Thought Paper #2

Explain a current political debate (e.g., immigration, climate change, transgender rights) using the 5 moral foundations. How do
liberals see it? How do conservatives see it? How would you explain it to members of both parties? This is not about which side
is more “right” or “wrong”; it
is a perspective- taking exercise in which you explain a single issue in two ways using what we’ve been working on in class.

The moral foundations of how liberals treat people who are trans gender seems to rely
heavily on the foundation of harm vs care; for conservatives I see this as an issue of sanctity. For
conservatives and those who are considered “traditional”, being transgender is a new and
unnatural phenomenon which also breaks society’s gender norms. I will focus on three areas of
trans gender rights that cause disagreement between liberals and conservatives. First is how to
approach proper pronoun use for someone who has transitioned. The second is their exclusion
from sports. The third is trans gendered people’s ability to serve in the military.
The most prevalent issue for my demographic seems to be the use of gender pronouns,
especially when it comes to people who are trans gender. The problem is there is no definitive
test for gender since it is considered by a number of people to be a social construct, but others
argue that it is inextricably linked to the sex someone was at birth. What defines someone’s sex
is whether they were born with biological male reproductive organs or female. So although we
can test someone’s sex, if you believe that sex determines gender you will know what gender
they are, if you don’t then you will not know without asking. It seems to me gender refers to the
heuristics concerning personality and behavior of individuals from each sex. It is self-evident
that “natural” boys are different from “natural” girls. Females produce more estrogen, less
testosterone, are more agreeable on average, more empathetic, less athletic and many others than
their male counterparts (not including reproductive ability or physical appearance). Without
arriving to some sort of moral judgment concerning these facts, we know that these differences
exist. Because of these differences, boys, on average, have different degrees of these features
compared to female, giving rise to expectations for the behavior of a male from a female. This is
a stereotype but useful most times, and this is what we call gender. But since many of these
features reside in categories but in spectrums there is no test for where someone falls in the man
or woman scale; only likelihoods of whether someone was born a certain gender.
The second issue is trans gendered individuals’ exclusion in the world of sports. As I
explained before, being born a male gives you physical advantages over a female which of
course applies to sports. Although the two bell curves exist, they are significantly distinct. Thus,
why two leagues exist between the sexes which encompasses the moral foundation of fairness;
which surprisingly is something that a liberal and conservative could agree on here.
Last is the issue of allowing transgender people serve in the military.

I am fairly liberal but believe that someone who is transgender is considered to be

transitioning from a male to a female or vis versa but that there is no thing separate from the two.
Although some people argue that there is something distinct between those two categories (and
maybe many more than a third gender), the next issue is when we can decide when someone has
achieved womanhood/manhood. These two issues are interlinked for liberal