Why I say that transgender is a koan for biopolitics, and not only?
We read the following koan, “the pitcher”, which is a classic of Zen philosophy:

———–
The teacher Pai-chang would choose a monk in hand the task of opening a new monastery. Called his disciples, put a pitcher on the floor and said, “will choose who will describe the pitcher without naming“.

“It is a round vase with a handle and a spout” said the most learned of his students.

“It’s a gray container and serves to contain water or other liquids“, said another.

“It is not a clog” said third most wittily.

The other monks said nothing, because they were convinced that they could not come up with better definitions.

“There is no one else?” asked the teacher.

Then Kuei-shan stood, he was a mere servant of the monastery. He took the pitcher in his hand and showed it to everyone without saying anything. Pai-chang said, “Kuei-shan is the abbot of a monastery”.
———–

I will return to this, later.

Now take into account as the method of bipolarity applied in politics does to mal-form the common thought and legitimize a paranoid social behaviour.
The start point is the necessity, by those in power, to manage and control the population.

The first step is classification. The classes, the “containers“, in which include everything, every phenomenon and every person, are defined. The best position for maximum control is to be able to divide certain characteristics in two distinct and opposing classes.
Then, through widespread and subtle social conditioning persuade to be just, good, acceptable or superior one of these classes, and that’s it: the other, in contrast, is logically wrong, unacceptable or inferior.
When this policy of discrimination becomes blatantly anachronistic can add other “inferior” classes and / or take into account the interactions between classes (these interactions are also subject to classification).
I will not now develop the speech apply to the forms of government (democratic, non-democratic), races (white, black, other) or other topics unrelated to the argument of this blog, which I leave to philosophers and thinkers in other offices and other ways. I just want to note that the bipolarity is a very powerful tool and every form of government tends to consolidate it.

How does classification by sex? There shall be two mutually exclusive classes, “male” and “female”.
Everyone, from birth, will be defined by authority (as doctors): male if he has a penis and hasn’t vagina, female if she has a vagina and hasn’t penis.
Each of us must be thrown into one of two boxes, and act according to the related definition lifelong. Every other situation is defined deviancy or malformation, physical or psychological, and must therefore be corrected with the appropriate instruments.

Obviously, at nature do not matters at all about the classification done by humans; for example, a certain percentage of people (intersex 1 in 2000, XXY chromosome 1 in 600) born with penis and with the vagina, or with features not track determines.
At this point the authorities (in the guise of not questionable official medical science) that must to put in a box the newborn, make use of words such as “anomaly“, “pseudo …”, etc.. or make use of size limits (the penis should not be shorter than 2.5 cm, the clitoris should not be longer than 0.9 cm) to decide which box is put down the baby, and often define his / her sex with a “corrective” surgical operation, removing the clitoris “excess” or micropenis and constructing an artificial vagina-like. These impairments, which I consider terrible abuse, will almost certainly problems of type physical, psychic, difficulty of self-perception identity and in reaching orgasm for the reduced sensitivity.
Think about this: there are people who are born, for example, with fingers that are much longer or much shorter than normal. Even considering an anomaly or malformation, someone would think seriously cut the fingers and replace them with prostheses made “normal”?

But the goal has been reached, nobody has the right to exist for what is, must exist only for that the power requires him / her to be, even if classified with such artifices, like artificial vaginas, because the genuine is not classifiable.

The political and religious power, supported by science institutions, does so always and influences people to assume that this is right and questioning is highly regrettable.
It works so well for sex, classified according to the interactions between people who may be either male or female, resulting in:

• male with male,
• male with female,
• female with female.

After just struggles, the social ranking that first saw men and women second (this is an extreme simplification may not enter into the details of the phenomenon) has become anachronistic.
The social conditioning is so focused on sexual relations, for reasons that even now the current dominance of the old science with its mechanistic-deterministic paradigm (which would not investigate here) sees the relationship as fair and favored the so-called heterosexual “male with female“, and currently permitted and acceptable (not yet in all social organizations) that so-called homosexual “male with male” or “female with female“. No other sexual relation is considered, because there are no established other gender.

In reality, the classification is more complex because sexual identity is defined by three diagnostic criteria: sex, gender and sexual orientation. Because I am opposed to determining an individual with the system of classification I will not get too involved with this. My argument would be valid anyway, without calling into question more classification rules.

Of course an individual, borned with their vital functions intact, comes complete, whole and perfect in himself. Although born, for example, without an arm, or with a micropenis, he does not feel (he isn’t) incomplete or defective, but attributed to him, and he is conditioned to think it and feel it, by society for comparison with a model of ideal human being, defined by criteria medical-anatomical and / or statistics.
When (perhaps always?) these criteria are arbitrary and / or dictated by a logic of power, community begins to exert violence on the individual that differs from standard. One of these criteria is the classification for sex, seen before. Thus biopolitical sexualism binary device acts.

The politics does not repress sexuality but produces it, establishing sexual norms, and therefore creates perversions considered deplorable, using culture socialization and education as a mechanism of power on the individual through rules moral, religious, scientific, linguistic, etc.

Think about how much violence to their individual identity must be suffer a transgender. Consider what is born with a penis. Male will be cataloged.
Growing, she will naturally expressing her femininity, but the community will not leave any choice in this: he is male and can not be female. At most can be gay, if she lives in a modern and tolerant society.
For years, day after day, her individuality must suffer violence from the social environment. Growth will be increasingly evident her feminine appearance and attitude, but for the community she will always be considered a male - from school, doctors, almost all her family, etc.. Will be ridiculed by his peers because “too feminine” and possibly even beaten by bullies, or worse.
Should always dress for boys, and who knows, maybe even make a “cure” of testosterone.
As an adult will have no choice if she wants to be female, must deny herself as is. Must give up part of herself to undergo a sex reassignment surgery (SRS), ie removing the penis and building a fake vagina, which probably will bring more problems than solutions (difficulty achieving orgasm, vaginal stenosis likely, etc…).
And you believe that in most Western countries she has equal opportunities in employment? Or perhaps, considering the few alternatives, she will decide willy-nilly for the “oldest profession in the world“?
Other question: given the negative opinion of society on this kind of stable relationship, how many men want to marry her or live with?

I’m not saying that the SRS is intrinsically wrong. Anyone should be able to freely do, if he is confident and fully aware of what it means and implies.
The problem is that often happens that also the transgender, growing up, has been conditioned by society to think in terms of that bipolarity which excludes her existence. She was convinced that there are only two boxes, “male” and “female” and anyone is in one or another. Feeling feminine can only conclude that she must be female, the only official alternative to the “male” that she does not feel to be. For this, she may decide that she wants the SRS, crippled beyond repair her original individual identity.
It occurs to me, now, to have witnessed a few months ago in a television broadcast a transsexual that spoke that officially becomes female following a SRS, and then had married. She turned (can not remember the exact words but the sense of speech) with attitude of superiority to present transgender (all of them were more polite, nice, calm than her) because she felt a “real woman“, certified by official documents, in contrast to others that they could not even understand what they are and not had the “courage”, as she had, to decide to be “complete women“. She was also very angry with many people who, she said, consider her husband a gay man because he married a person who was a man. By these delusional assertions, we understand what I said before: she was completely conditioned by biopolitics. Also, why get angry if her husband is considered gay by somebody? A gay is no longer considered despicable or inferior, surely should not be for her, either. I think it is because even though she wanted to completely deny her “masculinity” with the SRS, the scalpel could cut only her physical offshoot, but something remained unresolved at the psychological level.

The trans may be more feminine by changing the amount of hormones in their bodies, reducing androgens and increasing estrogen. The most marked result is obtained by removing the testicles. This is far less invasive that above-mentioned SRS. Indeed it is practically maintained the original anatomy, with the penis intact, which allows to achieve a satisfying orgasm, and the absence of the vagina-like avoid possible future problems of stenosis. There is therefore no negative psychological impact, even the trans will enjoy her femininity without more radical changes to her being.

Now, we return to the koan: attempts to define the pitcher without using its name, “pitcher”, are destined to fail.
In the first case we start from some other object, such as vase, highlighting things that for that object are a flaw or defect (a spout and a handle); but a pitcher is not a vase, and considered as a vase is obviously faulty. The fact is that a pitcher NOT MUST BE a vase.
The second case would give the pitcher too general characteristics that can be attributed to other different objects, giving rise to misunderstandings. Could be considered a cup, a bowl or something else, but the pitcher is nothing else.
The third case was told in a joking way, but despite appearances it is perhaps more subtle. If objects are many to choose from, of course, exclude one (the clog) does not get us anyway, in this case even remotely understand what object it is. If the choices are only two, the fact that the object is not one of those two leads us to conclude with absolute certainty that it is the other. If someone had made we believe we can choose a clog and a hat, we would not doubt that the object is a hat. Really it’s a pitcher, but we were deceived by someone who had, from start, already interest to make us believe that it is a hat.
The only way to truly know something is bringing it closer and watch, observe. Moreover, the only way to understand an entity is put your mind in stand-by and feel it with your heart in its entirety, to perceive what the nature, the universe, wants to express with its irreplaceable and unrepeatable uniqueness. Altering this uniqueness is a serious act against individual freedom and truth, therefore against the universe.

I want to clarify that everything I said about the koan (but also everything else) is my personal reflection, inspired and impromptu. Everyone can, and must, have its own. Koans are for this. Moreover, ideas are constantly changing; years ago I still thought this, and at any time are subject to improvement. Ideas are not carved in stone (the stone changes too slowly!).

This koan undermines the system of classification, it highlights the limits of this system and left to imagine the damage of its application to human beings.
I think that we should refuse to be classified and classifying others. Let us live our genuinely unique individuality, without doubts, without guilt, without political manipulation, and let us live in the same way our relationships.
Then, how can we talk about ourselves and about someone else? We must not use the language to define, but only to describe. Not to put people inside a box, but to give, at who is listening, an approximate idea by nearly-similarity. Here opens a quite long thought, and being it of utmost importance I will write my ideas on this in another post.

I know that a professional philosopher who does not agree with my ideas maybe would have enough technique to disassemble. Perhaps it would be a pedantic artifice. I’m not a philosopher, I’m a freethinker, I like to think about things trying not to be influenced by arbitrary prejudices “politically” imposed.

I like the trans that show fully their nature without letting it a problem, at peace with themselves and with other people. Sure, each has her own character and therefore I have more sympathetic for someone than others, and I like someone more than others, as with any other human being. But, in any case, trans are a social and human priceless worth. First, as already seen, they challenge the biopolitical system, on the other hand enrich the human infraspecific biodiversity.
Transgender, show simply who you are, as you like and you feel like being. Someone likes, someone else will like, others do not. It is basically the same for everyone. Elapsing the time, for people no longer will be a problem and something must be added at “male” or “female“.

I love tgirls. I like their company, their being unique, feminine but not totally and not only, feminine in their special and exciting way. Tgirls have the better of femininity with that lovely something extra, in body and in character, that only tgirls have, this is the “tgirls prerogative”.