Gender dysphoria and transition, part 1: Topics

A week and a half ago, I got a phone call from a guy I'd gone to college with forty years ago, and whom I hadn't really heard from since then. I'll call him Cassius. It was a long phone call, filled with a lot of news on both sides, and I've written about the rest of it elsewhere. But one of the things he told me was that he has come to the realization that he suffers from gender dysphoria, and that he wants to transition to living as a woman. (I don't remember if he said he was simply thinking about transition, or if he has already made plans. Some of his other news makes me suspect he is still at the "thinking about it" stage.)

I have to admit I wasn't expecting that, though when I discussed it with another common friend who knew us both back then she said she wasn't surprised. (That makes one of us.) What I told Cassius at the time, and in a follow-up email afterwards, was that I had not tought a lot about transgender topics, but that of course I supported my friends. This was only partly true, because I have actually spent a certain amount of time mulling the issue over the last few years, just because it seems to be somehow in the air. But until now I have not had any concrete reason to sit down and spell out my thoughts in any detail. Also, I didn't think that phone call was really the time to get into a philosophical exploration of the subject.

The stated purpose of this blog is to see the world through classical eyes, and the classical world certainly understood that gender is not an immutable category. Dionysus was in many ways a gender-bending character: nominally male, but without any of the martial or heroic attributes that the Greeks assigned to masculinity, and followed by women who were intoxicated and deadly. The seer Tiresias was transformed into a woman and spent seven years of his life as one before being transformed back into a man. And Greek mythology also recognized the character of Hermaphroditus, who can be thought of as an ancient Greek futanari.

What part of this requires philosophical thought? I think there are at least four questions to consider:

1. Is gender dysphoria a real thing?
2. When people are assigned to one gender but feel deeply that they belong to another, how should they act and present themselves?
3. What should be the extent or role of medical intervention?
4. How should these people be treated by our laws, and by society at large?

I plan to address these questions in my next three posts. I will address Questions 1 and 2 together, and then write one post each for Questions 3 and 4.

If there are other questions I have missed, or if you have any other feedback, I welcome comments.