I recently saw that this meme was apparently making its rounds in alt-right and TERF circles, and while I know they meant this to be a pithy blow against “trans ideology” (whatever that means), it makes an excellent (unintentional) point about the essentialist ontology they always apply to trans people, but nowhere else.

For instance, let’s say a fat person –that is, someone with too many fat cells– wants to transition to a thin person. What they’ll do, sometimes with the help of surgery, medication, therapy, and support groups, is change their body morphology. However, if we were to apply the essentialist ontology that passes for logic, reason, and science in alt-right and TERF circles to this physical transition, we must say that the now “thin” person is actually fat because no matter how much weight they lose, they still retain all the fat cells they had before their physical transition. If what makes a body fat is an overabundance of fat cells and losing weight doesn’t decrease the number of fat cells in a body, the person with a BMI of 20 is still fat.

Of course, most people can grasp the stupidity of the logic on display in the above paragraph. However, when it comes to the following paragraph, some who claim to be rational thinkers are swayed:

Let’s say a male person –that is, someone with XY chromosomes– wants to transition to female. What they’ll do, sometimes with the help of surgery, medication, therapy, and support groups, is change their body morphology. However, if we were to apply the essentialist ontology that passes for logic, reason, and science in alt-right and TERF circles to this physical transition, we must say that the now “female” person is actually male because it doesn’t matter that they have a female phenotype, they still retain the XY chromosomes they had before their transition. If what makes a body male is XY chromosomes, and transition doesn’t decrease the number of XY chromosomes in a body, this person’s female phenotype is male.

From there, these folks who claim to have science and logic on their side will claim that bariatric surgery is healthcare while trans surgery is mutilation.