Tradfeminist concepts like "there are no inherent mental differences between men and women" and "gender is a construct" are actually completely opposed to transgenderism. Because if there's no innate brain difference, you can't have a sparkly pink girl-brain trapped in a man's body. And if gender is a construct, then there's no soul-like "gender identity" imbued in all of us at birth. That's why they need to supplant feminism with transgenderism. It's also why they supplanted the gay pride movement and tacked the T on, because if gender is on a spectrum and sex is mutable like trans activists insist, then homosexuality doesn't exist. Transgenderism is completely inconsistent with gay pride and feminism, so they had to undermine both.
I don't really think this is really correct but it's also not
wholly wrong.
There are sort of two different perspectives that are used to buttress troonism. On one hand there is the social constructionist view of gender and an associated scepticism of biological causes for differences in human behavior as well as a strong aversion to naturalistic moralizing. This is where notions like gender as performance and as being not inherently coupled to sex originate. To people thinking in this school, the question of whether someone simply
is trans or why they wish to assume a given identity or form of gender expression is an irrelevant one; the extant social arrangements and conventions are not taken to be inherently 'superior' or 'natural'. In fact given the supposed 'oppressive' nature of these social arrangements then it is in fact radical - which is to say good - to subvert them and being an un-categorizable freak show is undeniably subversive. This is why you can literally write a
book writing about how sissy porn turned you into a troon
and be
feted for
it!*
This sort of thought is dependent on dismissing biology as significant or at least determining/constraining human behavioural possibilities significantly. So, the idea that there is some practical problem with allowing natal men into women's spaces is not really acknowledged and even if it is acknowledged it is likely to be conceptualized as a consequence of the extant power structures (e.g. patriarchy) and not as an unavoidable problem of biological origin. An interesting corollary to this general suspicion of biological forces as constraints is the aversion to the 'born-this-way' narrative of homosexuality. This here is a good example of this:
(Source:
https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/masha-gessen/)
It also captures the problem with this sort of thinking: its limited appeal. It's hard to convince people that heteronormativity is oppressive or that every form of social relationship that constrains behavior is arbitrary and should be deconstructed. Even if the masses could accept this kind of thinking and be willing to adopt a 'live and let live' type approach, it still doesn't help AGP-types since it fails to supply an explanation behind their specific motivations. It may be so that subverting gender norms is good but it doesn't help John (aged 41, married for 12 years, 3 children) explain to his soon-to-be ex-wife why he has suddenly decided to queer their marriage.
This gives rise to the second set of justifications, the familiar 'born-this-way'/'innate gender' narratives. This is what actually gets bandied around most of the time since it relies on widely accepted logic that drove acceptance of homosexuality and can be understood by anyone (GL explaining Judith Butler to 8 year olds), This makes it instrumentally valuable and ultimately what matters the most to troons: can you use it to justify acting out your fantasies without being socially sanctioned? Can you use it to deny explanations for your behavior which you find distressing?
The idea of some inborn brain error therefore became the main narrative device used by troons in the popular media. However, it's wrong to say that this makes troonist thinking contradict feminists like Cordelia Fine who seek to minimize or deny neurological sex differences. In fact, the idea that men and women don't differ psychologically has also obviously helped in suppressing people's doubts about the wisdom of troon ideas like self-ID and quite probably primed people to find the idea that you could in some sense have the 'wrong' brain (small mistakes happen, right?) since sex differences are seen to be less substantive than they actually are. The less significant sex is seen to be then the more relevant nebulous notion of 'gender identity' become.
The first perspective also still crops up, much of the language of troonism is taken from social constructionist accounts of gender and 'radical' ideas are adopted when they are useful. Serano, for example, posits a more or less evidence-free conjectural model for how gender identity (he calls it 'subconscious sex' which is IMO a better term), sexual orientation and gender expression are instantiated in each individual and exhibit natural variation. This is pretty much a 'wrong' brain/body model but he fills is books with gibberish that is obviously heavily influenced by social constructionist type thinking. I tend to think that this stuff gets thrown in when advocates are pressed because it helps bulk up an otherwise totally unjustifiable thesis because while the politics/culture that is associated with it is often very batty, the underlying scholarship can be quite solid. This makes it a nice accompaniment to under-evidenced scientific thought bubbles. In some cases it can even serve as the main argument and the terrible brain scan studies like Zhou et. al. can just be dispensed with altogether, even though when the troon goes to explain themselves personally they still resort to a 'wrong' brain narrative.
Zizek captures something of this strange dynamic:
*Colin 'Katy' Montgomerie, however, believes that Mr. Chu needs to see a therapist and read the science or something which is why I came to the
scientific opinion that Colin jack(s/ed) off to sissy porn.
