Social and Medical Gender Transition and Acceptance of Biological Sex

Biological sex should be “acknowledged” and “accepted”—but which responses to gender dysphoria might this preclude? Trans-identified people may factually acknowledge their biological sex and regard transition as purely palliative. While generally some level of self-deception and even a high level of...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Watt, Helen 1962- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: [2020]
In: Christian bioethics
Year: 2020, Volume: 26, Issue: 3, Pages: 243-268
IxTheo Classification:NBE Anthropology
NCC Social ethics
NCF Sexual ethics
NCH Medical ethics
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:Biological sex should be “acknowledged” and “accepted”—but which responses to gender dysphoria might this preclude? Trans-identified people may factually acknowledge their biological sex and regard transition as purely palliative. While generally some level of self-deception and even a high level of nonlying deception of others are sometimes justified, biological sex is important, and there is a nontrivial onus against even palliative, nonsexually motivated cross-dressing. The onus is higher against co-opting the body, even in a minor and/or reversible way, to make a false communication concerning one’s sex. Hardest to defend is the destruction of sexual-reproductive functions and causally downstream functions such as lactation: due to the transcendent nature of sexual-reproductive functions, an appeal to the “principle of totality” here is misplaced. This is not to say that social, and milder medical, transition is absolutely excluded even for severe unmanageable dysphoria, nor that subsequent to any transition, detransition is necessarily required.
ISSN:1744-4195
Contains:Enthalten in: Christian bioethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1093/cb/cbaa015