If, as its etymology suggests, by ontology were meant the study of being, it wouldn’t have much to say, because being is an unanalysable primitive. That is, if you don’t know what it is for something to be, then I can’t explain it to you, because neither can I explain it to myself. All that can be said is that being is (what we might call) an ‘enabler’ concept. It can’t itself be explained, but it enables us to explain other things. Why is there this? Because there’s that. Why is there that? Because there’s this other thing. And so on.
So if it’s not about being, what is ontology about? It’s about how things that are – or even might be, like unicorns – are distinguishable one from the other. What makes a manatee distinct from a unicorn? That the one exists but the other doesn’t? Fair enough. But that doesn’t tell us 1) What makes a manatee distinct from something else that exists, like a toaster? Nor does it tell us 2) What makes this toaster distinct from that one?
The answer to the first question is that 1) a manatee is a spatio-temporally contiguous collection of atoms so configured as to constitute what we call a manatee, whereas a toaster is a spatio-temporally contiguous collection of atoms so configured as to constitute what we call a toaster. Well duh. But why do we call the one a manatee and the other a toaster? By which I don’t mean, How did these particular words come about? Rather I mean there must be something about the one that behooves us to distinguish it, both in behaviour and name, from the other. But what?
And the answer to the second question is that, 2) though each of two toasters is a token of the kind we call toaster, this is this one whereas that is that one. That is, the two may be qualitatively identical but numerically distinct. What makes them numerically distinct? That they occupy different spaces. A duh, you say, but sometimes even a duh can be overlooked.
Note that configuration is a relational term. So to be more inclusive in our ascription of thing-ness, a collection of constituents need not necessarily be spatio-temporally contiguous. Think of an army spread out with gaps along a front. Or we might want to include a collection of non-contiguous events, like a war. As Hobbes reminds us, and as I can attest, most of war consists of waiting.
Okay, so armies and wars are still things. But, you might say, ideas are something else. Else in the sense of not things. You might think that thoughts are things, insofar as they have to be physically instantiated. But what those thoughts are about need not be things. Even if, as some believe, numbers are real, they aren’t real things.
I mention non-things like numbers only to henceforth ignore them, because I want to confine our domain of discourse to things like manatees and toasters. But what about (what Wittgenstein called) ‘cluster’ concepts, like religions or games? Buddhism has some of the paradigmatic properties of a religion, but it lacks a god. Trans Jane has some of the paradigmatic properties of a woman, but she lacks the absence of a penis. So what is it about you and a toaster that makes you a person and a toaster not? What is it that makes this person white but that one not? What is it that makes trans Jane a woman but cis John not?
Some people – let’s call them trans-allies – think it’s sufficient that Jane thinks of herself as a woman. Others – let’s call them trans-skeptics – worry that if so, then I’m Napoleon just in case I think I am, which, as it happens, I do. So, they argue, clearly just thinking something can’t make it so. For that matter, neither can not thinking it make it false. Napoleon would have been Napoleon even if he thought he wasn’t. So what does make trans Jane a woman?
One might think the problem here lies with gender identity being a cluster concept, whereas being a manatee is not. Something is or is not a manatee quite independent of anyone thinking it is or isn’t. That is, there’s a mind-independent fact of the matter. And one might think likewise about Jane being or not being a woman.
They might be pleased to know that Plato scooped them two and half millennia ago. The world, he thought, presents itself to us already carved at its joints, carved into (what more contemporary philosophers) call ‘natural kinds’. By this Plato didn’t mean to exclude things that are artificed, like toasters. Notwithstanding it may have been constructed from more atomic natural constituents, a toaster too is a natural kind, in that – or so he thought – we recognise it as a toaster, because (what he thought was) the ‘form’ of toaster is already in our minds. And it’s in our minds because our minds are preprogrammed with the form of toaster.
Plato’s theory of forms is, of course, much too metaphysically extravagant for contemporary tastes. But what’s the alternative? That there are joints to be sure. Otherwise no way of carving a turkey would be better than any other. But what makes one way better than another? Better by whose lights? Ours. What distinguishes a whale from the water surrounding it is the uses we have for it that we don’t have for the water surrounding it. For a marine biologist a whale is a mammal. But for our ancestors it was a fish, because it could be found where all the other fish are. Is there a fact of the matter whether a whale is a fish or a mammal? Certainly there is. But it’s a fact indexed to the uses we have for the particular sortals we perform.
So, is Jane a woman? For what purposes? For all kinds of purposes, just as a whale is a fish for all kinds of purposes. But for the purpose of scheduling an annual pap smear? Certainly not. But now – and no surprise here – comes the hard part. For the purposes of competitive sports? Access to shared ablutionary facilities? To women’s shelters? To incarceration in women’s prisons? To whether I should be pursuing her as a possible sexual partner?
The trans-ally wants to say that all of the above, perhaps even including pap smears, are cultural decisions. Trans-skeptics can agree, but they think that allowing Jane to compete with cis women is unfair. Or even if not unfair, it discourages cis women from participating in competitive sports. Allowing Jane in cis women’s washrooms and shelters and prisons makes cis women uncomfortable. Well yes, answers the trans-ally, just as it once made white men uncomfortable to share a lunch counter with a black man. Get over it!
And if I can’t? Or would just rather not?
The problem with separate-but-equal, answers the trans-ally, is that it never is. That problem is especially acute for trans people, because they’re unwelcome in both communities. Or even if the cis male community learns to be more accepting, the trans woman doesn’t feel comfortable there. She wants to compete with other women. She wants to shower and shelter and do her time with other women. The problem is they don’t want to shower and shelter and do their time with her.
So what it comes down to, it would seem, is where we want to draw the line between public and private entitlements. We’ve decided I get to chose who I sleep with, but not who I have to sit next to at the lunch counter. Is this a principled decision? And if so, what’s the principle? Go ahead and give it your best shot, and it’s still going to die the death of a thousand qualifications. In short there isn’t one. It’s a political decision, by which is meant one reducible to the weighing of conflicting popular druthers. All else is moral ad hocery.
Such as? Such as trans Jane is contra natura. And spectacles are not? Such as trans Jane may be dissimulating. Or perhaps just deluded. As might I be in claiming to be Napoleon. Let me tell you what you’re going to do about it. You’re going to decline to recognise me as the emperor of France. Will that have been a metaphysical decision? Really? Do you really think you could articulate a defensible theory of personal identity?
I could go on. And elsewhere I have. But by now it should be clear that trans Jane’s status is a function of the purpose for which we divvy up the world into those who are women and those who are not. Some people think we should do away with cis women-only competitive sports. But then why not, while we’re at it, with the ‘special’ Olympics? Some people think we should do away with segregated showers, just as we have with segregated lunch counters. Well, we could bring back segregated lunch counters, just as we’ve brought back segregated graduation ceremonies. Why did we bring back segregated graduation ceremonies? For the same reason trans-skeptics want to protect cis women-only competitive sports.
So what’s the takeaway from all of this? That in this debate, and the myriad debates like it, we need to cut each other a little slack. Trans-skeptics are not transphobes. They’re just allies of another constituency, namely women who want to protect what attracts them to certain sports, and their bodily privacy. Could that value change, as it did vis a vis who we’ll let sit next to us at the lunch counter? Certainly it could. And if and when it does, no doubt we’ll want to revisit the issue. But as the reversal of Roe v Wade has taught us, ‘culture’ is a fickle master. Now that we have segregated graduations, need Jim Crow be far behind?
Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy
Paulosophical Vimplications 
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