Transgenderism as a broad public discussion is a modern phenomenon. American psychiatrist John Oliven coined the phrase ‘transgender’ in 1965. Oliven believed that the terminology in his day was not representative of the many ways transgender people expressed their identity. The term would eventually displace the phrase ‘transsexual’ and start to take on its more modern interpretation in the 1990s. Historically, transgenderism, or what may be more appropriately understood as transsexualism in historical reference, lived in the fringes of society as either a subculture like that of the LGBTQ community or a specific belief, as is the case of the Hijra of the Indian subcontinent. However, modernity has brought this topic to the forefront under the motive of diversity and inclusion.

Political activism has been the driving force behind the public ascent of transgenderism. Activism around supporting transgender rights has grown substantially since the first pride parades of the 1970s. However, due to the political nature of its ascent into public consciousness and the speed in which it has been received in popular culture, advocates of traditional and conservative social norms have mobilized a counterculture movement to curve transgenderism’s social progress. In consequence, discourse around the nature of transgenderism has devolved into sophist rhetoric.

This is unfortunate, to say the least. There are valid reasons to argue in defense of transgenderism as well as valid concerns against it. Even if one considers the best possible arguments from supporters (to promote inclusion and freedom of expression) and critics (concerns about women equality and mental health), debates tend to be poorly constructed around bad faith talking points and misleading statistics. Those for transgenderism tend to make unintelligible claims about what it entails while those against it tend to make narrow-minded assertions. For meaningful progress to occur on the matter of transgenderism, the conversation must be better formulated and rooted in logical inference about what it entails.

A robust inquiry into the transactional aspects of transgenderism is important, because at the end of the day what is of interest is a person. When one takes the individual’s interest into account, all the background noise becomes less audible. The person comes into focus, and they are no longer thought of as an abstraction. They are present and concrete. For this reason, I seek to do the topic of transgenderism some justice, to the best of my abilities, by taking an analytical approach to understanding what the concept entails.

What makes the debate around transgenderism contentious is the incongruity in the meaning of the word ‘gender’. What does gender mean? When one invokes the term gender, what is its propositional attitude? Does gender mean sex? If they are different, then how so? Resolving these questions will yield a logically consistent sense of the expression ‘gender’, whereby one can effectively endeavor to address the transactional questions regarding transgenderism. In keeping with Oliven’s original aim, I, too, will aim to sketch a working understanding of gender by formulating an idea of its sense and reference to provide an understanding of its identity and propositional attitude. I will make use of Frege’s theory of sense and reference in formulating the connection between the word ‘gender’ and its expression. Lastly, I will take my understanding of gender and apply it to the current transactional issue around pronouns with the hopes of demonstrating how a clear understanding of language can produce workable solutions to one of society’s most contentious transactions.

German philosopher, mathematician, and logician Gottlob Frege was interested in solving the problem of identity statements and propositional attitudes. An identity statement is a statement that consist of two nouns joined by an auxiliary verb. A propositional attitude is a mental relation between a person and a proposition. Frege was captivated by the question of how one can account for the cognitive value between similar expressions that convey different meanings, viz. the identity statements ‘a = b’ and ‘a = a’, when they are both true. To state his achievement in a sentence, Frege’s solution was that while ‘a’ and ‘b’ have the same reference, they have different senses. For example, the ‘evening star’ and ‘morning star’ reference the same thing, Venus, but do not convey the same sense, propositional attitude. To provide a simple understanding of what Frege’s theory purports, consider the following illustration: when someone states “Oranges are on sale”, the statement is making use of a reference to an object, ‘oranges’, to express a cognitive value. When you think of oranges, you have a mental concept about what it is, e.g., something spherical, the color orange, some fruit, etc. This is the sense of the object. Our knowledge of an object in reference is mostly determined by our sense of the object. Therefore, the sense of the object determines the reference. So, when one hears “Oranges are on sale” they do not look at the object ‘apples’ thinking they can get a good price. In intentional context, the sense is what is of interest as the reference may not always align with the object of interest, e.g., you look at grapefruit by mistake.

Unfortunately, a survey of publications by leading medical institutions yields no insight into the distinguishing attitudes of gender and sex within the transgender lexicon. The Mayo Clinic defines transgender as “an umbrella term used to capture the spectrum of gender identity and gender-expression diversity.” The institution goes on to define gender identity as “the internal sense of being male, female, neither or both.” The American Psychological Association expresses the same belief about the meaning of transgender and gender identity as Mayo Clinic. The Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expands the aforementioned definition to get at some semblance of the difference between gender and sex. They define transgender as “an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity or expression (masculine, feminine) is different from their sex (male, female) at birth.”

Suggesting the term ‘transgender’ is an “umbrella term” demonstrates a clear lacking in specificity of what the concept entails. The lack of specificity is compounded as the term ‘transgender’ is used to house other vague concepts like “gender identity” and “gender expression”. What does it mean to be neither male nor female? How does one conceptualize gender identity when it can be used to reference either male or female (distinctive forms) and a nonbinary state (lacking distinctive form)? How should society handle a person’s internal view of their gender when there are competing mental conceptions of gender?   

Philosophical arguments tend to be a little more fruitful in understanding what is meant by gender identity. But, regarding the nature of transgenderism, philosophers exhibit a clear disinterest in making logical associations between meaning and reference such that one can establish a propositional attitude about what transgender identity statements entail.

American philosopher Judith Butler follows much of the groundwork around gender identity laid out by French philosopher Michel Foucault to establish a view of gender identity as a socially constructed concept. However, Butler’s metaphysical view of gender lacks a clear propositional attitude for how one establishes a conception of gender that is distinct from sex. That is, the arguments advanced under her gender metaphysics do not help in understanding how sex is different from gender. Accordingly, Butler’s argument on gender leaves out the discernment between that which has distinctive form (sex) and that which lacks distinctive form (gender). Her argument merely addresses differences based on personal experience and attitudes about gender that get at some semblance of gender identity, whereby gender resides on a conceptual spectrum and not something that denotes a binary form. This makes Butler’s idea of gender vague and does not help in the establishment of how gender (which appears to be malleable) and sex (which tends to denote a distinct form) should be understood in the transgender lexicon. Butler’s metaphysical view of gender identity tends to use the word ‘gender’ to conceptualize both a spectrum and simultaneously a binary form, which violates the law of noncontradiction.

However, thinkers like British philosopher Kathleen Stock advances sex as a biological condition influenced by nature and gender as a psychological perception influenced by culture. Her use of the term gender is by and large based on the standard meaning found in dictionaries. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary gives the following as definitive for gender: “The state of being male or female as expressed by social or cultural distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones; the collective attributes or traits associated with a particular sex, or determined as a result of one's sex.” While this is a reasonable perspective to have, Stock also makes the claim “’gender’ is used, perfectly correctly, as an ordinary synonym for ‘sex.’” Here, Stock holds a contradictory view if gender and sex are to have distinctive senses. Hence, her sex/gender distinction has no difference in meaning.

Additionally, Stock’s understanding of gender and sex is predicated on the dichotomy that either sex or gender must be linguistically abolish. This is because she has no basis for conceiving of sex (a biological reality) and gender (a social condition) as a reference to the same object but consisting of distinctive meanings. Stock’s understanding of gender is a grammatical classification corresponding to the two sexes and some state of sexlessness. Following from her analysis, one would be tempted to say gender is a grammatical spectrum encapsulating sex and sexlessness. But this notion of sexlessness is unintelligible. Biologically, our species reproductive parts and anatomical composition consist of either male or female features. Thus, any reference to gender as something other than sex is really referencing some state of betweenness which may not conform to the class of male or female.

Stock maintains that gender is denoting male and female in a biological sense. However, I would argue gender is a classification corresponding to the two sexes. Here, that which is being classified and that which is sex are separate concepts. Nevertheless, the classification expresses that which has sex due to its correspondence. But what the classification is expressing is not that which is sex, but rather that which has sexness, i.e., maleness or femaleness. In consequence, gender references that which corresponds to a person’s expression of maleness, femaleness, or sex betweenness. That is, gender is that which has the appearance of sex.

The view that gender expresses the appearance of sex is supported by research performed by Dutch American ethologist and primatologist Frans de Waal. In De Waal’s book Different, he pulls from decades of observation and studies of humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans behavior to argue a clear linkage between gender and sex. However, de Waal contends that biology does not necessarily support traditional gender roles in human societies. Thus, arguing gender expresses the appearance of sex preserves biological reality but also allows for a variety of gender expressions that need not conform to the natural linkage between gender and sex.

What determines the propositional attitude of maleness, femaleness, or sex betweenness is the degree one is influenced by their feminine and masculine traits (genetics, hormones, physiology, etc.) and their social network (environment). Here, studies in genetics, psychology, physiology, and sociology provide a descriptive understanding of how feminine and masculine traits manifest in person and influence their gender expression.

What is left now is to define what is meant by the word ‘sex’. Stock advances sex as a biological condition. That is, sex is either of the main divisions—male or female—into which living things are placed based on their reproductive functions. The concept of sex, therefore, refers to that which distinguishes male and female, but its sense is the anatomical composition and reproductive contributions that make the class of sex functionally different. Therefore, the sense of sex is that which is of the class of male or female. I believe Stock’s use of sex is acceptable. Her view will be used as the basis for understanding the word in this analysis.

While contending with Stock’s sex/gender definition, and analyzing these terms under Frege’s theory, I find that gender and sex have the same reference, viz. features expressing either maleness or femaleness, but their sense are different due to the divergence of meaning. The sense of gender is that which expresses the appearance of sex, and the sense of sex is the physiological composition determined by evolutionary biology that denotes the class of sex.

Using what I have derived as the sense and reference of gender, I will briefly discuss how one can begin to articulate productive solutions to social problems that arise when sex and gender appear to be at odds pertaining to the use of pronouns.

A major topic of discussion is the business of which pronouns to use when addressing a transgender person. Here, I will speak to the pronouns ‘he/him’ and ‘she/her’. The pronouns ‘he/him’ express one’s maleness or masculinity, not the class of male. Likewise, the pronouns ‘she/her’ express one’s femaleness or femininity, not the class of female. This is because one’s mental conception of a male or female is not predicated on them being the class of said sex. For example, if I say, “She is standing right there”, one’s mental conception is not the class of sex that possesses large gametes, but rather that which has femaleness due to their appearance. Hence, we should use “she” and “he” to reference those who we perceive as having femaleness or maleness, respectively.

While the predicate for which pronoun to use would be based on gender expression, in practice pronouns in spoken language would be much more circumstantial. This is because the mental conception of the exact properties of gender may vary from person to person. For instance, having a beard denotes a property of maleness but not all men sport a beard. So, if someone is more accustomed to seeing men with beards, then the absence of it may change their perception of a male’s gender expression. Recall, however, that in intentional context the sense is what matters as the reference can be misrepresented, e.g., calling an orange a grapefruit by mistake. So even in good faith discussions, errors in pronoun labelling can occur.

The transactional process of labelling a person’s gender based on their gender expression until this point has only made mention of one’s mental conception of gender and how one’s sense of the gender in reference could result in mislabeling despite best intentions. But what about bad faith mislabeling of a transgender person’s identity? In the case of someone acting in bad faith, I do not believe an analytical argument would do any good at changing their behavior. The issue at hand resides within the person’s moral attitude about transgenderism. So, the question becomes, what responsibility does a person have to change their attitude about transgenderism? This question presents itself as a representative of an even bigger question: what responsibility does one have to change their attitude about anything? While such a question may be too broad for this essay, I will still attempt to address the question of our responsibility to identify people by their preferred gender identity.

All individuals in a functional society are given some degree of respect and accommodation for innate differences. For instance, societies will designate special parking privileges for the disabled to aid in their everyday affairs; and by and large members of society are respectful of this arrangement. Women and men play in separate sports leagues in order to ‘level the playing field’ in sporting competitions and create equal opportunities. So, we have precedence in a broader sense of society where one’s identity statement and subsequent preference to be acknowledged based on their identity expression is respected and accommodated.

Now, it should be noted that the identities of being disabled or being in the class of female are not self-determined. Accordingly, one may appropriately contend that what is being acknowledged, respected, and accommodated is a natural consequence associated with their being, viz. one either had an accident or was born disabled, or was born a woman which entails certain accommodations ought to be made. In contrast, one’s gender expression is a choice. However, I do not think we can apply the rigid sentiment that the consequences of one’s choice are outside of collective consideration. For example, to be a parent, and consequently identify as a parent, is one’s choice but society is accommodating on that which parenthood expresses (e.g., having maternity leave when a child is born). So, whether one’s identity statement is accidental or intentional, a functional society appears to take these matters into consideration, acknowledge their importance to said individual, and act with an appropriate degree of respect and accommodation. I do not see why a transgender person would be an exception if they are honestly only trying to represent themselves. That is to say, the person’s gender expression is an honest attempt to be their authentic self.

There exist logical ways to discuss the social contentions around transgenderism. I have presented at least one of them, suggesting that gender ought to be understood as that which has the appearance of sex. i.e., maleness, femaleness, or sex betweenness, which is different from saying one is of the class of sex, i.e., male or female. Moreover, a logical take on transgenderism provides a window into how to understand what is meant by gender in modernity, whereby we can frame the discussion intelligibly and productively to find workable solutions for when sex and gender are at odds.