Do English Pronouns Refer to Sex or Gender?
Difficult (or impossible) as it may be, I'm interested in determining whether there is any evidence that English pronouns are supposed to refer specifically to a person's sex or gender (or both).
1. The question presupposes that there is a distinction between sex (biological) and gender (social/performative). If you don't affirm the distinction fair enough, but debating it is not the intent of this post.
2. It's difficult to ascertain how the pronouns have been used since the aforementioned distinction is new, or at least newly popular. That is, you can't simply refer to historical use.
3. The question of what they SHOULD mean, or how they SHOULD be used is not what I'm asking right now (that's why I'm posting here and not in, say, /genderfliud).
4. Dictionaries say that things like, "he" refers to a male, boy, animal or person; or "he" refers to one of unspecified gender. The former maybe suggests reference to sex, but is ultimately unclear because "male" and "boy" themselves can refer to sex or gender (that is, using the words "male" and "female" or "boy" and "girl" in this context, it's natural to ask/sensible to specify whether they refer to ones sex or ones gender). And The latter suggests that it refers to gender, but, again, it's not clear that "gender" refers here to a distinctly performative quality not necessarily connected to ones sex.
5. It could be the case that, following the adoption of the philosophical view that sex and gender are distinct, the question of to which of these pronouns are supposed to refer is as yet undetermined, since the pronouns evolved prior to the distinction.
The reason I'm asking is that I've not heard a compelling argument nor seen evidence favoring any of these views, which, to summarize, are:
a) they refer to sex
b) they refer to gender
c) they refer to both
d) they refer to neither (they exclude the distinction)
Also, answering this question seems to be at the heart of many of these debates, though interestingly it's never brought up - or it is brought up and I live under a rock: if this is the case I apologize and would appreciate a reference.
Thanks!
*This question felt a little too basic for a non-philosophical for a philosophy forum, and a little too philosophical for reddit, so, I posted on both:
same question on reddit
1. The question presupposes that there is a distinction between sex (biological) and gender (social/performative). If you don't affirm the distinction fair enough, but debating it is not the intent of this post.
2. It's difficult to ascertain how the pronouns have been used since the aforementioned distinction is new, or at least newly popular. That is, you can't simply refer to historical use.
3. The question of what they SHOULD mean, or how they SHOULD be used is not what I'm asking right now (that's why I'm posting here and not in, say, /genderfliud).
4. Dictionaries say that things like, "he" refers to a male, boy, animal or person; or "he" refers to one of unspecified gender. The former maybe suggests reference to sex, but is ultimately unclear because "male" and "boy" themselves can refer to sex or gender (that is, using the words "male" and "female" or "boy" and "girl" in this context, it's natural to ask/sensible to specify whether they refer to ones sex or ones gender). And The latter suggests that it refers to gender, but, again, it's not clear that "gender" refers here to a distinctly performative quality not necessarily connected to ones sex.
5. It could be the case that, following the adoption of the philosophical view that sex and gender are distinct, the question of to which of these pronouns are supposed to refer is as yet undetermined, since the pronouns evolved prior to the distinction.
The reason I'm asking is that I've not heard a compelling argument nor seen evidence favoring any of these views, which, to summarize, are:
a) they refer to sex
b) they refer to gender
c) they refer to both
d) they refer to neither (they exclude the distinction)
Also, answering this question seems to be at the heart of many of these debates, though interestingly it's never brought up - or it is brought up and I live under a rock: if this is the case I apologize and would appreciate a reference.
Thanks!
*This question felt a little too basic for a non-philosophical for a philosophy forum, and a little too philosophical for reddit, so, I posted on both:
same question on reddit
Comments (46)
Consider a supernatural creature like a ghost or a deity, not even having a biological body, how can we say there is a biological sex? Yet, we still use "he" and not "it" because the gender is nonetheless performed. I could make up a story about two clouds and call one bob and the other jane and refer with "he" to bob and "her" to jane and nobody would be complaining about how clouds lack a biological sex. So using gendered pronouns for that which clearly has no biological sex is not controversial, only using gendered pronouns which contradict the biological sex is controversial. I can all a boat or country a "she" and etc.
Gendered pronouns always indicate gender but do not always indicate sex. If gendered pronouns were "biological sex pronouns" then this whole conversation about "which pronouns are appropriate" wouldn't make any sense, the answer would be obvious.
I think empirically, most people historically and continuing down through today probably intend to refer to sex, both with their use of pronouns and their use of the terms "man" and "woman". If shown e.g. a series of images of a person with feminine gender presentation undressing to reveal that they have a masculine body underneath their clothing etc, I expect that most people, both historically and probably still today, would think "that's a woman" at the first picture and use female pronouns to refer to the person in the picture (something often used in support of "man" and "woman" referring to gender the social construct, not sex), but then "oh, no I was wrong, that's a man" at the last picture and use male pronouns to refer to the person in the picture (which of course runs counter to that preceding parenthetical). That suggests to me that people are aiming to describe sex, and merely using gender presentation as a proxy for sex.
And I think that needlessly fighting to change the use of language from that historical course has caused little other than harm for the trans (and nonbinary) community. (But that fighting back against that in turn only causes more harm, so I don't really know what to do besides just speak however least bothers one's present audience).
Quoting McMootch
No, the question only presupposes that we use scribbles to refer to things, not what those scribbles should or should not refer to.
It seems to me that you have to first determine what the relationship between sex and gender are to be able to determine whether or not it is meaningful to use some scribble to refer to one or the other, or both.
Not sure what you mean by off the table? I'm curious about how people think the pronouns have been used historically because I think this can make it easier to think about how they could be used in the future.
I assume this is true
I think the benefit is a better understanding of reality. Men do things women do and women do things men do so much so that these days we wonder if there's any difference between them. Understanding gender as performative I think is a necessary step to adapting to and better understanding how our reality is changing
I think you're right. But again that's why I pose the question of how the language has worked thus far, so that it's easier to think about what kind of adaptation could make it equipped to handle the distinction.
You're right, I should have been more clear- what I meant was, in asking the question, I'm presupposing the distinction. In other words, what I mean is: supposing the distinction sound, what do they refer to?
I'm presupposing that the relationship is one of biology and performance. I think the question only really makes sense in light of this presupposition. That's why I said at the beginning if one doesn't affirm the distinction then the question is meaningless, because the answer would be "the pronouns refer to sex and gender both, which are the same thing." I think they have indeed been used to refer to both traditionally, because I think traditionally we've considered them to be the same. But these days folks are arguing that they're different, and then insisting upon certain uses in a way that, I think, doesn't really make clear how they're conceiving of the relationship between sex and gender and the pronouns. For example, "he" can refer either to a male body or a male performance, so if a trans person says "call me 'he'..." and they mean "...because I identify as/perform male, even though my body is female," then they seem to presuppose that the gender pronouns do (or should) refer to gender and not sex, and I find this contentious. Not saying I disagree, I don't disagree or agree, I just find it contentious, and haven't really heard any compelling arguments for either side of it. Usually in place of such an argument, which would be essentially ontological, what you get is an ethical argument for trans rights, as though the question somehow threatens these rights.
^^ this.
I think you hit the nail on the head on all accounts. I think a lot of people don't know what to do other than just speaking in a way that least bothers one's present audience, and ultimately this is the issue I mean to address, because this can lead to people using language in a way they don't understand, or worse, don't believe in (and this I think is what spurs damaging arguments, because here people quickly become indignant). In the example above, where a trans person wishes to be addressed according to their performance and not their body, I don't know that this is fair - obviously it's not fair to a trans person that their language can't accommodate their identity, and this is indeed where the issue begins. Nonetheless, speaking in a way that overrides a society's perception and use of language is not a solution. A solution in theory would be a compromise between individuals whose language isn't equipped to express their identity and a society who finds this language meaningful. It's a difference I think between the killing of a language and the evolution of a language. I don't know what this solution is of course, I just know we haven't found it, and again, I think finding it should start with ontological conversation rather than ethical debate (though of course there's always a bit of the one going on in the other).
Imagine for a moment that we spoke some alternate English where it was not possible to speak about a person without implying either that they are fat or that they are skinny; this alt-English is "weighted" the same way that ours is "gendered".
In the world of this alt-English, you have a person who has a fat body, but they really really dislike that fact, and are trying very hard to be skinny, and it hurts them every time someone refers to them with the language variants for fat people. They feel like "do you have to remind me that I'm fat every damn time you talk about me?"
But to the people talking about them... well, there isn't a way to talk about them without calling them either fat or skinny (in this alt-English), so they look at someone and see whether they look fat or skinny, and use the respective variants of language as appropriate. Being asked to call someone who looks fat "skinny" feels like being asked to deny empirical reality, to lie to someone for the sake of their feelings.
I expect that most of the latter group of people would have no problem changing their language to refer to the person as skinny instead of fat if they actually got skinny. So any fat people who are able to get skinny can just avoid the problem: everyone will just see them as skinny and address them with skinny terminology.
But meanwhile, you have the group of fat people who want to be skinny, who feel like fatness is not an essential part of themselves, that it's even contrary to themselves, who hate having to live life in their fat bodies and dream of some day being able to walk around as a skinny person, and in the meantime, just wish people would stop constantly addressing them as a fat person.
It's the fault of this alt-English that the only options are to address someone as a fat person or as a skinny person. This alt-English doesn't have a way to address or speak about people without referring to their weight.
We who speak real English hopefully recognize how ridiculous alt-English is, but the genderedness of our own real English is every bit as ridiculous, and causes exactly the same kinds of problems.
For example, in the olden days we might have read this sentence: “A soul should resist all the urges of passion; his reason must govern them.” Now, the context does not exclude the possibility that a female soul is included in this analysis, indeed the author may have wished to include the souls of men AND women, but because the default gender was grammatically (and conceptually, as I suppose, since men were the chief authors of yore and wrote for a predominantly male audience) male, the masculine pronoun “his” was written...
Fast forward to our day: that same sentence would probably be written, “A soul should resist all the urges of passion; their reason must govern them.” “their”, here, is meant to refer to the previous “soul”; but “them” is supposed to refer to “urges”, whereas, since the pronouns have changed number, from singular to plural, an ambiguity arises, since now “them” is possibly singular in force, referring to the previous “their”!
Let me give you another example that shows this ambiguity, one I read this year in an editorial: “After Trump leaves office, the nation needs a true inquiry into his handling of the virus, and how to be sure that no future president has the ability to make so many Americans suffer for their incompetence and callousness.” Now, it is obvious from the context whose incompetence and callousness is spoken of: that of some future president. But because a future president might be female, the author of this statement chose to write “their” in place of “his”; and in so doing, created an awkward ambiguity, since “their” here most naturally refers to “Americans”.
Naturally for us it works well, as there actually aren't so many occasions when the "hän", referring to both he or she, would lead to problems or misunderstandings. And it works easier than saying "he or she". Yet before nobody cared much about the issue and only now the sjw types are enthusiastic how "progressive" the language is.
If the distinction were sound then there would be no reason to ask your question. Your question stems from the fact that the distinction between gender and sex isn't clear.
Quoting McMootch
People can insist that people use certain terms all they want, but in a society with free speech, they can't dictate what words others should or shouldn't use.
If what they claim isn't clear, then what could they be insisting?
Is this a moral/political issue, or a metaphysical/epistemological issue? What does a person mean when they claim to feel like, or be, a man or woman? Is it a mental problem? Is it possible that we have souls that are male and female that get put in the wrong bodies, or what? The fact that there seem to be so many people willing to just accept what others insist that they do without asking these questions is a great example of how political propaganda has an effect on weak minds.
Good point, the distinction is definitely over-used and under-defined. Perhaps correcting that is the place to start in clearing up the tensions of these issues, rather than trying to determine the meaning of the pronouns.
I think it's become a moral/political issue only because it's a metaphysical/epistemological issue that hasn't ever really been solved.
In my head it goes like this:
Gender is performative, a matter of behaviors and traits that find themselves somewhere on the masculine/feminine spectrum, which has nothing to do with one's body (sex).
But, for so long it was thought that certain behaviors ought to exist only in certain bodies, and that when they don't it's strange or wrong, so that there are still many people who feel strange about seeing certain behaviors coming from certain bodies. Therefore, when a person feels inclined toward behaviors that some consider strange or wrong for their body, they're put in a difficult situation (many people see them as strange). As a reaction to this, some of these people are prescribing as a solution a language that refers to their behaviors, not their body.
Now, if everyone could instantly disassociate behaviors from bodies (gender from sex) this would not be necessary, because it would be understood that whether you're called a "he" or "she" or a "boy" or a "girl" has nothing to do with your personality. (This, by the way, would be my answer to the metaphysical question of sex/gender. So in a sense, yes there are male and female souls (and souls in between), in that humans have psychological pre-dispositions (biologically and culturally influenced) causing them to exhibit behaviors that are mostly what we would call "masculine," mostly what we call "feminine," or anywhere in between.) But because this disassociation is awkward and takes time, people are revolting against the thing that seems most immediately to hold it together (gendered language).
To use the example from Pfhorrest,
.
But here's the problem. If gender and sex are distinct and not connected, then how can one say they're in the wrong body? One's body has nothing to do with one's gender; if it did why ask to be addressed by your gender in spite of your body? If you say, "I feel my gender is x, therefore my body should be x too," aren't you affirming the idea that gender and sex are supposed to be connected? In the example above, the person who feels fatness is not an essential part of themselves feels that a particular material thing (body type) should be connected to a particular immaterial thing (personality), and the fact that it doesn't is an indication that something is wrong. But were they to adhere to the argument that divides the bodily and the performative, shouldn't their gripe be, not with their body, but with this very feeling, and with anyone who speaks in a way that affirms and reinforces this feeling in society?
To use myself as an example, I don't particularly care how people gender me, the performativity is completely irrelevant to me, I behave how I decide is best to behave regardless of the gender associations of it. But I would very much like if my body was significantly different than it was, and if it weren't for cost and risk and irreversibility etc, if it was as easy as buying new clothes, I would "wear" a body much more like the opposite sex than what I have now, in a heartbeat.
I've been trying to propose that we use different terminology to refer to that property, which I call "bearing", than we use to refer to gender. Orthogonal to cisgender and transgender, people could simultaneously be cisphoric ("bearing to the same side") or transphoric ("bearing to the opposite side").
Yes, and there are many that don't want to solve the metaphysical aspect because they want to keep it a moral/political issue so that they can use it as a weapon against their moral/political opponents.
Quoting McMootch
All this does is re-enforce the idea that there are only two genders (masculine and feminine). When a trans-person claims to be one or the other, they too are re-enforcing the two gender idea. Not only that, but they re-enforce those biases that women wear dresses and men wear pants by claiming to be one or the other by simply dressing a certain way. If they claim to be a woman because they dress like one, then that just re-enforces the idea that to be a woman, you need to wear a dress. They continue to put people in one of two boxes based on how they dress or behave.
Human sexes have a wide range of behaviors that overlap. These behaviors, then, shouldn't be defined as masculine or feminine. They are simply human behaviors, and have nothing to do with sex/gender. There are behaviors and physiology that we can point to that are masculine or feminine, like giving birth and being able to stand an urinate without getting urine all over your legs and pants.
Quoting McMootch
I don't believe in the idea of souls. For me, it's more of an issue of how they were raised. Parents have a tendency of projecting their expectations onto their children. For instance, telling your daughter that she thinks like a man, or dressing your boy in dresses. As children, they adopt these behaviors as norms, so when they become adults they become confused because the expectations of society is different than their parents'.
They claim that gender is a social-construction, but a social construction is a shared idea - meaning that members of some society mutually agree that these ideas are good and useful. But if a person claims to be something else, then they are not agreeing with the rest of society. Therefore, their disposition doesn't qualify as a gender. Either gender is a social construction, a feeling, or the same thing as sex.
- sex
- gender
- feelings about one's body
and none of them are necessarily connected.
Ok, so I posited in my last post that one's gender and one's sex should have nothing to do with each other, and that it wouldn't make sense to prefer a pronoun based on the feeling that one's gender does not align with one's body. In other words,
sex ? gender; therefore,
if gender = pronoun,
sex ? pronoun.
And if gender is also distinct from body-preference (i.e., preference toward this or that gender performance and not connected to preference toward this or that body), then it wouldn't make sense to prefer a pronoun based on the feeling that one is in the "wrong" body. Or,
body-preference ? gender; therefore,
if gender = pronoun,
body-preference ? pronoun.
So, if preferring pronouns based on one's sex or one's body-preference doesn't make sense, all that remains is the idea that pronoun preference ought to be based in gender performance. That is, I suspect this is the best possible line of argument in favor of pronoun preference, which would go something like "my performance/behaviors tend toward 'x', therefore I identify as 'x', so please address me as 'x', even if my body be 'y'."
And here I am back to wondering if this is a strong enough argument to alter our use of language, lol. Again, not saying it isn't, just that it's contentious. Not quite weak enough to say it's wrong and deny a person's contrary-to-sex preferred pronoun; but not quite strong enough to want to go as far as calling some biological men women, and some biological women men.
Your "bearing" terminology honestly sounds viable, definitely the most sensible suggestion I've heard on the topic to date. I'd be interested in hearing it fleshed out a little more.
Also I want to point out (not to you Pfhorrest but just in general) that generally speaking I have no aversion to using new or strange or different words, so long as I can more or less agree that they're meaningful, and that I suspect this is true of many people (maybe I'm an optimist), and I think it's really short-sighted and unhelpful to assume that everyone who resists different use of language does so xenophobically.
Once upon a time, English (Old English or Anglo-Saxon) used masculine, feminine, and neuter gendered pronouns. Over time, English shed much of its complexity and became Middle English, an evolution of Old English with the addition of many French words (but not French grammar). In the renaissance period (1550 and forward, very roughly) English writers began creating a more complex vocabulary based on Latin and Greek roots. The more complex vocabulary fit into the still simplified grammar.
Early in this long process, masculine "he" became the default neuter pronoun, along with "it". You'd have to delve into Old English to find out more. (That is quite doable, but it would be enormously helpful if you were very interested in learning Old English.)
From what I read as a long since former English major, the use of "he, she, and it" has been stable since at least 1200.
It's one thing to add new terms to a language; that happens all the time. Changing the way a language handles gender, though, is a much much more loaded process, and is likely to be contested. Further, discussions are likely to be taken up between the Biology Department and English (or French, German, Spanish, etc.) Departments.
However much acceptance transgendered persons receive, there is very little biological evidence that there is such a thing. There are 2 sexes. Only 2, and they are fixed at conception.
Other departments in academia get involved. Psychology, Sociology, and Medicine, for instance. The idea that one can change one's gender in fact, not just in practice, is another highly contested idea.
The term "gender role" is said to have been coined by John Money in An Examination of Some Basic Sexual Concepts: The Evidence of Human Hermaphroditism as "appraised in relation to the following: general mannerisms, deportment and demeanor, play preferences and recreational interests; spontaneous topics of talk in unprompted conversation and casual comment; content of dreams, daydreams, and fantasies; replies to oblique inquiries and projective tests; evidence of erotic practices and, finally, the person's own replies to direct inquiry."
However, the Oxford English Dictionary provides the following examples of the term "gender" being used throughout history:
1474 in C. L. Kingsford Stonor Lett. & Papers (1919) I. 142 (MED) His heyres of the masculine gender of his body lawfully begoten.
a1500 (?a1460) Towneley Plays (1994) I. xxx. 408 Has thou oght writen there Of the femynyn gendere?
1580 W. Fulke Retentiue 92 For there is but one Lord..both of men and of Angels, which doth not onely exclude all other Lordes of the masculine gender, but much more all Ladyes.
1632 S. Marmion Hollands Leaguer iii. iv. sig. g4v Here's a woman: The soule of Hercules has got into her. She has a spirit, is more masculine, Then the first gender.
1656 Earl of Monmouth tr. T. Boccalini Ragguagli di Parnasso 135 Strength..was a vertue attributed to the masculine gender.
1719 J. Harris Astron. Dialogues 141 I think the Poets make her change her Sex, and turn He-Thing, as if she could not be as useful when of our Gender, as of yours.
1723 Lady M. W. Montagu Let. 7 Dec. (1966) II. 33 Of the fair Sex..my only Consolation for being of that Gender has been the assurance it gave me of never being marry'd to any one amongst them.
1818 T. H. Bayly Parl. Lett. 32 The women adore you, and call you defender, And friend to the rights of the feminine gender.
"From the very day that she was designed she was almost doomed" - Paul Louden-Brown, White Star Line Archivist
I guess the Titanic had a vagina then?
XX male syndrome
XY gonadal dysgenesis
How do you define sex? Is it determined by their genotype or by their phenotype?
It surprises you that the Titanic had a vagina?
Not necessarily, no, but probably strongly correlated, much like sex and gender.
Quoting McMootch
Correct, though I want to be clear that my "bearing" concept is specifically feelings about one's bodily sex, not just feelings about one's body in general. Basically, it's the feelings of what are today called "gender dysphoria" and "gender euphoria"; that's where my term "bearing" comes from, as the root "phor" means "to bear" (as in, to head in a direction, or to continue or carry on). It also makes a nice nagivational metaphor with "orientation": your bearing is the direction you're heading, and your orientation is the direction you're facing.
Quoting McMootch
Thanks! My first thread on this forum was actually all about it, here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6768/disambiguating-the-concept-of-gender/
As far as I know, the typical person claiming to be transgender does not display any symptoms of the two syndromes which you mentioned. As far as I know, there are no physical markers for the vast majority of people claiming to be transgender.
Lacking a physical marker does nothing to undermine the claims. People feel the way they feel. There aren't any physical markers for homosexuality either--none that hold up to close scrutiny. anyway.
If to be male is to have genotype XY and to be female is to have genotype XX and if there are people who have neither genotype XY or genotype XX (and there are: see XYY syndrome and Triple X syndrome as examples) then either these people have no sex or there are more than two sexes.
Regarding XX male syndrome and XY gonadal dysgenesis, are you suggesting that people with such disorders should be raised as the sex that corresponds to their genotype, e.g. those with XX male syndrome and so phenotypically male characteristics should be raised as a female, competing in women's sports, using women's bathrooms, etc.?
Quoting Bitter Crank
That's because transgenderism isn't concerned with genotypes. People who are transgender do not claim to have sex chromosomes that they don't have. If sex is determined by one's genotype then this shows a distinction between sex and gender.
Then why do many transpeople have sex changes?
Quoting Michael
Then what are they claiming? That is the question.
The term "gender identity" is said to have been coined by Robert Stoller in his 1964 paper The Hermaphroditic Identity of Hermaphrodites.
Before him was John Money who is said to have coined the term "gender role" in his 1955 paper An Examination of Some Basic Sexual Concepts: The Evidence of Human Hermaphroditism.
Being a man or a woman is understood by many to be psychological/behavioural, not genetic. If I were to somehow have my mind transplanted into someone else's body, die and become a ghost, or turn myself into a pickle, I'd still identify as a man despite not having XY sex chromosomes.
Taking the first half 'psychological'... If you had never met any other people, would you still identity as a man, and if so, how would you know what the word meant?
I wouldn't. One's psychology is often shaped by others. As explained by WHO, "gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time."
Thar's a definition I think works very well, but that all sounds behavioural to me. Sure, they''ll be psychological consequences, even causes (of the behaviours), but I struggle to see how one might come to use a word to describe one's psychological state (absent of behavioural cues) without engaging in one's own private language.
Absolutely. It the the implication of either/or that I was interested in. Both, I have no difficulty with.
By that analogy, if there are persons born without 1 or both legs, then one would say humans are not bipedal. Humans are sometimes born with abnormalities ranging from mild to severe.
I knew a person back in the 1970s who had a chromosomal abnormality who went by the name 'Neither She He'. Neither She He was very short, bald (not by choice), and had some other anomalies in proportion, short legs, for instance. I don't remember what choice of clothing Neither She He made. I came across NSH at gay male community gatherings concerning violence and two murders in a cruise park.
So yes, I know there are people who are on the furthest end of the distribution of characteristics, or maybe they aren't even on it. They are exceptions which don't overturn the principle of 2 sexes--the way 1 arm or 1 leg -- or neither of both -- do not annul the principle of bipedalism.
I shall think of you the next time I bite into a pickle.
Humans aren't defined as having two legs, and so that's a false analogy. You claimed to define one's sex as being one's genotype, and so "male" means "human with an XY genotype" and "female" means "human with an XX genotype". It would then follow that anyone who isn't a human with an XX genotype or an XY genotype is neither male nor female. So what sex is someone with XYY syndrome or Triple X syndrome, and why that?
But if you want to carry on with your analogy, presumably you accept that someone with one leg is still human, and so even though it is correct to say that humans, generally speaking, have two legs, it is a fact that there are humans who don't have two legs, and so even if it is correct to say that men, generally speaking, have an XY genotype, it can be a fact that there are men who don't have an XY genotype.
Or do you want to say that people with only one leg aren't real humans?
The species Homo sapiens is bipedal; that's not the only defining characteristic, bipedalism is one of many defining characteristics. Species have distinct characteristics, whether they be Scutigera coleoptrata or Pongo abelii. That's how we tell them apart. Defects don't define species, but they don't negate species membership either.
et cetera, proving that this is the best of all possible worlds...
All you're saying is that humans tend to have two legs, which I don't dispute. But it is a fact that there are humans who don't have two legs. So if this is to be an analogy to sex then all you're saying is that humans tend to be of two sexes, determined by two genotypes, but it is a fact that there are humans who don't have either of these two genotypes and so presumably aren't of either of these sexes (or who do have one of these genotypes but aren't of the usually corresponding sex).
Carrol O’Conner: “Goyles were goyles and men were men...”
Oh how I miss the good old days!
What I don't have to do, and don't want to do, is elevate an anomaly to some sort of 'rare norm'. I was born with visual anomalies which have been difficult to deal with. I'd prefer to have normal vision, but I don't. Tough luck. I cope as well as I can. Your example may wish to be unambiguously male or female, but is not -- tough luck. I wish the person well. But a rare sex-chromosome anomaly doesn't add up to any sort of third sex.
That's a mighty big IF.
Anyway, the reason you'd still identify as a man is because your memories are of being a man, and that you were born male. But if you could have your mind transplanted into a woman's body, then your memories of being a man would eventually become less prevalent because they are no longer useful in your present form.
And my question was, "what is it that transpeople are claiming?" Are you saying that their minds were secretly transplanted at birth?
Quoting Michael
In other words, gender refers to the characteristics of the sexes. The characteristics (gender) are socially constructed, not the sexes. The characteristics include the norms, behaviors and roles associated with the sexes as well as the relationship between the sexes. As a social construct, the characteristics vary from society to society and can change over time.
It seems to me that the sexes, which are not socially constructed, play a pivotal role in determining gender. Not only that, but there are behaviors and norms that are specific to the sexes, so can't be socially constructed. Sexual selection plays a key role in the evolution of a species - the peacock being a great example.
One could say that the characteristic expectations that groups have of the sexes IS sexual selection.
This doesn't seem too complicated to me. In general, English pronouns refer to perceived gender. One's views on the relationship between sex and gender don't change the rules of pronoun usage, they just change how gender is perceived by the user of said pronouns.
Ships etc. are an interesting exception to this rule-- they remind me of the gendered pronouns of other languages that have objects as their referents.
There is the possibility however that had English a gender which marked non-human, animate things, and if there existed a pronoun in that gender, that this pronoun would be used to refer to the cloud or whatever. I believe some languages distinguish these features by gendered nouns, so it would be interesting to look at fables or modern children's stories to help answer this question. I'm not totally sure the precise candidate pronoun that would fit best if pronouns necessarily marked sex does indeed exist in some language. If it doesn't, that might itself argue in favor of pronouns referring to the gender concept.
Section 2.1 in this paper for example touches on this a bit, I haven't read the whole paper yet but I think looking at languages that make some of these distinctions English is missing would shed light on this question.
I'm not totally sure that the thought experiment covers the possibility that when we use "he" to refer to the male cloud, we are just picking the best word we have based on some notion of semantic similarity. Does that require a concept of gender role or identity? If people use "she" to refer to a boat, I think they are assigning some female characteristics to the boat, via metaphor, where "female" could just as easily refer to sex as to a notion of gender which is based on but different from sex.
What do you think @Judaka?
Quoting Taylor
And some languages don't even have gendered pronouns, as though we just said "it" about everyone and everything. My opinion on this matter is that gender is an intellectual, cultural and linguistic concept, the rules for gender in English and probably most languages are pretty crap. The "correct" pronoun use is determined by the rules of the language, which, may or may not even be consistent. We don't need to look for truth in their use because their use is not based on any truth, it is based on rules, which can be confusing, misleading and unsatisfactory.
Quoting Taylor
Gender does give us (or asserts) important information, it is not a meaningless category. If in my story, my cloud was a "he" then ascribing my cloud with a traditionally feminine perspective, with feminine attire and feminine attributes, that may be quite confusing for my audience.
If I had my two clouds, bob and jane, acting like a couple, then we would expect the "bob" or "male" cloud to fulfil the role of the husband and jane, the wife. It might be quite bizarre or confusing for some if I had bob act like a traditional wife and jane act like a traditional husband. If I called both my clouds "it" or a new non-human gendered pronoun then perhaps the context that I'm trying to evoke thoughts about wouldn't come across as well. I guess it depends on the context.
I think in English that "it" comes across differently than "he" or she", if one calls their boat an "it" then their boat comes across a thing, if one calls their boat a "she", it gives the boat some personality. "It (the boat) takes me from place to place vs "she takes me from place to place", it gives the boat a sense of agency. The boat almost seems to be choosing to take her captain from place to place. That's my view, I don't know if a different English pro-noun like the ones from your link, carry that same kind of feel or not.
Anyway, English dictates the rules and the rules are confusing. They could be different and that'd be fine, maybe preferable. I follow the rules because we need rules, not because I agree with them or think they're good.