Skip to content

Mark Goldblatt vs. transgender people

Mark Goldblatt is an American author and anti-transgender activist.

Background

Mark Meyer Goldblatt was born on June 8, 1957. Goldblatt earned a bachelor’s degree from Queens College of the City University of New York in 1979. Goldblatt earned a doctorate from CUNY Graduate Center in 1990. Since 1989, Goldblatt has taught at Fashion Institute of Technology of the State University of New York.

I Feel, Therefore I Am

In a 2023 review, Carl Trueman wroye:

On transgenderism, Goldblatt has a field day. The obvious nonsense that is transgender ideology would be the stuff of a Marx Brothers movie were it not leading to the government-authorized mutilation of bodies too young to be legally tattooed, and to the hounding and thuggish bullying of those who refuse to conform to the new pronouns. In a sense, this is low-hanging fruit—men pretending to be women and going from middle-of-the-pack athletes to world champion contenders merely by adding “s” to their third-person nominative pronoun.

In a post with an unnamed interviewer, Glo

Q: I think I see where this is going. Now you’re going to say that transgendered people are also drawn to the idea of subjective truth, right?

A: Yes, that’s the connection. Transgender activists argue that you are whatever you feel you are, whatever you identify as. If I sincerely identify as a woman, then I am a woman—despite the anatomical evidence to the contrary staring up at me when I look down.

Q: But isn’t gender dysphoria—the mismatch of sexual classification and gender identity—rooted in biology? Doesn’t that make it objectively real?

A: Recent studies have indeed suggested that gender dysphoria may have a genetic component.  If the research pans out, that would prove a measurable correlation between a transgendered person’s genetic profile and his distress at his sexual classification. But it still wouldn’t prove that his sexual classification is wrong. A comparison with schizophrenia is instructive. Schizophrenia also seems to have a genetic marker. But that doesn’t mean that the voices a schizophrenic hears inside his head exist outside his head. Delusions are a real thing. But the content of delusions is, by definition, unreal.

Q: Let me get this straight. You’re saying that someone like Rachel Levine, the current Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States, who has achieved far more in life than you have, is delusional?

A: Rachel Levine, from the evidence I’ve seen, is intelligent, well-intentioned, and altogether qualified for his public office. But if he sincerely believes he’s a woman, then he’s definitionally delusional. Dr. Levine is sexually classifiable as a man. He feels like a woman. He identifies as a woman. He expresses that identity in ways that are traditionally female. That’s nobody’s business but his. But he isn’t a woman. The meaning of “is” is distinct from the meaning of “feels”… or “identifies”… or “expresses.”

Q: But Dr. Levine is a trained physician….

A: Yes, and I’m not. I take your point. Nor am I a psychologist, nor even a performance artist. But the debate isn’t about medicine, psychology, or bullshit. It’s about language and logic: a man is an adult male human being; a woman is an adult female human being. That’s what the words mean. So, too, “male” and female” have clear definitions. They’re sexual classifications. They’re not mysterious or conjectural. Among mammals, there are two and only two sexual classifications, and even when anatomy is not decisive—which is exceedingly rare—a DNA profile will reveal a person’s sexual classification with 100 percent accuracy. The term “transgender,” from the standpoint of empirical measurement, is meaningless. Sexual classifications are real. Your rejection of those classifications has no effect on whether you are classifiable, and how you are classified. You can ingest hormones until you turn blue. You can dice and slice your anatomy until it’s unrecognizable. But your DNA will still reveal your true sexual classification.

Anti-trans coverage

Trueman, Carl R. (Spring 2023). More Than a Feeling: The woke pathologies of our day. Claremont Review of Books https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/more-than-a-feeling/

Books

Goldblatt, Mark (2022). I Feel, Therefore I Am: The Triumph of Woke Subjectivism. Bombardier Books, ISBN 978-1637582855

Media

The Glenn Show with Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, and Mark Greenblatt (April 30, 2023). I Feel, Therefore I Am – Repost. https://glennloury.substack.com/p/i-feel-therefore-i-am-repost

The Glenn Show Clips with Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, and Mark Greenblatt (Apr 25, 2023). Does “T” Belong with “LGB”? | Glenn Loury, John McWhorter & Mark Goldblatt | The Glenn Show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvAQL3hJOwk

Resources

Mark Goldblatt (markgoldblatt.com)

Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)

Fashion Insitute of Technology (fitnyc.edu)

X/Twitter (x.com)

Instagram (instagram.com)

Facebook (facebook.com)

Substack (substack.com)