Today’s article in the Sunday Times (London) “Viking hordes ‘may have been trans’” is making the social media rounds in predictable ways.
Certain people think it’s utterly ridiculous:
Other people believe the article was transphobic, although the main complaint seems to be with the picture accompanying the article. Perhaps these folks don’t read newspaper articles.
Gender-critical feminists and trans rights activists had a rare moment of agreement. Everyone with an opinion about the “trans Viking” article seems to have disliked it.
But what does the article actually say? The trans angle seems to revolve around this claim from Sacha Coward, whom the Times describes as a historian specializing in gender and sexuality, but who describes himself as a “freelance museum professional” with a master’s degree in anthropology:
“At the very least, men and women in Viking society could break from traditional constructs of male and female roles and it is possible that we are talking about people who would today identify as transgender or nonbinary.”
This claim, by the way, about gender roles is based on very old news (from 2017): After DNA testing, the bones in a Viking warrior’s grave were discovered to have belonged to a woman. Today’s article could have served as filler on a slow news day at any time between the 2017 discovery and now. (The Brits didn’t have the Super Bowl to distract them today.)
Coward’s statement confirms that trans is something we made up —because why might some Vikings “today identify as transgender and nonbinary”? Because those things are an idea — not a material reality, not a physical condition, but an idea — which did not exist in Viking times.
In Viking times, if you were a female warrior, you were a woman.
It means Vikings allowed people some flexibility in their social roles. It’s not too big of a stretch, considering that women, when the men were off raiding, were home running the farms and doing all sorts of “manly stuff” in their absence. Viking women could also get a divorce and at times were consulted in major political decisions. But the fact remains: Vikings simply lived their lives in their bodies as they existed. There is no mention in the runes of gender dysphoria. (There is, however, ample evidence of Viking same-sex activity which, unlike “being trans,” is a real thing across time and culture.)
The woman-warrior in the Viking grave was highly respected, judging from the clothing and other items found there: she appears to have been more a military leader than a follower. She was a successful person — and yet if she lived today and “identified” as transgender, she’d be caught up in all the extra baggage: changing her appearance, her name, her pronouns. She’d be fretting about whether she passed, whether her “top surgery” was symmetrical, whether “bottom surgery” was worth the risk, whether she was starting to go bald, whether the pain in her shriveling uterus meant she needed a hysterectomy, whether men considered her “one of the boys.”
What would she gain in today’s enlightened times, which she didn’t have during her own celebrated life? What would she lose?
It’s interesting to think about, but no matter what we might speculate, the fact remains: The concept of “trans” Viking warriors is nonsense.
But Why Does a Silly News Item About Vikings Matter?
On any controversial issue, we 21st-century people tend to split into our factions with our rigid beliefs. Every group believes what it believes about gender, and no one is likely to budge an inch.
If we want to change the way our culture perceives “being trans,” and if we want to have real conversations about it, we will not succeed by going round and round in the same circles of thought, with the same talking points that people on the other side have already dismissed.
For example, if a gender therapist sincerely believes “kids just know who they are,” you will never convince her that this statement is untrue or irrelevant. You just won’t.
If transwomen sincerely believe that spaces like women’s-only gyms should be open to them, and they get “gender euphoria” from being in those spaces, then you will never be convince them that “gender euphoria” (which to them is a really positive thing where they feel great) is really “autogynephilia” (a kink that they’re imposing on people who don’t consent, which is one reason women prefer penis-free zones). They’ll just never see it that way.
If family court judges, legislators, domestic violence counselors, elementary-school teachers, and college sports coaches believe deep-down that it’s important to change with the times and to make sure “oppressed” groups have rights, they will never be able to hear the concerns that anyone wants to raise. They already “know” that such people are bigots. They wouldn’t listen to them any more than they would listen to a Klan member who suggested we bring back Jim Crow.
None of these good-hearted, fair minded people —who genuinely believe themselves to be on the side of the angels — is able to think in any other way. Why?
Because their fundamental underlying belief is that “being trans” is a real thing, a real way of being physically wired (similar to the way we’re wired for sexual attraction) instead of what it is:
A culturally specific creation of our time and place: the 20th and 21st century West.
Imagine what would happen if everyone who understands that “being trans” is a cultural creation decided to work together to change the underlying false assumption that it’s a universal human condition. What if we we all decided to talk about the ways in which “trans is something we made up”?
If we were able to do that, the conversations about gender could shift completely. And the great thing is that it’s apolitical. You can understand that trans is a culturally created condition whether you’re a far-left bleeding heart like me, or a far-right person. It’s the common ground on which all of us can agree to meet.
And what happens otherwise? If we allow the premise that “trans is real” to go unchallenged — if we concede it’s some kind of human universal condition — well, in that case, we enable all the same harms that are happening now.
Suppose we don’t challenge that underlying premise, and instead our strategy is to try to chip away at each instance of medical harm, each bad policy decision, each lost custody battle, each kid rendered infertile, each ridiculous gender curriculum, each outrageous sports decision…one by one by one.
Even if we convince one school, one sports organization, one gender clinic that someone was harmed or one decision was bad, that simply fits into the existing gender narrative, and doesn’t do anything to disrupt it:
“Well, that particular kid wasn’t really trans!”
or
“That particular decision was bad, but everything else we’re doing for trans people is still necessary and represents progress.”
Similarly, even if we convince every state legislature one by one that transition for minors is harmful, there are plenty of 18-year-olds who can take themselves to a Planned Parenthood or a university clinic to get “gender-affirming medical care.”
The focus, if we accept the current “trans is real” paradigm, remains on an imaginary group of “really trans” people who deserve to be perceived and treated, as a matter of “rights,” as belonging to the opposite sex, when clearly they are not.
Anyone else who is harmed along the way is treated as unfortunate collateral damage in the noble effort to give medical and sex-based rights to “trans people.”
To be clear: gender-nonconforming people need our protection, accommodation, and acceptance.
But if trans is something we made up — if we can talk about it in those terms, and get other people to talk about it in those terms: as a cultural creation, a culture-bound syndrome, an idiom of distress, however you want to describe it—then the conversation becomes very different.
It doesn’t matter how masculine (or not-traditionally-feminine) a girl or woman is; it doesn’t matter how feminine (or not-traditionally-masculine) a boy or man is. Everyone can be accepted as they are.
Once seen, the fact that trans is a cultural creation — an idea; not a reality — cannot be unseen. Anything that helps people come to this realization can be helpful — and possibly something like this silly article about Vikings is unthreatening enough to be a safe conversation-starter. “Being trans” is not a “thing” that people “are.” It’s a set of major cosmetic choices that some adults in the 21st century West choose to make themselves happier.
Viewed as “major cosmetic choices,” the entire conversation about “being trans” and what society needs to do for people who make major cosmetic choices changes:
The conversation with the gender therapist about whether children know “who they are” becomes meaningless—a three-year-old girl can be “really a boy” in the same way that she was “really a kitten” last week. Either way, a child can’t make major cosmetic choices.
The debate about whether male-bodied people belong in women’s single-sex spaces seems simpler — male-bodied people who make major cosmetic choices do not belong in the single-sex spaces set aside for women.
As a bonus, the conversation would naturally shift to acceptance of gender-nonconforming men in men’s spaces. (And if someone fully “passes” and is in opposite-sex spaces with no one being the wiser, well, that becomes the nonissue it always was before.)
The family law cases about whether parents should lose legal or physical custody of a child because they doesn’t support their child’s major cosmetic choices simply go away. The other parent can’t support a child’s major cosmetic choices either.
The controversy of whether legislators should make laws ensuring “gender-affirming medical care” becomes a lot clearer if those are cosmetic choices. If adults want cosmetic procedures, they pay for them.
The question of whether “gender” belongs in a kindergarten curriculum becomes as silly as the question of whether they should be taught about bulimia or any other culturally created condition.
The controversy of whether male-bodied people should participate in women’s sports becomes a lot clearer.
Changing the meta-narrative about what it means to “be trans” is the only way to shift the narrative and to change what’s happening.
What do you think?
Great, thought-provoking post as always. I have mixed feelings on this subject.
Your view is one I am sometimes tempted to endorse. I mean, it would solve the whole problem. No more conflicts, no more medical procedures on kids. No more thought police refusing to let us say “pregnant women.” It’s also the view that appeals to me as a materialist.
The main thing that holds me back is the testimony from countless trans people
that it does not work for them. In particular, descriptions of intense dysphoria that can only be alleviated through transition. They’re aware of the non-conforming option and said “No, it has to be this.”
However, the demands have become so twisted and extreme that it is causing a lot of problems. And that leaves me not knowing what to think.
In my ideal world, adults could transition and be accepted socially with desired pronouns, preferred restroom, and whatever clothes and cosmetic prosecutes they want. But we would be very conservative about kids wanting to transition. We would acknowledge sex as real and meaningful. We would preserve women’s sports. Etc.
It seems like the trans movement used to agree, 20-30 years ago. Old school trans people like Buck Angel still promote this view. But the activist movement now views this position as oppression, and I don’t know if it’s possible to go back. And every day it gets harder to imagine due to the regressive demands of the movement (liking pink=girl) and science/medicine giving in.
So maybe you’re right that we need to tear down the whole thing and say “No, you aren’t a woman.” But I can’t bring myself to advocate for such a thing when so many trans people state that it would cause them immense pain.
This is the solution they’ve arrived at, and they hear GC views as hateful and wanting them dead. The idea that anyone could think I feel that way (even though they’d be wrong) is enough to keep me quiet, apart from pseudonymous discussions online.
Prior to very recent decades—so, what, 99% of the time we’ve been a species?—surgical intervention wasn’t a thing that existed. Is there evidence of mass suicides by humans who couldn’t deal with having a penis or breast with no other recourse? Maybe it’s happened but it’s not a phenomenon I’ve ever heard of.