Mind-Body Dualism as it relates to LGBTQIA people.
For some time, I have been thinking about what is being said when someone claims that trans women are women or that trans men are men. The truth of these statements is a metaphysical claim. The statements are clearly meant to refer to the mind/spirit/soul of the person rather than the body.
When someone objects to transgender people and tells them that they are really whatever their biological sex is based on chromosomes, genitals, reproductive capacity, or whatever arbitrary marker they use, they are in fact usually correct under a monist philosophy. If what you are is the same as your body, then concepts such as gender identity don’t make any sense.
But we live in a world where most people claim to be dualists. Most of the world population identify with some form of religion such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or something like that which includes belief in an afterlife and the concept of mind/spirit/soul. It refers to that part of someone which will still exist elsewhere and live on even if the body is destroyed. Because this soul/mind/life-force is not the body, this is a dualistic worldview.
Those who follow a monist or materialist worldview believe that physical reality is all that exists. These are usually atheists too because to be a monist means that you cannot believe in anything other than the physical. I used to be that person but not anymore. I have seen and experienced too much that does not align with the idea that the mind and body are one. Most notably the huge disagreement between what my body feels like doing and what my mind forces it to do.
Whether you are dualist or monist clearly makes a difference between whether you accept transgender people as their claimed identity. If you are Christian, it also has implications for whether you accept Jesus as merely a man or as God taking on a temporary physical form. However, most people are not autistic philosophers as I am, and they do not understand or recognize these connections.
And another thing that must be clear is that in LGBTQIA, one of these letters is not the same as the others. The T is for Transgender, which is about identity. All the other letters are about the body. For example, a Gay or Lesbian is defined precisely by people who are sexually attracted to those who share the same body type as them. A heterosexual is also defined by being attracted to the opposite sex. In both cases the labels are 100% based on the body they happen to be born into.
And then things get more complicated when you realize that Transgender people, just like Cisgender people also have a sexual orientation. A transgender woman who is attracted to men is heterosexual under the dualist philosophy, but homosexual based on a monist philosophy. That is because sexual orientations are based on what the physical body is but ignores the soul. It could be that people are attracted to people of a certain type of mind a person has independently of what body they inhabit in this life cycle.
And now we have 3 interacting elements.
- The physical body
- The Mind that lives in that body
- The philosophy/religion/spirituality that interprets the mind and/or body.
The movie Freaky Friday is a fine example of what I am talking about. The mother and daughter switch bodies which means they still retain their same soul. They still behave the same way and think the same way but now are in each other’s bodies. The entire movie would not work without dualism.
I could easily go on forever about this and will quite possibly write more in the future. Because these issues relate heavily to LGBTQIA people, especially the T, I wanted to get these thoughts out during Pride month. In the future I hope to go more in depth about how it could affect other controversial religious or political debates.
Chastity White Rose 
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