what is good for the goose
The story breaks on 14th January 2021 on the popular online forum Reddit, on the discussion board of /r/sgexams. A user recounts a story which alleges that the Ministry of Education (MOE) of Singapore had interfered with their ability to seek gender reassignment treatment and surgery. On the 15th January the Ministry of Education (MOE) posted a reply on their facebook page, denying the allegations. On the 21st of January MOE posted a joint statement with the Institute of Mental Health (IMH). To date there has been no evidence presented by either party. I am of the belief that serious allegations require serious evidence, lest we forget the case of Parti Liyani: there cannot be two standards for evidence depending on where public sympathies lie. The mere allegation itself has raised serious questions about how Singapore society and its government has and should tackle LGBTQ issues.
Let me start with the statements by MOE and IMH. The first statement from MOE on the 15th was a non statement designed to refute the allegations and say little else. The first line denied the allegations made in the Reddit post, and the rest of the post was irrelevant to the accusation. It looked like several boilerplate statements cobbled together by an intern. To that end I am disappointed by the statement but not surprised. The second statement while at times vague, included a line which to me was an unequivocal assurance of what I wanted to know, that the “final medical treatment decisions involving the use of hormonal therapy rest with clinicians and their patients”. This is important: barring illegality for safety of procedure, any medical treatment should concern only the doctor and the patient and no one else.
I have every sympathy for anyone who suffers from gender dysphoria. I cannot even begin to imagine what it must feel like to feel trapped in the body of a gender you do not identify with, and have a society which at times marginalises and refuses to acknowledge this experience. I also fully support an individual’s rights to do anything they want, as long as their rights do not infringe on the rights of others. To that end, if an individual chooses to undergo gender reassignment surgery or therapy, I support their right to do so.
That said, I believe MOE has been caught between a rock and a hard place. This is not to excuse how MOE and their employees have treated Ashlee, and this is not a piece in defense of MOE or their policies. The debate on transgender rights is a very broad one, and all arguments for and against certain rights have to be given a nuanced and detailed treatment. Because of that, my focus will be decidedly narrow.
I think the biggest issue that people often miss when talking about transgender rights is whether the person in question is pre or post gender reassignment, both on paper and in fact. As of 1973, Singapore has legalised gender reassignment surgery, and it is legal to change your legal gender on identity cards. As of 1993, it is possible for a person who has had their legal gender changed to marry someone who was previously of the same sex as them. With the legal gender reassignment, it would presumably be legal to use any and all gender specific facilities and spaces. As to whether the other users of these facilities will discriminate against the transgender individual, that is separate from the point that it is legal for them to use those facilities. In law, there seems to be very little stopping a post gender reassignment transgender individual from enjoying their rights under their new chosen gender.
The problem arises if the transgender individual in question is pre gender reassignment treatment and surgery. I am of the opinion that self identification is not a sufficient standard for using gender specific facilities and spaces. At the risk of oversimplifying, a basic position that I have always maintained is that an individual should be free to exercise their rights, insofar as their rights do not interfere with someone else’s rights. To that end, I’m all for individuals deciding what gender they identify with, and to seek reassignment if they so wish. By all means, live your life, as long as it does not interfere with my rights. A pre operation transgender individual relying on self identification to use gender specific facilities and spaces is a violation of others’ rights.
There are reasons for gender specific facilities and spaces. A large part of that is a history of male on female violence that has necessitated these safe spaces. When we discuss gender specific facilities and spaces people often default to toilets, and it sets up a convenient strawman for people to punch on. But safe spaces extend to more than just toilets, they include prisons, and female only hostels and women’s shelters. These are traditionally safe spaces for a reason, and there are a growing number of incidents which show just that. This is not to say that transgender people are more likely to commit acts of assault, or that female on female violence never happens. But there are differences in physiology between men and women that make male on female violence more likely to happen, and less likely to be prevented. In relation to all other safe spaces, how can we ever discount the fact that some of these women who harbour in these places have experienced some kind of male related violence, sexual or otherwise, and are seeking shelter precisely against that? Are their rights somehow less than a pre-transitioned individual's?
We should never let anyone’s rights prejudice someone else’s rights, and even the rights of the minority have no trump over the rights of the majority. It is increasingly trendy nowadays for virtue-signalers to flaunt their wokeness as loudly as possible, always taking the side of those they consider to be the most victimised in society. Yes, it is probably true that society has a long way to go before we can even adequately address gender dysphoria and all the issues that come with it. But the solution today cannot be to enact policies which prejudice the rights of others.
I do not envy the position MOE is in now, or the whole government for that matter. Disallowing self identification then ties being transgender to the ability to receive treatment and surgery, which in turn prejudices people without the economic ability to receive said treatment. It is a discrimination by class. There is no easy solution to this matter. For MOE in particular, will they allow transgender individuals to participate in sports, regardless of whether they have transitioned? Individuals who transition after puberty have gone through irreversible changes to their body that even hormone treatment and surgery cannot correct for. There is a reason most sports are split by gender, males in general have greater muscle mass and skeletal density than females, which accounts for their greater physical prowess. It is simply unfair for males to compete in the same arena as females. Should they then have their own transgender league? That could be construed as discriminatory as well. These are just some questions that have to be asked when we say that we want equal rights for transgender individuals. None of this is written to deny their humanity, or to deny their right as people, but merely to shed some light on the issues which do not get discussed because it is uncomfortable to insert nuance into transgender rights slogans.
Public policy is often about painting broad strokes across a canvas in a hope to cover as much of it as possible. It is for the individuals in the system to use finer brushes to bring out the details that these broad strokes might miss. Our current system of genders is binary, and for good reason. Gender is more like two peaks than a spectrum, with most people existing somewhere near either peak. Biologically speaking, people are born into one of two sexes, and even people who exist on neither peak are exceedingly rare, and make up even by the most generous estimates 0.02% to 0.05% of the population. As such our systems by and large follow this binary. If you are arguing that it should not, that gender should be understood on a spectrum, then it shouldn’t matter to you which gender specific facilities a transgender person should use. Either gender is binary and therefore the distinction important and we have to allow transgender people use the right facilities, or the distinction is not important at all, it cannot be both ways.
Gender dysphoria is a problem that our society does not adequately address. But in our zeal to correct those wrongs we cannot commit other wrongs along the way. This has nothing to do with culture wars, or about religious beliefs, or about our conservative culture. The problems as I set out above are practical in nature and by no means easily solved. It turns out what is good for the goose is not always good for the gander.