclusion of our city deliberations was that transexuality should be framed in terms of intentionality. Not self-identification forward slash transubstantiation or scientism forward slash determinism. Intentionality.
What do the scientismists say to this?
It's a problem for them. You can't prove intentionality.
Ha! In your face, scientismerists!
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What would it mean for transexuality to be grounded on the concept of intentionality?
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You don't think it's like changing clothes and then pretending you haven't changed clothes?
No.
But it is possible?
Yes. Well, it isn't impossible, in time. Like I said, we don't think the probability is zero. And it can't be proven that the probability is zero.
And it involves intentionality?
Yes.
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I have no idea.
It took us several weeks to think this through. It means there are four sexes.
Four?!
Yes, the two that...
Four?!
The two that you're accustomed to, but now also the two transitioning sexes - people within the process of transitioning from female to male or male to female. Transitioning, not transitioned. Transitioning based on an intention. An intention stated to a community medical professional that they wish to change sex. That changes their sex.
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Recognising four sexes. This is the way past determinism and anti-biology. Understanding that transexuality is about biology, but not only about biology. Intentionality as key.
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I need to sit down. I'm gonna sit on a bucket of batter and look out the window at the bus stop
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From there it's a question of language. I like the French – om aspeeron and fem aspeeron.
What does that mean?
Aspirant man and aspirant woman. Aspeeron means aspirant.
Wait a sec. Doesn't that mean there'd be two classes of sexuality? Aren't the two new sexes a lower classification?
Excellent question. That depends on the society. In ours, no. We talked about this for hours. It seems to us that if you want to be of the transitioning sexes, you'd be proud of your intent. So there'd be nothing unequal about it. But you're right – if transexuals aren't listened to by a society, it will mean inequality.
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Hey! No! We don't do salt'n'sauce here! It's salt'n'vinegar! Salt'n'vinegar!
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The salt'n'sauce people are loitering outside again.
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Salt'n'vinegar!
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They're crazy.
You might want to write this next bit down. It's reasoning that affects your gender culture. It's about self-identification. Why we think it's problematic.
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One. A person can identify as a gender and have an intention to change sex.
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Two. A person can identify as a gender and not have an intention to change sex.
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But three - identifying as a gender doesn't reveal this intention or lack of intention to change sex.
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And so if you think that transexuality is about self-identification, two things are liable to happen. Firstly, gender culture people participating in gender culture believing that it involves taking medication or seeking surgery. And secondly, persons with an intention to change sex believing that they're required to participate in a culture of gender self-identification. These are the two effects of conflating gender culture and transexuality.
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And here's the final recommendation from our citizens' assembly. It's a recommendation to aim to minimise the influence of self-identification forward slash transubstantiation and scientism forward slash determinism.
What?! Who are you to say what people should believe in?
Yes, you're absolutely correct. But what we can do as a community is avoid institutionalising quasi-religious dogmas.
What do you mean?
I'll phrase it a different way. We've already avoided institutionalising them, because we have a deliberative culture. We have constantly running citizens' assemblies on everything we want to discuss – we have direct democracy. This last recommendation is effectively reiterating this to ourselves, but at the same time it does send a message across space and time to other communities, letting them know that we believe the way we organise is more democratic.
More democratic than what?
Great question. More democratic than indirect democracy. When people talk on behalf of a community instead of the community talking for and to itself - that is, when politicians and political party bureaucracies talk for a community, it's impossible to represent all the things that people there might have thought of saying to each other in public forums - in citizens' assemblies. It's absurd to think conversation can be collated into representation. So much social learning is lost. And that's before you recognise that, once elected, representatives have always tended to represent different constituencies to the ones electing them. Representative democracy has a tendency towards oligarchy. This has been known for millenia.
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However, regarding transexuality, this is all emphasised. Accentuated.
Why? Is it because my boyfriend's aftershave pure hums?
No.
Because pickled onions are so delicious?
No.
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So on one side scientism and determinism, and on the other self-identification and transubstantiation. And then, with electoralism, when views are aggregated and given politician and political party representation, you get polarisation. Institutionalised religiosity. Anti-debate. Desecularisation. Which the politicians will use for political leverage. And none of this is done to improve the welfare of transexuals. They need the social learning that's been denied by indirect democracy. Without it, the inequality you suggested might arise, will arise.
So what's the final conclusion of your citizens' assembly?
Representative democracy is transphobic.
