Authentic Bodies and the Problem of Epistemological Reflexivity

I begin with a meme, which unfortunately I can't figure out how to post directly here, so I link you here.

If you are too lazy, it is the college liberal girl saying, "If you feel trapped in the wrong body you have a right to change that." Followed by "If you want to get a nose job you are fake and shallow, learn to love the body you were born with."

The logic that makes these two statements compatible is obvious. 'Liberals' believe that standards of beauty are socially constructed, and that people who undergo surgery to conform to them are being manipulated or coerced by these constructed standards. Gender identity, on the other hand, appears to be more immune to these accusations of constructedness.

But should they be? We often talk about gender as a constructed thing. We know that women do not, by their nature, wear high heels and red lipstick. Yet those things are recognized as feminine. I can remember, for example, someone I knew who was trans. They chose to display as feminine, and the way they did this was by wearing high heels, fake breasts, and lipstick.

If you were born with male genitalia, but identify as a woman, why does dressing like a woman help you feel more like a woman? Especially knowing that those standards of femininity are socially constructed?

The college liberal meme is actually quite insightful in this insistence. Why is it acceptable to modify your body to fit socially constructed standards when you belong to a minority group (of trans people), but shallow and wrong to do it to when you belong to a majority group (a woman who wants a nose job, etc.).

I can't unravel the logic right now. It is too complex of a problem.

Something ain't right here.

It may have something to do with fighting for equality. Those who seek gender reassignment, for example, are a persecuted group. They defy normative standards, and a push for equality is then conceptualized in terms of physical augmentation. While something like a nose job is not something that is a push for equality, per say. It is a push for conformity. But gender reassignment has traces of that same push for conformity.

Can the solution to these problems really be found in physical augmentation and conformity?

Or is there another solution?

I'm wondering if the solution has to do with humanity's unique relationship with language.

I am referring to what is called the 'reflexivity of human knowledge'. This argument has been most powerfully made by Roger Smith in Being Human, but finds its antecedents in Foucault, and German Romantic philosophy (which I'm less familiar with).

The argument is this: Human's cannot say what they are without changing what they are. We exist in a social world that is built of language, and when we go about classifying people, we also help people become those things. A colloquial phrase puts the point succinctly: Be careful what you claim you are, what you claim has a way of coming back and claiming you.

This point becomes clearer when we examine the difference between classification in the natural sciences and the human sciences. In the natural sciences, we don't need to worry that our classifications will in turn effect nature. Nature is out there and exists as it is, and we will not change it simply by talking about it. The human world, on the other hand, is not only out there, it is also in our minds. So when we classify the human world, we need to take into account the fact that our classification will feed back into and change our reality. Thus knowledge of humans is reflexive, the process of knowing ourselves changes ourselves.

Are gender/sexual classifications not illuminated by this insight? Is there a way to take into account the fact that by labeling people fems, butch dykes, lipstick lesbians, so on, actually helps create those people? By labeling the behavior we provide a focal point for it, and actually end up reinforcing the behavior.

Does the problem of elective surgery need to be resolved by allowing everyone to modify their body based on what they think it ought to be? Or do we need to do mental work to see that our bodies are okay as they are?

Are we to tell those who desire plastic surgery that they need to learn to love their bodies, regardless of whether they want a nose job or sexual reassignment?

What to do?

The problem of the reflexivity of knowledge, which really breaks down into the problem of human self-creation, is the biggest philosophical problem I see, and one that is implicated most seriously in the philosophy of history and politics.

If you've read this, please let me know if this makes any sense.