The Meaning of "Woman"
I was reading Judith Butler's Gender Trouble and came across the following question she posed which I appreciated
In other words, do you think it is possible to create necessary and/or sufficient conditions for an idea like "woman" (and if so, what would those be)? Furthermore, if a woman has not experienced oppression (or denies that she has experienced oppression, yet self-identifies as a woman), does this call into question her "woman-hood" if one accepts the second half of their premise?
I've been thinking about the statement "trans women are women," and seem to think whether one agrees or disagrees with this term comes down to how one defines or identifies woman (i.e. how closely is it related to sex at birth). I'm very new to philosophy of language so I'm very curious how these definitions are related to the creation of meaning.
is there some commonality among “women” that preexists their oppression, or do “women” have a bond by virtue of their oppression alone?
In other words, do you think it is possible to create necessary and/or sufficient conditions for an idea like "woman" (and if so, what would those be)? Furthermore, if a woman has not experienced oppression (or denies that she has experienced oppression, yet self-identifies as a woman), does this call into question her "woman-hood" if one accepts the second half of their premise?
I've been thinking about the statement "trans women are women," and seem to think whether one agrees or disagrees with this term comes down to how one defines or identifies woman (i.e. how closely is it related to sex at birth). I'm very new to philosophy of language so I'm very curious how these definitions are related to the creation of meaning.
Comments (195)
You could just as easily connect female identity with female warriors of the past. Significant warrior women existed from the early Greek and Germanic tribes, the celts, the vikings etc to women today fighting on the front lines of war.
Plenty of powerful historical women as well, in all fields.
Why would women not choose to identify more with these historically powerful examples of female strength along with political resistance groups like the suffragettes etc. Why would they choose to identify with the oppressions foisted on them by others?
Trans women are trans women. Women are women. Referring to a trans woman as a woman is just a way of accepting someone as they wish to be seen.
In terms of close relationships, medical reasons and physically competitive sports trans women are trans women. Outside of those areas trans women are women.
It is just a case of common sense and politeness. Most people who see someone dressed as a woman will call them a woman. Maybe there are a few scarce situations where it is not clear but that can be overcome quite easily with a simple exchange.
There need be no necessary and sufficient conditions in place for us to be able to use a word; indeed, there rarely are. This is what is meant by the term family resemblance.
Stipulating a criteria, one way or the other, is a political act.
Quoting NOS4A2
Case in point.
So here's an opportunity for Nick to explain the practicality of that theory. In my old-fashion ways, I might pose the moral question "ought we use the word "woman" for a man who has transitioned to a woman?" I'm sure @Isaac and @Tom Storm would be interested in hearing how it works in a practical situation.
Show us how your ideas will objectively set us on the straight path.
A poor argument.
You write that “Referring to a trans woman as a woman is just a way of accepting someone as they wish to be seen…it’s just a case of common sense and politeness” and I’m inclined to agree. Certainly one who goes out of their way to misgender someone says a lot more about them then the person they’re misgendering.
To me, where it gets more complicated, is when we start engaging with feminist literature and talk about epistemology, not how we behave in polite conversation. Take Simone de Bauvier, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” If one agrees that a crucial part of “being” a woman is being socialized as a woman, specifically at a young age, then (to me) one can reject the statement “trans women are women” simply because, in their view, trans women haven’t been through this crucial socialization process. Perhaps the person rejecting the statement would say “trans women are *partially* women” or “trans women are in the *process* of becoming women” or maybe even “trans women are missing a crucial part of what it means in my definition of woman but I will still call them a woman out of politeness.” This last statement in particular wouldn’t sit right with me, and I am interested in anything in response.
To be honest, I really struggle in my (hypothetical, I really haven’t talked to a lot of them) arguments against TURFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists).
We talk about “in terms of close relationships, medical reasons and physically competitive sports trans women are trans women. Outside of those areas trans women are women.” However, even in those categories the lines are being blurred, with some transwomen arguing that they are women and thus have a “right” to compete in physically competitive sports. I honestly don’t know where I stand on the issue.
I can tell you exactly what would happen if trans women competed in physical sports. They would break all the women’s records and rank high. This is simply a fact.
Women’s sport dominated by trans women is not women’s sport. There is a reason men and women do not compete together in nearly every sport. The men are FAR stronger and have better stamina too.
You're under Wittgenstein's spell! Is suggest you do something about it, pronto!
I remember in my youth, having a chat/debate with a homosexual man who at one point exclaimed.
'I don't care about biology! I am not a man and I never have been.' It was said with such conviction that I became convinced that 'the gender part' of his consciousness identified as female and it was as simple as that. That was not going to change in his lifetime and I just had to accept that. It was not a case of 'being polite.' This person was telling me something that I either accepted or was willing to war with forever because he was UNABLE to be any other way.
I think if transwomen/men are willing to take it as far as medical intervention and surgery then it's a done deal. I think you ultimately make space for transpeople or kill them because they can't be other than who and what they are. I don't think previous 'socialisation as a woman,' is an issue. I think they always have.
As a youth, I would perhaps engage in what was considered 'male activities' while the person I had the chat with may have been engaging in more female activities. As he claimed, 'he was never male.'
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
This is one of the 'issues,' isn't it, and the idea of transwomen having access to female toilets etc.
Maybe there should only be one type of toilet facility with individual large enough cubicles. Perhaps the communal area could have security camera's to protect everyone using it.
Very difficult. I wonder if Science can find some acceptable solutions in the future to the sports issue.
Maybe safe 'steroid' type medication could be given to women who transform into men to gain the increased strength they need within a set range and men transforming into women could have their strength reduced to a set range. Perhaps they could then compete in sports fairly. I suppose I am just 'guessing,' now but humans are quite good at finding solutions........eventually.
Maybe a (probably more controversial) genetic-based solution is possible, in the future, if science ever identifies exactly what causes the 'disagreement,' between the physical gender and conscious gender of an individual and finds a way to correct any ambiguity before birth. I don't know enough about biology or neuroscience to know if such detection and intervention is possible or not.
Exactly. Should be all the answer needed here.
It's possible of course, yet your idea of a woman may not exactly coincide with another's. So it would be hard to craft a universal definition.
https://alyesque.medium.com/on-women-as-a-class-materialist-feminism-and-mass-struggle-42a228bde888
Currently men and women cannot be physically changed to match the physicality of those sexes. Perhaps in the future CRISPR will allow people to change completely. As scientific knowhow stands, the physical differences (in terms of strength) cannot be levelled.
If I could literally change into a female overnight I would definitely give it a try (as long as I could revert back to being male). Who wouldn’t out of sheer curiosity?
I agree, except I'd add that the setting for this is the age of high tech warfare, so we aren't shuffling millions of men off to die in a trench somewhere.
Maybe this eased the way for women's rights in the 1920s when capital's domination of labor was worse.
I have no issue with it either but many many people do have an issue with shared gender public toilets.
Especially women who fear male sexual preditors.
Quoting I like sushi
I wonder if VR(Virtual Reality) or AR(Augmented Reality) will reach a stage where you can wear a 'sensory encounter suit,' and sit inside a machine and wear a 'helmet,' that can allow you to become a virtual woman at any time.
1. Genetically: XX (normal woman) or XXX... (superwoman)
2. Bodily: Breasts, vagina, other secondary sexual characteristics.
3. Mentally: ??? No data or conflicting reports.
It mainly an issue for Americas, UK, Aussieland and NZ I expect.
Once CRISPR makes a little headway it will be possible to literally convert sexes. As for pregnancies … would need to do some wiggling around to produce eggs/sperm ‘artificially’ most likely. The whole procreation problem might not be so easy to overcome (at least for converting to female!).
Oh, I don't know about that, I think the number of male sexual predators are evenly spread globally but I don't have any stats to back up what I am claiming. Perhaps you do, to back up what you are claiming.
I know I have many male friends who will try to 'chat up' women whenever they can, especially with a drink in them. If they shared toilets, I think they would try to 'chat up' women in there as well and perhaps be 'cheeky,' if they get rejected out of hand. There are serious issues of concern involved I think.
CRISPR and its possible projected future replacements/advancements are indeed very interesting but I wonder if transwoman to man or transman to woman will be eventually moot, if the current projections of future transhumanism are realised.
I find this quite interesting. If I think of my own group of friends, male/female/married/single/various sexual preferences etc. The aspects of their 'personality,' that I personally would lablel 'male,' or 'female,' are myriad, subjective and probably idealistic. They are probably also strongly driven by my experience of and indoctrination in stereotypes. I have often heard comments such as 'I am in touch with my female side,' or 'The woman in me wants to hug him the man in me wants to beat him up,' etc.
Although many of us have clarity of gender, it's hard to deny that we have aspects of our opposite gender personality. Is it just the physical differences between men and women that drive the mental conflict?
The only necessary condition for using a word is that you are referring to some state-of-affairs that is not necessarily just another use of words. If not, then you aren't actually using words. You're just drawing scribbles and making noises. But it nice to see you finally admit that when you use words, you aren't actually ever saying anything, Banno.
Quoting Banno
No. Categorization is an act of reason. Finding common ground with others' categorization is an act of communication. But it is nice to see you finally admit that you see everything through the prism of politics, Banno.
Yes, just as a doe is an adult female of the deer species. Nothing political to see here.
The problem is that in acknowledging someone's definition of "man" or "woman" that contradicts my own, would be discrediting my own identity as a man. Why should I relegate my own notions of what it means to be a man for the sake of not offending someone that is only happy when dictating what others can think or what words that they can use?
It is sexist to say that someone dresses like a woman - as if women can only dress a certain way. Trans people are no different in being sexist when they claim that being a man or a woman is dressing a certain way, nor are they non-binary when they still assert that they are a man or a woman. If they were really non-binary then they would be neither a man or a woman. As such, they should have their own category in sports and not participate in the binary categories of men and women's sports.
His was a strange criticism and a political act at the same time. It’s no wonder truth suffers around issues such as these.
If a guy is wearing make up and a dress, and appears to be conveying the general outward aspect of ‘woman’ I would refer to them as she/her because that is CLEARLY what they are conveying. I know they are NOT a WOMAN because I can see they are a TRANS WOMAN but I need not be a dick about it and refer to them as he/him.
Politeness in this circumstance has nothing to do with some weird inner dictionary definition of ‘woman’. Undoubtedly, as mentioned, it is possible I am unsure about whether someone perceives/conveys themselves as x or y, in which case I would just probably ask if necessary and suffer the consequences of potentially offending them (they would be rare cases).
Maybe being exposed to trans women more often than many in the western world has coloured my view? I have no idea? It just seems pretty obvious to me how to behave in a reasonable manner to people who are different to me in terms of how they perceive their own identity. God knows we all have some kind of identity crisis at some stage in our lives, that is just the way things are.
I’m not crossing over into sexism here. The same basic rules apply.
To what extent are you down with sacrificing truth to protect someone’s feelings? I might convey in manner and dress that I am a king, but would you refer to me as “lord” and treat me as such in case you might offend my delusion?
I don’t believe the delusion of being a king is comparable. I have not been anywhere in the world where there was a predominate minority of people believing they are kings. Correct me if I am wrong? Whilst when it comes to gender issues there is a very obvious minority stretching back through human history who ‘feel’ like the opposite sex of what their genitals say.
If you wish to offend people for nothing go ahead. I have no issue with it really. If said people are my friends I would though. Point being there are boundaries and a reasonable degree of friendliness is not writ in law but it will be judged by people nevertheless.
I don’t care for the ‘law’ tbh. I just use my own judgment because I think I’m old enough and experienced enough to dictate what I believe it right or wrong (reasonably well at least!).
If some radical politically charged trans woman came up to me and started ranting that I should always call her a woman I would tell her to get the fuck out of my face and stop disgracing herself by accosting me when I was out and about minding my own business. In the same light I hope you wouldn’t march up to someone you perceived as ‘a man in a dress’ and start lecturing them about how delusional they are and that they are bothering you by silently suggesting they are a woman when you know they are a man.
Is that a silly enough place you were hoping to get to in this discussion?
I didn’t say you said anything about sacrificing truth, but you are willing to knowingly utter a falsity to preserve someone’s feelings, with little consideration to the feelings of others who identify as the opposite. I just think that behavior is less than ethical, more of a ploy to avoid confrontation than anything else.
If the trans person is your superior at work, you must refer to them in whatever way they want to, and this has nothing to do with the trans issue per se, but with workplace hierarchy. Similar for other workplace policies.
It's only when the trans person is your socioeconomic equal that the trans issue comes up.
I’m not sure it is ethical to lie for my boss, or any other person above me in any hierarchy.
That is a weird lens you have on the world. People are people. What the hell has economic status got to do with how you treat people?
I say that because you said that you know they are not a woman, but are willing to treat them and speak about them as if they were. Have I read it wrong?
Interesting. I suppose that is the reason we should not put dresses on pigs
There are a few thing going on here, as far as I can see.
If I accept that a person in the scenario being discussed is sacrificing the truth to protect someone's feelings, I don't think it is obvious that is unethical. There is long standing debate about the interplay between different ethical principles like "I shall not lie" and "I shall be kind." So I don't agree that uttering a falsity is necessarily unethical.
Secondly, and I think this is one that a trans person would use, is suggesting the use of he/she is referring to a social construct of gender vs a biological construct of sex. And hence they are not uttering a falsity, as they identify with the social construct of gender that is different to their biological sex at birth.
It is really not that complicated.
We’ve seen where that has gotten us, though. Men are being allowed to compete in women’s sports, or to disrobe in their change rooms, for example. We’re forcing people to use language we would never use otherwise. We’re cutting off people’s genitalia and feeding hormones to children. We are sacrificing much more than truth.
At what point do you say, “no, that’s not a woman”?
It’s complicated because such pronouns refer to women, not men.
“Case in point” is an illustrative example of your assertion “Stipulating a criteria, one way or the other, is a political act”. But you were unwilling or unable to say how that is the case. A poor argument.
Authoritarianism relies on pretending the world is clearly cut by distinct categories. the arguments they present are dependent on saying that certain uses of a word are wrong in themselves, as opposed to being incompatible with other uses.
Defining a woman as a person with a vagina sets up a different discussion to defining a woman as a person who adopts a certain social role. Hence it sets up a different politic.
Both are in a sense equally arbitrary, but one excludes reflection on the place of social considerations by reducing them to a physical condition. That is, a discourse in which the physical state of having a vagina is equated with being a woman effectively denies the worthwhile distinction between being a woman and being a female. Hence it arbitrarily restricts the possibilities, while distinguishing between being a female and being a woman allows for more nuanced discussion.
For the moment it is worth simply drawing attention to this aspect of your position.
Indeed, this is a contentious and interesting issue. There is nothing like a consensus on the issue. A feminist group with which I have a long association has welcomed an increasing number of trans and queer folk, which I find both confronting and invigorating.
While the lack of consensus is well worth contemplation, the impact of the inclusion of trans folk also remains unclear. It is possible that the focus of feminist organisations will become less distinct, making them less likely to induce change; but it is also possible that the result will be a broadening of the range of possibilities.
Interesting times.
Quoting Banno
Here is an asymmetry. 'Trans men are men' is not a slogan. Nobody feels threatened by a person who lacks a penis using the men's changing room or taking up men's sport or entering a men's prison. This makes me think that the root of the problem is not about trans. If it were, we would see approximately equal anxiety about either or any direction of transition.
I think the source of anxiety is male violence and domination. A trans person might be bullied in the men's changing room. They should be able to go to the toilet without fear of harrassment. A woman might be raped in the refuge or the women's prison. A girl should be able to get changed without having to risk seeing a penis. Women's sport should not become dominated by male bodies. These are the problems. Take away the violence and domination and 'trans women are women' would be as unnecessary a slogan as the non-slogan 'trans men are men'. Meanwhile, the ridiculed terfs and and so-called tras get to fight it out and the patriarchy sits back and enjoys the show. It's tragic.
This 10 minute talk is an interesting view - unintended consequences of Queer Theory, sex as a social construct leading to buckling of the concept of 'sisterhood'
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12804/the-meaning-of-woman/p2
Yes, the lack of symmetry struck me, too, and is symptomatic of the power structure, as you suggest - not just violence, but the threat to perceptions of masculinity and selfhood such as those expressed here.
My resident expert in such issues pointed out that if the social categories of sex and gender were to dissipate in importance, those folk who rely on those social categories for personal power would be exposed. That's the threat that underpins the need for folk hereabouts to defend certain definitions. That is, the theory of definitions they prescribe has its cause in their perceived social standing, and not so much in due consideration of the way language is used.
Anyway, you don’t seem to have a sensible/reasonable thing to say so I’ll leave you to it.
Socioeconomic status.
Pretty much everything. The class war is the only real war around.
It depends on how much you want to keep your job ...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00168s3
While it does seem that some concepts are relatively successful, like the scientific method, some are just ludicrous, such as viewing the world through the oppressor versus the oppressed narrative or, moreover, chanting "trans women are women" that makes as much sense as a 'Chinese Rolex is still a Rolex!' or 'my Kia is a Mercedes!'
So if you want somehow useful philosophy, try reading anything from Stoics to Nietzsche. Postmodernists are just a bunch of nutjobs. ;)
Is it possible that people act in the world without any concepts, but when they analyze their experiences, concepts enter as gears in the machinery of explanation?
And then maybe these explanations, arising from reflection, affect the form of future actions.
Most people are incapable to create their own concepts. They just have some instinctive feeling and would pick any random concept that clicks with it. Like if a person is bitter and resentful, he would be happy pick the 'oppressed' concept, as it alleviates the burden of responsibility.
Me as well. Though I have a close friend who is Muslim and she can't fix her hijab in a shared bathroom space with men. So then the solution to this would be individual stalls with toilets, sinks, mirrors, etc. But this also has an economic impact as well.
Where I am confused is you also say
In this case, from what I can see, you seem to be using women to mean something different in these two places. Do you mean for the term women's records/sports is actually (or referring to) female's or women who are not transwomen's records/sports? Or are you using the term woman out of politeness but depending on context can exclude trans women. To me, the complication is the use of the same word "woman" to mean "female + trans women" and "female but not trans women" in different places.
To refer to them ‘as a woman’ is to use she/her. That is all. Maybe I am one of the few people here who is not obsessed with identity politics and just sees a human being trying to fit in as best they can.
I recommend travelling to Manila. You will see plenty of transgender women every day in every day jobs with everyone just going on about their business. For some reason there are hang ups about this in western society.
I’m bored talking about this so ignore me if I sound a bit short. I can only say the same thing so many ways.
Yep, I think that's the suggested solution but you still have the concern of male sexual predators/ drunk men/men or boys who dare each other to......etc Men (maybe not exclusively men but mostly) who will hang out in the communal area where the 'stalls' are and 'pester'/try to 'chat up' women who transit the same space. So you would probably need CCTV in this communal area or some sort of security.
But that's the thing though: Why would you be concerned how someone refers to you in the third person? It would be strange to be referring to you in the third person when you are present. Third person pronouns are used when the person is not present. So how is someone that isn't present to the conversation offended if we use pronouns that they can't hear?
Quoting I like sushi
It is not clear. A man can wear a dress and still want to be called a man.
And again you engage in these sexist assumptions that what you wear makes you a man or a woman.
The same people on this forum advocating for politeness are the same ones that repeatedly engage in character assassination and ad hominem arguments when you simply question their assumptions.
It doesn’t matter to me if you feel restricted by my definition, or that you believe my rhetoric can somehow exclude your reflection. These are your personal problems. At any rate, the aspect of my position you seek to draw attention to is pulled from thin air.
The biology, the history, the etymology lead me to one direction. No one has convinced me of another. If excluding my definition, impugning my motives, and torturing the plain meaning of language serves to preserve your penchant for nuanced discussions, have at it, but from this angle I grow closer to concluding that the suppression of an inconvenient truth is the highest duty of your kind of thinking.
And fuck off.
The current LGBTQ . . . .xyz controversies revolve around a problem that scientists & philosophers have not been able to resolve : what makes a man/male or a woman/female? As a corollary, what makes an objectively female body subjectively feel like a man, and vice-versa? So, far we don't find any definitive difference in the brains, apart from volume, which is limited by body/skull size. MRI scans do show some characteristic features of male/female brains, but interpreting those colorful blobs is highly subjective and subject to personal bias*1.
Even more difficult to understand is the psychological experience of discerning a male from a female. In extreme cases -- a voluptuous or muscular body shape -- the superficial difference is pretty obvious. But we sometimes find some physical exemplars, who prefer to have sex with their own gender. That is obviously counter to the reproduction purposes of evolution; hence abnormal. So how can we explain those not-so-rare anomalies? The gender-identification-algorithms in the brain produce automatic sub-conscious physical responses : "is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"
So, it should be clear that nonbinary people don't deliberately choose their sexual preference. But traditional mores are based on the Norm, and hostile to the Abnormal. Hence, the religio-political civil wars tend to divide those who judge by "face value", versus those who try to read minds. The current "don't say gay" laws are trying to censor "evil beliefs" by making certain behaviors illegal. We went through a similar polarized religio-political struggle back in the 1950's "McCarthy era". Ostensibly law-abiding citizens were challenged in court : " are you now, or have you ever been . . . . X". At the time, aggressively evangelizing Communism was not only economically abhorrent to Capitalists, but also morally loathsome to Christians.
Ironically, the Bible makes no mention of Trans-sexual behavior explicitly, but men & women were traditionally forbidden to wear clothes commonly identified with the opposite sex. Which is why the sight of women wearing pants was offensive to some cultures and not to others. So, I suspect that in modern secular societies gender-roles are more fluid than in the past. And traditional religious & cultural mores are currently on the defensive, but not yet defeated by the forces of "Evil". The bottom line is that your gender is not defined by your personal subjective preferences, but also by cultural objective labels. Meaning is in the mind of the beholder. :cool:
*1. Transgender brains are more like their desired gender from an early age
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm
Nietzsche is generally considered the precursor of postmodern philosophy, the basis of which are: Antichrist (rejection of all attachment to God) and a call for a re-evaluation of all values, a negation of conventional metaphysics, an insistence on perspectivism, a rejection of Enlightenment rationality and the advocation of will to power.
Perhaps you’re more postmodern than you think, or not. :lol:
The usual masculinist folk have gathered around your thread, leading it away from the interesting point, the various attempts to articulate the place of trans folk in feminist discussion, and all the complexity that involves.
The SEP article Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender provides a broad if indecisive account. There's a summary of the rejection of biological determinism, followed by an explanation for the usefulness of differentiating sex and gender, and the resulting difficulties. Is gender a consequence of socialisation, psychology or sexuality? Then there is the question of how one distinguishes each of the two sexes and two genders: Male from female, masculine from feminine, and the reality of these differences.
The fourth section of the article perhaps addresses your OP must directly, with a discussion of what might be used to group women, an extension of the nominalism/realism discussions elsewhere in philosophy.
And the final section discusses non-binary issues.
Let me know what you think.
You might want to re-read Nietzsche. ;) Postmodernists go like "let's screw over the whole society, so that some hypothetical transvestite doesn't feel excluded", Nietzsche more like "screw the slaves, focus on developing the master morality".
Ahh I see, that was my bad for misunderstanding what you were saying.
Interestingly, this could also bring up a conversation about what the pronouns “him/her” actually mean. Because if one thinks “him” or “her” refer to male or female (or man or woman) this could be seen as an affirmation of one’s claim that trans women are women. Maybe it’s a bit more removed than that though. Still, if someone asked me to refer to them by a specific pronoun I’d do my best to accommodate. But in a philosophical setting, asking someone to agree to the (according to Benno) political statement “trans women are women” would be different.
A parallel would be me saying “Happy Easter” to someone. If someone responded with “I don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead,” I think I’d be taken aback. I wasn’t necessarily asking them to agree with the statement that Jesus rose from the dead (if I was, I’d instead say something to the effect of “He is risen”). I was simply using Easter as a more “secular” (though Christian inspired, like most of Western society) holiday, and trying to be polite. To some people, that’s what Easter represents. To in this case, I think it depends what their definition of Easter is. Perhaps the same could be said about the use of “him”/“her.”
This is a good point, and like Banno I also noticed the asymmetry but I don't think I had followed it to the conclusion that the root of the problem is not about trans, but I agree with you to a large extent now that I think about it. To a large part, I think I was influenced by my campus’s focus on “transphobia,” which unfortunately can be used as a straw man to remove nuance when people are discussing issues like trans participation in sports.
If the issue was truly transphobia, as you mentioned, then I think we’d expect to see equal anxiety. The fact that the focus is mostly on trans women probably comes down to anxiety about male violence and men in “women’s” spaces. This would also explain why some of these people are also against trans men being in “men’s prison” out of fear of sexual violence. In truth, it may be a combination of the two in some circumstances.
Yes, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying here, and I’ve seen some of the research you mention about “brain structure” (although I’ve yet to see anything conclusive and there’s still so much we don’t understand about the brain).
I was under the impression that “sex” (I.e. male vs female) was actually pretty well defined and agreed upon as which gamete an organism produced (and from my limited knowledge, there are no reported cases of humans who produce both sperm and ova, despite there being humans that have testicular and ovarian tissue i.e. true hermaphroditism). However it’s relationship to gender is certainly an interesting and very complicated one.
A great Überdouche afraid of some trans activists? say it isn’t so.
All we can say with any certainty is that there is a significant minority that feel like they were born as the wrong sex and that this is just part of humanity and has been for as long as history has been written.
You will probably find this interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAxDDqi2tBg
Here's something you won't hear me say very often - I am sympathetic to the feminist position. They've worked hard to improve conditions for women, to improve the definition of women if you will, then along comes this new group and want to muddy the waters. Feminism, while still controversial in many places, is mainstream controversial. To claim that feminists and transgender activists are in the same fight tends to push them out of the mainstream. They lose sympathy for their positions.
But even the most thorough and precise surgeries cannot erase the reality. The reification of “gender” betrays any distinction between itself and “sex”. Better to return to the language, I suppose, where some ground can be gained. It makes sense to me; along with the decline of grammatical gender in the English language, prudes would start using the term “gender” to refer to sex because of the increasing sexual connotations. Then by the disco era, feminism gets a hold of it to include roles and such. Then gender identity enters the scene. Now males can be women, females can be men, erasing any link to the origin and history of these words.
The discussion is so nuanced that it is almost unintelligible.
Words are always evolving. Language belongs to the people, not to lexicographers and grammarians.
It's easy to see the distinction between gender and sex - if you look with a charitable heart.
Take the words, for all I care. One can read the distinction between gender and sex until the cows come home, but one cannot really see it outside of that domain of rhetoric, is my point.
These organs (fully/incompletely developed) are, I believe, strong indications of ambiguity in sex/gender at a very fundamental level, oui? People getting mixed up about their gender shouldn't come as a surprise given the above. I'd say it'd be more astonishing if homosexuals and transexuals didn't exist.
Like a hysterical school girl you expressed your fear that trans activists will “screw over the whole society.” The movement does use propaganda and may have some less than desirable consequences, but it won’t unravel the fabric of society as you’ve been lead to believe. Aren’t Überdouche‘s supposed to be leaders and not mindless followers???
Where have I expressed fear of traditional gender roles?
Damned! And I always thought why I have such a small penis! I'm a woman!
And I finally understand my high-pitched voice now!
:smile:
If there is anyone in fear of it, it was Nietzsche. Good old Fredrick took hide of himself behind his über-moustache.
The funny thing is, if a man behaved like a women, for instance, wouldn't you tend to think of them as being feminine rather than masculine, despite what you see on the outside?
The ambiguity of some male/female physical features is not so surprising if you consider that the embryo -- formed from male sperm & female egg -- begins its development with basic female forms, and only at a later stage -- after certain hormones are pumped in -- begin to differentiate, with the fundamental human/female organs continuing on, and male organs beginning to specialize in drone functions : to service the queen, so to speak.
This scenario is reminiscent of Plato's myth of primordial androgynous humans with features of both male & female. Unfortunately, those all-in-one hermaphrodites were split by the inept gods into three genders : female, male, and androgynous. Presumably, that third option has developed over time into the anomalous LGBTQ . . . . xyz varieties of gender/sex that we find coming out of the closet today. :joke:
To me, you have to first ask why we are categorising men/women in each case.
In the case of what third person pronoun to use, I see no fundamental reason that pronoun has to be linked to biological sex, other than that is just the way it has been done (a poor reason in my opinion). Language gender does not have to be inked to biological sex.
In the case of the categories of men/women in sports, this is different. The reason for the categorisation is that biological men have on average an advantage over women in most sports. So here I don't think we can simply say you can identify with whatever gender you wish. There are other possibilities, such as identifying what exactly gives biological males an advantage, and then saying that a biological man can compete in the women's category if they undertake steps to stop that advantage (hormone therapy for example). But that last point is an active discussion point and I don't think a definitive answer has been found yet.
I would tend to think of them as acting feminine rather than being feminine. There is nothing feminine about chest hair or an Adam’s apple, for example, at least as far as I’m concerned.
Eschewing language conventions because one can seems to me a terrible idea, at least if we are to share a language. The same goes for pronouns. Of course, one can use whatever pronouns one likes, so long as he is willing to accept how jarring and odd it might seem to his interlocutors, but to expect others to conform to such usage is absurd.
But language conventions change over time, in particular English language conventions. And what you are seeing is not the eschewing of language conventions, but the change of them.
And since that change reflects societal changes happening among younger generations, I think the language changes in this instance will stick.
I also think people who grew up with the old conventions will find the new ones jarring and odd. But newer generations will take up the new conventions, and the circle of life will continue.
So for instance a woman can only pretend to be more rational than emotional and they can't actually be more rational than emotional, going by common stereotypes?
Perhaps it will stick. Perhaps it won’t.
Indipendent? It makes you wonder who comes up with these.
Anyone can alter his mannerisms, behavior, and dress to appear feminine, but acting can only go so far.
That's how they spell it in Kersplakistan, goofy Europeans. :smirk:
Quoting NOS4A2
I'm talking about characteristics like being aggressive or submissive, competitive or cooperative, etc
I’m just saying that’s not what I was talking about. By “acting like a woman”, I thought you meant he was effeminate in his mannerisms and dress, not adhering to your stereotypes.
You need to get out more? Walk down the streets of any metropolis.
Feminism has broken the comfortable, historic, patriarchal usage.
I walk around and see the sexes, the biology, often despite the performative and contrived.
I imagine a feminist would know what a woman is.
Is your sex contrived?
Excellent. Then you agree that trans people really shouldn't care what others think - especially when they are not around when others are using language to refer to them.
Quoting Banno
Quoting praxis
These are some of the contrived, social characteristics (stereotypes) of what some society means to be a man or a woman. If you've watched women's sports, you will see that they can be just as aggressive and competitive as men. It's not a lack of aggressiveness or competitiveness that are the reasons we separate women's and men's sports. Biology is the reason we separate them.
"President" and "Senator" are also contrived labels. Does this mean that I can be a president or senator if I so choose? Why are the contrived terms of "man" and "woman" not enforced but "President" and "Senator" are? What makes sex/gender so special in this regard?
It seems to me that when two women are attracted to the same man, then aggressive and competitive are fully apt terms to refer to their behavior and they can be just as aggressive and competitive as two men that are attracted to the same woman it's just that they display it in different ways.
If gender is fluid then why can't others hold differing ideas of what it means to be a man or a woman without forcing their own idea of what it means to be a man or a woman on others? It seems to me that trans-people think that gender is only fluid for themselves (a feeling) and not for the society at large (a social construction). This mass delusion is such that they can advocate for politeness and fluidity, but only for themselves and don't feel the need to be polite to others concerning others' ideas of sex/gender or the fluidity of such on the collective scale, as opposed to their own individual scale.
It's not really all that complicated to distinguish between a man and a woman when you cease using these contrived stereotypes of behavior that all humans participate in regardless of sex/gender and focus strictly on biology as the characteristics that define a man or a woman.
Yes, there seems to be a difference between being a trans-woman and being a woman. I wonder what that difference is if not biology.
The problem at hand is the confusing of the wide range of human behaviors with the narrow behaviors of the sexes. There are behaviors that all humans can participate in, regardless of one's sex - like wearing dresses or pants - as opposed to behaviors that only a particular sex can engage in - like giving birth.
There is not just ambiguity in the sex but in the species as well. Because we evolved from pre-existing species our embryonic development is similar to other species.
Does this mean that I can identify as a chicken or a rabbit? If I did would I receive the same respect that others are advocating showing someone that identifies as the opposite sex? Why or why not?
I'm willing to bet that you when you read the last part you smirked, if not laughed out loud, at what what said. Identifying as a chicken is funny. Asserting that you are offended if you are not referenced properly as a chicken is even funnier. That is clear evidence that you don't take such claims seriously. Why then would we accept, without question, the claims of someone claiming to be something that they are not when it's about sex? What is so special about sex in this regard?
There seems to be distinction between being a man or a woman and acting like one. If you see a person wearing pants do you automatically refer to them as "he" or "sir"? If you have to ask before using those terms then it appears that the way that people act or dress is not a clear indication of what they are. When an white person tries to act like a black person they are ostracized for culture appropriation. How is it not sexual appropriation when a man acts like a woman? Again, we are giving special, undue credit to claims of sex/gender when someone identifies as something that they are not, as opposed to other types of behaviors that copy the likeness of other types of people.
When it’s not an act, obviously.
The point that I was trying to make is how we naturally distinguish gender/sex, contrary to what NOS seemed to be suggesting.
If you are talking about trans-sexual people, those opposed to non-traditional non-binary gender roles, might say they are "claiming to be something they are not". But the trans- person might retort that society is trying to "force them to be something they are not". Yet, where does the truth lie, in objective observations from outside, or subjective feelings from within?
In the movie, The Crying Game, the protagonist found someone who behaved & appeared to be an attractive woman, but who turned-out, upon closer inspection -- and much to his disgust -- to have an unexpected appendage, that at first seemed to be a deal-breaker. But, he eventually falls in love with him/her, despite his/her congenital deformity. So, was his love the result of false advertising, or of his own realization that it's what's in the heart that matters in a love relationship?
Unfortunately, the sex/gender game is full of false advertising, from boob-jobs to macho-posturing. So, who is the best judge of a person's sex/gender, the person his/herself, or society & scriptures? Due to the rarity (10%-15% ??) of non-binary examples (out of the closet), most social systems have judged non-conformance to natural/cultural norms to be abnormal & unnatural. But modern science & technologies have demonstrated that mental gender is a continuum, not as clear-cut as the normal physical duality. Since some citizens feel & believe that their gender does not match their sex, who's to say they are wrong?
Hitler's worldview was neatly black & white, so you were defined as either Aryan or Jew, even if you had one parent of each race. And either Male or Female, even if your body is masculine, but your brain is feminine. Therefore, the question comes down to the old Social versus Individual political views. Who rules in such cases? Would you agree to have political laws define your gender against your personal wishes? I can't say, from personal experience, but that seems to be what the LGBTQ...xyz non-conformists are claiming.
What's so special about sex/gender is that it's only partly physical (body), and partly metaphysical (mind). Binary gender is clearly the norm, but Nature sometimes makes mistakes : allowing exceptions to the rule of Reproduction as the Reason for being. For all I know, some animals may be homo-trans-sexuals, but they can't speak for themselves, so they just do do as they feel. As long as humans don't interfere in their private affairs. :smile:
Gender Continuum :
http://www.issuesmagazine.com.au/article/issue-june-2014/breaking-through-binary-gender-continuum.html
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30556480/
A terminology overhaul is quite a difficult thing to do and takes time.
Are the behaviors and claims of a schizophrenic person an act? There seems to be clear cases where someone does not believe that their ideas are false yet we still don't believe them. I'm sure you have no quarrels about telling others on this forum that their firmly held beliefs are wrong.
Do the feelings of a delusional person (specifically, somatic delusions) harbor truth? This explanation seems to eradicate delusional states and render them non-existent. Are you saying that there are no such thing as delusional disorders?
Quoting Gnomon
So are you saying that there is a little homosexuality in all of us - that we are capable of having an intimate relationship with the same sex if we just give it a chance, or be fooled into it as in your example. Would you say this to a gay person - that if a male homosexual man met a a woman dressed as a man and began to fall in love but found out suddenly they have a vagina instead of a penis, then they shouldn't be offended at being misled? I don't know about you, but the moment someone shows that they've been lying to me all along, I am no longer attracted to them. It seems that you'd be okay with being lied to.
Quoting Gnomon
Where is your source? Transgenderism is extremely rare (<1%). Words like "woman" and "man" are useful because a vast majority of humans fall neatly into two groups. Using genitals and gonads alone, more than 99.9% of people fall into two non-overlapping classes and the other traits (chromosomes, hormones, etc.) almost always occur with these. If there was no over-lapping then the terms would not be useful because there would be no distinction to make. By claiming to be a man or a woman, transgenders are making the terms useless in one way and being sexist in another way because they are claiming that behaving a particular way and wearing particular clothes is what makes you a woman or man. Think about if I said that blacks only act and dress a certain way. That would be racist. The hypocrisy is nauseating. Science isn't science when it's been hijacked by governments and used against scientists to make them conform to the current direction the wind is blowing in society. On one hand scientists say delusional disorders exist (like somatic delusions) and on the other they give sexual somatic delusions a pass. Why is that?
Quoting Gnomon
Exactly. You're using a single person that had a lot of power, Hitler, imposing his own worldview on everyone else. This is actually a great comparison to what the extremists on the left are doing. If it really were not enforced then we wouldn't have a certain group of people dictating to the majority how words are used based on their feelings. Political laws do not define gender. Science does.
Quoting Gnomon
You'll have to do better than this. The same can be said of someone that identifies as being a chicken. It's partly physical and partly mental.
It means possessing characteristics associated with women, like the qualities mentioned earlier, but are not exclusive to women, and that is the point, that we can make a natural distinction between gender/sex.
No. You are interpreting a trans-person's self-image as a delusion. But, if so, your own self-image would also be a delusion. :wink:
Quoting Harry Hindu
No. That's irrelevant to what I said. Instead, the implication is that a fertilized egg is not predetermined as male or female. Instead, it is transformed into one gender or another during development. So, copying errors of DNA, or delays in adding certain hormones can result in a fetus with features of both genders. :nerd:
Quoting Harry Hindu
No. I didn't say that trans-gender-people are 10%-15% of the general population. The reference was to all forms of gender abnormality. And the percentage is just a guess. LGBTQ people prefer the higher numbers, but what's important for us to understand is that gender anomalies are fairly common. If you want sources, just Google "genetic gender anomalies". :cool:
Quoting Harry Hindu
Unfortunately, political laws do try to define gender. :worry:
The legal definition of gender as 'the two sexes, male and female, within the context of society,' might change once and for all
https://dukeundergraduatelawmagazine.org/2019/11/06/international-law-convention-evaluates-legal-definition-of-gender/
Quoting Harry Hindu
There you go again, interpreting a person's self-identification (trans- or chicken-) as a mental disorder. That equation of gender & species is a sign of gender prejudice, such as Hitler advocated -- implying that gays are less than human. Genetic Science indicates that non-binary babies result from natural causes, not from mental disorders. :smile:
Homosexuals and Nazi Germany :
Homosexuality was classed as a “degenerate form of behaviour”
https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nazi-germany/homosexuals-and-nazi-germany/
Causes of Gender Dysphoria :
[i]It was traditionally thought to be a psychiatric condition meaning a mental ailment. Now there is evidence that the disease may not have origins in the brain alone.
Studies suggest that gender dysphoria may have biological causes associated with the development of gender identity before birth.[/i]
https://www.news-medical.net/health/Causes-of-Gender-Dysphoria.aspx
PS__I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm not gay, and I'm not a gay-rights advocate. I just want to keep our philosophical discussions on an intellectual, not visceral, level.
It is a VERY good point that shows the problem some people have with distinguishing ‘gender’ from ‘sex’.
I wanted to thank you for linking the SEP article. Very interesting read, and helped clarify some of the points Butler made (I enjoy reading Butler but since I’m new to the field I sometimes miss things).
I was also very much wrestling with the idea when I made the OP (this is from the article you linked): “feminists aim to speak and make political demands in the car name of women, at the same time rejecting the idea that there is a unified category of women”
Along with “to respond to oppression of women in general, feminists must understand them as a category in some sense.” This echos some of the concerns of feminists I have talked to recently that got me thinking about gender in the first place: without an idea of woman, the idea of “women’s oppression” is nonsense, and in some ways, feminism is self defeating if it rejects the category of women.
With that being said, perhaps some “fuzzy” category of women (where the “edges” are unclear but the critical mass is understood and agreed upon by most people) is all that feminism really needs to achieve its political goals.
This point is worth addressing and not dismissing (in my experience, it often is dismissed when asked).
I have yet to hear a satisfactory response so I really hope some other people can chime in here.
There are two responses I’ve heard to this. The first one is an appeal to neuropsychology, which argues that trans brains are more “similar” to the gender they are transitioning to. To me, this is unconvincing because neuropsychology is very poorly understood, so defining this “similarity” feels (to me) like cherry picking. At the end of the day, the brain is also a biological system, so once again if someone’s “brain biology” doesn’t match their “genital/chromosomal biology,” which is to win out in our definition of gender?
Furthermore, this argument is directly opposed to (mainstream) feminism because it seems to imply gender or sexual determinism by arguing there are clear (enough) brain differences to categorize people into “man” or “woman” based on brain structure alone. Feminism, in my view, has tried to distance itself from these arguments as these were the same ones used to argue women couldn’t fly airplanes or shouldn’t be allowed to participate in politics. In this case, if someone who was born with a vagina and identifies as a woman but has a brain structure that is more similar to a man’s, should we call them a “man”?
Another way of approaching this is to argue that gender expression itself has a neuropsychological basis. However, if gender is a social construct (as many feminists argue), why would there be a biological or neurobiological basis for gender expression? And if there is, wouldn’t this imply that there is a biological basis for gender (and gender stereotypes) different than how we define sex?
The second response is that there are trans people in many societies throughout history. “Transgender people are known to have existed since ancient times…However…the modern concept of being transgender, and gender in general, did not develop until the mid-1900s.” This is more convincing to differentiate it from people who claim they are trans racial or trans species. However this does not address the question of whether or not transgender-ism should be pathologized. One could also argue that people born without a limb have existed since ancient societies and even in animals. However this is still pathologized as abnormal.
Quoting Paulm12
I recall, back in the early eighties, some close Nepalese friends puzzling as to where Australia's Meti where. I didn't understand the question for another twenty years...
In other words, these characteristics are not really associated with women, but with humans in general. The fluidity of gender is being confused wth the fluidity of human behaviors and roles. The behaviors associated with sex is very narrow. In this sense, gender doesn't exist except as sexual stereotypes in one's mind. Sex is what is real.
Exactly. Show me the part of the brain of a man that claims to have the brain of a woman that controls the menstrual cycle.
Not only that, but what about the "what it's like" to be a bat or anything else that you are not? The whole point of Nagel's argument is that we can't know what it is like to be something that we are not. So how exactly does a man know what it's like to be a woman when they are not? The same people on this forum that have used Nagel's argument are the same ones claiming that men can know what it's like to be a woman. The hypocrisy is everywhere on this topic. They are also the same people that have no quarrels in questioning the claims of other people, and advocate for the right to do it, but when it comes to transgenders claims, they are given a pass. None of the atheists (myself included) here are concerned about the feelings of theists when they question their claims. I'm the one being consistent because I insist on questioning all outlandish claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Quoting Paulm12
Yes, I've made this point before. Social constructions are agreements between two or more people about the expectations we have of each other. Transgenders are rejecting the social construction by not agreeing on the expectations we have of each other based on our sex. So is gender a social construction or a personal feeling? If gender is a social construction then gender fluidity is social fluidity meaning that for gender to change, society has to change. If it is a personal feeling then it is personal image fluidity and comes and goes at the whim of the individual. They simply can't agree on what it is so why are they so confused that others are so confused about what it is they are claiming?
Quoting Paulm12
Since different cultures have different expectations of the sexes then transgenderism in different cultures means different things. In Scotland where some men wear skirts, is wearing pants in Scotland indicative that you identify as a woman? In cultures where men sport long hair and wear jewelry, is having your hair short and avoiding decorating yourself with gems indicative of your identity as a woman? If it depends on the culture you find yourself in then the differences aren't in the brains of men and women, but in the expectations of the various societies that exist and have existed.
Then a schizophrenics self-image is not a delusion or a hallucination either?
Quoting Gnomon
Your use of the term, "error" is telling in that being born with features of both "genders" (don't you mean sex? The fact that you keep using gender to mean sex is quite telling as well) would be an error. The fact that 99.9% of humans don't have errors must mean something.
Quoting Gnomon <1% is not common.
Quoting Gnomon Then gender is not an objective feature of the world as in the structure of brains, but an arbitrary, subjective characteristic of societies that varies over time and space.
Science transcends the differences which in other fields of endeavor make one period incommensurate with another, or one cultural expression untranslatable in another context. Science knows no contextual limitations. It merely seeks the truth.
What is it that really defines a man or woman, the question seems to be. Sex alone doesn’t seem to cut it, particularly in less liberal perspectives. For instance, if a man were to act too feminine in a very macho culture they may not be considered a man and it wouldn’t be at all unusual for them to be told directly that they’re “not a man.”
What is feminine supposed to describe, if not females? What other objects in the world ought to be described as “feminine”?
If not a man, then what? Some other sex?
But the point was that it is an old term (like ‘race’) that has morphed into some other meaning depending on context.
I always understood that something is feminine if it is characteristic of, or appropriate or unique to women.
You have never studied and Spanish, French or German? There are plenty of example where mundane objects are given masculine or feminine labels.
Then there is pink. Is pink ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’? Did you know that only a few generations ago newborn boys were dressed in pink and girls in blue.
Trends change. Biology doesn’t - at least not so fast.
I assume it means a lack of maturity, or perhaps past maturity, or some other gender. Just looked it up and as of today there are 72 genders, so there's plenty to choose from. :grin:
Dictionaries record usage, “trends” in definition, and “feminine” means “having the qualities or appearance considered to be typical of women; connected with women” (https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/feminine_1). It is synonymous with “womanly”.
Sure, the word can be applied to man, to stereotypes, to objects, and so on, but it will always be figurative. It will never be accurate.
Grammatical gender is different than natural gender. Grammatical gender is a feature of language, a way to classify words, going back thousands of years (Protagoras?).
Yes, I would say this is an unwanted lingual effect.
Much like "WE" can be you and I, or I and others but not you, or I and you and others. Because of my autism, the use of pronouns without a clear connection to their antecedents makes a text incomprehensible.
It was cleared up. End of story … you probably missed it.
The KEY point was that a ‘feminine’ trait is not a ‘female’ trait. The example I gave was ‘compassion’ … clearly men and women both possess ‘compassion’.
If we are talking about personality traits and differences between the sexes; there is not a massive difference at all. In fact, taking any random woman or man from the street and having them take a personality test then showing said test to a qualified psychologist and asking them ‘which is a man and which is woman’ would get you the answer ‘I have no clue whatsoever’.
The differences are averages across huge samples. Physiologically there are quite distinct differences between men and women. Psychologically the differences are all that pronounced at all.
Therefore ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ traits are, at best vaguely associated with one sex or the other, but it is nothing like a hard fast rule of thumb. Due to basic distribution the differences do stick out more often than not at the extremes.
And please note that ‘pink’ is generally considered a ‘feminine’ colour today around the globe. This is a modern cultural shift away from Catholicism - blue for virgin Mary was associated with girls and pink boys.
I hope that clears up any misunderstanding here. If not so be it.
Compassion is a characteristic of men and women, and therefor not a feminine trait. End of story.
I’m talking about biological characteristics and traits. An Adam’s apple or chest hair is not feminine. Those are masculine traits, in other words, characteristic of a man. I don’t think a man with those or any other masculine traits ought to be called a woman. Anyways, that’s all I’ve been trying to say.
Compassion is classed as a feminine trait. You cannot simply change how language is used to suit our needs and beliefs and expect everyone else to get on board … which is kind of what some here are arguing against when saying female and woman are the same thing. Colloquially I agree that gender and sex and used synonymously and we’ve yet to fully adjust to technical terminology.
I don’t expect you to get on board. I could care less what others believe. I’m just saying compassion isn’t a feminine trait, but a characteristic of both men and women.
It is an old fashioned generalisation that has survived in the terminological categorisation.
I say sex is all that is necessary. But lets entertain your idea that sex is not the only thing that defines what a man and woman are. Is sex is a necessary part - meaning that ones physiology is a necessary part of being a man or a woman along with whatever other characteristics you wish to add. Can one be a man or woman without the proper physiology?
Quoting praxis
This what is called a figure of speech.
Figure of speech: a word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effect.
Also, this is implying that what makes one a man or a woman is society or others' view of you, not yourself based on your personal feelings.
Figures of speech convey meaning, and in this case, what it means to be a man.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It implies that our own view and the view of others may not align or be in agreement.
Again, you are using a prejudicial comparison to implicitly label the trans-person as insane. I don't personally know any trannies, yet “gender dysphoria” is not considered to be a medical condition. Instead, it's an emotional distress, due to a conflict between self-image & social labels. Their "mental" problem is similar to other marginalized people, who are bullied in school and online.
I don't know where you get your information, but since your bias seems to be pretty firm, I won't try to argue with your other "mythical" assertions. Perhaps someone with more direct knowledge of the physical & social aspects of being a social outcast can offer you a different perspective of the gender/genetic story. :smile:
Myth #8: Transgender people are mentally ill :
https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/5/13/17938120/transgender-people-mental-illness-health-care
You didn't read the definition:
Figure of speech: a word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effect.
Quoting praxis
And we can work that out if the other person isn't insistent that their view is the only right view, hence my questions to you that you avoided answering.
No. I have pointed out the similarities between a trans-person's claims and the claims of others diagnosed with delusional disorders. You have yet to make any argument against that and instead are insisting on throwing about thinly veiled ad hominems and pleading to authority.
Quoting Gnomon
Logical thinking.
Oh I read it alright. Perhaps you will be kind enough to read my definition:
Meaning: what is meant by a fucking word, text, concept, or action! :blush:
Quoting Harry Hindu
A noble patron of postmodern thought would stand with standpoint theory.
My daughter asked for a library card and as under age, she had to get the permission of her parents. The application asked for gender (only for statistical purposes).
The alternatives were:
1) Male
2) Female
3) Other
4) I decline to comment
I wonder really, what they need that kinds of statistics. Of course the utter hypocrisy is that they also ask for the whole social security number in the same application, which actually tells the sex of the person (at birth, at least) quite clearly, if you just know how to read the numbers. So guess the statistics they want to know is about how many don't think the sex at birth doesn't represent them, have had a sex change or something.
Of course, 4 would be a performative contradiction.
But the question on the application, according to you, asks for the gender, not the sex.
Only fucking words? What about non-fucking words?
You are making unnecessary distinctions and at the same time being purposely obtuse to the necessary distinctions, as in the difference between non-literal meanings and literal meanings.
Is your example of the use of the term, "man", in the literal or non-literal sense? What is the difference in being a man in the literal sense vs the non-literal sense? Just to avoid any confusion, I'm aiming at the literal sense of the term, "man". So if you agree that your example is a non-literal use, then your example isn't useful in defining "man" in the literal sense. In other words, we are talking past each other.
To get a library card? I think it has more to do with the author(s) of the application are simply virtue signaling.
Forgive me, I got tired of endlessly repeating the same point, that a discussion between gender and sex is natural and quite common.
Technically they ask for both.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't know what the objective is, but this kind of virtue signalling is beyond me.
In fact it's actually good that you never have here any questions about race or ethnicity. I find them usually quite dubious. It's something that we really, really shouldn't mimic from the US (or the UK).
Forgive me, but I fail to see where you actually made any point, much less repeated one. If you'd like to continue, educate me on your points by answering my questions: is physiology a necessary part, if not the only part, of one's gender? What is the difference between the literal and non-literal meaning of "man"/"woman"?
Once upon a time there was a man named Frank. In all appearance Frank was like any man, often wearing jeans and a raggedy old t-shirt he bought at Brittany Spears concert back in 1998, and in the manner of any dude would frequently scratch his balls, in public. But inside, behind the shallow facade performed for the public eye, Frank was gentle, sensitive, and downright emo to the core. People who got to know him, really know him, would say the that he “has the heart of a woman.” They meant this figuratively, of course.
One day while downing brewskies with his buds in the man cave, Frank felt a sharp pain in his chest. His unhealthy mannish lifestyle had finally caught up with him and he was having a heart attack. He was rushed to the hospital and, long story short, eventually got a heart transplant. The donor was young woman that was killed in a motorcycle accident the day before. After the transplant, people who got to know Frank, really know him, would say that he “has the heart of a woman.” They meant this literally, of course.
:roll: So is a heart part of what makes one a man or a woman, or is it some other part of the body? What makes some heart the heart of a woman or a man? Is it something about the heart, or something about the rest of the body?
-You are talking about politeness not morality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history
There's nothing "postmodern" about it.
Welcome back.
I am asking you to show how to apply your moral considerations in a particular case. How best to treat transgender folk?
Imagine getting your panties in this much of a bunch because you are given more choices which, ultimately, don't even affect you one iota.
People like to talk about "wokeness" as a result of snowflakesness or some such, but it's pretty clear wokeness is what brings out pathetic, fragile egos like the above in spades as a reaction. This is probably the best argument for wokeness: it brings out to the fore those pathetic enough to care this much. You get to identify society's weakest, most contemptable beings.
Seriously, I think the big problem some people have here is simply down to how in society men and women are different and due to these differences people tend to act in certain ways towards each other. Men interacting with men, men interacting with women, a man interacting with women, and so on and so forth …
For someone trans, that is CLEARLY trans, this simply does not fit into common social interactions for many people - unless you live in the Manila or some other place where trans people are clearly a visible part of day-to-day life.
So how should we interact is probably the wrong question. It is more about how can we interact more often so as for such questions to become background noise like ‘how should men interact with women, or …’
I imagine for a number of generations to come people will have little to no interaction with anyone trans. Once CRISPR does what it is going to do the whole conversation is going to shift dramatically … so we have a few generations to yet so I just suggest we accept people believe themselves to be such and such, just like we should accept that someone who feels like they are on fire when they are not and know they are not STILL feels like they are on fire!
:lol:
By transsexual logic if someone wants to be Mickey Mouse, s/he is Mickey Mouse.
Well, yes.
@Nickolasgaspar presented a particular approach to ethics, which I think somewhat problematic. The suggestion that he show how it can be applied remains open.
A man my thing he is a woman or vice versa, but there is no way for them to prove it :smile:
I remember watching a documentary about a guy who felt like his leg was not his leg. He had to go through several stages of psychological evaluation to have his leg amputated. Sounds very strange on the surface of it but when you listen to how it felt the only other option would have been to have brain surgery (not that they knew how to fix it) … needless to say losing a leg was the better option.
There is a rather large difference between a beaver and human than there is between a male human and a female human.
Theists have been able to live without proof of their beliefs/feelings about gods since we left the forests.
I don't think a man who identifies as a woman feels a need to prove their 'inner gender,' to anyone.
I think that current and future transhuman technology will add to the fog which continues to gather around gender. I was born as a male, I have lived as a male and will die as a male but my maleness has became less and less important to me the older I get. Perhaps that is progressive. I suppose that will always be, as I suppose it should always be, in the judgment of everyone else, including me.
There's something quite odd about transsexual logic in my humble opinion.
About the guy who had leg issues, do you have a reference?
[quote=Ms. Marple]Most interesting.[/quote]
It is delusional when they say they ARE that way. It is not delusional to say you merely feel a certain way. Why is that so difficult to grasp?
No I don’t have the reference. Watched the documentary many years ago.
1. I feel/think I'm a woman/man
Ergo,
2. I am a woman/man.
If you abstract the form, you get
3. I feel/think I'm an x.
Ergo,
4. I am an x.
Substitute x with anything under the sun and we see the folly of their "logic".
There are instances where people FEEL something yet KNOW that they are not physically the case. The woman who has had a burning sensation on her left arm for decades KNOWS her arm is not burnt or burning.
She does not walk around waving her arm around saying ‘my arm is burnt’ because she knows it is not.
Are so out of touch with basic argumentation that you think that ‘think’ and ‘feel’ are the same thing? Utterly ridiculous. Bye bye
If a male thinks he is a woman, the best he can do is to visit psychiatrist to at least learn why does he feel that way.
in psychiatry there is well known diagnosis for this illness, it's easy to google it out therefore mentioning doctor is not mocking.
However true problem is that them feeling it that way is more pleasant than asking doctor for help.
If I feel there is something wrong with my stomach or my head I'll go visit a doctor, and so should a person who thinks that he should change his genitalia.
EDIT:
diagnostic code is 302.50
that's clasified as mental disorder
Yes it is, it's classified as mental disorder, diagnostic code Z72.52 aka. "High risk homosexual behavior":
https://icd.codes/icd10cm/Z7252
Any more nonsense to offer?
in psychiatry, diseases are classified according to diagnostic codes.
for homosexuality it is Z72.52, for transsexuality it is 302.50
Hello, I checked my inbox and found no PM from you.
I will try to send a quick PM to you to establish a connection.
Disease classification is world wide accepted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_mental_disorders
Where do you live in the world? UAE? Saudi Arabia?
Right, and heterosexuality is an illness because of https://icd.codes/icd10cm/Z7251
And having blood is an illness because of https://icd.codes/icd10cm/Z671
:roll:
I held similar views in my youth. I was brought up in tough part of a city. We had many words for homosexuals you are probably familiar with. When I was around 14 (I think), I beat up a guy who was bigger and stronger than me. I did it because his brother told me to. The person I beat up was a homosexual. In my twenties, on nights out in the city center, there were occasions when the group I was with insulted or threatened those who came within our site who we judged as effeminate or such.
I am ashamed that I took part in such in my past. I will never do anything like that again.
I don't care about a person's gender anymore.
I have been very impressed indeed by the dignity of homosexual/trans/LGBTQ etc people and how they have organised in the western hemisphere in particular, and fought for equal treatment under the law. They dealt with the threat of AIDS and all of the abuse, threats and violence perpetrated against them by young idiots like myself and much worse than I, and they have maintained their dignity. In my opinion, they utterly defeated the viewpoints I held all the way up to my mid-twenties and they will continue to gain equality globally.
He's just completely misunderstanding the ICD. The Z codes are "factors influencing health status and contact with health services", not illnesses. For example, code Z02.6 is for when someone visits a health centre to be examined for insurance purposes and code Z68.22 is for an adult who has a healthy BMI of 22.0-22.9.
For someone who visits a health centre because they engage in high risk sexual behaviours, whether heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual (likely to be screened for STIs) the codes are Z72.51, Z72.52, and Z72.53 respectively.
And the 302.50 code is from ICD 9 and corresponds to Z87.890 in ICD 10 which is the code for people who have a history of sex reassignment.
I suppose there must be an explanation on how to interpret these codes.
I only know that one code may refer to multiple diagnosis types.
Quoting universeness
They are getting their equality but it seems only in the western world.
Yes, it's explained on that website: The Z codes are "factors influencing health status and contact with health services." It covers such things as blood type, BMI, and reasons for visiting a health service.
They have proven themselves to be a very resilient movement. Give them time.
The only way to prevent them from achieving their goals is to kill them all but that may include YOUR own or ANYONE's own current or future child. So better for us all if we accept all such people as equal to all people.
Yep, this is a documented disorder and it's not just for legs (although legs may be the most common). It's called body integrity identity disorder (BIID) or body integrity dysphoria. Its symptoms are:
In some extreme cases, a person wants their entire spinal cord disconnected or removed. I believe the ethics of it are very complicated, especially considering the hippocratic oath. In fact, I have trouble differentiating between this disorder and gender affirming surgery (where, say, a "man" wants his penis removed and replaced with a vagina).
I think a lot of the arguments to justify allowing gender-affirming surgery could also be used to justify these sorts of amputations, and, by extension, assisted suicide or euthanasia (in the case of existential suffering). I have heard that one of the reasons all of these treatments are controversial is that they are some of the only psychological disorders that are treated with primarily physical, non-neurological, and non-reversible surgeries.
I have transgender buddies and of course will treat them/gender them the way they want to be treated. However I hesitate to call myself a "transgender ally" because at the end of the day it is hard for me to understand what justification will allow gender affirming surgery (which I don't really care about/doesn't affect me) but not be applied to medically assisted suicide in the case of no terminal illness (Something I feel strongly about, as I would have sought this out when I was suicidal for years but am now glad I did not).
The ‘logic’ used by the other person you mentioned claimed that ‘feeling’ is equivalent to ‘knowing/thinking’ something to be a true physical fact hence why I not responding to them for about a month - a little rule I have here that works well for me.
My gripe is a simple one. As far as I know, the only justification a transsexual man has for identifying himself as a man is that he feels/thinks he is a man. The absurdity of this transsexual logic is brought to the fore by applying it like so:
1. I feel/think I'm an elephant (man/woman)
Ergo,
2. I am an elephant (man/woman)!
Why is me going "I am an elephant" a delusion and a transsexual claiming "I am a man/woman" not? :chin:
By the way thanks for explaining BIID. Helpful!
-What do you mean "it remains open". Judging(approving or disapproving) people's behavior and its affect on other members of their society is what Morality is all about. Why is this so difficult for you?
Sure there are grey areas where its not clear if we will need to "sacrifice" members for the well being of others and their society in general....but at least we have a real-life foundations where we can start producing objective evaluations.
-Well why is this even a question???? Is Discrimination an option?
Would you want to live in a society where your sexuality defines the way you are treated.
Just make that question for every moral judgment in your life and tell me how it goes.
Just put yourself or your family's in the particular case you have troubles with.
The difference is that gender is a psychological identity but being an elephant isn't.
The rest is kind of a true Scotsman argument. Someone born in Spain can be considered ‘Scottish’ if they grew up in Scotland in their early years I would say. I would argue against someone who has spent their entire life living in Spain without speaking a word of English suddenly moving to Scotland in their 20’s and declaring they are ‘Scottish’ to be somewhat delusional. The exception would be if they said, I know I Spanish but my whole life I have felt out of place and tried many things to feel at ease in my own skin. Then I visited many countries around the world and to my surprise found that ‘Scotland’ felt like home to me.
For the purpose of social acceptance immigrants are more readily treated as members of their adopted nations with far less resistance. I would imagine those resistant to accepting foreigners as fellow citizens are the ones with an ‘illness’ of a sort. I think it is called ‘tribalism’ :D
Note: Joke! I do not view ‘tribalism’ as an ‘illness’.
DOES NOT COMPUTE!
Why do transsexuals want to change their sex?