Is Calling A Trans Woman A Man (Or Vice Versa) A Form Of Violence?
Is calling a trans woman a man (or vice versa --- i.e., calling a trans man a woman) a form of violence?
I came upon an article in Think Progress which quoted Laverne Cox — an actress in Orange Is The New Black — saying, “ When a trans woman is called a man, that is an act of violence.”
This line was also quoted and supported on the intersectional feminist website, Everyday Feminism, in an article entitled “5 Lies People Love to Tell Activists About Violence – And Why You Shouldn’t Believe Them.”
The author of article, xoai pham [name spelled with all lowercase letters by the author] defended this statement by saying:
(Note: I will use “they” and “them” because those are the author’s preferred pronouns).
I have a hard time swallowing pham’s argument. Supporting the conditions that create violence does not necessarily mean one is committing violence. Indeed, religion creates the conditions necessary for religious violence, but would someone be committing violence by saying she believes in God? I would bet that most people, even the staunchest atheists, would say “no.”
Some may point out that a belief in God does not necessarily lead to killing in the name of God. I would agree. But the same could be said about not believing trans women are women. Even if I didn’t believe they were “real” men or women (and I’m not saying I do or don’t), I could certainly still respect their humanity. If my wife said she was a cat, I wouldn’t believe her, but I also wouldn’t support any violence against her.
Readers might say that my cat example is absurd, considering there is no history of violence against people who believe they are cats. But I would just respond with my religion example. There is, after all, a history of religious violence. In fact, it’s probably far older and has taken far more lives than transphobia has. It's still killing many innocent people today, too.
None of this is to say that saying a trans woman is a man (and vice versa) can never be a form of violence. I may be driven to commit acts of violence against trans people because I believe they are not "real." I may even be able to inspire others to do the same.
But greed can also drive me to commit acts of violence, but greed is not considered violent.
In closing, my argument is a reductio ad absurdum. Sure, you can believe that the statement "trans women are men (or vice versa)" is a form of violence because it supports conditions that create violence, but then you would also have to accept (the absurd conclusion) that by having religious beliefs and making religious statements you are also supporting the conditions that create violence.
And I just don't think many people --- even the most vitriolic atheists --- would want to accept that conclusion.
I came upon an article in Think Progress which quoted Laverne Cox — an actress in Orange Is The New Black — saying, “ When a trans woman is called a man, that is an act of violence.”
This line was also quoted and supported on the intersectional feminist website, Everyday Feminism, in an article entitled “5 Lies People Love to Tell Activists About Violence – And Why You Shouldn’t Believe Them.”
The author of article, xoai pham [name spelled with all lowercase letters by the author] defended this statement by saying:
xoai pham:Trans women die at the hands of people who believe this, who believe that they aren’t valid or real. That they’re pretenders, dangerous impostors.
When a trans woman is called a man, the culture that threatens trans women’s lives is reinforced. Many trans women of color barely make it past their 30s; their average age of death mirrors the life expectancy of a baby born more than 5000 years ago.
When people support the conditions that create violence, they are also committing violence. They’re simply ensuring that someone else will be doing the work of murder.
(Note: I will use “they” and “them” because those are the author’s preferred pronouns).
I have a hard time swallowing pham’s argument. Supporting the conditions that create violence does not necessarily mean one is committing violence. Indeed, religion creates the conditions necessary for religious violence, but would someone be committing violence by saying she believes in God? I would bet that most people, even the staunchest atheists, would say “no.”
Some may point out that a belief in God does not necessarily lead to killing in the name of God. I would agree. But the same could be said about not believing trans women are women. Even if I didn’t believe they were “real” men or women (and I’m not saying I do or don’t), I could certainly still respect their humanity. If my wife said she was a cat, I wouldn’t believe her, but I also wouldn’t support any violence against her.
Readers might say that my cat example is absurd, considering there is no history of violence against people who believe they are cats. But I would just respond with my religion example. There is, after all, a history of religious violence. In fact, it’s probably far older and has taken far more lives than transphobia has. It's still killing many innocent people today, too.
None of this is to say that saying a trans woman is a man (and vice versa) can never be a form of violence. I may be driven to commit acts of violence against trans people because I believe they are not "real." I may even be able to inspire others to do the same.
But greed can also drive me to commit acts of violence, but greed is not considered violent.
In closing, my argument is a reductio ad absurdum. Sure, you can believe that the statement "trans women are men (or vice versa)" is a form of violence because it supports conditions that create violence, but then you would also have to accept (the absurd conclusion) that by having religious beliefs and making religious statements you are also supporting the conditions that create violence.
And I just don't think many people --- even the most vitriolic atheists --- would want to accept that conclusion.
Comments (136)
While respecting their persons, I do not believe that a person can become the opposite sex, however. One can play the role, dress the role, think the role, and so forth, but biology trumps gender theory. A transsexual woman is a man who has taken hormones which produce feminization of the male body. A transsexual man is a woman who has taken hormones which produce masculinization of the female body. Stop the hormones, and the body reverts to its normal state.
We can distinguish between treatments that lend an air of verisimilitude to a desired gender change and an impossible gender change. My view will be hotly rejected by most transsexuals. Some will brand me as transphobic, misogynist, hateful, violent, and so forth. This is to be expected. We live in a period when extremes of ideology demand acceptance, and refusal to accept leads to denunciations.
Still and all, transsexuals are persons, and I'll continue to grant them respect as persons. I don't have agree with anyone's ideology.
Trying to censor what people say because you find their words hurtful prevents proper arguments. Anyone can claim some words upset them and were hence an act of violence.
Personally I don't need society to reinforce my gender identity or sexuality. I think it is impractical to police society so that people feel endorsed by everyone.
Ironically xoai pham says in another article that she is gender nonconformist. So I don't see how you can transgender someone without a transparent gender identity.
It seems like victims politics for me because for example when people opposed gay marriage I don't think that meant they endorsed violence against gays and it was possible to argue for gay marriage and against your opponents without allegations of supporting violence.
This was the first thing I thought of when I read the post. There are words that mean strong things, that can grab your attention, can move people. When we dilute their meaning, we are left unable to speak strongly enough when we really need to.
At what point do you start calling a man a woman, if you know they are going through a change of gender. From the get go, or do you wait until the change is manifest, or perhaps just ask them what they prefer to be called. My friends name is Dana which makes this a little easier, I tend to avoid referential pronouns at this point with Dana.
You have to understand the degree of danger. In the U.S, a trans person is 14 times more likely to be murdered than a non-trans person. There have been wars which were less dangerous to soldiers. So, given the situation, I feel it's okay if we use a very dramatic language, because it is a very dramatic situation.
I have a friend who is currently transitioning. It is hard because on many accounts I feel like I'm losing my friend, because he is changing into the kind of woman which I wouldn't really want as a friend. In a way, I also find his attitude somewhat insulting toward women, because he acts as a caricature of a women in many aspect. I have been told it's normal at the beginning, as transwomen try to get into a more "feminine" mindstate, to overact a lot....
But anyways, what is clear, though, is that I have to change even my smallest linguistic habit. Just adding 'man' or 'dude' in the middle of a sentence, even as emphasis, will make him flinch visibly. A client called him 'sir' about a dozen times in a call the other night and he had tears in his eyes. From what I can see, trans who start down this road "feel", in a very real way, like we feel jealousy or anger or pain, that refusing to recognize their transition is psychological violence.
Well think about it, girls; does it get your knickers wet? Does it give you the vapours? Do you feel entitled to have your gender acknowledged?
To me the relationship between the gender theory and biological sexes resembles a lot that between religion and science: ignorant people think they contradict each other. They don't.
There's a general rule of human kindness - protect vulnerable people. There is no doubt that transgender people are very vulnerable and deserve protection. Another general rule, more like a guideline actually - call people what they want to be called. Up until a year ago, as far as we knew, my sister's child was a 17-year-old man. They, as they like to be called, is transitioning to, not a woman, but a person with no gender. My sister and her husband have been devastated, not because they don't love their child and want them to be happy, but because they feel as if they've lost someone they love. That they never even knew someone who is so important to them.
On the other hand, it is my understanding that less than 1/2 of 1% of people in the US are transgender. Black people, who make up more than 10% of our population, lived in slavery and Jim Crow tyranny for centuries and have only recently started to be granted the respect they deserve. It won't take that long for transgender people, but it will take time. The nation won't, and shouldn't have to, turn on a dime and be expected to change such traditional ways of thinking overnight. It's not realistic.
Saying that calling a transgender woman a man is violence is an insult to all those who were enslaved, lynched, murdered, tyrannized. It makes me angry.
The fuck does that have to do with anything?
If a black person ask of you not to call him 'a black man' because he finds that to be insulting, does refusing to do so constitute psychological violence? I'd say yes. Its the kind of shit attitude that bullies have.
People like to be called by the thing they like to self identify by. Anything else is violence.
Here's a definition of violence - Behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
All the definitions I could find use the same terms - "physical force", "hurt, damage, or kill." If you are saying that calling a transgender woman a man is the same thing as using physical force to hurt, damage, or kill her, then ...well...I'm trying to think of what to say without insulting you. Sorry, I got nothing.
Since this is a philosophy forum, a lot of very silly things get written. Some may actually be sillier than what you wrote, but I'm not sure.
I am not sure what you mean by "dramatic language" here. Do you mean "exaggerated language"?
I am also not sure if the high rate of transphobic murders would matter here. Men are killed at far higher rates than women, but does that make it violence to say something untrue about men?
Quoting Buxtebuddha
It depends on the situation, I think.
Why do you feel that way? Would it be violence to tell a white woman who thinks she's black that she's not black?
How many white women do you know calling themselves black?
If she feels that way they yes, you would probably be doing her violence.
Words in themselves aren't violent, though. Certainly the situation in which misuse of pronouns occurs depends on who is misusing the pronouns and why, but that still doesn't make the misuse violent.
I went on the web and tried to find information about the murder rate for transgender people in the US. The stories were conflicting. One page said that one in 12 transgender people are murdered. Another said that the murder rate for transgender people is lower than for a normal woman and much lower than for a normal man. There seems to be agreement that about 25 transgender people are killed each year. I'm sure there is underreporting, but let's use that. From various sources, I get that there are about 1 to 1.5 million transgender people in the country. Using the lower number, that gives a murder rate of 2.5 per 100,000 people. Wikipedia says the overall murder rate in the US is 5.3 per 100,000.
The transgender murder rate in some other countries, especially in South and Central America, is much worse.
This probably says something negative about me, but the violence to grammar bothers me more than the sexual identify issue.
To some extent, transsexuality (especially M to F) is a "drag" performance, and great drag requires lots of practice. Most transsexuals are not well off, and have to work with what they can afford. If a transsexual was wealthy, they could afford great clothes, great hair, private lessons, and so on. They wouldn't be going to work in their perhaps rattly looking used-clothing store outfits and absurd wigs on the bus, getting taunted by the teenagers. For the average person, it takes real guts to pull off an act like that.
In Am J Public Health. 2017 February; 107(2): e1–e8 the authors using meta-analysis determined that the rate of transsexuality was 390 per 100,000, or 1.25 million total.
Quoting T Clark
"Transsexual" is busy taking on new, vague, novel, and nonsensical meanings, so the number of self-identified "transsexuals" is likely to rise, especially the category for which the only therapy is the torture of ordinary language.
Well, there was this one, at least:
I know a young 18 year old woman. She has led a very unhappy childhood. She has a very hard time making friends. She lives deep in a fantasy world. Just watching her behavior, it's clear she is deeply depressed. Lost. Her adoptive new-agey mother doesn't believe in therapy. She takes her to aromatherapy. The young woman very strongly identifies with manga superheroes. She has started to refer to herself as a boy and considers herself transgender.
I'm not saying she is not really transgender, but before that designation can be taken seriously, it should be made by a person who has a stable foundation to stand on. She needs guidance and protection. I worry that the increased ease in using the transgender designation will make it easier for people like her to make this kind of decision without reflection or an understanding of the condequences.
There's also the problem that sexual reassignment surgery is not therapeutic and doesn't reduce depression or suicide. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885.
Here's another : La violence est l’utilisation de force ou de pouvoir, physique ou psychique, pour contraindre, dominer, tuer, détruire ou endommager. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence
Translation : Violence is the use of force or power, physical or psychological, to impose constraints, dominate, kill, destroy or damage.
Quoting T Clark
Yup, this is a pretty fucking idiotic attitude to have. Especially more to be conscious about.
I wouldn't be so sure about that; I could absolutely see the more "fundamentalist" atheists agreeing with that conclusion. The anti-theists.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I could not agree more with everything you said. I have only known a few transgender women and one transgender man, but I always used the pronouns they preferred. I think that's just common courtesy. But I really wish we could be more honest about the reality of things, and acknowledge the fact that transgender people in general are in serious need of help. The suicide rate is alarmingly high, and when I read things like this...
Quoting Akanthinos
...it makes me so sad knowing that instead of truly helping these people, we're going along with their delusion. Some of you may think I'm horrible for calling it that, but believing you are a male when you are in fact a female (or vice versa) is, by definition, a delusion. And there is clearly a lot of psychological harm done to the individual due to this inconsistency. I have a male friend with a voice that is higher than usual for a man, and he has been called "ma'am" during phone conversations very often throughout his entire life. It doesn't cause him to flinch or bring him to tears; reacting in such a way to something so insignificant would be a sign of real psychological problems. I'm not saying all trans people have these issues, two of the few I've known didn't care when people got their pronouns wrong. But we can't ignore the statistics on suicide and depression. I feel nothing but love for transgender people, and I understand how difficult their lives are, which is why it seriously pains me to see how society is handling the issue. And because the violence, murder, suicide, and depression rates all continue to rise, clearly our approach isn't working.
Also, for the record, this...
Quoting Akanthinos
...is incorrect. I don't know where you got that number, but I've checked many sources and they all clearly show that the overall trans murder rate in the U.S. is lower than the cisgender murder rate. However, a subset of trans people--specifically black and latino transfeminine individuals--do have a higher murder rate than cisgenders. But it's still nowhere near 14 times higher.
As for the actual topic of the discussion, no, I do not believe using the wrong pronoun constitutes violence. That's as absurd as claiming you can rape a woman by looking at her. We can say it is abuse to use the wrong pronoun, but not violence. We've gotten far too wishy-washy with language as of late, and I honestly worry about the ramifications.
Can one be inessence a psychological woman in a man's body?
Can one be in essence a psychological woman in a man's body?
Within the gay community for instance there is a broad spectrum, from masculine acting men tom men who fronthe time they were very young, spoke and walked and gestured in feminized ways, and had interested normally associated with females.
Quoting Akanthinos
Quoting Akanthinos
I don't think language can be violence, but if I did this would probably qualify.
Is psychological gender even a coherent concept? I'm no psychologist, but it doesn't make sense to me that there could be such a thing as "psychologically feminine" or "psychologically masculine". That would essentially mean that there are uniquely male personalities and uniquely female personalities. As far I know there isn't any actual support for this notion.
I won't try to convince anybody of this because it's just the opinion I have based on my own reasoning, but it seems to me that a man feeling as though he is a woman or vice versa is caused mainly by societal norms and the pressure put on individuals to be a certain way based on their gender. If a young boy wants to play with dolls or wear dresses, he is told directly--as well as indirectly and (constantly) subliminally--that those are things that girls do. I truly believe that if we didn't have these set gender roles, transgender people wouldn't exist. There would just be men who wear makeup, wear "women's" clothes, have long hair, etc., and women who wear "male" clothing, have short hair, etc. And they would be fine with being called their biological gender. The only reason this isn't the case is because these societal gender roles are so deeply ingrained in our psychology, that when a boy liked makeup and dresses etc. he thinks that this means he cannot be a boy and he must be a girl. This is the root of their psychological distress, these incompatible "realities" which they try their hardest to make peace between, and yet no matter what they do they cannot.
I'll say again, though, this is all just my own speculation. It makes sense to me that this is the case, but I know it's not a clear-cut issue.
Going by this definition, putting up a stop sign could be considered an act of violence. After all, stop signs involve the use of power (i.e., from the government) to impose constraints on our actions.
Definitions like the one you cited weaken the term violence. They make it so even the most mundane acts can be considered violence.
What about all the behavioral differences between males and females across the animal kingdom? This clearly shows there is such a thing as psychological gender, and if it can vary between biological males and females, why not within those groupings as well?
Here's a thought experiment:
I'm imagining that I am going back to just before your birth, and manipulating your hormonal levels such as to change your gendered brain structures and turn you into a feminine gay male. . Now let's flash forward to right now.
In what ways would you feel different? Quite apart from your sexual inclinations, this change in brain organization would have a wide range of subtle effects on your perceptual processing and behavior, affecting everything from how you perceive color to how you walk and talk and gesture, and how you socialize with others.
I'm not quite understanding how this makes the statement violent. Even if everything you said about believing in distinctions and justifying responses is true, how does that make it violent? What definition are you using of violence?
Furthermore, your statement about sharp distinctions would seem to lead to a host of absurd conclusions. For example, there is a sharp distinction between pregnant and not pregnant. You have to be either one or the other. There is no in between. But would that make statements about pregnancy --- e.g., "My wife found out she was pregnant yesterday" --- violent?
Those things are all emergent from your biological sex, though. I thought you were referring to a male/female psychology separate from one's biology. Or maybe you're saying that a literal male brain could form in an otherwise female body?
Regardless, if these things you describe are all so well-documented then we should be able to prove them through studying transgender people's brains, right? Why has't that been done to settle the debate?
No, one can not.
One may wish one was a woman (when one is a man) or wish one was a man (when one is a woman); one may play the social role of the opposite sex; one may identify with people who are of the opposite sex; one can pretend that one is actually a member of the sex opposite that which one was born into. One may have some degree of feminized or masculinized brain (homosexuals). But in 99.99% of births, one is male or female.
Granted: there are people who are born with ambiguous genitalia which is a problem unto itself. Transsexuality is not thought to involve ambiguous genitalia (at least as far as I know).
Quoting Joshs
I'm not a practicing psychologist, neurologist, endocrinologist, surgeon, or any other advanced specialty, so it has not been my job to precisely parse out these distinctions. However, 97% of speakers, writers, demonstrators, and practitioners about and of gender issues and/or transsexualism aren't either. None the less... you ask, can one distinguish...
Many aspects of personhood can be readily observed, or observed given sufficient time and care. From what I have read, from what I have heard from transsexuals, what I have observed most transsexuals were born with genitalia, hair distribution, bone structure, and endocrine system within the normal range of their biological gender. The normal range, however, is quite wide.
The way individuals think, imagine, process data, remember, and so on generally falls within a normal range, but again, the range is wide. Many of the differences among hyper masculine men, the average man, and the effeminate homosexual man will be lost in overlap of ranges. Just for example, the hyper masculine man (exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics, large, muscular body, male dominant personality) can be and sometimes is a homosexual. and not only a homosexual, but one who is sexually passive to boot. Similarly, there are kind of reedy, slightly built men who are domineering male STEM types. There are husbands and fathers who giver every appearance of thinking like "real men" and acting like "real men" but who have a sort of "swishy" style of speaking and who have a lot of "feminine interests" but who aren't at all homosexual or remotely transsexual.
Transgender M to F may be successful ex-soldiers, have lived very masculine lifestyles, think and talk in very masculine style, but may be 45 years old (or more) and decide they are going to become women. So they take the hormones, grow big tits, redistribute the surface fat layer, learn to dress and groom like a woman, but otherwise are still pretty much the same people they always were.
The jury is out on how much alike and how different men and women are. It is pretty much a hung jury, because "the jury" doesn't seem to be able to decide one way or the other. Men and women both argue both sides, back and forth, switching sides as is convenient. There is no consensus on what, exactly, is the same about men and women, except that everyone agrees that they are different.
Not talking about biology here.
The point is that a would be transsexual man can claim to be a woman, not on the basis of biology, but on the basis of psychology, and the range of psychological traits makes that a very hard case to prove or disprove.
It would be easy if transsexuals all had biological mismatched reproductive organs (like a penis and ovaries), and mismatched brains to go along with the mismatched reproductive organs. Unfortunately, that just isn't the case.
I am not a big fan of the "meme" concept, but I think a lot of gender-fluid talk is mostly meme and very little reality. No, I don't trust a 4 year old and his sometimes overly-invested mother to be on the level when the mother reports that her son wants to be a girl, and that he should be seen by a gender specialist, blah blah blah. No, I don't take it at face value when a screwed up teenager (there are such things as teenagers who are unusually screwed up) claims to be transgender. Or neuter, or whatever the fuck they come up with. If 4 year olds can pick up these memes, 17 year olds have been over exposed.
No it's not violence. In some contexts it might be considered harassment (i.e repeatedly seeking out interaction with particular transsexuals in order to use the pronoun they do not desire), but it's not violence.
Admitting that it is violence in any respect is the first step toward instituting "thought-crime laws".
So long as something is not a direct call for violence (or a "screaming fire in a crowded theater" type situation), freedom of thought simply demands that we have the right to hold and express our beliefs even if some find those beliefs emotionally offensive. Phams argument rests upon the idea that using the undesired pronouns for transsexuals is tacit approval for their lynching or their central cause of suicide. While it is possible that refusing to offer basic respect to transsexuals by using their desired pronoun be a factor in some actual lynchings and suicides, my guess is that they have many larger and more complicated problems to deal with. I don't believe the lynching of transsexuals is statistically significant in the modern west, and if failing to hear one's desired pronouns is statistically significant in contributing to transsexual suicide rates then I reckon such persons really ought to be sequestered in mental health institutions for their own safety. To be clear I do not think transsexuals are so emotionally fragile that [s]name[/s] gender-calling is what drives them to suicide in disproportionate numbers, but I do think this constant infantilizing of women, non-whites, and non-heterosexuals (as if they're delicate snowflakes who shatter in the slightest breeze) is really getting quite old.
P.S: Without it Trump would never have won, and the alt-right would never have "cohered".
Lots of these types of discussions around lately, which are ripe for people talking past each other as it just depends on how broadly you define your terms. In a narrow common-understanding-of-the-word sense, no, it's not violence. In a broader more philosophical sense, yes, it could be. Slavoj Zizek wrote a whole book called Violence about this broader sense:
"We tend to fixate on what Žižek calls subjective violence: acts of assault, murder, terror and war. However, there are two other varieties of objective violence: "the 'symbolic' violence embodied in language and its forms", and systemic violence, the "often catastrophic consequences of the functioning of our economic and political systems".
Link.
Like when colleges force students, faculty and staff to stop using certain pronouns?
Like when activists, pundits, etc. use their positions to marginalize, shame, humiliate, etc. anybody who does not think and talk in lockstep with their ideology?
What will happen as a consequence of the answer is a function of all the superordinate meanings and commitments, personal, social, cultural, that are tied up with it. Gay vs straight vs trams matters in a way that penis vs vagina do not, because they refer to deeper issues of meaning distinctions involving whole ways of behaving and societal reaction to them.
But I would argue that within a particular culture there would be enough commonalities to draw useful generalizations about such differences. My belief is that there is some period during fetal development where such brain structuring for gender takes place. I beieve this because I know many people whose constellation of behavioral and perceptual characteristics fit a pattern, a complex pattern consisting a large list of traits that were a part of their behavior for the time they were very young. These core traits I dont see as random and I dont see as culturally shaped. They include ways of walking and talking and running and throwing and pronouncing words. It misses the point to dismiss them as purely cultural because that doesn't t explain the complexity of the pattern or he fact that it so often emerges at such a young age. What I think does explain the pattern is that there are deep structures in the limbic system of the brain that deal with affective aspects of perception. When these are feminized it produces a range of perceptual styles that subtly condition the brain to organize experience differently than masculinized structures. A preference for more gradually unfolding contexts of processing as opposed to a more rapid 'testosterone' style is one way of describing it.
As far as transgender is concerned I tend to see a biological female with a masculinized brain someone with heir own unique style. They are not trapped in the wrong body because the body doesn't function independently of mind and vice versa. Behavior defines what he body is in it's functioning. So Kaitlin Jenner will never be just a woman, but neither will she be just a man.
My own view is that , since the body and behavior are inseparable , a claim to be born in the wrong body is incoherent , and is caught up in the same categorical stereotyping as those they are opposing (if you behave like a woman, you must have a woman's body.).
Gender--I don't know.
I am not ready to say that reproductive organs are in any way arbitrary. Fair skin is a trait. Kidneys are not a trait. Are those who say that gender is culturally constructed saying that uteruses and testicles are arbitrary traits? Is the pattern of distribution of uteruses and testicles in the human population the same as eye color? Sex organs are as arbitrary as eye color and tell you as much about a person as eye color?
You hear about a "post-racial society" sometimes, and it makes sense. A lot of people are ready to discard racial categories and put race in our collective rearview mirror. Are many people ready to discard gender?
We have plenty of people, both men and women, lamenting the decline of "chivalry", so we have a long way to go if we want to discard gender.
This thread is further evidence of the power of gender. If transgender people really are as vulnerable as some people here have said, maybe they would be better served by focusing on how they are like everybody else instead of how gender does not work the same for them.
It appears to me as if we agree completely. I think you're saying the same thing I was saying, just in a different way.
There are certain traits which society has deemed male, and others female, but there are no objectively male or female personality traits or "psychologies" or whatever. While we may generally see certain traits in certain genders, there are also varying levels of cross-over, and this is what causes problems. We have decided that certain traits are distinctly female, even though they do appear in men (although more rarely). If a male possesses some of these traits, he's just seen as slightly feminine or "metrosexual". If he possesses too many of these traits, he will have trouble reconciling his male body with what societal norms which have been programmed into his brain tell him can only be female traits. As a side note, I really don't think these things have anything to do with sexual orientation. Some straight men are very feminine, some gay men are very masculine. This is also evidenced by the fact that not all transgender people are heterosexual or homosexual; there is a mix.
Anyway, as I said I think we do agree. And I definitely agree with your last sentence about stereotyping, and the hypocrisy of the transgender issue in regards to feminism (or just anti-sexism). The whole idea of being transgender seems inherently sexist, to me.
Sometimes one hears about a "post-racial society" and then something happens which pretty much obliterates the idea that we are anywhere close to being a post-racial society.
If we were a post-racial society, then we would think about race as much as people today think about phrenology - measuring the bumps and indentations in your skull to learn about one's personality. We don't think about phrenology. We are a post-phrenology society. Post racial? Not even close.
Good luck.
Quoting Joshs
This isn't literally true, of course. As I said, it's a cliché. It's a metaphor.
Quoting Joshs
Agreed. The development of the fetus is sequential, and various parts, systems, and features are triggered by hormones from both the mother and the fetus.
Quoting Joshs
No disagreement here. I imagined (infantile) homoerotic imagery at an early age. The interest in homoerotic fantasy, images, and activity with other males never changed. That's just one element. All sorts of human behavior are determined in pre-natal development through the genes of the fetus from the father and mother and through the genes governing the mother's reproductive system.
Most human features are scattered out on a continuum. Every more or less normal child learns the language of the people around him or her. Language acquisition is built in. But facility in even the native language varies so that some people can't spell worth a damn and other people do well in spelling bees (if they are sufficiently focused and motivated -- which is another set of features.
I think children have a host of not-all-that-flexible features and capacities at birth. However, the culture begins interacting with infants very early on, and thus it becomes tricky to sort out which features were culturally influenced and which were impervious to influence.
The maturing child will develop a unique gait, for instance, and that gait ill remain for life, baring injury or disease. Yes, people can learn to walk in one of several other gaits, but they will tend to revert to the natural one. Remember Jack Benny, the comedian? Jack Benny had a distinctively feminine gait -- he walked like a woman. He exaggerated it at times, and it was always funny -- partly because there was so little else about him that was feminine. It was the visual contrast between the man and the walk. That he walked like a woman, though, is a cultural judgement. The way women walk (just like the way men walk) is culturally influenced, even though biology gives us a certain gait.
Some guys can put on a wig and "become instant females" -- not that they are transsexuals, or particularly feminine, or even homosexuals; they just have the right facial features which when slightly modified (and in the right context) look feminine. Women, of course, can do the same thing in reverse. Everything we do can be (and usually is) judged culturally.
I tend to think people are much more alike than different, and I think this goes for women and men, as well as the Japanese and the French, for example. We are one species, we have a common biological/evolutionary history, we have the same requirements for survival, and so forth. The big difference between men and women is mostly cultural.
A social role of a sex is an oxymoron. As I said before, biological sexes don't contradict the gender theory.
What is the gender theory?
Is this an actual scientific theory, though? I thought the way you said it made it sound like it was, but I hadn't heard of it.
I would never deliberately offend a transgender person and I think society should accommodate their wishes where there is no risk of harm, but in conversing about the subject, I expect to be allowed to voice my own beliefs about gender (so long as they are neither incoherent, nor inciting immediate harm), which is not always the case in such debates. Furthermore, when it comes to actual potential harms, like the suicide of transgender teens, I have a duty to do what I thinks is best to prevent that harm, whether that is by lobbying government, campaigning within my social group, or just setting an example in my own personal behaviour.
As I've said before (and I've no interest in starting this debate again, I bring it up for context only), I believe that if a person sees potential harm in some belief, it is fair and reasonable of them to take what action they think is necessary to mitigate that harm i.e. they must resolve the uncertainty into what they think is most likely, they may no longer withhold judgement. In contrast, where there is no harm to be predicted, it would be grossly unreasonable to forcibly resolve an uncertainty, just for the sake of it.
Transgender issues are no different. One cannot say it is impossible that some people are born a woman in a man's body. Maybe God made them that way and so it must be true, maybe the dualists are right and this non-substantial 'mind' stuff from whence our free will derives also dictates our gender. When talking about religion, all sorts of metaphysical positions seem to be allowed, when talking about gender it all seems to get very biological of a sudden. A bit hypocritical when talking theory, but I think entirely appropriate when talking policy because of the potential harm.
Transgender teenagers have an alarmingly high suicide rate, something has to be done to reduce this and no-one is ever going to resolve the issue of whether it is possible for someone to be a man in a woman's body. If we can't use science to say a man did not walk on water (because sience is a metaphysical position that can't be proven), we certainly can't start invoking it to say that all of gender can be reduced to biology and culture, maybe gender too has a metaphysical component. But where we can see serious harms, we can, and indeed must, act nonetheless. We must pick one belief and act on it in such a way as to prevent the harm.
Personally, I think that as a society, the only fair way to resolve uncertainty into action when it is necessary is by science. Science invokes only experiences that we all share, in that it is based n the physical world. If there is no scientific evidence that brains are born women, even though they are in a man's body, then it is reasonable (no matter how uncertain we may be about that conclusion), to approach the suicidal teenager with that presumption, not play along with their delusion, just because it 'might' be true.
Obviously she was deliberately deceiving. She did not have a genuine reason to identify in that way.
That does not change to fact. On a side note I think it would teach us all a great deal if we had to spend a week in another persons shoes.
Were her motives a genuine reason to witness prejudice first hand?
Is telling a schizophrenic their hallucinations aren't real a form of violence?
Is telling someone they aren't a vampire, when they believe they are, a form of violence?
Is telling a theist their god doesn't exist a form of violence?
Is questioning anyone's assumptions a form of violence?
Your post suggests that 1) transwomen are men and that 2) it isn't violence to tell the truth. We're probably never going to agree about 1), so let's address 2):
Is telling a fat and ugly person that they're fat and ugly a form of violence? If we accept that the term "violence" covers psychological violence, and not just physical violence, then I think it is a form of violence. It's certainly something people say to bully.
If I call you all a bunch of neanderthal misfits who do not understand the first thing about violence and parade your prejudices as if they had some philosophical merit, I would suggest that you could justifiably infer that my intention was to harm, and that I was being violent.
Now some people might seek to justify violence - I need to put you in your place, not for your own good, but for the protection of society from your craziness.
Quoting Michael
In general, of course it is. Again, in the consulting room, and phrased with gentility, it is not.
I remember the time when homosexuality was illegal, when it was not considered a legitimate form of manhood, and every kind of violence against homosexuals was justified as protecting society, including and especially, the exclusion of such people from the entitlements of human society, including being accepted as a man.
And I see no philosophical principle whereby we must inevitably agree that physiology shall trump inclination. Why may we not declare that the essence of manhood is attraction to women, regardless of one's equipment? In which case, lesbians would be men, and male homosexuals, women. But perhaps there is an argument to be made, on the grounds of liberty and respect for the individual, that self-identification should trump both biology and sexual preference.
What's being attacked if the metaphor of violence is to be used is a part of the self that is essential to self-understanding (not so for all assumptions), extremely socially vulnerable (unlike most religious beliefs) and not a simple delusion (hallucinations etc).
(Y)
Psychological violence isn't a novel term.
Besides, if you're focusing too much on the specific word "violence" and not allowing for similar words like "abuse" then I think you're missing the point of the original claim. This isn't some grammar lesson.
On the topic, there is a view that both sex and gender are socially constructed and that therefore cisgenderism is as much drag and as little part of a person's essence, which does not exist, as transgenderism. I know I'm a man because I act the part. Society knows I'm a man because it was announced at my birth as my sex. The announcement was the creation of my sex, not a mere description. It's Judith Butler for anyone who wants more.
Semantics are important here. It's clear to me that this movement deliberately engages in compound verbal rounding error to appropriate shock from other contexts. I see a lot wrong with that. Be very careful with this.
BTW, do you see anything suspect about a self proclaimed gender noncomformist demanding that everyone conform to their ideas about gender?
I'm afraid I don't see how this would affect the statements "I am pregnant" or "I am not pregnant." What does it matter if woman said she was pregnant after using A test versus B test? What does it matter if she will carry it to term? These questions are all irrelevant. They have no affect on whether or not the answer to the question is violent or not. If you think otherwise, please define "violent" and explain your reasoning.
I don't understand how. Can you please explain to me how the meaning of the phrase "I am pregnant" differs when a woman uses an accurate versus inaccurate test or whether or not she will carry it to term.
So, it's not the "irreducible distinctions" that make language violent, at least not by itself, but the contexts with which it is spoken? Is that what you're saying.
A whole week! I thought walking in somebody's shoes for a mile was enough.
So nice to see a mention of an old friend, after all these years.
If one examines Batailleist `powerful communication’, one is faced with a choice: either accept realism or conclude that sexual identity, perhaps ironically, has intrinsic meaning, given that consciousness is interchangeable with narrativity. Thus, la Fournier[2] states that we have to choose between the textual paradigm of context and prematerialist narrative. Sontag promotes the use of Marxist capitalism to attack hierarchy...
For some it can take a week to cover a mile.
Are you saying transgender people walk slower than cisgender people?! That kind of bigotry will not be tolerated here.
I can see society without race.
But gender seems to be too much a part of culture to be discarded. Among other things, there are not racial roles, but there definitely are gender roles.
Do you think stereotypes or expectations about the way people of different races should act would fall under the category of "roles"?
There's an old story somewhere (can't remember the source) about the difference between carpeting the world with leather to make it comfortable to walk on, and wearing shoes. There is no right not to be offended, there is no right to expect the world to bend to your preferences for how you'd like people to speak.
The notion that speech is violence is a metaphor gone haywire.
I think prenatal hormonal effects on brain organization that produced the male - female cognitive and affective differences that come up again and again in research studies have a great deal to do with sexual orientartion. Of course there will always be outliers; feminine acting males who are only attracted to women, etc, but I think there is a causative relation between sexual attraction and gender related brain physiology.
Sex is a dance, and it involves a complementary of behavioral traits. A ' typical' heterosexual male with male brain physiology will have a certain erotic 'dance' style, aggressive, impulsive, dominating, emotionally unself-aware. In short, the constellation of behaviors that appear in gendered brain studies. A typical female will have opposing affective relational tendencies, and the contrast between the two forms the erotic dance and the attraction.
Among many gay men, it's less of a complementarity than it is a ' twinning'. Both men in the dance have an equal share of male and female behavioral traits, and so the mirror each other more than complement each other.
For many gay men, the idea of being in command, being the decisive one i he way that many women expect from men, is erotically repulsive because they perceive their behavioral and erotic style as more yielding and finns the dynamism and commanding nature of another man to be erotically exciting, the very traits that would repulse many heterosexual men. The look and feel of a male body is erotic in what it represents about the way that body is designed to behave. Large, muscular , hairy, forceful is what a male body implies in comparison to a female body.
You'll see interesting mixes of bodies in the gay community. Musclemen who combine elements of domination and strength with softness and femininity in themselves, and this would be expected if the gendered brain is halfway between a masculinized and a feminized organization.
Yes, you'll find all kinds of exceptions to the dynamic I've described.
But if you agree that gendered brain organization is real and is a consistent factor in male-female behavioral differences that form the kind of pattern of traits that researchers see, it would seem odd to deny that such differences would not affect sexual attraction, even if there are many other factors involved.
First of all, you need to school yourself in the difference between delusions and hallucinations. All knowledge is essential to self-understanding, and getting it right (true knowledge) is even more essential. What is being attacked is an assumption. What basis does anyone claim that they are a man or a woman, when they physically aren't?
People who are delusional are extremely vulnerable to their delusion being questioned. They become humorless, offended, etc. that their premise is being questioned. That is the symptom of a delusion.
Correction. My post suggest that transwomen are men that think that they are women. What is the difference between a transwoman and a man who thinks he is a woman to you?
Come on, Michael. I know you're smarter than that. "Ugly" is a subjective term, first of all, so let's dispense with that, and focus on, "fat". We have measuring sticks for measuring obesity, but not for measuring ugliness.
Is it not violent to allow themselves to keep being fat? What about calling them, "obese"? Does that have a less offensive tone to it? Is it violent to tell a person starving themselves because they think they are fat that they aren't in order to save their life? You seem to think that every time someone uses these words they intend to be insulting, just like you seem to think that someone is trying to be insulting to a person who thinks they are a woman, by telling them that they are a man who thinks they are a woman, not actually a woman. One is trying to help another out by showing them the truth. It's something people CAN say to bully, but not necessarily. That's the problem. You all tend to think that because someone doesn't agree with you, they are being offensive.
You can tell how old this is by the popular culture references - late 80s early 90s.
I don't. Something can be unintentionally insulting.
When I said that "it's certainly something people say to bully" I was simply pointing out that "it's true" isn't a defence against the accusation of violence, which seemed to be the defence you were going for.
But this is crazy. Identities don't exist in a private vacuum. They're functions of each other, socially negotiated and defined by contrast. If I treat my own identity as equally sacrosanct, an impasse immediately arises. I'm something different from a female to male transsexual. If the distinction is important to me and others refuse to acknowledge it, we'd have to consider that violence too.
I don't require others to validate my identity. It's a pathological endeavor and it would entail coercing others to privilege my identity over their own. Ironically, that's much closer to violence than the claim being examined in the OP.
If we look at the definition of "violence" I think that, actually, it is correct.
Violence:
noun
1. swift and intense force:
the violence of a storm.
2. rough or injurious physical force, action, or treatment:
to die by violence.
3. an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws:
to take over a government by violence.
4. a violent act or proceeding.
5. rough or immoderate vehemence, as of feeling or language:
the violence of his hatred.
6. damage through distortion or unwarranted alteration:
to do editorial violence to a text.
What may muddy the water (because the water is really effing muddy) is the phrasing "act of" which leads the reader to make the assumption that there is a physical act rather than a purely linguistic one. I also think, in the interest of charity, the author was speaking about an intentionally "vehement" or "immoderate" expression meant for psychological harm, hence the
And here is where the rhetoric comes in.
Hidden premises, in my view, come in at:
1. "people support the conditions" - since "conditions" is plural, only people who are aware of and support ALL conditions and ALL effects of those conditions contained within the set may be considered to be party to the negative outcomes associated with them. By the logic presented, if I support the Olympics, then by default I am guilty of Dr. Larry Nassar's sexual abuse of teenage Olympians? No.
2. "conditions that create violence" - "conditions" here seem to mean "culture" since I can love the conditions of a thunderstorm but still not be guilty of doing violence to a transgender that is hit by lightning. So it should be restated that if by supporting a "culture" that intentionally suppresses the rights of transgender expression, then we could be inadvertantly encouraging violence of others against transgenders.
The equivocation is with the word 'violence' - switching from linguistic/conceptual violence to actual physical violence (murder). Calling a transgender woman a man is violence to their self expressed trans-identity under the definition of violence, but it is NOT the same as the physical violence (self inflicted or otherwise) that would lead to the death of that transgender.
So are these "conditions" being condemned only for trans women of color? The argument doesn't seem to make the case for all transgender then, only transgender of color. (it could be said that the word "color" here is supporting the "conditions of racism" by acknowledging a false distinction between humans not based in biology/genetics and therefore the author is guilty of lynching...if we use the same sort of rhetoric).
I get the anger, I get the fight to survive, to be acknowledged, to be accepted as human, and to have the same rights afforded to others. I totally agree with and support the author in those fights...but leave the PoMo rhetoric and guilt trip out of it please (imo).
No.
I know if I am or am not being a man--I am or am not opening doors for women; I am or am not being a protector and provider; I am or am not sexually active.
I know if I am or am not being a civilian; citizen; worker; elite; etc.
There is no such thing with respect to race.
If you disagree, then tell me how I know if I am being " white". If I am failing at being "white", who would be a good role model for me? Do you not hear how ridiculous that sounds?
But these things are also stereotypes, so you're sort of shooting yourself in the foot.
The truth is that these "roles" you're talking about are all based on stereotypes, whether they're gender roles or race roles or whatever the case may be. So, you can either say that these roles are legitimate or that they're not, but you can't cherry pick.
None of this tells me how I know if I am or am not playing this "white" role well or who would be a good role model for me.
I do not believe that the social role of "white" exists. A white person might be more likely to have a role like master and less likely to have a role like servant, but that doesn't make "white" a role.
If you don't know, then you're not.
So you want me to tell you what white stereotypes are? I recommend Chappelle's Show, Key and Peele, or any standup special of any black comedian ever. There are plenty of comedians of other races, as well, who have spoken about things that are "white" or that white people do. It's most often discussed in comedy because talking about racial stereotypes in a serious manner makes people so uncomfortable, but I think you're being dishonest if you claim they don't exist, or that they're somehow different from gender stereotypes. They clearly aren't, and I don't understand how you can't see that.
Here's a skit from Chappelle's Show that illustrates it quite well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX5MHNvjw7o
No.
If "white" is a social role, tell us how one knows if he/she is or is not successfully acting in that role.
Living up to stereotypes is not acting in a role.
I never said it was, you did--that's been my point this whole time.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
You listed some stereotypes, claiming that doing them would mean you are "acting in the role of man".
These "roles" you speak of are just stereotypes. I don't open doors for women, I am not a protector or a provider, I am not sexually active. According to you, I am not a man because I don't do these stereotypical "male" things. And yet despite not doing any of them, I am a man. It's almost as if being a man means nothing more than having a Y chromosome, just as being white means nothing more than having a certain skin tone....anything beyond that is a stereotype.
Of course the social role of "white" exists; and "black" and "gay" and all others. Stereotypes and social roles exist because we are not all one big cultural frappe, the same everywhere. Cultural groups are just unique enough to be noticeable. So, what is the "white" social role? Among other things, it's a distinctive kind of language (depending on geography); it's certain kinds of food and clothing preferences; it's a way of relating to institutions (like the police or government officials) that is a bit different than other people's; it's a generally practiced style of self-presentation. Han Chinese, Nigerians, Argentinians, Ugandans, Indonesians, Zimbabweans, Russians, Peruvians, French, Italians, Swedish, Canadians... pick a group, any group, and there will be a certain style of "XYZ" culture which will be unique to a particular time and place.
A 'male' role is arguably, not a role a woman would adopt even if they could. According to the logic behind it, its largely to do with greater average physical strength and the inability to suckle children. So, the theory goes, women would not adopt the typical male roles because they are not, on average, stronger, and they can suckle children. I'm not saying I necessarily agree with this argument (although I have a great deal of sympathy for it), I'm just saying there is one.
With race, however, whilst a few extreme racists exist who have ideas about racial differences leading to behavioural differences, most people who exhibit 'white' stereotypes do so by virtue of the historical context alone, meaning that had history taken a different route, blacks would have adopted this role instead.
So the argument is, nothing about their 'whiteness' causes them directly to adopt this role, whereas something about a man's 'male-ness' causes him to adopt the roles he does.
Quoting Michael
Exactly. It's not violent to use words. It is violent to allow people with a sickness to keep thinking they aren't sick. You didn't address the rest of my post where I made that point. Instead, you chose to cherry-pick my post, while ignoring other pertinent questions, like "What is the difference between a transwoman and a man who thinks he is a woman to you?"
Whole societies are capable of mass delusion when they are inconsistent in their application of logic as the result of allowing the feelings of a few people who have trouble facing reality dominate the rest of us. The application of logic and reason can hurt feelings, ESPECIALLY when you have a severe emotional investment to what it is that logic/reason and empirical evidence show aren't true.
Sometimes when I debate a theists, I feel like I'm taking ice cream away from a child. Their beliefs are needed in order to stay sane and to function in society. Not knowing is a terrible feeling for them. Questioning their belief has an emotional impact on them. Religion is just another mass delusion, fed by a society who regurgitates theses ideas and reinforcing them in society. There is no logic or reason imposed - just an appeal to the majority and the character assassination of those who question these baseless ideas. The same is the case for the transgender movement.
Do we want to get at the truth of why these people have these feelings, or are we only concerned about their feelings? Truth or feelings? Which is it?
If they harm someone, then it is.
The rest of your post wasn't relevant to my criticism, which is that "it's true" isn't a satisfactory defense against accusations of violence/abuse/insult. I've already said that we're never going to agree on whether or not transwomen are women, so there's no point rehashing those old arguments.
That depends entirely on context.
Socrates says that the greatest good is knowledge and the greatest evil is ignorance. So which is actually more harmful - the truth or remaining ignorant?
Quoting MichaelIt's not an old argument. You haven't even asked that question of yourself. I know, because you're performing these wacked mental gymnastics in order to avoid answering the question. Answer the question, as it will help us both understand where it is you are coming from because as it stands right now, you are being inconsistent.
If you can't answer that one, then start by answering the other questions I first started with in this thread and the others I posed to you in the post you cherry-picked. You're being intellectually dishonest.
Saying, "We're never going to agree." shows how close-minded you are. You can't be swayed with evidence and logic. I am allowing you to sway me by asking you a question that could either make or break my point. Have you ever asked that question of yourself, and if so what was the answer?
If you look at the picture, you may want to call this person a lady or a gentleman, and you may have an argument to make. But if you lock this sort of offender in what we traditionally call a male prison, you can expect certain consequences that will not be beneficial to the person concerned. Seemingly the blindness of justice does not prevent it from coping a feel and making a decision, but the feel coped must have been confined to the groin region.
'This is a man - fact.' really doesn't 'do justice' to the situation does it? Not according to the other male prisoners, anyway.
Men get raped in prison regardless of whether or not they look like women, so I really don't see the relevance.
A man can look like a woman. How can that be? Only because the 'definitive attributes' are made invisible. So what you don't see is highly relevant by your own definition of maleness.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I don't suspect that this person had "the standard experience of anyone being in prison". Are you being deliberately obtuse?
Not all men get raped in prison, but rather the more effeminate men. So what shall we say, that the essence of masculinity is to rape, and the essence of effeminacy is to be raped? But this is a radical move from the groin equipment definition.
As to whether being trans is a mental illness, I think the question needs to be framed around harm and outcomes. If there is no treatment for trans people that helps them identify as their apparent biological sex and transitioning results in better health outcomes, that would seem to be the way forward.
Also, if there is a biological basis for being trans, that would make it less subjective and dispel other ideas such as transracialism.
Imprisonment is intended to be “intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and offensive”. EDIT: and rape isn't a requirement for prison to meet that description. Perhaps your experience wasn't that way, but it squares with many people's experience. So... who is being obtuse? BTW, I don't think it should be very very bad; it just is, in many countries.
You are.
What is it about the various county, state, federal, or provincial prisons that isn't intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and offensive? So, I'm sure the big, well muscled type A personality might do OK in a prison where the inmates have the upper hand. He would do the intimidating, humiliating acts in a hostile, degrading way. The not-so-well muscled, heterosexual, not-so-A-type personality are not going to fare so well, never mind the effeminate gay guy. Then there are the prisons where the guards have the upper hand which is what many assume always goes on in prison, except that it's not. Guards can provide the intimidating, humiliating conditions in a hostile degrading way, even better.
Some inmates who are very vulnerable (like the slight, effeminate gay guy or transsexual) often end up in "protective custody" which is fairly often indistinguishable from solitary confinement.
I'll grant that not everyone comes out of prison with the maximally negative possible experience.
Cultures and sub-cultures are not social roles.
Social roles are things like teacher, student, client, consumer, boss, leader, citizen, suspect, elite, man, woman, intellectual, mother, father, etc., etc.
Some people with certain characteristics might be more likely to end up in certain roles, such as African-Americans in the role of suspect, and be likely to have to play the role differently, such as not being believed, having deadly force used against you, etc., but that does not make those characteristics a role.
The point I tried to make is that race is not biological and is socially constructed from arbitrary traits while sex--male and female--is purely biological and the things it is based on, such as uteruses and testicles, are not traits (just like kidneys are not a trait) and are not arbitrary.
Quoting Pseudonym
No.
I juxtaposed sex, a biological fact, and gender, a role a person plays. Nothing more, nothing less.
Somebody then suggested that races--white, black, Native American, etc.--are roles just like man and woman are roles, and I showed how that is false. Nothing more, nothing less.
Quoting Pseudonym
I did not say any of that.
I simply said that a post-racial society sounds plausible while a post-gender society does not, and that transgender people might therefore be better served by a focus on how we are all the same rather than a focus on their struggle with gender.
In other words, if gender could be dissolved then that could liberate transgender people from their struggles. But the dissolution of gender seems highly unlikely to happen anytime soon, therefore resources available for helping transgender people are not well spent doing things like attacking gender by saying calling somebody a "man" is violence.
No, I never said that living up to a stereotype is acting in a role.
I never said anything about stereotypes. Somebody else brought up stereotypes.
You are attacking your own straw men.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
No I did not.
I listed acts that are performed, such as opening doors for women.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
No they are not.
They are acts that are part of a script called genders.
Stereotypes are things like blondes being dumb, white/caucasian athletes being slow, nerds/geeks being inept at mating, etc.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
Straw man.
I did not say anything about stereotypes. I did not say that anything is stereotypical of anybody.
I said that "white" is not a role like "man" is. Somebody assigned the role of "man" can do a good or bad acting job, but there is no acting job to be done with "white", I said.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
Male and female are biological facts. Man and woman are not. A lot of theory in the social sciences calls the latter [B]genders[/B].
Social roles are assigned to genders, not sexes. Nobody says, "Be a male!" or "Male up!". People do say, " Be a man! " and "Man up!". Nobody says, "My daughter grew up to be a great female. I'm so proud of her". People do say, "My daughter grew up to be a great woman. I'm so proud of her".
Gender is not set in stone. The act that must be performed--the script that must be followed--in the roles of man and woman varies temporally and spatially. It used to be that being a woman meant being skilled in making and keeping the perfect home. But now in a lot of places not knowing how to prepare meals from scratch does not mean failing at being a woman. Now, it seems, not exerting power means failing at being a woman--"Lean in" is the way to be a woman now, it seems.
The point is that "white" is not in the same category as man, teacher, consumer, leader, mother, etc. "White" is not a role to be played. There is no script--no opening doors for women, or anything like it--to be followed acting in a social role called "white".
None of your responses to me address any of this. They have filled a field with straw men.
You haven't shown anything. You have provided zero evidence for your claim other than "because I say so".
I'd also like to make clear that my claim was that gender roles are based on stereotypes--no different than racial roles/stereotypes--and you have yet to show why gender stereotypes are different from racial stereotypes in any significant way, which was your original claim.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
If race is not biological, why are children born the same race as their parents? How can we find our racial ancestry by looking at our DNA? How can forensic scientists tell what race a person is based on their blood?
The fact that you won't acknowledge that the "acts" you listed are stereotypes does not mean I created a straw man. I think you're being intellectually dishonest in an attempt to avoid facing the problem with what you originally claimed.
I asked for evidence of a social role called "white". How do I know when I am failing at being a "white", I asked. Who would be a good role model for being a "white", I asked.
The responses were evidence of stereotypes, cultures and sub-cultures, not any evidence of a social role.
If there is a social role called "white", ample opportunity to show evidence of it has been given.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
I have made clear that I believe that conflating stereotypes and social roles is a fallacy.
And I have made clear my view that race is a social construct. Therefore, even if social roles are based on stereotypes derived from biology, there are no such stereotypes to build a "white" social role with--there are no biological races in homo sapiens sapiens.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
Straw man.
I never said anything about stereotypes.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
Again, race is socially/culturally constructed based on arbitrary characteristics.
Biological races do not exist in the species homo sapiens sapiens.
Biological sexes do exist. Nobody, as far as I know, arbitrarily picked uteruses to create categories called sexes. But that is exactly the origin of race--some arbitrary characteristic, skin color, was chosen to be used to place people in fictional categories. It did not have to be skin color. It could have been hanging ear lobes, stature 6' or greater, or belly stars. Either way, I guess "you can't teach a sneetch".
Yes, and as I said that is absolutely all you have made clear: that you believe it. You have presented zero support for this belief of yours.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Racial classification is not based on arbitrary characteristics; it's based on biological clustering of physiological traits within geographic populations. You apparently have a very poor understanding of what race actually is.
There is nothing to acknowledge about stereotypes.
People here are insisting that stereotypes are derived from biology.
Gender is not biology. Man and woman are not biology. Male and female are biology.
If gender is not biology, and if stereotypes are derived from biology, then stereotypes do not apply to gender.
Gender is not a trait. It is a role. Just like consumer, citizen, boss, worker, husband, mother, suspect, leader, intellectual, guru, pundit, etc. are roles. Roles are things that are performed.
Stereotypes are not performed. That is further evidence that stereotypes and social roles cannot logically be conflated.
And it is completely culturally constructed and corresponds to no known biological reality.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
What is your stake in the view that "race is culturally constructed" and that "gender is culturally constructed"?
There is a simpler (and I think a more truthful) way of de-linking race and culture: Race is real and isn't determined by culture; it's inherent in the genetic makeup of a person. Culture is also real, and is learned. There isn't a genetic link between race and culture. There are links of learning and environment, however, between race and culture. People tend to behave like those around them--that's cultural.
Maleness and femaleness are real and are biologically determined. Men are males, women are females. Both males or men, females or women, have certain sex-linked characteristics and traits, and both males or men and females or women learn an array of culturally specific roles in connection with their sex and gender.
All humans inherit tendencies to behave in various ways, and also learn behaviors in early life. Some of the behaviors are "stereotypes", a term applied to specific types of individuals or certain ways of behaving intended to represent the entire group of those individuals or behaviors as a whole. So, girls playing with dolls and boys with trucks are "stereotypes".
A "role" is culturally defined manner of behaving. "The stereotypical male role in a family is to provide financial support and leadership." A "role" may also be biological. The male "role" in reproduction is inseminating females. The female "role" in reproduction is bearing off-spring. The male may play the role of "family defender" because biologically he is bigger and stronger than the female (usually). The male may also play the role of care-giver, which is a role usually assigned in stereotypical fashion to females.
It's just an inconvenient fact of life that roles, stereotypes, biology, and culture are braided together. With some effort the specifics can be teased apart. We struggle to do this all the time. "Was so-and-so born with high intelligence (genes, biology, prenatal environment, etc.) or is so-and-so very successful as a result of obsessively hard work? Or in joke form, "If you're so smart, how come you are not rich?"
Oh, well in that case I apologise for misrepresenting your argument. I thought you might have some logical point to make that had not been properly understood, but you are, in fact, as completely wrong as JSG has outlined.
In what way is the selection of reproductive organs to define two sets of people not arbitrary, but the selection of skin colour (and connected racial genetics) is arbitrary? As far as I can see they are both just biological features of the body. It's true we might have divided society by height, or earlobe size, but those features have always been mixed so there's no historical reason to. We divided people on the basis of sex because their roles are forcibly different in at least one aspect (men cannot bear children). We have, in the past, divided the population along the lines of race because it signified a different cultural origin and so a potentially different set of behaviours. We have never had any reason to divide society by height, or ear lobes, so we never have.
So, to the extent that the roles for 'man' and 'woman' derive from biological features, they remain relevant to society. Like any role, personal autonomy should be paramount and if a man wants to adopt a woman's role, or vice versa, there should be no barrier to them doing so, but neither would it be honest to say the roles are entirely cultural.
The roles assigned to race, on the other hand derived from the historical fact that race was a signifier of cultural origin. Not only is this no longer true, but the roles related to that cultural origin never derived from any causally linked aspect of that culture.
I agree with you, therefore, that a post-racial culture is possible (indeed probable), whereas a post-gender culture is not, but not, it seems, for the same reasons.
That's not all I'm saying. You're being purposely obtuse.
I have made the point, several times, that NOT saying something can be just as violent. By reinforcing someone's delusions can be just as harmful. Reinforcing somone's ignorance is just as harmful and can lead to death, like in the case of obesity and anorexia. The fact that I have to reiterate this, when it's all in my posts, most of which are direct replies to you, just means that you are ignoring a key point because you don't have a defense against it.
You also don't want to "debate" whether or not transwomen are women because you know it is fundamental root of the problem that you have. If transwomen are women, then are all women transwomen? What is the difference? Where is your logic? It is non-existent. All you do is keep going in circles because you lack a defense altogether.
All I am trying to say is that "it's true" isn't a defense against the accusation of violence.
:-} And I'm saying is that NOT telling them it's true isn't a defense against the accusation of violence.
I haven't said that.
Society probably cannot function without gender. At least not at this juncture.
Reproductive technology like artificial wombs might make sexual reproduction, including pregnancy, obsolete. AI might replace humans in parenting. AI might make humans obsolete in military, law enforcement, business and organizational management, education, legal representation, and other work. Males and females might end up all doing the same things, and roles related to sex might not be needed.
But at this time society probably cannot function without gender.
Race, on the other hand, serves no function other than dividing us and making us easier to manipulate and dominate. The sooner we all see through the smokescreen of race, the sooner we can identify and confront the real sources of suffering in the world.
Quoting Bitter Crank
All of the evidence that I have seen says that that is false.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Social roles are in no way tethered to elements like biology, immediate environment, stereotypes, personality, etc.
What stereotype is the social role of consumer built on? What immediate environment is the social role of consumer derived from? None and none, respectively. Anybody with any traits and background can act in the social role of consumer. Just like anybody with any traits and background can act in the social role of patient, client, suspect, customer, leader, worker, student, teacher, entrepreneur, etc.
And what role one finds himself in can change in the blink of an eye. For a long time, academics were authorities guiding people called students who looked up to them. Now academics are more like customer service representatives working for highly-paid administrators and trying to please paying customers. If the customers--formerly known as students--in your class give you bad reviews your highly-paid bosses who are focused on the bottom line might not renew your contract next semester. Medical professionals also seem to increasingly find themselves and the people they treat / care for in different roles. Increasingly the latter are customers rather than patients--they'll even get a survey emailed to them asking them to rate the care they received!
Social roles are parts in the screenplay called society. Male, female, black, white, gay, tall, short, introverted, extroverted, disabled, healthy, sick, high IQ, low IQ, etc., symmetrical face, asymmetrical face, fat, skinny, etc. might predict what roles one finds his/herself in and how often, but they are not roles themselves, and roles are not constituted of them.
The "consumer" is an economic stereotype made possible and created by industrial society. "Consumer" started to become popular around 1900.
Prior to the deployment of various labor-reducing devices using electric motors, automobiles, and so forth, men and women devoted most of their time to producing. Men worked in production jobs (farm or factory, mostly) and women produced food, clothing, and some domestic goods at home. A woman often prepared food from a kitchen garden and used eggs from a backyard henhouse. Food was prepared from simple raw ingredients.
The industrialization of the home converted women from producers to consumers. One drove to a store and bought bread (didn't make it), canned fruit (didn't preserve it), meat (didn't kill it), and ready-made clothing (didn't sew it). The woman shopped for and "consumed" household goods, as well. Families consumed housing and transportation.
"Consumer" is now applied to everybody, even mentally retarded individuals who "consume" custodial care services, so the term has approached meaninglessness. But if you set aside these nonsensical uses, the term is still meaningful.
The economic role of consumption (by consumers) is a critically important element in the modern economy. Something close to 3/4 of the GDP is derived from the acts of buying stuff that define the role of consumer.
In many ways, being a "consumer" is a degraded role, a shrink wrapped stereotype.
And we are in this screen play whether we jolly well like it or not, playing out our various defined roles, and just like characters on the screen, we can not walk out of the screen, we can not walk out of society. Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Calling patients, clients, students, and so "consumers" is a piece of current bullshit lingo. It's a trend that comes out of business management schools, which says that schools, hospitals, social service agencies, and so on will perform better if things are run like a business. The approach is aided and abetted by (often) laudable moves to make institutions a little more accountable.
Should professors be teaching to suit the standards of their students? Well, I don't think so, but if students are going to rate teachers, and administrators are going to look at the ratings, then they will teach to make the students happy. A large proportion of college teachers are now adjuncts -- a nice work for "temporary". If they want to get hired for the next term, they had better have good ratings.
Colleges, hospitals, and social service agencies do the same thing they have always done; a change in language (health care consumer rather than patient) is likely to be a transient phenomenon.
Will you please explain how you think white, black, asian, and aboriginal people get born? If race isn't biological, then something VERY MYSTERIOUS is going on. You know, when two asians have children, there is a much, much better than a 50/50 chance that the children will look like other asians. Same for whites, blacks, and aboriginals. Like it or not, the races are propagated by sex.
Now, you may not like the concept of race, but the distinctions between groups of people, whether they are races or not, are still transmitted through sexual reproduction.
Race and sex would be disconnected IF, as George Carlin said, two black parents could produce a child who had straight blond hair and blue eyes.
What is socially constructed is not the skin and hair colour and nose shape but the importance of these things in influencing our judgements and categorisations unjustly. This in turn focusses our attention on skin and hair colour etc. When someone says 'race is determined by culture not genetics' I think the charitable way of reading this is that the racial basis of prejudice, hatred and discrimination and thence of the study of and focus on racial differences is entirely arbitrary. If we have any charity left and I hope we do.
No.
Speaking for myself, when I say that race is socially/culturally constructed I literally mean that races in the human species are fictions that people created--mostly to justify oppression, exploitation, etc.--based on arbitrary characteristics/traits and that do not correspond with any known reality in the natural world.
It is so easy that anybody can do it in less than a minute. Pick a group of people, pick a biological characteristic/trait that they have and you don't, and say that based on that characteristic/trait they constitute a race and you constitute a different race. "Those people over there, they have free-hanging ear lobes. We over here have attached ear lobes. We are "attacheds", they are "free-hangers". It is biological reality that no rational person can deny: we are a distinct group separated from them by our attached ear lobes!".
Read "The Sneetches", by Dr. Seuss.
Biological race is, basically, a myth created to justify treating certain people as less than human. Biological reality, as I understand it, is that we are overwhelmingly all the same and that the biological differences between us, as an instructor I had in a college geography class once put it, "are miniscule".
This is simply not true (or at least wasn't true 100 years ago, thankfully it is becoming more so now). People with hanging earlobes have had no different cultural heritage and history than those with attached earlobes. The two populations have always been mixed and formed part of the same culture. The distinctions identified in race, whilst having no bearing at all on personality, did once indicate very strongly the cultural heritage of that person and so what adopted values they may have.
Nowadays, thankfully, this is becoming so much less the case that to read anything into race would be unfair stereotyping, but our history of oppression and its legacy still means that someone's skin colour gives a statistically more significant indication of the sorts of challenges they've had to face in life than their ear lobes.
It's not just arbitrary. It meant something significant about cultural heritage a hundred years ago, and shameful though it is, it still means something about one's history today.
All of the evidence that I have seen says that that is completely irrelevant to why racial categories were created.
Quoting Pseudonym
That does not make racial categories correspond with any reality in the natural world.
Quoting Pseudonym
No.
All of the evidence I have seen shows that racial categories were arbitrarily created based on arbitrary characteristics and then projected onto people.
The way that I understand it, your characterization of racial categories as objective intellectual tools based on what they "signify" is patently false.
Furthermore, no concrete evidence from history, anthropology, biology or any other authority has been presented in support of this "race signifies biology and culture" assertion.
False dichotomy.
It is not "producer versus consumer". It is "frugality versus consumption ".
And it is an integral component of capitalism, not a latent effect of industrialization.
In Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism Richard H. Robbins shows how a class of people who are willing to consume more and more stuff had to be created and how it is maintained. The propensity to frugality had to be overcome. "Customer service" was created to make people feel like they have some special status when they consume goods (there is nothing special about going to a big box store and selecting and purchasing an item that you really don't need; it is robotic and dehumanizing, if you think about it). I recall this as well: the attractions at Disney World, Robbins convincingly shows and thoroughly documents, are designed to downplay / obscure in the minds of visitors the negative impacts of capitalism and maintain a class of consumers willing to buy more and more stuff.
The capitalist consumer is a social role created and maintained as an integral element of the global capitalist system. Without people playing that role, capitalism would not work.
Personally, I hate acting in the role of capitalist consumer. All of the advertising, merchandising, marketing (I may be in the minority, but I hate junk mail), and everything else trying to manipulate me into buying stuff is physically, emotionally and spiritually taxing. Alas, I have to navigate through all of it to meet my needs.
But don't worry, capitalists. Plenty of people are convinced that the consumer role is for royalty like them even though it makes life stressful; takes time and energy away from their relationships, hobbies, etc.; burdens them with a lot of debt; etc. I believe that some people even [B]love[/b] it--if Black Friday was to disappear they would feel deprived.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, how independent was industrialization and capitalism in Europe and North America? Pretty much synonymous.
Look, I'm a pretty thrifty fellow, most of the time. I've never been in debt except for a mortgage I paid off in 10 years, and not because I had so much money. I've always been relatively poor -- certainly at the bottom of income expectation for a guy with a masters degree. But... never mind that. The point is, buying objects that one needs like food, clothing, shelter; objects that one wants like books, newspapers, dog food (I don't want it, but the dog certainly does), a gadget or two..., and services like an occasional and inexpensive lunch in a restaurant with friends are not crimes against nature, Wisdom.
People have been consuming necessities, luxuries, and services ever since hunter-gatherers settled down to grow barley and wheat 12,000 years ago. Chemical analysis of containers indicate that they were brewing beer and wine. They gathered to share feasts. They engaged in decorative practices. It's in our nature to produce and consume. It isn't dehumanizing, it isn't unclean, it isn't wrong.
We manipulate things: that's part of our nature, and in order to obtain things and experiences to manipulate in our hands and in our heads we have to work to earn money for these things. Maybe people who go to Disneyland are not living up to your expectations (not mine, either) but everyone isn't going to study philosophy and wear a barrel (Diogenes).
Don't sneer too much at consumers, Wiz. If everybody reduced their consumption by 25%, and eliminated a lot of the superfluous stuff, the world economy would crash and people like us would lose what little we have. It would be globally catastrophic.
Just a dental reflection on race differences.
No one denies that there are traits which are distributed almost exclusively across some populations. That's the same when people mention how medications sometimes add warnings that Afro-Americans shouldn't take these, and how that support race theory. It's just besides the point entirely. A 'racial' understanding of human society is devoid of true meaning because we never applied the selective force necessary for racial differentiation to human reproduction, i.e. breeding.
An additional reason why this is devoid of meaning is because it is entirely superfluous. People's identity are not tied to race, but to heritage and location. Contrary to your last picture, we are not turning into nothing because we acquire a better understanding of the real sources of semblance and difference amongst humanity.
People who are threatened by the perceived collapse of white culture have a weak identity, at the core. That's the best I can put it. If you want to find pride in your heritage, study your ancestor's history. They shouldn't claim shit other people have done simply because you share skin colour. Better yet, they shouldn't seek pride elsewhere then in themselves and their own accomplishments.
I don't understand what you are saying here. Are you suggesting that there is literally no evidence that different races have had, on the whole, different cultural experiences? Are you saying that the cultural history of, say, Polynesian Islanders, has not been unique, or that Polynesian Islanders do not have any shared genetic traits?