social science – Let's Queer Things Up!

Folks often ask for shareable versions of the threads that I write on social media. In this new series, “Twitter Roundup,” I’ll be compiling threads worth saving! This thread focuses on the ways in which the social sciences are overlooked when talking about the existence of transgender and nonbinary people.

A lot of folks keep telling me that trans identity isn't "scientific" and yet when I ask them what they mean by science, they keep talking about biology. As if the (simplified) biology they learned in grade school is the only kind of science that exists. Ever.
— Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️ (@samdylanfinch) December 24, 2018

There have already been a lot of really excellent pieces written about the variability of biological sex/sex characteristics, the neuroscience behind gender, and the like. So I won't dwell there. But there's something else I need to point out: Social science is a thing.
— Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️ (@samdylanfinch) December 24, 2018

I have (eh hem) a degree in anthropology. Simplest definition, the study of human beings, including society, culture, language, and how we've evolved. It is a really exciting field. It is also a science.
— Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️ (@samdylanfinch) December 24, 2018

That… is a scientific fact. It is a recorded, observed, studied phenomenon. Gender has always been fluid. How people conceptualize and relate to concepts like "woman," "man," "femininity," "masculinity," "androgyny," "third gender," and more has always been in motion.
— Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️ (@samdylanfinch) December 24, 2018

You can cherrypick the aspects of "science" that you like the most (like "biology") and reduce them. But you would be proving my point — because the very fact that you can choose which aspects of observable science to rely on proves that science itself is influenced by culture.
— Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️ (@samdylanfinch) December 24, 2018

Which is to say, we exist in a historical moment in which a very distinct relationship to things like sex, gender roles, expression, language, and identity can be observed in a (now very visible) population.
— Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️ (@samdylanfinch) December 24, 2018

Your discomfort with this population does not change the fact that it's a population we have studied across cultures and across time. It doesn't change the fact that this is a community that requires a particular kind of support in order to be mentally healthy and to thrive.
— Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️ (@samdylanfinch) December 24, 2018

You aren't required to "like" transgender and nonbinary people. But you don't get to use "science" as justification for it. Plenty of scientists across disciplines have been studying gender and sex diversity at length, much longer than you've been on Twitter yelling about it.
— Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️ (@samdylanfinch) December 24, 2018

You can choose to adopt whichever aspects of "science" suit your worldview, but the uncomfortable reality is, human beings are very complex, and no single field of study can accurately capture how we exist in the world.
— Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️ (@samdylanfinch) December 24, 2018

And it's also true that we may not agree on what this whole "gender" thing is, because there are so many different ways of looking at it. Which is why, at the end of the day, "don't be an asshole" is probably the better worldview to ascribe to.
— Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️ (@samdylanfinch) December 24, 2018

What we're really talking about isn't science so much as it is ethics. And I think it is immoral — subjective, I realize — to erase a population of human beings (who are just trying to be their most honest, complete selves) and to do so in a way that deliberately harms them.
— Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️ (@samdylanfinch) December 24, 2018

It's not "science" to deny someone the ability to authentically and joyfully exist in this world. It's cruelty. That's something you have to reconcile for yourself — whether or not this is an accurate reflection of the person you want to be in this world.
— Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️ (@samdylanfinch) December 24, 2018

At the end of the day… it's just not that complicated: pic.twitter.com/P1zEuiGArb
— Sam Dylan Finch 🤷🏻‍♂️ (@samdylanfinch) December 24, 2018

A gif that reads, “When people tell you who they are you believe them.”

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