Gender dysphoria (G.D.) claims that someone whose sex was determined at birth to be male is entitled later to "identify as" female and take appropriate measures.

Analogously, someone whose sex was determined at birth to be female is entitled later to "identify as" male and take appropriate measures.

What about this?

Entering stage right is conservative philosopher WVO Quine (1908–2000), who taught at Harvard University for decades and published widely during a long and distinguished career.

While many of Quine's contributions are technical, there is a fairly simple one that applies to the problem at hand.

Suppose, Quine noted, that we can translate (paraphrase) sentences that appear to refer to Xs into equivalent sentences that do not.

Of course, it would not follow that there are no Xs.  What would follow is that we need not assume there are Xs.

Stated another way, we do not need to be committed to the existence of Xs. Or, again, the assumption that there are Xs is redundant.

For example, it is easy to paraphrase sentences that appear to refer to shadows into equivalent sentences that refer to only shadowed objects.

The result won't necessarily be literature, but that's not the point.

The point is that we don't need to assume there are such things as shadows.

Voilà!

Now let's postulate a conceptual version of Quine's test.

Suppose we can paraphrase sentences that appear to refer to concept C into equivalent sentences that make no such reference.

The conceptual version of Quine's test says that we can eliminate the concept "shadows" because the concept "shadowed objects" will do the job.

Voilà!

So how do we eliminate the concept "identifies as"?

Easy.

The sentence (A) "Smith, born male, identifies as female" is equivalent with the sentence (B) "Smith, born male, believes that he is female."

Voilà!

"Identifies as" is a clever bit of propaganda because sentence (A) appears to assert something as fact through the use of the verb phrase "identifies as."

Keep in mind that verbs usually denote action; they denote that something real is happening.

The equivalent sentence (B), however, shows that the appearance of fact in sentence (A) is an illusion, a clever verbal trick.

Leftists are sneaky, so you've got to watch them like a hawk.

Sure, Smith may well believe that he is female and passionately so.  Maybe he got up one morning and "felt" female, or something like that.

People hold delusional beliefs all the time, especially Democrats.  Just listen to Joe Biden and you'll see what I mean.

At this point, an "identifies as" proponent may well claim that Smith's belief that he is female is "true for Smith."

What about this?

We apply Quine's test again and show that "proposition P is true for Smith" amounts to nothing more than "Smith believes proposition P."

Getting outside the circle of one's own ideas requires a lot more than verbal tricks.

Arnold Cusmariu is the author of Logic for Kids, which may be obtained at a 25% discount from specialsales@taylorandfrancis.com. Arnold worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for almost 25 years and describes some of his accomplishments in "Philosophers at CIA?" published earlier this year in the Journal of Intelligence and Analysis https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372852127_Philosophers_at_CIA.

Image: WolfBlur via Pixabay, Pixabay License.