Looking at 'trans people’s lived genders and gender realities' and doing so 'on trans people’s terms'

In a recent interview, Ding explains their PhD philosophy research at UArizona. It's "a theory of gender equality that begins from trans people’s lived genders and gender realities on trans people’s terms. This is both a story of what gender is that reckons with the fact that, yes, trans people are a thing, and a vision of what equality would then mean and require in light of that recognition." We should "take seriously transgender equality as an element, requirement, and condition of gender equality, rather than something in direct opposition to it." This helps solve "tricky conceptual and analytical challenges that trouble current trans law and feminist politics," including "real issues of injustice."

Is "gender identity" a necessary concept? Maybe it's just

"an easy way to simplify gender for a cis audience, to make our lived experiences more palatable to a dominant world that has not been hesitant to exercise power over our basic needs and our very existence when it feels threatened.

Would gender identity have as significant a part to play (if any at all) in a story of gender told by and for trans people? Does transgender equality perhaps demand far more than the mere inclusion of trans people in existing cis-centric analyses, movements, and institutions?"

Ding also proposes: "People often presume that trans people learn to navigate the social world as our lived genders by modeling ourselves after how cis people do gender, and philosophers theorize trans people’s genders as a problem to be solved by retrofitting gender identity into existing cis-centric frameworks." Ding thinks it should be "the other way around." Cis people could "do gender better by borrowing from trans people’s gender practices," and furthermore we could all understand gender better "starting from trans rather than cis people's genders." Trans people's "gender practices better explain important aspects of gender reality that may not be immediately obvious to most cis people, and our gender practices manage to turn gender into a source of love, strength, joy, knowledge, dignity, and freedom."

I recommend the interview! Pride Month Q&A: Gender, Equality, and Feminism Through a Philosopher’s Lens June 20, 2024