The New Free to Be Might Make You Long for the Seventies

On Jack Turban's "Gender Affirming" New Book

You might remember MIT philosopher Alex Byrne’s devastating takedown of Judith Butler’s new book. This week, he does it again: this time, taking on Jack Turban, director of the Gender Psychiatry Program at UC San Francisco and leading proponent of “gender-affirming” healthcare for children.

Turban’s new book, Free to Be, cheers on child transition based on a “transcendent sense of gender”—and omits much important information along the way.

The New Free to Be Might Make You Long for the Seventies

Alex Byrne

Gender identity, Turban explains, is “one’s psychological understanding of oneself in terms of masculinity, femininity, a combination of both, and sometimes neither.” The number of gender identities is “nearly infinite,” although he concedes that for practical purposes “male” and “female” can crudely approximate the gender identities of most people. Free to Be’s glossary tells us that a transgender person is someone whose “gender identity does not align, based on societal expectations,” with the person’s “sex assigned at birth.” But then wouldn’t a stereotypical butch lesbian be transgender? She understands herself as masculine, so presumably has a male gender identity, which does not align with her sex assigned at birth.

However, it turns out that gender identity is considerably more intricate and elusive than Turban’s initial definition suggests. “On one level,” he writes, gender identity is “something deeply felt… one’s transcendent sense of gender. You simply feel a certain gender.” Transcendent sense of what, though? What are these “genders” that one may feel? The glossary entry for “Gender identity” gives a few examples of genders: “male, female, nonbinary,” while implying that there are many more. By “male” Turban doesn’t seem to mean the male sex, but precisely what he does mean is unclear. In any event, our butch lesbian is evidently supposed to have a transcendent sense of her female gender; this is why she is not transgender.

The effect of all this complexity is to shroud the notion of being transgender in a dense fog.

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This Week in Sex-Realist Feminism: J.K. Rowling, Drafting Women, and a Detransitioner's Pregnancy Journey

This week: Helen Dale on J.K. Rowling and gender politics in the U.K, Sarah H. Wilder on Phyllis Schlafly and the draft, Kelsey Bolar on a detransitioner's pregnancy journey, raising boys, heterodox feminism, FD recommends a book—and more!

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From the Archives:

Now is a good time to revisit this evergreen piece on the understanding of parenthood shared by Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen.

Jane Meets Mary: What Austen and Wollstonecraft Teach Us About Parenthood

Beatrice Scudeler

“Both Austen and Wollstonecraft prioritized rights for the sake of practising virtue. Recognizing the importance of our embodiment as men and women, both thinkers were deeply concerned with marriage and parenthood as opportunities for moral growth.”