Gender is a social construct, transgender is a social construct, biology is not
I'm going to put two terms that are backed by the transgender community, at least the one's I've spoken with, below
Gender - A societal construct which expects certain behavior from each sex.
Sex - The biological difference between male and female.
Gender relies on the stable nature of sex, but it also relies on the unstable nature of prejudice and sexism. For example, what makes a society? A "society" can range from the world, a country, a city, a family, and even an individual. Meaning what one person considers as a gender for one sex, can differ greatly from what another person thinks a gender is.
Gender at best then, is a pre-judgement. It is an expectation that when one observes a biological sex, they will behave in a particular manner within a certain social group. At worst it is sexism, in which a person is inflexible in their expectations and demands that a sex act a particular way.
What then does it mean to be transgender? For clear and consistent vocabulary, it simply means someone who crosses the gender expectations of their sex within a certain societal setting. I would say that allowing people to be cross gender is in an ideal sense, appropriate. It reduces stereotypes and allows more freedom, which I usually favor. It can be entirely free of prejudice or sexism.
Does being transgender change your sex? No. Barring minor exceptions like extra chromosomes, sex is biologically defined most readily through genetics. Meaning no matter how one acts, dresses, or presents themselves, their biological sex is still defined by their genetic aspect. A social construct cannot change a biological fact.
Can a transgender person validly claim they are trans sex? No. If I claim that I act, dress, or look a particular way, and this necessarily makes me the opposite sex, this would be prejudicial at best, sexist at worst. Sex is not a cultural construct. A cultural construct does not have the validity to imply that they should be treated as if they are sex of the gender they are expressing.
So what does that mean for pronouns? Are pronouns identifiers of gender or sex? The traditional use of pronouns is to identify sex, not gender. "She wore a top hat, he wore a dress." The behavior or expression of the individual is irrelevant to the identification of their sex.
A requirement that someone be called a pronoun that does not fit their sex because of an expressed gender stereotype is wrong. It is a requirement that gender take precedence over biology. A subjective construct cannot legitimately challenge objective biology. To do so would be sexist, noting that a subjective idea of one's actions make you a particular sex. Can people choose to use pronouns in a gendered way instead of biological way? If the parties agree to it, that is fine. But there should be no expectation or demand that a person use pronouns in a gendered way when their use has been implicitly biological.
Should gender be the deciding factor in any decisions that are based on biology? Again, no. Sports for example is separate based on biological, not gender differences. Women's shelters or prisons are separate due to the fact that a man can physically force themselves on a woman and get them pregnant. Vice versa for women to men. There is nothing discriminatory in basing differences off of biology, and one's expressed gender does not change this.
I am open to hearing other opinions, but this is currently the only consistent way I can look at the vocabulary for it to make logical sense.
In sum:
Gender and transgender or social constructs, or subjective.
Sex is a fact, and objective.
Objective considerations trump subjective considerations. The desire for subjective considerations to take precedence over objective considerations results in prejudice or sexism.
Gender - A societal construct which expects certain behavior from each sex.
Sex - The biological difference between male and female.
Gender relies on the stable nature of sex, but it also relies on the unstable nature of prejudice and sexism. For example, what makes a society? A "society" can range from the world, a country, a city, a family, and even an individual. Meaning what one person considers as a gender for one sex, can differ greatly from what another person thinks a gender is.
Gender at best then, is a pre-judgement. It is an expectation that when one observes a biological sex, they will behave in a particular manner within a certain social group. At worst it is sexism, in which a person is inflexible in their expectations and demands that a sex act a particular way.
What then does it mean to be transgender? For clear and consistent vocabulary, it simply means someone who crosses the gender expectations of their sex within a certain societal setting. I would say that allowing people to be cross gender is in an ideal sense, appropriate. It reduces stereotypes and allows more freedom, which I usually favor. It can be entirely free of prejudice or sexism.
Does being transgender change your sex? No. Barring minor exceptions like extra chromosomes, sex is biologically defined most readily through genetics. Meaning no matter how one acts, dresses, or presents themselves, their biological sex is still defined by their genetic aspect. A social construct cannot change a biological fact.
Can a transgender person validly claim they are trans sex? No. If I claim that I act, dress, or look a particular way, and this necessarily makes me the opposite sex, this would be prejudicial at best, sexist at worst. Sex is not a cultural construct. A cultural construct does not have the validity to imply that they should be treated as if they are sex of the gender they are expressing.
So what does that mean for pronouns? Are pronouns identifiers of gender or sex? The traditional use of pronouns is to identify sex, not gender. "She wore a top hat, he wore a dress." The behavior or expression of the individual is irrelevant to the identification of their sex.
A requirement that someone be called a pronoun that does not fit their sex because of an expressed gender stereotype is wrong. It is a requirement that gender take precedence over biology. A subjective construct cannot legitimately challenge objective biology. To do so would be sexist, noting that a subjective idea of one's actions make you a particular sex. Can people choose to use pronouns in a gendered way instead of biological way? If the parties agree to it, that is fine. But there should be no expectation or demand that a person use pronouns in a gendered way when their use has been implicitly biological.
Should gender be the deciding factor in any decisions that are based on biology? Again, no. Sports for example is separate based on biological, not gender differences. Women's shelters or prisons are separate due to the fact that a man can physically force themselves on a woman and get them pregnant. Vice versa for women to men. There is nothing discriminatory in basing differences off of biology, and one's expressed gender does not change this.
I am open to hearing other opinions, but this is currently the only consistent way I can look at the vocabulary for it to make logical sense.
In sum:
Gender and transgender or social constructs, or subjective.
Sex is a fact, and objective.
Objective considerations trump subjective considerations. The desire for subjective considerations to take precedence over objective considerations results in prejudice or sexism.
Comments (136)
I don't have any trouble with what you've written, although I am confused by your claim that it is backed by the transgender community. The way the situation is usually presented is that the transgender community believes that transgender people who are biologically male should be legally and socially treated and named as women with the reverse being true for those who are biologically female. Is that not correct? Conflicts are reported between people who want transgender women to be able to compete against biological females in sports and those who don't. People have been fired because they refused to call biological males by female pronouns.
Quoting Philosophim
There are some who argue that gender is pulley a social
construct, but I dont think youll find that to be a majority view within the gay community. My own view is that the biological and the social are inextricably, and for many who believe they were born with their particular gender already put in place, the idea that gender is strictly socially constructed is ludicrous.
Can you say some more?
There are literally hundreds of individual mannerisms of gesture, speech patterning, perceptual affective comportment that make up a patterned constellation that makes up gender. Social constructs determine the various ways that such mannerisms are refined, channeled, etc, but dont invent them from scratch. Biology produces gender in other animals(we can distinguish male from female dogs on the basis of gender behavioral differences), and if biology can generate binary genders it can produce an infinity of intermediate ones too.
Ive read that the transgender community has shied way from that expression in recent years, but I dont think many have completely abandoned the underlying split between sexual body and gendered psyche it implies. Not that I think it matters whether one justifies transitioning on the basis of body dysphoria vs social acceptance.
It was my terms of gender and sex. Its difficult to address all members of the transgender community as different factions have different wants. I simply started with the terms "gender and sex" as to my knowledge, is generally agreed upon by the majority of the community. If some in the community with what you've asked above, my point is that this does not line up with the terms they've offered.
If you believe that gender is not a social construct, then please feel free to offer the alternative, and how it is separate from sex. As for the definition of gender above, what if we have different gender viewpoints of how a man and woman should act? What if I believe wearing a dress is what women do, but then I go to Japan and see males wear kimonos or go to Scotland and see males wearing kilts?
Is this something you've ever had to deal with in your work?
It's complicated and people are different, even trans folk. I am not an expert on the subject.
Is this in the sense of gender, or sex though? If its sex, I think that has some actual merit. This would be a transsexual, which is different then being transgender.
What tradition? The sex/gender distinction doesn't have enough history to have a tradition. Pronouns were and are applied to a conglomerate of what we now consider sex and gender.
I dont use the word gender anymore unless it refers to grammar. Better to abandon the term, I say, and stick to sex. It basically clears up any confusion.
I disagree with this. In cultures across the world there have always been cross dressers or people who took on cultural expressions of the other sex, but were always still seen as their sex. There are male and female cross dressers, but no one thought a cross dresser became the opposite sex of what they are. Please give me an example in which one a person's enactment of the opposite sex erased their actual sex in the culture.
My understanding is it's gender, which is separate to biological sex. But I'm not one for debating this minefield of a subject, I'm no expert and people understand it in different ways. I'm happy to support trans-people and I've never experienced any problems associated with the issue in the years I have known and/or worked with trans or gender diverse people.
It is a useful word however if it accurately describes a cultural expectation for a sex to act or present in society.
No one is disparaging you or hopefully taking this conversation as a measure of whether you support trans people. This is about exploring the terminology and trying to make a clear distinction of what is appropriate and right in regards to the use of gender vs sex. When I see the word "transgender" in popular culture it is currently unclear and confusing. I see certain requests being made that do not make sense to me if transgender is defined as I've seen it. To me, this asks for a discussion about how we as a society should interact with trans people's requests, like wanting to cross sports for example.
Sure. I'm happy for others to worry about definitions. It's never been confusing in practice for me or the people around me, but I understand it preoccupies a lot of people's time. Bear in mind definitions are tricky - we can't really define religion as Karen Armstrong and our own @Wayfarer point out. Atheism has a range of definitions. I take it to mean I have heard no good reasons to believe in gods, others take it to mean that there are no gods. And on it goes. :wink:
In my view setting up definitions that can then be taken and applied to the world in meaningful ways is one of the major goals of philosophy. Its not that we can't define things, it is that it is difficult and many people are content with using what gets them through life without having to think too hard about it.
In your day to day interactions, I'm sure there's no issue with transgendered individuals. That is not what this discussion is about. There is an active portion of that community that is insisting, not merely requesting, that people call them particular pronouns or that they be able to play cross sex sports. That to deny this is transphobic. That doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't make sense to a lot of people. Focusing on the vocabulary allows me to start a discussion for those who are interested in exploring the concept. If you are not, that's fine, but its not an impossible topic to think about.
I generally think practice or doing is more important than theory, but I hear you. A useful definition I have gone by is a transgender person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth. That's a standard definition.
I've probably said all that matters to me on this subject. I'm old enough to remember when we rooted out 'fags' on the football field because 1) 'they played like girls' and 2) 'they'd be staring at your dick in the locker room and upsetting team morale'. Yes, a different issue, with alternative nuances, but it is instructive around how we formulate responses about identity and how apple carts are predictably upset.
Issues around bathroom use, sport access, prison allocations are all matters of etiquette and practice we can work out over time. Will there be mistakes? Sure. Will there be good news stories? Them too. Happy for you to explore these with others interested, although bear in mind the bigots often use specific and infrequent examples of sport or prisons to justify trans hatred in what I suspect is a hasty generalisation fallacy.
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I previously noted that I feel a goal of philosophy is to construct definitions that are useful. Theory is interesting, but practice is useful.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yes, I am aware of this standard definition, and it doesn't make sense to me. If gender is a social construct, how can you have one that doesn't fit your body? It would make more sense that you don't have a social construct that fits your social setting, not your body.
I do not abide by insulting people for their sexual or gender preferences. I care about clear communication, and requests of people that make logical sense. Being afraid of being called a bigot or some other horrible word for wanting to explore this comes with the territory of philosophy. I understand your implications and your fears Tom. Such fears can be diminished however if the attitude going in ensures that the focus is on the logic, and not derision or insults. I appreciate your points and understand why you are bowing out.
On one hand it seems to dismiss notions of male/female stereotypes, yet on the other seems to work very hard to conform to them.
On one hand it seems to advocate self-acceptance, yet at the same time doesn't accept the part of the self that is the physical body.
I feel this is due to a lack of clear vocabulary. Transgenderism has not been studied by the broad public until now, and the vocabulary we are using may very well tie too many generalities together and become a muddled mess. I do not blame the transgender community for this. Clarity of vocabulary allows clarity of thought. With unclear vocabulary it can be difficult to communicate your thoughts effectively. The attempt in the OP was to cement some clarity to particular terms and come to a conclusion based off of those terms.
One of my pet peeves. Newborns are identified as male or female, they aren't arbitrarily assigned a sex.
All this genderendering results in such peculiar constructions as "persons with a uterus" or "pregnant persons" in health care settings. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Women (females) have uteruses and women (females) get pregnant. A woman who has had a complete hysterectomy (such as for cancer) is still a woman, just as a man who has been castrated for testicular cancer is still a man.
Drag queens, with whom the press has recently become fascinated (or obsessed--can't tell which), are not transgendered. They have been usually been heterosexual as often as (usually) gay and (sometimes) lesbian. Drag acts generally rely on exaggeration.
This language may be used because in some cases the sex of the child isn't actually clear. There are a host of abnormalities that may arise. Someone who does not have an abnormality and states they were assigned a sex is misusing the language for their situation.
I agree that we should create a new word that describes a group of sexual individuals that vary from the norm. I propose "Variant Sexuals". Its seems an inoffensive way of demarcating differences without making them an alphabet soup.
According to the definition of transgender, drag queens are practicing transgender actions, but only focused on fashion. Perhaps transgender identity requires one to conform to the entirely one one's social construct of what the opposite gender is. This again my require better vocabulary.
But who is saying anyone is arbitrarily assigned a sex? I thought this was about gender, not sex. People don't identify with the gender that accompanies their sex at birth.
Quoting BC
Even if this language is stupid, stupid, stupid - it doesn't change the reality that there are people who identify with a particular gender, regardless of the sex they are born with. How we negotiate this is a matter of etiquette and practice. It ain't going away because it's a pet peeve.
Doing the same for the physical or biological aspects of sex or gender represents a more difficult problem.
What? My pet peeves don't rule? I'm aghast!!!
No one was "assigned" a sex (not talking about gender) at birth until that peculiar construction was pushed by the transgendered and their allies. Similarly, "people who are pregnant" is a very recently contrived usage. The only "man" who got pregnant was a woman transgender who had had nothing removed and decided to reverse her hormone therapy and have a child. It was reported in the popular press as some sort of "breakthrough". It was a breakthrough of stupidity into sensible discourse.
Quoting Philosophim
I don't either, and have followed the trans person's world view, whether I thought it was sensible or not.
Accepting their world view for purposes of conducting social services is one thing; validating their world view in a philosophy discussion about transgenderism is altogether different. I have some doubts about aspects of gay men's worldviews, too -- legal marriage, fathering children with a surrogate, service in the military, and so on. That doesn't imply that I am hostile toward fellow gays who are married, have children, and are veterans.
I didn't have to provide social services to a MAGA Trump-type (I retired before Obama was elected) but had one walked into the office, I would have provided the services they were due.
I hate to tell you...
Quoting BC
Kind of, but sex was always 'identified' or 'determined' then 'recorded' on birth paperwork and a birth certificate. Whether the word is assigned or identified makes little practical difference. The point being that recorded sex at birth by a health professional, as opposed to self-identified gender may be seen as separate matters - and by no means all trans folk, as I'm sure you know, agree on criteria, just as cishet males won't all agree on masculinity. Thank Christ.
Quoting BC
Fair enough.
Quoting BC
And for me this type of issue is a separate matter to the reality of transgenderism. It's located in peripheral discourse or sense making about the issue. What worries me is people making a hasty generalization fallacy into 'therefore all trans is stupid.' Which I'm not accusing you of doing. There will no doubt be bullshit present too as there are in all matters.
Quoting BC
Now you've clearly crossed the line.
All ideological identities are subjective because they relate to thought processes and they will only correlate to objective criteria if the subjective ideology requires it.
For example, an Orthodox Jew defines a Jew as having a mother who is Jewish and he defines Judaism as a very specific set of beliefs and behaviors.
A Reform Jew allows that a Jew be the child of a Jewish mother or father and he defines Judaism quite differently than the Orthodox Jew.
Should the Orthodox Jew be required to accept the way the Reform define Jews and Judaism? No, but neither should he have the authority to deny the Reform Jew his right to call who he wants a Jew.
Let us then add another problem, which makes this analogy all the more apt. Suppose "Jews" have certain rights to citizenship in Israel that non-Jews don't? Who gets to decide who receives these rights, the Orthodox Jew or the Reform Jew. This debate over terms now has political consequences and the two sides will have to fight over authority.
Back to transsexuals. If gender, as you define it, is a subjective belief, isn't it also a subjective belief that that belief must correlate to an objective criterion like sex? Why do you get the authority to demand that gender must correlate to biology anymore than an Orthodox Jew has the authority to demand that religious affiliation correlate to biological factors?
This battle you define is therefore one over authority, meaning it is a political battle between the progressives and the orthodox (lower case), but it is not, as you claim, just a foolish error by the transexuals in not appreciating the old rule that sex and gender correlate. They wish to overthrow that old rule
This is an very enlightening analogy.
Incorrect. Definitions are of course constructed by human subjective observation of reality, but for them to be of most use, they must be able to be objectively used. For example, if I define a tree as a "Thing with branches and leaves", its not very useful for details in a world with brushes and shrubs. A botanist wouldn't hold to such a definition because clarity and accuracy of definitions are important when discerning between plants as a profession.
If a Reform Jew and Orthodox Jew have definitions for their own branch of Judaism, that is fine. But then this needs to be objectively matched to the definitions to say, "That person is a Reform Jew, and not an Orthodox".
Quoting Hanover
What I am saying is if you have a definition of gender, and a definition of sex, gender does not change your sex. Vice-versa, sex does not change your gender. Thus if we separate people according to sex, and the limitations of the body that sex entails, saying you identify with a gender that matches another sex does not entail you entry into areas divided by sex.
To do so would be to have the Orthodox Jew say to the Reform Jew. "I identify as a Reform Jew, even though I don't meet your birth criteria for it." This is not a battle over authority. This is a battle over people trying to say that gender equates to sex. That because you act in a particular self-subjective gender, that this qualifies you to be treated as if you are the opposite sex in all authoritative matters. Gender does not override sex, just like sex does not override gender.
So - say what you like about gender constructs.......
(on second thoughts, better not :yikes: )
There can be disputes as to what constitutes what, including what objective criteria are to be used for that determination. Whether Pluto is a planet or not is one such question. Obviously nothing ontologically changed about Pluto over time, but that it one day was considered a planet and another day not is based upon convention and whatever purposes the people using the term are trying to fulfill.
Quoting Philosophim
If they live in isolation from one another, then there is no pragmatic effect for their distinct uses of the term Jew, but where it matters is when the term "Jew" (or in your case "woman") is afforded certain rights in the community at large. So, if the rule is that "Jews" have the right to instantly become citizens should they immigrate to Israel, then a decision as to who is a Jew becomes important. Who gets to decide that question is one of politics and authority. If the Orthodox control the Knesset, then certain people the Reform would allow in would be excluded. That would then result in a political dispute by those disenfranchised.
Now turning toward the question of what is a woman. If women are permitted to play on certain sports teams, use certain pronouns, and use certain bathrooms, the question then becomes who gets to decide who is a woman and be afforded those right, and that is a political dispute. I'm not suggesting I disagree with the decision to disallow transsexual woman the right to play sports with biologically born women, but I am saying that there is no absolute right one way or the other dictated by biology. What value society wishes to afford biological distinctions is up to the society.
Quoting Philosophim
It's obvious that one's mental state does not change their biological state. It is also obvious that it is the accepted orthodoxy that we seperate men and women on the basis of sex (not gender). It is also obvious that there is a notable group of people arguing against that orthodoxy and demanding that seperation occur on the basis of gender not sex.
What this means is that you're not making an argument. You're simply restating the accepting orthodoxy and stating it shouldn't be challenged. That is, you're just telling me that we've traditionally separated men and women on the basis of sex, not gender identification, so we can't start changing things just because someone has changed their gender identification. My point is, says who? Why is that a dicate of reality that things be done tomorrow the way they were done yesterday?
Quoting Philosophim
It's entirely a battle of authority. The Reform Jew isn't saying that his mother is Jewish even when she's not and so therefore he's Jewish. He's saying his mother is Christian, but he's insisting that he's still Jewish because parental religion is irrelevant to his analysis. It's directly analogous to what we're talking about here. A MtF transsexual isn't saying she was actually born a biological female so she's therefore a woman. She's saying she was born a biological man, but identifies as a woman, so she is a woman to be afforded all priviledges afforded women, and she doesn't care about your definition of what a woman is and how it relates to sex.
Of course there can. But if we are to construct objective criteria that have logical consistency when applied to broad societies, certain criteria work better than others for communication, clarity, and consistency. In general, subjective definitions do not create clear communication, clarity, or consistency. A functional society will let people have their subjective definitions within their isolated communities. If they ask broader society to accept them as objective definitions that all communities within must accept, broader society is generally served better by rejecting these subjective notions unless there is good cause for society to change.
Quoting Hanover
Here is where your excellent initial analogy is breaking down. We do not have gender and sex isolated from each other. They also aren't variations of the same thing. I think this analogy has gone far enough and it should refocusing on the topic itself; that gender is a social construct, sex is an objective measure for all to agree despite one's societal culture, and that gender does not have the right to claim it can be equivalent with sex.
Quoting Hanover
You have the order mixed up. First you decide what a woman is, then you decide permissions, pronouns, etc. The definition of men and women has already been decided by society, and that basis has always been sex. Without that, gender itself is meaningless. If gender is a belief in how a woman should act, gender first relies on there being a clear definition of what a woman is by sex. Sex is stable across all cultures. That is why gender can vary across cultures, but always uses sex as the basis for this gender. The definition by sex is not political in the least. It is based off of biology, a science. Changing this definition of biology outside of biology would be political.
Sports and places of division by sex, are by sex, not gender. They were divided because of the biological consequences of sex, not a person's behavior or manner of dress. This is obvious, and not up for debate. In sports it is simply because of the unconquerable differences between men and women in physical exertion. I've done amateur weight lifting and have an interest in physical exercise and capability. Men's biological bodies are simply better adapted pound for pound than a woman's for competitive physical activity. This is a biological fact, not an opinion.
It ha nothing to do with whether a woman was butch or empathic. It has nothing to do with dress or make up. All of these personal expressions of individuals which do not come from sex, have no basis in decisions regarding sex.
Quoting Hanover
Of course we should not just keep doing things, "because we've always done it that way." But we don't also change things because "Well I want to." There has to be a logical reason. Perhaps an advance in science or understanding of human nature. Which is why I never shy away from the question. But the answer of some in the transgender community that gender should be the reason for division instead of sex doesn't make any sense.
As noted, gender is a subjective construct which can vary from individuals and group to group. My sister does not paint her nails or wear dresses. Does that mean she's the gender of a male? Of course not. She has the sex of a female, and in her mind, not wearing dresses or not painting your nails doesn't make her any less gendered as a female either. Yet there are people out there who would believe my sister is not expressing the female gender. Should we have society legislate that she is now a gendered male because she does not paint her nails or wear dresses? Of course not, that's absurd. Sex is unchanging and not subjective. It makes much more sense that sex would be the ultimate arbiter of sex identification, not gender.
The battle for authority is not the definition of sex. Its not the idea that gender is a self-subjective identity. The battle is from one segment of society who wants to have everyone take a small group's self-subjective identity, and have that be more important in societies decisions then sex identification. Sex identification has continued to exist because there are important divisions regarding sex, solely because of biology. The introduction of gender, or that acting in one person's particular stereotype of what one sex should act like means you should be identified as that sex, is illogical.
Quoting Hanover
The word "man" and "woman" are not based on gender, they are based on sex. There is no question as to what a man or a woman is. There are no privileges afforded a man or a woman beyond this biological difference. We can say there are stereotypical expectations of men and women's behavior and expression, and many men and women do not fit into those stereotypes. Not fitting into a stereotype doesn't change your sex, period. If a man wants to wear dresses, paint their nails, and act flighty, that's fine. They are still a male that's expressing themselves in a particular way. You can say, "I like a particular gendered idea of the way a woman acts in society, so I'll act that way." There's nothing wrong with that. But you are still a man or a woman because of your sex, not your actions or expressions.
It also doesn't matter whether they care about societies definitions or not. Society always gets to decide. And if they really didn't care, they wouldn't be trying to change how society functions. I don't get to decide what the word "sheep" means, any more than you get decide what any other word means. I am open of course to hearing whether society should change the meaning of certain words or laws and regulations. In the case of gender and sex, I do not see any good arguments as to why society should use gender as an identifier for someone for whom their sex does not match. Give me some reasons, and I'll consider them.
I'd try to avoid changing or adopting law based on what people think themselves to be, however strongly and genuinely, myself. But I'm old, and your world frightens and confuses me.
The argument I bring is that there is no logical reason why we should change the status quo of gender and sex being separate, and that one's gender has nothing to do with one's sex, or societies laws and divisions by sex. We should never be frightened and confused of asking questions or examining our presuppositions. I think fear and confusion comes when change is made without adequate reason and/or poorly explained.
My reference to being frightened and confused was a reference to an old Saturday Night Live skit involving the "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer," a character played by the late, great Phil Hartman.
In fact, though, we should be careful what we do with the law. We're seeing laws, regulations and policies being adopted willy-nilly (as I said, I'm old) addressing gender already. No doubt there's more to come.
Basically this sums up every single problem that both sides possess in having any sort of dialogue on this sort of discussion. Everybody gets the distinction between gender and sex. If they don't then its no difficulty in educating them on that. The issue is deciding on what matters gender should take the forefront and in what cases sex should.
Bathroom discussions revolve around this a lot where its gender that rules and whether you have the 'correct' internal/sexual anatomy or the right chromosomes isn't how people 'gain access' to such private places. Its passing that matters and not some rigorous identification.
Sports is a different matter and one in which biology takes the forefront. . . UNLESS there is some specific biological characterization (bone structure, hormonal levels, etc) as a way of leveling the playing field that is sufficient enough to allow fruitful and relatively balanced competition. That is something that would have to be argued for as impossible/possible in principle by those educated in sports science.
Social groups, cohesion, and the benefits gained from such matters are another situation of great disagreement.
The question should always be: Is gender or sex the deciding factor in some particular social/political/economic decision? Or to what degree is each characterization to be leveled?
My point is that gender should never be a factor. Gender is a subjective stereotype, an expectation of how a sex should act in a social setting. Dress codes that do not explicitly tie to physical sex (for example, shirts that cover up breasts correctly) should not be enforced. Thus requiring someone to wear a dress, or not wear a dress, should be abolished. Make up or lack of make up should be abolished. Basically society should not enforce behavior or fashion based on physical sex. THAT is old, outdated, and enforcement of stereotypes.
All areas that are necessarily tied to sex should never consider gender. Never. Anything that has to deal with nudity should always be separate due to the possibility of one sex being able to force themselves on another's vulnerable position. Women's sports, bathrooms, and shelter's should all be based on biological sex. Laws should enforce that if a man goes into a male bathroom dressed as a woman, they cannot be harassed or discriminated against. This seems fair and right towards all parties involved.
Quoting Philosophim There is already the possibility of another forcing themselves on another in that situation right now. There isn't a bouncer, pants checker, or chromosomal identifier at the door of every. . . or possibly any. . . bathroom so there is no way to enforce this. Nor is the possibility of some hormonally unbalanced and crazed abuser going to see the woman's sign on the door then think, "Oh shoot. They got me. Now I can't fulfill my desires because its law that only real woman can enter this bathroom. I guess i'll abuse woman elsewhere in a more public place." On top of the fact that abuse in this respect is already covered under law.
A situation i've never actually seen dwelt with is. . . If a person, dressed as woman and self-proclaimed trans-woman, entered the bathroom. . . with no one else there. . . relieved themselves. . . then left. What are the consequences of that action? What are the legal charges to be brought on that person for relieving themselves in the wrong area? What if someone else was in the room regardless of any minute but irrelevant interaction they had? Would that worsen the charges?
Are we taking legal action against them because we think they are probably an abuser? Are we biased in that respect?
It does all hinge on IF it comes to public/legal light that a person who did enter the bathroom had different anatomical parts or chromosomes. When that does happen, what do we do?
I've seen some interesting arguments on the internet that argue that all transexuals or homosexuals are mere sexual deviants on par with pedophiles as well as ploys to be sexually abusive. I'm sure you can find an article on some man who dressed as a woman is expected and acted as indecent or immorally a manner as possible. Oh look, I found one in Florida!
Quoting Philosophim Got it. Unisex bathrooms all the way.
Quoting Philosophim Sure, although this should already be covered under anti-discrimination laws if it isn't already.
Of course. Its not about the likelihood, Its about the comfort of those feeling like they have a safe space for their sex. When you're in a vulnerable position with your pants down in a bathroom or needing to adjust clothing you don't want to worry about a man in the area. If a man wants to invade a bathroom and commit assault they can of course. But when there is a social pattern that's ingrained in a person its less likely to occur.
Quoting substantivalism
Laws can be created, but enforcement of them is another matter. Its illegal for someone to trespass on my property. But if I had a kid cut through my yard one day as a short cut, do I need to call the police? No. Its an option. If a person disguises themselves well enough to pass and no one notices, then no one will likely care. But if someone DOES notice, and it bothers them, they then have the right to ask the person to leave or report them.
Quoting substantivalism
That is not what is being discussed here at all. The argument of division by sex has nothing to do with gender. Meaning when I talk about the potential for sexual deviancy, it applies to the sex difference, not the gender difference. 99.X% of people do not commit sexual abuse in bathrooms. But the fear of that .x percentage that do is enough to have sex divisions by law.
Quoting Philosophim Exactly, like those laws covering abuse, indecency, etc. That already exist. We can worsen the sentences if they are not up to your liking. Put in more unisex bathrooms? More education on toxic masculine/feminine behaviors in or outside relationships? Mental health improvements in early warning behaviors to be noticed?
Quoting Philosophim Note that what you said is not actually specific to any correct bathroom usage. Technically, a person could find someone who is fairly masculine but has chromosomes that are XX as rather bothersome as well but we will. . . for some reason. . . curb their uncomfortability under the guise of 'anti-discrimination' if they are in the woman's rest room.
This seems hypocritical. I can imagine perfectly reasonable scenarios involving people's 'discomfort' about being around or having their kids around some transitioned individual who is perhaps as transitioned as could be. . . but in the 'right' restroom in your meaning.
Also, what are they going to report them for? If they were neither abusive nor indecent. Nor were they violent, aggressive, or verbally abusive. Are we going to tell them they used the rest rooms and then left? Are we punishing them for not 'passing' enough?
Quoting Philosophim The second you brought up 'passing' or not 'passing' you brought up gender. The second you brought up 'discomfort' and therefore indirectly some social acceptance of this behavior also involves. . . gender.
Note that i'm going with the simplest definition afforded to me as to what sex is. Your chromosomes and nothing else. Especially since many other physical features of people on the surface level are or have been suspect to recent easier forms of modification or the realization of the social conventional nature they have. Regardless, I'm sticking with the chromosome definition.
No. You can have gendered stereotypes and identities formed within any group. You can make friends or enemies with anyone. The social dynamics that may result within one particular group do not negate a group's division by sex, period. We are talking about division due to physical safety and vulnerability. Anything that forms outside of that is secondary and has nothing to do with a person's sex, or the division of sex that formed this group to begin with.
Quoting substantivalism
Find me the number of cases in which a woman was confused for a man. Its not many. Of course there are exceptions. There are always exceptions. General laws are not based on exceptions, but generalities. If you want to carve out subdivision a1 to the rule to ensure exceptions are treated fairly, all good. For example, if the other bathrooms are full, if you have a child under a certain age of that bathroom's sex, etc. There is no general reason to allow cross bathroom attendance.
Quoting substantivalism
Some laws are not about a person doing something specifically wrong, its about prevention. There's a law that a person can't trespass on my lawn. I see some kids playing football out in the street and they end up occasionally running up on my lawn. Are they doing any harm? No. Are they staying long? No. Do I have the right to go out and tell them to get off my lawn, and call the cops? Yes. Would I be a jerk? Yes. Doesn't matter though. Territory and property rights need to sway towards those who own them, even if that person is a jerk.
Quoting substantivalism
Not at all. I didn't bring up passing and not passing, you did. Doesn't matter if you're passing or not, the law is if you have a biological sex that does not belong in a particular place divided by sex, you don't belong there. Period. Acting or trying to hide one's sex does not give you a pass.
Second, the discomfort is not based on gender, but on sex differences. Can a man rape a woman? Can a man physically overpower a woman? In general, yes. It has nothing to do with whether that man is in a dress or khakis. This is not about the way society expects the way for a man or woman to act, this is about the physical interactions that can occur based purely off of sex differences.
Perhaps we can look closer at this problem that the mere presence of the male sex is perceived as a threat to the female sex. This may be part of what I think Josh meant about the inextricable link between gender and sex. It is expectations of gendered behaviour plus male sex that leads to a perceived threat. The discomfort is not just based on sex differences, but on its combination with expectations of gendered behaviour. If a male walked into the ladies bathroom wearing a dress, I would look for certain gendered behaviour as an indication of possible threat. There are plenty of women who could physically overpower me if they wanted to - even sexually assault me, physically speaking. But thats not within the realms of expected (gendered) behaviour from women. I understand the feeling that we dont want to worry about the proximity of a penis when our pants are around our ankles, but I think if were honest that worry is more about gendered behaviour in relation to that penis than it is about the sex differences. Because I would think there are men who feel vulnerable walking into a mens public bathroom, too, and would be on the lookout for certain behaviours, rather than simply the presence of a penis
I think were inconvenienced by this growing awareness of the complexity of reality. We like the idea of social shortcuts: men dress as men and go to mens toilets, and women dress as women and go to womens toilets - then we can continue to make assumptions based on minimal data. Life is much easier that way, but it would also be easier if everything was black and white (think Pleasantville). Thats comfort, sure, but its not reality. We need to learn to pay more attention, and not jump to conclusions too soon. As older adults, we just dont want to allocate limited time, attention or effort to reconstructing our predictions about the world; ie. learning, making mistakes, etc. But thats life, not just childhood.
No, this does not involve gender. Gender is a societal expectation of how a sex should behave in terms of body language, dress, and cultural expression. The ability for a man to penetrate a woman is a function of sex. It is not an expectation of how a man should act, it is the recognition of the physical potential action that a man can act on.
Quoting Possibility
Very few women can physically overpower even an average man. Physical rape by a woman is much more difficult based on anatomy. But this may be irrelevant based on the point I made earlier. I note just as much that women are not allowed to enter the men's room. So if you fear that, all the more reason to separate the sexes.
Quoting Possibility
You cannot necessarily judge the intent of someone by their behavior. Also gender does not apply to sexual assault or lewdness. Gender is very simply a subjective expected set of behaviors and cultural expressions that society and groups of individuals expect a sex to express. Men not crying is an example of a gendered expectation. This does not mean a man cannot cry. This does not mean that a man crying is a gendered expression. The gendered expression would be if a man decides not to cry purely because of the gendered expectations of himself or the group he is around.
Rape, assault, etc. are not gender expectations. Physical sex differences, and the general results they have, are not gender expectations.
Quoting Possibility
Speak for yourself. I am not inconvenienced by reality. I've thought about this topic for several months after doing lots of research scientifically, psychologically, and in online communities. I've already mentioned that I do not believe there should be any laws regulating gender expression. If men want to wear dresses, so be it. But in cases where real sex differences have potential outcomes, absolutely laws and limitations need to be made. Your gender is irrelevant to the law. Your gender is pointless except to the culture, social structure you are in, or your own personal guidelines. Sex differences and their potential outcomes regarding the physical nature and potential of those differences absolutely can be regulated by laws. The problem with your argument is labeling gender as something it is not, and inadvertently crossing into sex differences.
Quoting Philosophim No specific chromosomes specified or needed in such situations, yeah.
Quoting Philosophim It does imply its existence, need, or IDENTITY. Groups are not made in a vacuum. They are made on personal, social, psychological, economic, historical, or on any other particular collection of reasons.
Note, that there is a difference between a mere grouping based one particular characterization (having such and such chromosomes) and a social sense of cohesion. . . which is therefore not your chromosomes. Neither is and the expectations we hold for who can be 'a part' of it may be arbitrary or rather culturally set in stone. Those are the reasons people grasp at in the trans persons in the wrong bathroom discussion where its a talk of gender stereotype, assumed intentions, and toxic cultural identity.
Quoting Philosophim Am I now extending the definition of sex to include biological factors such as bone structure, muscle physiology, and. . . what else?
Quoting Philosophim That is the point of looking for exceptions such as in the case of trans people because this doesn't then become a throw away point but a reality.
Quoting Philosophim So, this whole discussion feels pointless as I could put in an exception for trans individuals as has already been done or will be done.
Quoting Philosophim I've been talking about cross bathroom attendance. . . of trans individuals. Let us be sure to not parrot the myth of advocating for increased sexual predation because we give trans exceptions.
Quoting Philosophim Then prevent actual potential harm. . . not a person just using the restroom for its intended purpose. The exception clause you brought up comes back at us again.
Quoting Philosophim Well. . . you did say. . .
Quoting Philosophim
That is what 'passing' is.
Quoting Philosophim Unless. . . [insert trans exception].
Quoting Philosophim . . . and the well-founded as well as supported implied intention to possibly do harm. That trans-exception again, also.
Ok, I think we've narrowed down our misunderstanding.
We don't generally let men or women in the other bathrooms. Being trans has nothing to do with whether you are a man or woman by sex. Your dress and behavior do not negate your sex or make you special. We don't have exceptions for trans people, because trans people aren't biologically different, they're just different by gender.
You seem to think how a person acts should trump sex differences. They don't. Acting like what some people think the opposite sex should act like does not make you the opposite sex. This is a clear fact. So if you're a man in shorts, a tank top, sweater, or a dress, you don't belong in woman's sports, their bathroom, or any other place divided by sex.
We do not divide bathrooms based on how you're dressed. There's a reason why urinals are not in women's restrooms, and its not because men "shouldn't cry". So there is no exception based on gender. There are exceptions based on physical sex differences or having a child of the correct sex with you. Thus there is no exception for trans individuals, because trans people are people of a particular sex who act or dress differently then their sex's stereotype.
Quoting substantivalism
I'm a little lost here. I'm not saying you can't have a relationship or an identity within a group. But you cannot have the identity of another sex, when you are not the other sex. You cannot have an identity of being a pale red head if you are a brown skinned brunette. You can never be the opposite sex. Its impossible. Desiring to be, pretending to be, are all desires that cannot come to fruition in reality.
I'll put another question to you. Why can't a trans person use the bathroom of their own sex? Why can't a trans person compete with members of their own sex? Why can they not accept that they are a particular sex, but they like to act like the other sex? Isn't that reality? I have no problem with a man dressing as a woman, or a woman dressing up like a man. But when you think doing so makes you the other sex, and affords you the ability to cross over to the other sex when those divisions by law were made based on sex, you've crossed over from logic into wish fulfillment. Societies job is not to entertain other people's wish fulfillment.
Quoting substantivalism
And I believed I said that because you were implying passing at some point. Looking back I don't see where that was. If you did not imply that, my mistake. But that is why I brought it up.
So to your point then, you need to explain to me why acting like or impersonating the other sex gives you the right to enter areas that are separated by sex. If we don't let non-trans men into women's bathrooms, why should one who acts like a stereotype of one, should?
First of all, gender is not necessarily about ought - As a woman, I have learned not to make decisions based on societal expectations of how I ought to behave. In turn, and because Im rarely in a position to enforce judgement, my interactions with men are based on how he is likely to act in any given situation, not how he should act.
This is more than recognising the potential physical action - Im a small woman, so if I responded to physical capacity alone, Id be living in fear with almost every encounter. I have to take into account more complex qualitative predictions as to the probability of that potential being acted on. Fortunately in most situations thats low, and my own capacity to interact at an intelligent level is high - so overall, my fear is low. I feel I should point out that, as women, there are many occasions in our lives where we have our pants around our ankles in the presence of strange men, and need to recognise much more than the physical potential action that a man can act on in order to interact effectively.
So, let me be clear - the mere physical ability for a man to penetrate a woman is NOT the source of fear or discomfort felt by women. Rape and sexual assault ARE an aspect of gender in relation to sex - this is not a matter of either/or. Men (or women) who use their physical potential action to oppress or manipulate the behaviour of others (male or female) as their perceived right is the problem, NOT the potential action itself.
Quoting Philosophim
Well, I can more reliably predict the intent of someone by their behaviour than by their physical appearance or dress. Gender is not simple at all - its a complex structure of predictions that are probabilistic at best. The discomfort felt in witnessing a man crying in public is also an example of gender expectations at work - but were not obliged to express that discomfort in how we respond.
In the same way, a male who walks into the female bathroom is going to cause discomfort in women based on a combination of gender AND sex, not sex alone. If they are dressed as a woman, then Im going to watch for other behaviour indicators to assess the potential risk. Its easy enough to do (harder to explain), and anything less than that would be ignorance on my part.
Quoting Philosophim Yes, it hasn't anything to do with chromosomes. Only whatever ISN'T chromosomes. . . so everything else. Unless you have a different definition to provide.
Quoting Philosophim Yes to the former. The latter however ignores societal classes, social roles, and stereotypes themselves.
Quoting Philosophim Well, i'm not privy to biological essentialism and given your extremely broad label painted for the word gender it actually is the case that it does. As it now covers everything that people would feel is relevant to being part of their group such as social roles, social discourse, social etiquette, dress, mannerisms, etc. Even much of the biological elements which can be readily modified. The literal only thing not included are your chromosomes by definition and or any latent biological essentialism that couldn't be 'transitioned' away.
So if it quacks like a duck, acts like a duck, and walks like a duck. Should it better stay away from those other ducks because its DNA doesn't match up?
The above is the impression I get from the defensive position i'm entertaining here. They are talking about bathrooms as spaces in which only "woman" are allowed and the 'sex' element to this is an excuse or cover up for prior assumptions of how transitioned an individual needs to be to then be seen culturally as 'woman/man' enough. Rather like an outcast seeking to be allowed by the best of their efforts into a collective that seeks to outcast them permanently for reasons irrelevant for the significant portion of most individuals as a part of that collective.
Quoting Philosophim It could make you similar in every manner that is relevant to most people as to what it means to be culturally/socially a man/woman while not having the right chromosomes still.
Quoting Philosophim It's based on your biological appendage then but technically both bathrooms should have toilets that allow for either to use. I prefer them even due to their added privacy of a closed door.
Quoting Philosophim The point I want to emphasize at this stage is how we've treated the bathroom situation. As a couple of the feminist articles i've seen on the issue have showcased and you admitted its about perceived safety among those of similar supposed standing. Its thinking, because we have the same external biology/behavior/chromosomes that we then feel comfortable around you in that vulnerable state. The question then is how much of the first two are needed until suddenly they, as you said before, 'don't feel uncomfortable'? Is there a 'male/female brain' or sense of biological essentialism that dooms any person who tries to avoid those masculine/feminine stereotypes?
Quoting Philosophim If you are talking about chromosomes. . . then yes. If you are talking about societal classes to identify under or be a part of. . . well. . . we are on a philosophy forum.
The question isn't of changing your DNA it's about acceptance and 'passing' in a societal context. Being allowed or given permission among groups of a particular sort. I'm being rather general here.
Quoting Philosophim Uhhh. . . reasons.
Quoting Philosophim Mostly because of the bare fact that you made in the beginning of this whole discussion. Gender isn't sex. It's fluid and people who have a particular set of chromosomes might just behave contrary to expectations of this biological fact. So, they may desire to be accepted into that grouping irrespective of being held down by their mere chromosome status. This new desire being so great that it motivates them to completely change many aspects of themselves to achieve this goal. Perhaps not too different to changing oneself in certain minor or major ways to gain friends, a romantic partner, or mirror a famous individual.
Why do you desire to be however masculine/feminine of a mix that you are?
Quoting Philosophim If gender is separate from or to be mostly dissolved away from sex then it's just dress, stereotype, and. . . lots of varied behaviors.
Quoting Philosophim Look everyone! We finally got to the actual point of this sort of discussion!
The question here is. . . what makes a woman/man that isn't their chromosomes? What behaviors/mannerisms/mental states are 'owned' by women/men?
Quoting substantivalism
No, that's incomplete. Do men dressed in clown suits get rejected from the men's restroom? No. Its not appearance, its based on sex. Appearance is how we readily judge another's sex. Can you attempt to disguise your sex? Yes. Does that change your sex? No. Does that mean that because we can disguise our sex that suddenly it makes it ok? No. Appearance is not your sex. Being able to "pass" does not change your sex.
Quoting substantivalism
Yes, it does ignore classes, roles and stereotypes. That's gender. The idea that a woman is inferior to a man is gender. The idea that only men can be fire fighters is gender. The idea that men cannot raise children is gender. All of those are subjective stereotypes and quite frankly, discrimination. Gender is not a good or positive thing substantivalism. Its a primitive emotional approach to judging members of the opposite sex on things that have nothing to do with one's actual physical sex.
Instead of digging into stereotypes by saying that trans people "belong to a certain social club" we should be changing our attitudes about gender stereotyping. Men should be able to wear tasteful dresses in public and we should all be able to treat that man with respect, equal rights, and not derision. A person shouldn't feel like they need to lie that they're the other sex to avoid stereotypes. A short man or tall man shouldn't be bullied.
To help me with our discussion, tell me why someone should cross sex divided places because of gender, over instead simply working on getting people to accept that men and women don't have to conform to gender stereotypes to be men and women? Specific examples please, not general abstracts.
Quoting substantivalism
Again, this is wrong. It is not culturally what it means to be a man or a woman, that's poor grammar. A man or a woman is by sex. Cultural expectations of how a man or a woman should behave, dress, and act apart from the physical sex differences is gender. Saying because I act like a certain expectation that one sex has makes me that sex, is discriminatory behavior.
Quoting substantivalism
It has nothing to do with a male or female brain. A man can enter a bathroom with painted nails, act flighty and emotional, and they're still a man. They are in a place they belong based on their sex. A muscular woman with a deeper voice who likes war games and monster trucks can enter a bathroom as well. The ultimate reason why we have bathroom division is based on sex. Not just the physical sex, but the act as well. Bathrooms are places of physical vulnerability, and generally attempt to have privacy from the rest of the world. Its not a place you go in and flex in the mirror or twirl your new dress around to strangers. You know this.
In places of physical vulnerability we try to minimize discomfort. We don't want to hear a man and a woman having sex in the stall next to us. When a woman has a period accident, she doesn't want to have men seeing her in that position as she takes a bloody tampon to a trashcan. Men don't want you looking over at their urinal. You get it.
Now, do we have exceptions like gay individuals? Of course. But its an extremely rare portion of the population. Further, the secondary sex characteristics do not have as much of a power difference, so any assault is less deadly and easier to fight off.
When you argue that trans people should be able to cross bathrooms, you make the mistake of ignoring sex. If you consider sex, what you should be saying is that all men and women should have no bathroom division at all. If its only a cultural idea, then we say the whole thing is a mistake.
So, argue that there should be no division of bathrooms based on sex if you want. Once you can show that, then we can say trans people can use the other restroom, as well as non-trans people. If you think there should be a division of bathrooms by sex, then trans people don't get to use the other bathroom, because gender is not the same as sex.
Quoting substantivalism
Societal classes are subjective expectations of behavior, culture, and dress based on those chromosomes. An expected societal class has nothing to do with your sex, its about the expectations others have about your sex. That's gender. Gender and sex are different. So this does not counter my point that changing your sex is impossible. You can disguise yourself to change people perceptions about you and their expecations of you. That does not change your sex.
Quoting substantivalism
Ok, then why don't we work on harsher punishment for violations like this, or work on the culture so that members of their own sex will not act negatively towards other based on stereotypes? Why is the solution to pretend a stereotype means you now belong in a place of another sex, despite you not being that other sex? Isn't the former much more logical and cause the least amount of issues in society?
Quoting substantivalism
And to that I say, "Tough luck". I'm short and I can't be a basketball player. It has nothing to do with my desire to be a basketball player. It has to do with my physical difference. Me putting on stilts and telling everyone I'm a tall person, or acting like the stereotypes of a tall person doesn't change this. My denial from the NBA isn't because of my behavior or societal discrimination. Its based on my failure to measure up physically for what is needed to be an effective member of a competitive sport.
Quoting substantivalism
Yes, that's exactly it.
Quoting substantivalism
Nothing. That's the entire point. Gender is a subjective stereotype of a group or individuals. If it doesn't have to do with physical characteristics, its not sex.
Gender is a stereotype of "ought". If you don't behave in accordance with certain stereotypes, does that change your sex? Of course not. My sister does not wear dresses and dissects dead bodies for a living. Does that mean she's not a woman by sex? Of course not.
Quoting Possibility
These are not strange men. These are medical professionals who have been vetted to ensure a particular level of trust. Men and women janitors can enter into cross bathrooms because we also know they're vetted. There is a level of professional trust. We're not pulling some guy off the street to give you an exam right?
Quoting Possibility
Some women, yes. But I am interested in groups, not individuals. Let me ask you this then, should there be a division of men and woman at all by bathrooms? Ignore the idea of trans entirely. Should we remove the men and woman bathroom division entirely? Would that cause any problems? If you say yes, then you are one person who does not believe men and women should be divided by sex in bathroom situations. If so, I have no disagreement, as you've erased a sex division, not a gender division.
If you do think there's a separation needed, then you need to explain to me why a separation based on sex suddenly gets overruled by a man wearing a dress. Why don't they still go over to their own bathroom? Why do they need or be allowed to come over to yours?
If there is nothing concrete that the word "Woman" refers to then it refers to nothing.
So it is conceptually impossible for a biological human male to be a female without making terms meaningless.
If a man goes in oestrogen and grows breasts he is trying to emulate a woman because oestrogen is linked to developmental features in actual women. So once again he is modelling himself on a real biological phenomena found in nature not on a mental concept of gender identity. Which is identical to blackface and someone emulating the features of an African.
Quoting Philosophim Except that isn't what you implied before. . .
Quoting Philosophim So. . . its based on appearance then from which they immediately judge the intentions of the person in question. If they don't 'pass' then and only then is it a problem regardless of whether its a trans-women or mistaking a rather "manly" seeming cis-gendered female for a male. It doesn't matter. The 'uncomfortability' that actually motivates lawful chromosomal divide is based on the fact that. . .
Quoting Philosophim
Quoting Philosophim It does change the point or significance of using it or its utility in a true general sense.
Quoting Philosophim Being seen as a likely perpetrator or as a statistical risk based off of your 'grouping' is also not based directly on your sex. It's a prior bias. . . assumption. . . stereotype if you will. . . and sex is neither sufficient nor necessary to motivate its presence. Only the action itself or some well founded intention to indulge in it when it's readily present.
Quoting Philosophim You know, you are right. So let us agree for the moment with Butler that gender is to be seen as a performance. You aren't pretending to be a man dressed as women. You are you. Identity isn't XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes. . . it's who you 'are' or what you consider your 'self'.
This is why I don't get you throwing gender out the window but yet you still want to keep this sex divide at the forefront. Why? You imply its independent of gender, gender preference, or stereotyping but when it has to do more with presumed intentions based on appearance or uncomfortability then you go outside your tool box.
Quoting Philosophim The question is why it should be a dividing line at all WITH a lawful set of consequences that negate some moral intuitions we have on it. Yes, you've already said that laws don't have to be morally guided. . . that does mean they still could be. In the trans-person using the restroom for its purpose example; if they are not being voyeuristic, violent, invading the personal privacy of others within reason, abusive, or intentionally disruptive without reason then it doesn't strike me as something deserving of lawful consequences. They are punished. . . for using a restroom.
The sex distinction makes the above a punishable offence. Which compounds itself upon society as a whole, your intention as well. Which motivates not the dissolution but the cementing of gender stereotyping as now its implied, whether by accident or a desired result, that you can't get society to a point that. . .
Quoting Philosophim
Turns out, such stereotyping is seemingly motivating the decision to punish someone who's only action was using the restroom. The motivation being one's 'uncomfortability' which is garnered by societal expectations of how one who is MALE is to be judged on sight or even under a 'disguise'.
Again, you seem to want to agree with me on gender and yet if a person doesn't conform to gendered expectations of their sex then they are still said to be 'doing it wrong'. They are not dressed, 'they are a man dressed as a woman.' They are not a mere individual, 'they are a man or woman.' Male and female don't carry those connotations but they can drag such stereotypes along if you don't explicitly make that clear. On top of the fact that a male person can't pretend to be a female person anymore than I can change by DNA but anything else may be extensively changeable. . . and therefore not 'owned' by the male sex or the 'female' sex.
Quoting Philosophim Then you need to put this canyon divide between, in the terms as i'm using them, what it means to be a man or women as well as accepted among those who ascribe to those labels/categories and male/female.
Nobody should or does act like they have XX chromosomes. As if they mean, "I'm feeling really XX chromosome today." No, they act feminine where this cluster concept may cover the experience/behavior. No one is pretending to be male, they are everything that in the performative definition of gender such a category is meant to imply by a colloquial usage.
Female people don't own facial expressions and externalized forms of certain behavior nor do males as if some one doing something similar is 'stealing' it or some 'cheap copy'. As that assumes, contrary to our assumptions, that gender is in fact strapped to your chromosomal status. That or some weird claim as to all people who are male/female people of being some monolithic ontological entity that 'owns' those features regardless of whether they can be changed.
Quoting Philosophim That would be a start.
Quoting Philosophim First, sex is not the reason they feel the need to be with the same sex. . . its SIMILARITY. Do I need to quote you again. . .
Quoting Philosophim Go figure. . . so it had everything to do with appearance. Sex is a secondary coincidental fact to one in which similarity is what seems to rule acceptance here.
Sex is a characteristic and it is not a motivational group identification to fall under. If you do that you are now going outside the purview of sex into. . . sociological creations.
Quoting Philosophim However, the motivation and reason why this choice is made can be heavily influenced by gender.
It is the equivalent to me having plastic surgery to look Chinese and winning Chinese business man of the year.
Or like the actual case of Rachael Dolezal who impersonated a black person and took a job advertised for a black person.
Men do not tend to look like women especially because women tend to have prominent breasts and wide hips so having surgery and hormones to look like woman and try and act like a women is an impersonation not a accidentical misidentification.
I was drawing a distinction between accidentally being mistaken for the opposite sex and impersonating the opposite sex and imitating how you believe they act and think (which in Dylan Mulvaney's case is an offensive parody).
Legally if anyone born male/ with male DNA etc is allowed to identify as a women there are literally no more women's only spaces or women's rights.
It is a fundamental attack on the identity of a vulnerable group that has become more aggressive in recent years and the consequences are becoming more blatant each year.
For example two female inmates in the USA were impregnated by a trans identified male in a women's prison and male born people have started to take more and more women's sporting trophies with the consequence that they have had to ban people who went through male puberty (men) from women's swimming, cycling and athletic.
And this is a dystopian and draconian policing of thought and language as well to impose someone else's inner desires on feelings on everyone else. Apart from that there is a surge of detransitioners with damaged bodies that are getting harder to ignore. So it is an unsustainable situation.
I am not, nor was it presented as such in this discussion. Men and women are based on sex differences. Gender is a subjective belief in how a man or woman should act. Male human = man, Female human = woman.
You must first have a human male or female to then ascribe gender. Because gender is the expectation of an individual or culture in how a human male or female should dress or act in particular situations that do not involve the physical aspect of their sex. If you need to express it in terms that fit with the accepted definitions of the OP, you can use the term cis and transgendered.
Quoting substantivalism
I think you may have misunderstood me or I was not clear enough. This is exactly what I am implying. My examples of noting that someone can disguise themselves are irrelevant to the separation of bathrooms by sex. It doesn't matter if you go into a bathroom and no one realizes you're not of the same sex, its still not supposed to happen.
If I break into a person's home, steal nothing, then leave, did I still break the law? Yes. Doesn't matter if I didn't do any harm. Doesn't matter if most people who break in won't do harm. My home is a safe place that I let my friends into. If you disguised yourself as my friend and I didn't notice, its still wrong.
Quoting substantivalism
No it doesn't. Bathrooms are for personal hygene and getting rid of waste bodily fluids. The sexes have different ways of getting rid of those. Dressing or acting in a particular way does not change that. Its not a party place. Its not a place to express fashion. Its to go to the bathroom. And since you have to undress or put yourself in a vulnerable position to expel certain bodily fluids, we keep the sexes separate.
Quoting substantivalism
Yes it is. It has nothing to do with your gender expression. I want to make it VERY clear. Transgender people are not sexual predators. Sexual predators are sexual predators. We keep the sexes clear for sexual privacy, not gendered privacy.
Quoting substantivalism
The definition of a performance is an act. So yes, you are pretending to be a man dressed as a woman or vice versa. That's basic a basic set of definitions and a logical conclusion. If you're saying that acting like something you are not, or identifying as something you are not, makes you that something, that's false.
Now, if you want to internally identify yourself as whatever you want, feel free. Invent your own language as you see fit. But when you go into society which has accepted definitions and language, you do not get to tell society to accept yours. You can ask, but it is not obligated in any way to agree with you. If you identify as a woman in society, but you are not a woman by sex, you are simply wrong in your identity.
Quoting substantivalism
Your set of sentences after this were too abstract and didn't really answer the question I gave. Please clarify with examples.
Quoting substantivalism
No, I've said several times that its based on the very real sex differences between men and women. Its not about the likelihood, its about the potential. This is not a gender issue.
Quoting substantivalism
I've never said someone not conforming to their gender is "doing it wrong". I've been claiming this entire time that gender is subjective stereotyping. Your gender has nothing to do with your sex. Quoting substantivalism
Gender is the expectation of behavior for a sex, so of course it is tied to a sex. If you say you have the gender of a man, you're taking someone's belief of how a biological man should act or dress in culture. Now does that gender differ from someone else's? Sure. But if they say you have a male gender, the implication is you are acting the way a biological male is expected to act.
Quoting substantivalism
We're not talking about being around the same sex. Anyone can make friends or hang out with people of any sex or gender. But there are particular places and events that are divided based on sex. The way you act or dress does not suddenly make this sex divide go away.
Quoting substantivalism
People can make decisions based off of gender, which would be the stereotype of some individual or culture. But you have not made a case for why certain situations divided by sex: bathrooms, sports, and shelters for example, should suddenly be changed because of gender. A subjective outlook that can differ from individual to individual has no basis overriding biological fact that stands despite subjective outlooks.
Maybe somebody already spoke to this, but bathrooms are also a place to adjust one's clothing, possibly change clothing, and apply makeup (if one does such a thing). These are also private activities, tolerable in front of the same sex but less so in front of the opposite sex. Bathrooms are also, as you indicated, supposed to be a calm place, without unnecessary static.
Quoting Philosophim Except when it comes to biologically transitioned individuals and intersex people who still, besides their possibly 'discordant' sex organs, can use either bathroom just as easily.
Quoting Philosophim So a person is a trans-female who passes. . . are they seen as a sexual predator or not?
Quoting Philosophim Unless what that thing is, is nothing above the act itself. Being feminine/masculine (NOT TALKING ABOUT SEX) is heavily enforced by and cemented socially in a variety of acts that do not have to involve you taking your clothes off or revealing your chromosomes.
Quoting Philosophim Society then has what right to tell us who we are internally? None.
Quoting Philosophim That is, if they are talking about a woman as someone with XX chromosomes. However, they are probably talking about woman as a social and protected political identity which is where the discussion comes in.
Quoting Philosophim The sex differences between men and women are chromosomes or what primary/secondary sexual organs you possess. Sex is not the 'potential to rape' or 'probably going to rape'. That is something that ISN'T SEX.
You may use sex as a classification scheme to reduce the possibility but sex is still not a 'statistical likelihood' or an 'uncomfortable' feeling or 'the potential to. . .' .
Quoting Philosophim . . . and it's there because. . . why? Why should it be there?
Quoting Philosophim . . . and these divisions by chromosomal status are there because. . .? Why should it be there?
That is why it seems some feminists seem to consider a white middle class female as a different kind woman than a poor african american female. I.E. the social unison or class here is not marking off important differences or needs to account for those in a way that naive approaches are argued to supposedly miss completely.
If you were catching a plane somewhere would you want to be flown by someone with a legitimate Pilot's license or someone who had been giving a replica pilots license out of sympathy?
This appears to be the only area in life we allow someone to identify as something or someone they are not and identify into a category that is already taken. And it sets a bad precedence and undermines the truth.
Quoting substantivalism
Woman as word is derived from the biological reality of women in whose wombs every human being grew. There is a whole field of medicine dedicated to women's bodies.
Whatever a woman's socio-economic status, class, political leanings and ethnicity only a woman can have endometritis, get pregnant, miscarry, menstruate, go through menopause or have an abortion.
There are enough commonalities among women as well as historical and current inequalities based on biological sex to make them a clear and distinct protected category with rights aimed at their unique experiences and needs.
If one group of women deserved a bigger voice than others it would be working class women. Afghan women, young girls and so on.
But gender ideology is promoted by middle class well off women and people attending university not by women in prison who may end up sharing a cell with a male bodied person or women who already have the least protections.
I believe biological real world distinctions need to be protected by everyone and feminist viewpoints that undermine women's biological reality and give women's spaces and rights to men are pernicious and misogynistic.
As gay man I feel the same way about how my own identity is being compromised by other gay people without my input or permission. There should not be an elite group of feminists setting standards and policy for all other women.
Sex is not a subjective outlook. We're starting to repeat, so I'm going to note this has already been stated.
Quoting substantivalism
I've said several times why it is. You even quoted me right here: Quoting Philosophim
Quoting substantivalism
Absolutely. We're not talking about exceptions. I noted that a long time back. If you're neither a man nor a woman, then yes, you can use either bathroom. Its a non-issue in this conversation. We are talking about biological men and biological women.
Quoting substantivalism
I am starting to feel like you are not actually reading my replies. I have said several times that trans people are not sexual predators. Stop implying that they are. Stop implying that I've said they are. I'm getting tired of repeating myself.
Quoting substantivalism
This is called gender. This is the entire focus on the conversation. Nothing new has been stated. Please re-read my definition of gender and sex again.
Quoting substantivalism
I clearly said you can identify yourself however you want. But if I identify myself as the president, then start telling society I'm the president and try to get into the White House, they're going to kick me out because I'm not the president. You can identify however you want, but society is under no obligation to accept it. In the case of sex, biology is a world wide agreed upon standard which we follow. It has nothing to do with gender.
Quoting substantivalism
I've said this several times. I feel like you're just rambling now. Go re-read our back and forth.
Quoting substantivalism
Again, re-read the last few replies. I'm not retyping the same thing I've already typed three times.
Quoting substantivalism
Again, reread.
I was enjoying the conversation but you are at your end. Either you've lost what I've been saying in the conversation, or you know exactly what I'm saying, you can't counter what I'm saying, and you're grasping at straws. Please do better on your next response or I will know this discussion is finished.
I would disagree with the OP claim that sex is objective. What is objective are biological features or properties. 'Sex' is a subjective term that is used to categorize beings based on those features, but it depends on the accepted definition, i.e. which features do we consider as essential for that category.
A case in point: people with the Swyer syndrome have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, therefore might be considered as genetic males (according to the OP). However, due to underdevelopment of their male gonads, they develop uterus and vagina. In childhood they are typically identified as females, only at puberty their development problems are diagnosed. They do not develop female gonads either, so they are infertile, but can be surrogate mothers: when implanted with fertilized egg, they can carry it and give birth. That means that a XY chromosome person can give birth.
Interestingly, such cases have prompted researchers to study the issue more thoroughly and it turns out that the Swyer syndrome is not the only cause of lack of development of a male phenotype. Generally, without proper hormone regulation an embryo, even with male genetics, 'defaults' to having most (but not all) female features. According to research done in Denmark one in 15000 people with male genetic setup have been identified and raised as girls due to their features typical of female phenotype. Surprisingly, some of them were not diagnosed with any abnormalities at all, beside lack of menstruation and infertility and were considered as biologically female even in their thirties.
Hello Jabberwock! Welcome to the forums. Please, write your thoughts and feelings freely.
Quoting Jabberwock
For a first time post, this is a very good point to bring up. Yes, I am aware of genetic abnormalities that result in a lack of clear distinction between the sexes. But these are exceptions. Further, it doesn't change the definition of what a man or a woman is. In this case, these people fit neither fully into the category of man or woman.
In these cases, an abnormality or handicap asks us different questions. How does someone who is genetically not a man or a woman fit into sexually divided spaces? I think that should be considered based on the difference. But not we're not talking about gendered behavior, we're talking about placing someone with an objectively separate sex from a normal man and woman.
A subjective idea is an opinion. For example, lets say in one society men are not expected to wear dresses. In another society, they are. This is a societal expectation of how a sex should dress, but it is not an objective measure of how a sex should act. Objective measures of sex would be solid sex organ differences or clear genetic traits. It really doesn't matter what someone's opinion on the matter is, sex is a clearly defined term that has been studied and is known across all cultures and outlooks.
The subject is then focused on the norm, not the exceptions. While exceptions can be great to examine to make sure we aren't mistaken on the norm, I don't think that is the case here. No one is subjectively determining the sexual genetic normal for men and women. But I argue that gender, or the expectation of how men and women by sex should act, is a subjective stereotype, and does not override one's sex.
Great post again Jabberwock, and I hope you enjoy yourself here!
Again, there is no problem in handling an exception. While they have an XY set of genetics, either there is some flaw within them, or an accident happened during birth that would change the phenotype. In this case again, the exception is the physical and objective difference, not a gendered difference. The difference is not subjective. In this case we can decide as a society how to best divide such a person based on these phenotypical differences outside of the person's control. But again, we are judging based on physical sex expression, not gender.
This is a far cry from a normal person. Societies sex division is based on the norm, not exceptions. And exceptions apply to exceptions. Exceptions do not override the norm. What you are talking about are transexuals. You can be a transgendered transexual, but being a transexual is not a matter of gender.
1. Sex is only determined genetically. That means that on the first day after the conception it can be identified and whatever happens phenotypically is irrelevant. By that account, people with androgen insensitivity syndrome are males, even though they have vaginas, everyone treats them as females and they themselves identify as females.
2. Sex is not fully determined by the genome, i.e. it can also be determined by the phenotype (i.e. actually expressed features). That means that even though the embryo has a male genome, something might happen along its development that will still make that person non-male.
Which is the case, in your opinion?
And thank you for the kind words, It is nice to feel welcome here!
Absolutely. But do the exceptions deny what a man and a woman are by DNA? No. A man is still an XY, and a woman is still an XX by default.
Let compare it to a tree. Lets say a tree grows is short like a bush. In fact, from a layperson's observation, it looks like a bush in its physical expression. According to biology is it a bush? No, its a tree, though an exception to the general definition of tree. Does this exception change the general definition of tree? No. Same here.
Quoting Jabberwock
Yes, if sex is determined genetically, then we have the definitions of male and female. But what if a person has an XXY chromosome? Well they are neither a man nor a woman in that case. Its not that the objectivity of sex has changed, its that we objectively have something that isn't a man or woman in the general definition, its an exception. It may be an exception enough that we invent a new term for it, or we simply say its "a woman that physically resembles a man". This would be more to your second argument.
The differences of secondary sex characteristics do not change the objective sex. In general, men are stronger than women. But a woman could appear that ends up being far stronger than most men. That doesn't change the fact that she's a woman by genetics. What we're really discussing is what we do with such individuals when we have situations in society that are divided by sex, but the overall secondary sex expression does not match the norm. Where do we fit a man that physically expresses as a woman? We would re-examine why we have the sex divide, and see if the physical sex expression is different enough that such a person could enter in both areas, or it would be better for everyone else if they entered only one.
In my view, these are transexuals. In matters of transsex, discussions of sex division ARE relevant. How and why we divide people who do not fit in the norms are relevant. Personally, I see no issue with a trans sexed individual who physically matches the secondary sex characteristics of the other genome from using either sexed bathroom. But to be clear, being transsex is not the same as being transgendered. A transgendered individual is someone who identifies with a subjective view point of the way a sex is supposed to dress or act. So a fully chromosonal and secondary sex expressed man who wears a dress is transgendered. Their gender expression should have no sway in discussions about sex division. Things like bathrooms and sports are not divided by gender, but are divided by sex. Thus why transgendered individuals should not be able to cross into places divided by sex.
Fantastic points! You are definitely welcome here and thanks for engaging with the discussion!
In such cases maybe it would be more productive to limit the divisions not to sex (as we agree that the expression might not be clear cut in some persons), but to particular features.
In speaking of the cases which point to disasters like if a transwoman rapes in a female only environment it is wrong to make generalisations. The majority of people who are transgender wish to simply live their own lives. Some blend in better than others in their chosen gender which may be more about ability to 'pass'. This may be about fortune than anything else and to focus on those who don't blend in is to reinforce stereotypes about bodies.
When people point to incongruencies about appearance it does not help, as if poking fun and stigmatisation of 'abnormality'. That is because it is those stereotypical ideals which may lead people to feel that they need to change their bodies in order to express their gender identity which does not always match biological gender.
True. For example women in general have more grey matter in their brains than men do. But if a man has more grey matter than a few women, does that make him a woman? Of course not. Sex separations in society are also not based on brain differences. No one cares about your brain composition in sports, bathrooms, or women's shelters.
Quoting Jabberwock
Lets look at it this way. We make laws based on norms, then make exceptions for cases that do not fit the norm.
So we have 95% of the population or more is a clear cut man or woman. Someone comes along and genetically does not fit. In that case we as a society can decide if their physical features are more important. Likely such a person would want to be in places where their expressed features more closely mirror the secondary affects of a particular sex, so society should probably accept that. I doubt anyone here has a problem with it.
Lets say though that a genetic woman has had some type of disruption in their development that they have the secondary sex characteristics of a man. Despite this, they choose to use the woman's restroom because they are in fact, a woman. I don't think anyone would have a problem with this either.
Now does that mean we suddenly change the rules for the norm? No. If you're a genotypical and phenotypical woman and you disguise yourself as a man, you don't suddenly get a right to walk into the men's restroom or play in men's sports. It doesn't matter that the exception can, they have something they can't change themselves.
Again, all of this is really talk of transexuals, which is not really an issue. Does a genotypical and phenotypical male get to dress up and talk like a stereotypical woman and suddenly get access to places restricted by sex? No, that doesn't make any sense at all.
It turns out to be effortless to allow someone to exist.
I'll make a concession that trying to enforce social decency(treating people the way they present themselves) has been poorly handled. Insisting someone is literally a different sex when it's intuitively a contradiction to a lot of the public has just made things worse. I more or less adopted the opinion of a surgeon that performs the procedures. In his words, the result is a feminized man or the inverse. The alteration seems to help but no one thinks they have become a different sex. They feel they moved closer to the sex they identify with and the remaining difference is something they continue to reconcile. So, let them be, I wouldn't wish that burden on anyone. In closing, let women's sports regulate women's sports. They were managing just fine without the public's input.
What is this gender you are referring to and what is this performance?
Women have innate traits based on their biology including characteristics that enable a woman to carry a child like large hips, breasts to feed a child etc. It is biological traits that are being impersonated as well as stereotypes.
I come from a family where none of the women have modified their appearance and most of the females do not wear make up they are unmistakeably female. I look unmistakeably male but I don't like sports or cars or laddish behaviour and happily read my sisters romance novels as a teenager. I don't feel less male dependent on my diversity of interests and behaviour.
If people are putting on a performance I would see that that was unhealthy unless it was solely for fun such as dressing up to go out or to enhance preexisting femininity.
I do not accept the concept of gender which seems synonymous with harmful stereotypes. Some one should not be labelled a woman because they are feminine, like makeup etc as if not conforming to trite stereotypes mean you need hormones and surgeries.
Women's rights and space and awards should be solely preserved for the reality of the biological sex. female.
I don't like women claiming they are men and having male experiences because they have no clue what is like to be truly biological male. I am not performing masculinity. I am male bodied from birth with male health issues like prostate problems. My identity is not a costume nor my decades of struggles as a male.
The performance aspect of gender is where biology and culture meet. It often results in an exaggeration of biological differences. It varies throughout history and geographical locations.
Currently, the media play a critical role, especially in ideals about the body and its aesthetics. It is a even a source of gender dysphoria as people are bombarded by images, including before and after images of transgender.
Stereotypes exaggerate biological differences and a clear binary divisions. It is possible to see gender in a less rigid way as a possible continuum, which was expressed in the idea of androgyny which has existed throughout human culture, long before the rise of the medical diagnosis of transsexualism and the movement of transgender and its politics.
Whether you say "transsexual" or "transgender" is controversial. The idea you are born in the wrong body and change sex has fallen out of fashion. But with one of the first ever person to undergo any gender affirming care Lily Elbe they medical experimented on his body to make it resemble a woman's and they went to the extent of implanting a uterus to fulfil his desire of being a mother.
"In 1931, Elbe returned for her fourth surgery, to transplant a uterus and construct a vaginal canal.[8][9][37][7] This made her one of the earliest transgender women to undergo a vaginoplasty surgery, a few weeks after Erwin Gohrbandt performed the experimental procedure on Dora Richter.[30]"
The surgery and it's subsequent attack by his immune system killed him shortly after.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili_Elbe
But back to the topic of identity. Other than genetic and biological facts what we choose as someone's identity seems arbitrary. A lot of people occasionally pick their nose and eat what they find. But no one would want that to form part of their identity I imagine. We all breathe until dead so is that part of out identity? We have a huge range of preferences and beliefs but none of these can be said to be owned by one sex or the other.
Rachel Dolezal identified as black with no recent African Heritage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal
Nkechi Amare Diallo (/n??ke?t?i? ??m??re? di????lo?/; born Rachel Anne Dolezal, November 12, 1977)[fn 1] (/?do?l????l/)[9] is an American former college instructor and activist known for presenting herself as a black woman despite being white. In addition to claiming black ancestry, she also claimed Native American descent.[10] She is also a former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter president.
The whole Rachel Dolezal saga is really relevant to this issue despite people protesting it isn't and it highlights the inconsistency/hypocrisy of identity politics. Woman's identities are not sacred but black peoples are.
No because I'm not in a situation where people are separated by having hair and not having hair. We are not talking about the general public. Your gender or sex is really no one else's business in public. We are talking about places that are divided by sex. My claim is that gender does not override sex division, because gender and sex are different.
Quoting Cheshire
I think we agree. Gender presentation does not change your sex.
Quoting Cheshire
Then they should have no problems with not being allowed into places based on sex division when they are not that sex.
But you just assume that transgender people are not transsexual, because 'the society does not care about brains'. We were supposed to talk about objective demarcation, so if the brains are different, we should take it into account.
Suppose that a person has a male body with male genitals, but due to some developmental occurrence this person's brain acquires features typically associated with women, therefore causing that person's strong identification with women. Would that person be transsexual or not?
No, that person would be transgender according to the definitions I've provided. Gender is how we expect a sex to act or dress. That's what the brain controls. We could also call that subjective stereotyping, or sexism. I think its very important as a society that is trying to avoid discrimination that we don't go back to the old idea that women and men's gender should define who they are.
Then you are inconsistent in your definitions you treat physical sex expression in genitals differently than physical sex expression in a brain.
No, I'm not. I'm saying that expected behavior is gender. If your brain now determines your sex, that means a lesbian could be considered a man because their brain is attracted to a woman. Do we want to go down that path? No, we don't. Sex is simply chromosonal and secondary sex expression.
To a point I made earlier, we don't divide the sexes by their brains. Bathroom division is based on physical privacy and vulnerability. Sports are divided based on the fact that testosterone and male hormones create physically superior people per weight class. Women's shelter's are to protect sexually traumatized women from being around the sex that traumatized them. Your brain is irrelevant.
Not if attraction to women is just one biological feature that aligns with features typically attributed to men and her other psychological features align with those of women. Again, psychology is also part of genetic expression and it might also be sexual, as there are biologically caused psychological differences typically attributed to sex. Thus it should be considered by you as 'secondary sex expression'.
So, your entire argument is regarding the caveat moments such as dressing rooms and bathrooms?
1. We do not know enough about the brain to determine this.
2. Separations by sex have NEVER involved brain differences. As such, a brain difference should not suddenly become a deciding factor. You think that a six foot 10 230 pound male should compete in women's sports because he has more grey matter in his brain than average?
3. What would be more feminine or masculine in the brain that isn't gender? Wanting to wear a dress doesn't make you feminine. There is nothing biological about being a woman that naturally compels one to wear a dress. Can you give some examples on your end?
My entire argument is the entire argument. Please read it.
1. That is exactly my point. Your claim is that transgenderism is NOT a result of biological expression of sex difference - how can you be sure?
2. That is precisely because 'sex' is a subjective collective term for many features that typically are bundled together, but not always, so the division will always be arbitrary. If we allow that not only chromosomes matter, but the expression of features, the same person might be considered both a male and a female. A person might have typically male levels of testosterone and a vagina. If we decide 'sex' based on their genitals, they have advantage in sports similar to males. If we decide 'sex' based on the testosterone level, they should use male bathrooms. Or we can accept that 'sex' is not an objective term and do the separations differently.
3. Wanting to wear a dress doesn't make you feminine, but being feminine might make you want to wear a dress. What exactly gives you certainty that the desire to identify with specific sex is not biologically based?
Everything is biological. You are your brain, and it is biological. The point I'm making is that if we could actually identify sex differences in the brain, its irrelevant to why we divide the sexes to begin with. We don't divide the sexes by brains, period. If you think we should, then please give a reason why.
Quoting Jabberwock
If it was subjective and arbitrary, why do transgender people want to be the other sex so much? If it was subjective and arbitrary, they wouldn't care. It is objective and not arbitrary by this alone.
And again, and if we start repeating ourselves its probably time to agree to disagree, I've noted that exceptions do not change the rules that concern the norms. We make exceptions for those people. I have not seen a compelling reason for a transgender person who is the norm of their sex suddenly being allowed into a place divided by sex because they want to act or dress in a stererotypical belief of how a sex should behave or dress. Feel free to give one, and we can keep discussing this point. But without answering this question, there is no more to explore here.
Finally, the label of sex is settled by science around the world. Give a scientist a genome of any human being and they will identify XY as male and XX as female. This is not subjective.
Quoting Jabberwock
To this point again, exceptions are not the norm. Exceptions do not change the rules for the norm unless a valid reason is given. An exception to one's chromosomes do not change the objective definition that an XY is a man while an XX is a woman.
Quoting Jabberwock
They're actually the same statement. "Feminine" is a gender term. It implies that being a woman entails certain cultural expressions and behaviors that can be different across cultures. My sister does not wear dresses, does not paint her nails, and dissects dead bodies for a living. These would largely be considered masculine actions in some cultures. Does that mean my sister should suddenly be playing sports on a male team? That people should now call her a man? Of course not.
The second argument I think you need to make is why being masculine or feminine as expressed subjectively by cultures should logically lead to someone being identified as a male or female sex by law. I'm very open to hearing it!
The whole discussion started with my objection to your claim that 'sex' is objective. If your claim now is that 'sex' is 'what we divide by' and we pick and choose the features for the division, then I guess it is a tacit acknowledgment that it is not.
Quoting Philosophim
Because the society strongly acts and sometimes enforces that division. It does not really give you an option not to belong to any group, even though some of your features might not 'belong'.
Quoting Philosophim
It seems that you decide that the person is 'the norm of their sex' based on several arbitrarily selected attributes. When I point out that there might be different attributes to be taken into consideration, you just dismiss them, based on 'what society thinks'. Not very objective, I would say.
Quoting Philosophim
But that is exactly what I wrote two days ago! If you give a scientist a genome of a human with AIS, they will identify them as a male, period. But your claim was that 'these people fit neither fully into the category of man or woman'. So you obviously reject the very scientific definition you quote.
Quoting Philosophim
You seem to want to use 'norm' and 'objective fact' interchangeably. But that is simply incorrect - if there are exceptions to 'XY is a man', then it is no longer an objective fact.
Quoting Philosophim
If 'being a woman entails' some behaviors, then they are ulitimately biologically conditioned. But your definition of 'gender' claims they are not. And as I wrote, sex of the brain does not depend on a single or some features - why would it?
As for identification by law, given your own rejection of your own scientific definition, how exactly would you base it?
I did and then you decided this all only applies to the limited context of "places divided by sex". I was trying to clarify your context. You said in public it doesn't matter at all. Seems Ad-hoc.
I have never said that we pick and choose the features of what counts as male and female. XY and XX for the norm. This is objective and unchanging. What I noted is that there are places we divide by sex and not gender. Point out exactly where I start to say sex itself is subjective and please answer the point I made in the quote.Quoting Philosophim
Try to avoid accusing others of taccit denial of their own claims without very clearly pointing out the exact wording and the logical contradiction. It comes across as dishonest and is often done by those who are no longer able to answer the points of the argument. Combined with the fact you did not answer my request, its looking like you are unable to do so, and are now attacking straw men. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt though! I could be wrong, it just needs to be clearly shown.
Quoting Jabberwock
Societies expectations of how you should act as a man or woman are subjective and arbitrary. That's gender. Your sex is not subjective or arbitrary. This is why gender should not be considered in sex division. Even if your features do not match someone's gendered opinion of how a man should act, you're still objectively a man.
Quoting Jabberwock
No, I've said clearly what the norm of sex is. XX and XY are female and male respectively with expected secondary sex characteristics. That is not arbitrary. If so, show me how please. I have not dismissed your attributes in any way. I have noted them as being either deviations from sexual norms, such as a XXY, or gender which is subjective. Please give a specific example of what I am ignoring or misaligning to the definitions I've given.
Quoting Jabberwock
And what behaviors biologically entail you to be a woman? Wearing a dress? Beyond the biological differences that the brain would need to interface with to birth or procreate, what is objective behavior that solely belongs to a man or a woman? My point is that being a woman does not entail you to behaving or dressing a particular way. That's society stereotyping, not an objective assessment.
Again, is another question I've asked you here that you have not answered.
Quoting Philosophim
As well, please do not just accuse an argument of contradicting itself or being arbitrary without evidence. Please copy the lines in question you think I contradicted myself at, then point out where the contradiction is. Its easy to get into your own head and definitions and see a contradiction where the OP has not because they are not agreeing to your definitions. Further, if you don't show me directly, I'm going to correctly conclude that you misunderstood, so its important for both of us. Its fine if you don't agree to my definitions, and some of the questions I've asked you are giving you a chance to challenge them, but we need to be on the same page so we're not talking past one another.
Its not ad-hoc at all. There are places that society divides people by sex. In public we do not divide people by sex, at least in America.
Quoting Philosophim
What if we divided gender differences in the brain? That is to say, what if we hypothesized that in humans, as in other mammals, there are differences in brain wiring bwrween the sexes that translates into differences between masculine and feminine gender behaviors and perceptual-affective styles? What is a male or female dog or cat. Mor specifically, what causes make and female behavior in animals? For instance, dog breeders and experts can quickly determine the difference between a male and female simply on the basis of their behavior. It seems that make and female dogs have subtly different brain wiring. I call this perceptual-affective style , because it has to do with a a certain way a dog or cat perceives sensations and affects that is gender related and independent of individual differences in personality. Would you agree that there are such consistent , recognizable behavioral differences between the genders in dogs and cats? Would you then agree that there are also such robust inborn gender differences in behavior between male and female humans?
Would you contend that perhaps a transwoman is someone who has inborn feminine gender behaviors and perceptual affective style and this may lead to identifying as female?
"Ethological studies also underline many behavioral sex differences in other animals [18]. Prominent observations related to reproductive behaviors, such as parental care, mating strategies, and courtship displays, are almost exclusively expressed by only one of the sexes. These traits have been tagged as real sexual dimorphism [19] or qualitative differences [18]. However, differences in behaviors not exclusive to reproduction are less obvious and may differ in magnitude between the sexes. Odor detection and stress responses, for example, fall in this category and are simply considered sex differences [19] or quantitative differences [18].
In some cases, both sexes appear to exhibit the same behavior; however, the underlying neural substrate differs between them such that, under particular conditions, one sex might display a different behavior (sex convergence and divergence, [19]). For example, Lighthall et al. [20] reported there were no significant sex differences in a human decision-making task; however, under the influence of a cold pressor stress, men showed a faster reward-related decision-making speed than females, thus indicating a clear sexual divergence in behavior. This effect was attributed to differential brain functions in the dorsal striatum and anterior insula, with an increased activation in men compared to women after the stress event. Finally, there may also be population differences in behavior, which indicates that the frequency of display varies between the sexes, although the pattern is consistent [18]. For example, in most social mammals, males tend to disperse more than females [21]."
-Behavioral and Perceptual Differences between Sexes in Dogs: An Overview
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6162565/
To sum up those weighty paragraphs, there are clear differences in behavior between the sexes in regards to sexual behavior, at least in the norm. After all there are gay dogs. But to drill down even further, obviously a female brain would need to handle menstruation, while a male brain would handle the male sex organ for procreation.
But what is important is while there can be a general sense of non-sexual behavior differences between the animals, its less obvious. Thus an agressive dog can be assumed to be male more often than not, but being aggressive does not make a dog male, nor is it limited to only males being aggressive.
This is a similar point in humans. In general, expected behavior in non-sexual interactions from a particular sex is gender. And gender expectations are not objective evaluations of how an actual sex should or must act. I've made the point further up to Jabberwock in a very good discussion that our current division by sex, is due to physical sex differences. To add to this, a consideration is the sexual behaviors between the sexes as well. Male sexual aggression is a strong consideration for why women have women's shelters and separate bathrooms.
What is not considered in these sexual separations are non-sexual actions that someone may assume a sex would have. In other words, gender is not a reason for the separation. Males may be seen as more aggressive, but an aggressive woman is not forced to use a male bathroom because she does not fit her gender role. My point is that even if there are non-sexual brain differences between men and women due to biological sex, it has not been, nor should be, a consideration in situations that are divided by sex.
Let us clear something up first. Most people with AIS have XY chromosomes. If you send their genome to a geneticist, he would tell you they are male, not that they have chromosomes different from men and women. Because according to genetic definitions of sex, they are male. Thus if we accept your objective scientific definition, people of biological male sex can have vaginas and give (surrogate) births.
Do we agree so far?
First, I again ask you on your next reply to answer my questions to you. Is it fair that I'm the only one being asked questions in a discussion while mine go ignored and unanswered? No. That's not a discussion. What we're trying to do here is have a discussion between two people trying to figure out what makes logical sense in matters of sex and gender. Carving out only what you want to discuss when the other person takes their time to address everything you've asked is not a discussion, its a one sided attack. I don't think you're intentionally doing it as you seem like a bright individual, and I've really enjoyed your points so far. But please, take the time to answer my questions as well if I have spent the time and effort to answer yours.
Those with AIS are not able to birth kids or get other people pregnant. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome/
Regardless, such a person is still a man, but with the caveat that they have a disorder that they are insensitive to androgens. Once puberty hits, the syndrome is first found when secondary sex characteristics begin to happen.
Lets say for fun however that male's could give birth. They would still be males. Male seahorses for example give birth. By sex, they are still males. Once again, having an exception to the norm does not change the norm, nor has your example shown me that sex is not objective.
Alright, with that please answer my previous points and questions before asking more of your own Jabberwock. I look forward to your answers!
It should be noted 'XY is a male' is a scientific definition of sex, but only one of several, namely genetic (chromosomal) one. There are other, like gonadal sex or phenotypic sex, which take different features into consideration. You seemed to acknowledged that when you wrote about 'sex expressions' (which clearly refer to phenotypic sex, not chromosomal one). Moreover, you wrote that people with AIS are 'neither a man nor a woman' - it seemed you referred to their sex, not gender. Again, writing that makes sense only when referring to their gonadal sex, less so when referring to their phenotypic sex. That is what I was confused about and decided to clarify the issue before we took the discussion further (including answers your questions).
Quoting Philosophim
I want to make a couple of claims here. The first is that gender expectations must be understood in ways similar to the role that expectations concerning other forms of behavior play in helping us to understand one another better. The argument Im making is a kind of Kantian one. That is, there are a host of ways of being that appear to be reflected in functional organization patterns in the brain that present as a kind of personality style, or at least an aspect of personality. Many of these we currently label in terms of pathologies, but we seem to be slowly moving away from such medicalizing thanks to political activism. Some examples include schizophrenia, Wilsons syndrome and autism-aspergers. I want to include human gender behavior.
I view individual gender as a mixture of inborn and cultural features. The inborn features to me are the most fascinating, because they consist of a neural organization that I call a perceptual-affective style.
This style globally , but often subtly, affects behavior including bodily comportment , speech pronunciation , sexual attraction, posture, emotions and many other aspects of our engagement with the world.
What being born with a sharply different gender than ones same-sex peers can teach one (but it isnt guaranteed to do so) is that all of us ( not just the non-binary) are behaviorally shaped in this global fashion, all of us have a perceptual-affective gender style unique to us but usually close enough to those of our same-sex peers that it is invisible to us. When it is no longer invisible to us , due to a sharp enough difference in our gendered behavior with respect to our same-sex peers, we are given an opportunity to notice the way that gender sweepingly affects human behavior in general. Of course, one doesnt need to be different in this way in order to come up with such insights, but it certainly helps.
What complicates this picture is that the interplay between culture and inborn dispositions makes it impossible to nail down once and for all the meaning of masculine and feminine, since these change along with culture.
My second claim has to do with the embodied nature of physical sexual features. Embodied approaches within psychology reveal that such anatomical
manifestations of biological sexual expression such as genitalia cant be understood in isolation from how they are used, how they are performed and enacted. Combining this with my first claim, ones psychological gender defines what a persons genitals are by how they are performed (and sensed).
Admittedly this is a subtle argument, and I admit that its value in advocating for political aims for transgenders is somewhat limited. Saying tv at our biological sexual parts are embodied and enacted via gender is quite a distance from talking about capability of pregnancy.
Quoting Joshs
But that is not what gender is. Gender is the expectation that a sex act or express themselves in a particular way. What you are noting is people wanting to act or express themselves a particular way. So if a man is born who wants to wear a dress, then he does. This is not gender. The expectation that a man should NOT wear a dress is gender. The expectation that a woman SHOULD wear a dress is gender. Can a man want to wear a dress and a woman not want to wear one? Of course. That desire does not change their actual sex of being male or female.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, gender is essentially sexism. Men shouldn't cry and women are expected to be emotionally weak and scatterbrained. Does a man crying mean he isn't biologically a man? No. Does an emotionally strong women with a mind as sharp as a tack mean she's biologically a woman? No. Just because societies or individuals expect a sex to act a particular way, does not mean that they are not that sex if they don't. Same as if they act in stereotypical ways to the opposite sex. It does not make them the opposite sex either.
Quoting Joshs
This is not pyschological gender, but sexual orientation. Now people may have a gendered viewt of sexual orientation. "You're a man and you want to sleep with another man? Well you must not be a man then." Of course you're still a man, your biology hasn't changed. You just don't fit into what that particular society stereotypes or wants to force a man to act like.
Quoting Joshs
So to clarify here, who you sleep with has nothing to do with your gender, which is simply a stereotype of what society or you believe a sex should act like. Sexual orientation is not gender.
Quoting Philosophim
You and I may very well have different definitions of gender. The notion of gender I want focus on has a number of features. First, it is not about arbitrary choices that a person decides to make. It is about about an inborn perceptual-affective schema of organizing sensory experience. I have in mind in particular the example of a gay man who was born with a feminine perceptual-affective style that they had no control over. This style dictated a large constellation of behavior. features, including a feminine-style of pronunciation, a feminine way of walking a throwing a ball, and a large number of other features that made them
stand out from other biological males.
Quoting Philosophim
I would include in this constellation of behaviors sexual attraction to other males. That is to say , it is not simply coincidence that a male born with a feminine perceptual-affective style who displays the constellation of behaviors I mentioned also very likely is attracted to other males. It is the brain-wired style that explains sexual attraction as well as ways of speaking, walking, emoting, etc. This gay man didnt choose to behave in this way, and didnt choose being attracted to other males. In fact they loathed themself for behaving in ways that resulted in their being bullied and called sissy.
Its ok if you dont want to call this inborn style of perceptual
organization gender. Im more interested in whether you accept that people are born with such global organizing structures that dictate feminine or masculine behavior that form a large constellation of features all belonging to a single causal pattern.
This is why I mentioned schizophrenia and autism previously. These are syndromes that generate a large constellation of behaviors that are all explained on the basis of a single cause, a way in which the brain processes and organizes affective and perceptual input.
My example of the feminine-acting gay man no more chooses to express themselves as a particular gender than the schizophrenic or autistic chooses to display the constellation of behaviors that define their syndrome. The constellation chooses them.
The problem is you're first attributing that behavior to what a woman does. And yet many women do not act "feminine". Does this mean they aren't women? Is a woman who acts masculine a man? The point of the dog article was to show that in non-sexual behaviors, it can be difficult to really tell what sex a dog is. Same with humans.
I've known plenty of men who speak "feminine" like, yet are straight. They are men, not women. There are plenty of gay men who do not exhibit "feminine" (or a cultural stereotype of a woman) behavior. This is because there is nothing inherent in being the male that necessitates that you lift weights and strut around in a room. You can have a very pretty, agile and soft spoken male, and they are still men.
Quoting Joshs
No, its not gender. Its just personality differences. The problem is you're assuming your version of "feminine" is some objective measure. But that measure is based on your culture and background, not biological fact.
I'll give you an example. I taught in inner city schools with mostly blacks and latinos. I'm white. Let me preface this by saying I found no difference between races besides over all culture. You have your jocks, your nerds, and everything in an American white school. TV and movies paint a different picture, and its false. Yet I'm sure some people believe that being black entails that you act or dress a particular way. Its just like gender. Its a subjective stereotype.
One thing I did notice was that young black males at one of my schools tended to act more like stereotypical American women. Black girls tended to be more aggressive and get in far more physical fights than black boys. Why? Culture. A surprising amount of young blacks in that area did not have father's in their lives. So the women ended up having to be the bread winner and fight for success. Being demure was not an option. On the flip side, boys patterned their speech and gestures after the main parent who gave them everything in life, their mother.
Now are these young men and women suddenly different sexes because they don't fit into the stereotypical middle or upper class American view of how a man and woman should act? No. The problem is your idea of "feminine" vs "masculine" is cultural. Your gay friend was compelled to act and express themself a particular way, so they should have done so without reprisal. They are a man by sex, no question, that simply acted differently.
I'm not denying that people want to act and dress the way they want to act and dress. My point is that it is irrelevant to what sex you are, and thus irrelevant in cases of sexual separation in society. If a male suddenly starts behaving in a stereotypically feminine way in Texas, they do not suddenly become a woman and have access to female bathrooms or sports.
Quoting Philosophim
In the way I am defining gender in terms of an inborn perceptual-affective style, this pattern is not simply binary (what sex are they), but a spectrum that goes from hyper masculinity to hyper femininity. Any particular individual is situated at some unique point along that spectrum.
In many , but certainly far from all cases, it is not that difficult to tell if someone has a constellation of behaviors that belong to the autism spectrum. But even if we simplify things by assuming a simple masculine-feminine behavioral binary, my claim is that, while it is apparently very difficult for you to really tell whether someone is male or female based on their behavior, my experience is quite different. To put it in more personal terms, Im a gay male who didnt choose to be that way. Furthermore, from
the time I was little, what gay meant to me was much less who I was attracted than the constellation of behaviors I have been describing , like throwing like a girl. This outed me well before I knew what homosexuality was. My brothers nickname for me was fairy, and this was before he had a concept of homosexuality.
My sense is that the constellation of behaviors that I insist form a pattern or theme that is generated by an inborn perceptual-affective style on the masculine-feminine spectrum are utterly invisible to you. You end up shattering this patterned constellation and its internal logic into a thousand pieces, and then treat each piece in utter isolation from the pattern they are inseparable from. This one just happens to want to dress like a girl, that one just happens to choose to throw like a girl, that other one chooses to speak with a lisp, that one needs to walk like a girl. Its as if youre trying to explain the learning of verbal language in Skinnerian terms, whereas Im saying that there is a spectrum of transformational grammars that organize our behavior along masculine-feminine lines.
Quoting Philosophim
I like to use the term personality interchangeably with gender. Masculinity and femininity are like personality traits in the way that they contribute a stable life-long stylistic element to our behavior. But the key here is that were not taking about isolated behaviors that form no pattern that overlaps between individuals. Rather, the masculine-feminine spectrum is a gestalt whose constellatory elements, while never identical from one person to the next, exhibit strong overlap that bind communities together as well as potentially alienating them from different gendered ones.
For instance, Ive spent a lot of time in gay social environments where we had the opportunity to learn about how these constellatory gender patterns overlap and differ among us. If you were to volunteer your view that gender is someone, on a whim, opting to put on a dress, the reaction would likely be a communal sense that you just dont get it. Many of us who were born with the non-binary gender perceptual-affective style that made us feel alienated from our male peers didnt put two and two together at first, thinking that these behaviors were unique to us as an individual , and didnt follow any larger internal logic, like a transformational grammar. For many of us, it was a revelation and a profoundly affirming experience to discover not only that there was a common thread tying together all of these behaviors within each of us that made us stand out from other males, but more importantly, there was considerable overlap among each of us in these non-binary ( or I should say inter-binary) gender behaviors. We recognized ourselves in each other.
For many gay men, the humor in the movie La Cage aux Folles comes from this recognition of something we share
that makes us different from our male peers. Yes, there are distinct masculine-feminine differences between the two main characters, the husband and husband. One is capable of acting more butch than the other, but the point for many gays who watch the movie is that in spite of these differences the couple (and their servant) still share many non-binary features that bind them together and set them off from straight males. Thats the in joke that I dont think you get.
Im not sure where you would see the humor in this film , given that for each of the many non-binary features this movie presents (a campy mix of masculine-feminine art, group over-emoting to the surprise of a champagne bottle popping, holding a wine glass with the pinky out, crossing ones legs like a girl, buttering toast in a dainty way, wearing makeup, not being able to walk like John Wayne), you would shatter the gender pattern into disconnected fragments and then list each behavioral fragment in isolation ( this one just happens to want to butter toast in a dainty way, that one wants to cross their legs like a girl, that other one wants to emotively overreact to the loud popping of a champagne cork).
Perhaps you imagine that someone decided to write a manual of how to behave like an effeminate gay man, and a bunch of people read it and then modeled their behavior after its instructions?
And how on earth would you explain thousand of years of discriminatory behavior towards women on the part of men if not by reference to robust inborn behavioral differences that become culturally stereotyped? You really think that average bodily differences such as size, weight, strength are enough to explain this history? If we took a population of men and were somehow sophisticated enough in our scientific knowledge to differentiate them in all the physical ways that men and women differ, giving half of them uteruses, do you think this would be enough to potentially generate the kinds of discrimination and stereotypes that women have dealt with over the centuries?
A terrible story Michael. But unless it applies somehow to the OP, I don't see the point in putting it here.
Quoting Joshs
Then you agree with me. Gender is a social construct. It doesn't have a set objective pattern and can vary wildly between cultures. Quoting Joshs
Right, so you behaved in ways that are stereotypically associated with women in American culture. What about the straight boys who also throw like girls? Or adult men who do, but don't dare show it to anyone over fear of being mocked? Finally, does being gay mean you have to throw like a girl? Of course not. There are plenty of gay people who don't act stereotypically gay as well.
The question then comes in the form of freedom as well. Many straight men might feel like acting a particular way that others would view as feminine, but refuse to out of fear of judgement. Being gay may help free you from this restriction, because you're already challenging the social structure as it is, and a large part of "male" culture is about fear of being seen as a woman.
But honestly, that last paragraph is just musing and nothing substantial. The point related to the OP is that despite these behavior differences, all are men by sex. Behavior, or expected behavior that does not change you from one sex to the other. You are a gay or a straight man. You could have a gay or straight gender, but again, these are cultural stereotypes and expectations of how gay or straight men should act. As such, gender should not be considered in places in which people are divided by sex.
Quoting Joshs
Oh, stereotypes definitely do not form in a vacuum. Lets just look at the thousands of years there wasn't any birth control or modern medicine. Men never had to menstruate or give birth. As such, they had to do the harder physical jobs that took them away from the house. Can you imagine being a judge for a small community when there was likely only one judgeship available, and it was a woman who had to excuse herself every month to avoid bleeding in public? Or being pregnant nine months or more out of the year?
The very real physical differences between the sexes meant certain outcomes for societal organization, and thus expectations, were more likely to happen. Most of the world lived in what we would consider abject poverty today. It was about surviving, and so you did what was best suited for yourself for you and family to survive.
So I'm not saying stereotypes don't exist, or that people don't innately want to dress, do, or act a particular way. But what I'm saying is that none of that does not violate the objectivity of sex, nor should gender override societal divisions by sex, when they are divided by sex and not gender.
The concept of an inborn perceptual-affective organizational brain pattern assumes the generation of a wide constellation of behaviors that, as I said, define a community by being present in various proportions in each individual. That means that obviously there are exceptions to every behavior that is included in the constellatory pattern that is gender. For instance, does being schizophrenic mean you have to speak in word salad, or be a catatonic, or have paranoid delusions? Of course not. Does this mean that schizophrenia is purely a social construct, that each behavior associated with it is unique to an individual and there is no common explanatory brain process to tie together the constellation of potential behaviors connected with it, that there is no community of schizophrenics with an overlap of behaviors? Of course not. But this is your claim concerning masculine and feminine behavior. You cant conceive of any vehicle , any brain process, that could produce a wide range of behaviors that we associate with masculinity or femininity, and tie them together on the basis of a single mechanism.
Let me talk a little more about this perceptual-affective style that is the source of the masculine-feminine spectrum. The terms I will use are sloppy and inexact, but hopefully they will convey the sweeping behavioral power and effect of how our brains are wired for perceptual sensitivity. Perceptual-affective style means the following: when you perceive a stimulus, there are a variety of different ways in which you can process it Ones brain can have a kind of perceptual sensitivity setpoint such that the most intense, actively changing aspects of a flow of stimulation are reinforced. Put differently, one seeks out this intense, rapidly changing rhythm of perceptual flow.
One is attracted to projects that involve lack of interruption and avoid the need for social give and take, because ones intensity-attuned perceptual system loses patience quickly with having to listen to others. If ones perceptual set point is at the other end of the spectrum, then the aggressive processing of intensely changing stimuli is not reinforced. On the contrary, ones perceptual system is inclined toward a gradual processing of unfolding new stimulation. One is more inclined toward social interaction than solitary projects. One is also more prone to depression and fear than anger and hostility. The fact that the setpoint reinforces gradualness of perceptual processing over intensity manifests itself in how a person moves, how they walk, how they position their limbs , how they pronounce words and their inflection and emotional range. It includes how one responds to noise, light, color , touch. Every stereotype of the effeminate gay male has its basis in this setpoint and its effect on perception and action.
This is the basis of masculine aggressiveness vs feminine hesitancy. All the exceptions one can point out dont disprove the rule, which is behind the stereotypical differences between mens work and womens work, and why boys today are not thriving in school the way girls are. (It may also explain why there are more male autistic than female).
Womens work , such as housework, needlepoint, raising children, jobs involving social and listening skills, focuses on tasks that unfold gradually, with intense and abrupt change minimized. Mens work focuses on intensely changing activity and solitary competitive projects.
Mens greater interest in physicalistic , non-romantic porn vs womens preference for intimate eroticism is another manifestation of the difference in perceptual setpoint.
Attraction to the opposite sex is also connected with the way that masculine and feminine perceptual setpoint result in a complementarity , a yin and yang that completes male and female in a sexual relationship. The male is attracted to all the qualities in the female that are not strongly present in himself: emotive sensitivity and verbal expressivity, physical softness and yieldingness. The woman, for her part , delights in and encourages a certain commanding and decisive style on the part of the male. In this way, each gender role completes the other.
Many gay men have a perceptual setpoint somewhere between the aggressive masculine and the gradual feminine. This means they dont crave softness and yieldingness from their sexual partner because they already posses these traits themselves. As a result, many gay sexual relationships are based more on a kind of twinning than a yin and yang. What attracts each sexually is the mix of masculine and feminine in the other. Many gay men will tell you they are repulsed by the thought of playing the role of decisive commanding male to a soft yielding female.
Quoting Philosophim
Physical differences between men and women fail utterly and completely as an explanation of a pattern of dominance of men over women repeated around the globe for millennia. It is the difference in perceptual setpoint between the masculine and the feminine brain that explains this behavior.
So what explains feminism and the many changes in the way young women behave today?This is not a matter of doing away with the perceptual setpoint, but of changing the way that cultural behavior expresses this setpoint.
Perceptual setpoint doesnt dictate whether a person will become involved in extreme sports, risk-taking behavior or fistfights. It only shapes the style in which one particulates in such activities. This means that there are no activities or behaviors that are off-limits to women or men , and the sex-based compartmentalization of social roles that used to be pervasive will become increasingly rare. But the setpoint differences that define masculinity vs feminist will always be present underneath these cultural changes in behavior, even as they manifest themselves in more and more subtle ways.
Your analogy does not match. You can be schizophrenic and you can be gay. These are objective medical identifiers. Now, if I believe that a gay person should act a particular way that has nothing to do with the definition of being gay, that's gender based on my culture. If I believe a schizophrenic should act a different way that has nothing to do with the definition of being shizophrenic, that's comparable to gender.
For example, "If you're gay, you should like Lady Ga Ga." "If you're shizophrenic, you should be violent and dangerous." Someone then comes along to a gay person who does not like Lady Ga Ga and states, "I guess you're not gay." Someone comes along to a shizophrenic person who isn't violent or dangerous and says, "I guess you're not shizophrenic".
This is the exact comparison with sex and gender. To be gay, you must be a male who finds other men sexually attractive. That's it. Whether you like Lady Ga Ga or not is irrelevant. Whether someone believes that to be gay, you must like Lady Ga Ga or not is irrelevant. People's beliefs in how you should act, dress, etc as a gay man do not alter the fact you are a gay man.
Same with sex. It does not matter if you dress or act like someone believes a woman should dress and act. They are still a woman, or not a woman, based on their sex.
What you are advocating for is that someone's stereotypes, be it racism, sexism, classism, etc, should be the sole decider of one's objective identification. That is ludicrous. Its wrong and evil. As a gay person who I'm sure has experienced such discrimination, I'm sure you would agree with me.
Quoting Joshs
Again, this is sexist. Plenty of men do not want to be a decisive commanding male to a soft yielding female. Your attraction or lack of attraction to a woman is based on her sex. I'm straight, and my same sex simply does not turn me on at all. Doesn't matter about the behavior. If you are gay without being bi, behavior isn't going to matter either.
Quoting Joshs
You're going to need to counter my points to demonstrate they "fail utterly and completely". Men in general are overall stronger than women and are not burdoned by the inconvenience of reproduction near to the level of women. Most of the world for most of humanity did not have effective birth control, sterile birthing areas, formula, of modern mentrual management. To just dismiss them without demonstrating why they could not have an impact is wrong.
"Perceptual setpoint" is just a sexist generality as to how a man or woman should act. If you could show that only biological men or only biological women exist certain behaviors, then you could note these are tied directly to sex. The fact that many of your behaviors are widely shared among straight men negates this idea that your thought process is somehow more feminine because of sex differences. Straight and gay men can feel and act in the same way in many ways, but cultural differences often times prevent or encourage certain behaviors within particular societies.
No logically sustainable argument has been made been at this point that gender should override division which has been done by sex. Its been an interesting aside, but I would like to refocus the point back on this topic. Lets take a perfectly normal XY man who wants to dress up like a woman and play sports competitively with them for fame, glory, and money, and give me a valid reason why they should be able to based on acting like what they believe a woman should act like.
When the term gay because popular, it was seen by the general public as strictly a description of same-sex attraction and nothing else. When I recognized myself as gay, the term meant much more to me than this. It referred to my gender, not in the way you mean gender as an arbitrary whim or compulsion to exhibit some behavior disconnected from any larger pattern, but gender as a constellation of behaviors caused by an inborn perceptual setpoint. i think the rise of interest in the concept of transgender among the public is making up for the fact that terms like straight, gay , lesbian and bi that refer exclusively to who one is sexually attracted to are just the tip of the iceberg. As descriptors, they leave out what people are belatedly coming to realize constitute much richer aspects of gendered personality that just the fact of knowing who one chooses to sleep with completely misses , even though it is inextricably linked to these richer aspects of personality.
Quoting Philosophim
Lets talk about stereotypes and sexism. I think you might agree that the concept of a stereotype depends on the association of a particular meaningful content with some aspect of someones behavior, and that content is treated in an over generalized way, forcing all sorts of differences into a single category which does not fit them.
Now lets think about my previous discussion of perceptual setpoint and the terms I used to attempt to describe the patterns of behavior that I suggested are generated by the relative masculinization or feminization of setpoint.
As in the choice of any particular terms, my descriptors could easiliy lend themselves to stereotyping. In fact, I would argue that settling for any specific contentful terms , such as masculine and feminine, guarantee stereotyping.
But the reason that I introduced to you my notion of perceptual setpoint was not at all to assign and lock in place a certain set of concepts , a laundry list of specific behaviors that we must then force all of us into (masculinity means THIS set of traits and femininity mean THAT set of traits).
What I was trying to demonstrate was that gender, like many other personality traits or dispositions, is inborn and, while it evolves in its expression as we mature, has a relative stability over the course of our lives. In addition, while no two people share the same gender, there are close overlaps among elements of the larger community which make it possible for individuals with a particular gender to recognize themselves in a subcommunity and as a result feel a closeness to other members of thar subcommunity on the basis of overlapping gender behavior that they dont feel with those outside of that subcommunity.
Th concepts that are key here are shared or overlapping patterns of behavior. The concepts that are not useful to me are specifically locked in descriptors of the supposed content associated with terms like masculine and feminine.
Discovering that one is on the autism spectrum can be tremendously empowering in two different ways. First, it ties together a range of behaviors in oneself that makes one different from the norm and unifies them. It thus allows one to understand ones own self better and is thus liberating. Second, it allows one to discover an autistic community within one can not only feel normal , but can politically empower one to question why autistism needs to be pathologized or othered by the mainstream. Just as with concepts of masculinity and femininity, the definitions of autistic behavior and causation undergoes change all the times. Each era temporarily locks in its own assumptive vocabulary of autism, what it is, how it functions, what behaviors are associated with it and why. These are unavoidably forms of stereotyping, but each eras stereotypes make way for the next eras new
stereotypes.
My point is that one can make a distinction between an inborn, patterned , robust personality style such as autism or gender, and the specific stereotyped vocabulary used to nail down and label its behavioral features. The stereotyping labels are always slowly changing, without disturbing the underlying unified pattern.
So if I am agreeing with you that no stereotyped definitions of such things as masculinity and femininity can justify themselves, what is the value of my position? Simply this: it offers an enrichment of that ways we can understand ourselves as well as others. It can cause us to look for ways that the behavior of individuals and groups form personality patterns that better explain their motivations than isolated whim or compulsion. The goal is not to pigeonhole
others into categories based on already-formed definitions. It is to reveal a richer and more integral purposiveness in oneself and others as one interacts with them. I admire your attempt to protect the world from sexual stereotypes, but I think youre throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Quoting Philosophim
It aint that simple. Why and in what way the opposite turns you on is connected with your personal perceptual setpoint
as well as cultural factors. How you respond to manipulation of the physical and behavioral femininity of your partner on a multitude of dimensions is a direct reflection of that setpoint. If I were to readjust your setpoint, you would be astonished by the thousands of subtle ways in which your comportment toward your world would change.
Quoting Philosophim
While I have many issues with the idea of allowing a biologically male body to compete among biological
female bodies, given the fact that you dont appear to have a concept of psychological gender, I suspect this may limit your engagement on this issue.
Which is fine. But this agrees with my point. Gender is subjective. Its your personal viewpoint of what it means to be gay. Objectively, all that it means to be gay is that you are sexually attracted to members of the same sex. Anything more varies from person to person.
Quoting Joshs
Or it could be taken that you have set personality points, and you have ascribed those points to the fact you are gay. Which is fine as a personal assessment. But that's all it is, a personal, subjective interpretation. You agree with me a straight man who acts in all the stereotypical gay ways, but ultimately does not find other men attractive, is not objectively gay. That's my point about objective language within society versus gendered language for ourselves or groups that we place ourselves in. When we try to take our personal or particular culture of understanding the world and attempt to tell everyone its now an objective fact, we step on others subjectivity without an established objectivity underlying our insistence.
Quoting Joshs
My sister does not like dolls. She dissects dead bodies for a living. She does not paint her nails, use make up, or wear dresses. She's very pretty. She is married and a mother of two children.
She has absolutely nothing in common with "feminine" women. She likes other women who are intelligent, hard working, and are interested in the same things she is. My sister if very much a woman, and does not consider at all that her life and what she's interested in makes her any less of a woman.
The reality is we like people who are interested in some common things we are. Then we make the mistake of attributing that to aspects about them that really have nothing to do with it. Perhaps we do it to make identity easier, as its the brains way of lazily organizing things. I'm sure there are plenty of gay people who you have no interest in being with, and have personalities and actions that greatly differ from your own.
Quoting Joshs
So are you attracted to some women? You would objectively be considered bisexual then. Which is fine, sexuality is a spectrum. I'm on the far end of the spectrum as I have never found a member of my same sex sexually attractive. I have friends who are more fluid. The point is that the words gay, lesbian, bit, etc all mean objective things regardless of your subjective viewpoints or culture. We should not let subjective viewpoints or culture dictate objective viewpoints.
Quoting Joshs
To clarify, of course you have a psychological gender. That's what gender is, a subjective viewpoint of how you think a sex should act, feel, etc. But a subjective viewpoint does not override objective definitions that apply universally regardless of your gender.
Good discussion btw! I appreciate your candidness and openness. I do feel we have each expressed our viewpoints at this juncture. So at this point lets see if we can wrap it. Should gender override objective sex division in society? Should a straight man be able to identify as gay even if they could never be attracted to another man? Should a man who wears a dress suddenly be recognized in society as a woman? Should be sister be labeled a man because she doesn't identify with what some people in America think a woman should be like?
That's why its a question. I say no based on the reason's given. What do you say?
Should we police thoughts and beliefs? Or more to the point CAN we and to what degree? That is what I read in the question of should.
I have strong opinions about who I would call and artist just like I would about what I would call art. I am quite willing and open to except that other people will undoubtedly use these terms differently to me and that at the end of the day is doesnt really matter as long as we understand each other enough not to degrade, belittle or abuse one another (with exceptions therein too of course!).
Should I care is someone calls themselves gay or Brian? I have no reason to care therefore the should is irrelevant to me. If someone demands that I address them as such and such I am far less likely to comply because I have certain anarchistic tendencies - it is more about the context than the demand/request.
Note: I do find it peculiar how some people request somethings and then act abused when such a request is denied. If something is genuinely requested it should be done so with the expectation of a refusal (depending on the request and the explanation of the person being asked of).
It depends and there are exceptions. That just about sums up reasonable social interactions I think.
Quoting Philosophim
I think we get into the same problems of stereotyping you pointed out in trying to distinguish objective from subjective with regard not only to gender but to the seemingly simple task of defining what it means to be attracted to someone on the basis of their sex. Thats why the alphabet of lgbqt keeps on growing and changing. We also have to include polyamory , incels and a whole boat of new delineations. According to those who argue that gender is a constellatory pattern or theme rather than independent behaviors, we are not attracted to another merely because of whether they have breasts or a penis, but how they manifest their sexuality via their gender behavior. For instance, I am more attracted to men who are in the middle of the spectrum than either hypermasculine or hyperfeminine acting men. Furthermore, I am not exclusively attracted to men, but the ones I am attracted to are more on the androgynous end of the spectrum. I think our culture is going to move away from using labels like gay and lesbian to refer to allegedly objective features of attraction based solely on anatomy.
Your question about how society should make decisions concerning how and whether to recognize the sexual or gendered categories people are claiming for themselves can be looked at from a pragmatic point of view:
what is the usefulness of doing so? How does society benefit? You might argue that it has been useful to offer legal protections for same-sex relations and partnerships because one is able to define and identify same-sex attraction objectively. We know there are significant segments of our culture who fit into this category, and denying them rights has social consequences. But as I suggested, the lines are being blurred between what is subjective and what is objective in this arena. Many now argue that the concept of psychological gender is no more subjective that what labels like gay and lesbian supposedly refer to.
This much I can tell you. It may not be practical for a community to make political decisions protecting the rights of individuals to behave in ways that that community considers to be the result of private whim or compulsion on the part of the individual, and does appear to belong to a larger pattern, constellation or theme of personality that all of us possess, each in their own way. In other words, if that community defines gender the way you do, as random, subjective whim, then that community cannot justify enacting new and special public protections for something considered to be a private choice like any other, for which the already-in-place protections for freedom of speech are more than adequate.
As with the gay rights movement, such protections will arise first from out of transgender, feminist and related communities themselves. The key terms in your questions have to do with recognizing and identifying. The trans, feminist and postmodern philosophical communities believe strongly that they already know how to recognize and identify something more than just private choice, whim , compulsion in what they call gender. A parent of a young biological girl who wants to dress like a boy, change their name to a boys name and ultimately transition surgically will behave differently depending on whether they grasp the concept of gender as inborn personality pattern vs random desire. In the first case, they will know what sorts of questions to ask and what sorts of behavior to look for to get a sense of whether their child is indeed transgender as opposed to just following trends of fashion.
This is why new protections are coming from these communities and the progressive urban environments that are sympathetic to them, and are being fought tooth and nail by conservative communities with no concept of gender outside of random private whim.
I want to make one last point. You have characterized gender as a question of nature vs nurture, and have opted to explain it as a social construct. It may have seemed that my disagreement with you rested on my claim for an inborn gender personality trait. But the essence of my claim rests not on nature vs nurture , objective vs subjective, but on the very attempt to understand gender or sexual into a split between objective and subjective. My argument is constructivist. Objectivity is a subjective and intersubjective construction. Even though my focus on this discussion has been on inborn patterns, my view of gender is actually much closer to the social constructionist approaches to gender of authors like Butler and Foucault than your cultural perspective is. Like me, they view gender in terms of a constellation of shared patterns of behaviors that bind communities. It is no accident that gender studies emerged out of cultural studies, which fed off of the work of French poststructuralists like Foucault and Deleuze.
So that is a bit of a different subject. The terms at this time note attraction based on biological sex, but one could invent a word that notes attraction based on gender. The problem of course again, is that one's gender definitions are not universal across cultures, but are subjective and cultural themselves. I am not saying you shouldn't invent a language or go by gender in your personal culture. Do what you want. Its when we try to create clear terms that can be objectively identified and assessed across all cultures that we need to be more careful in our terms.
Quoting Joshs
I'm not arguing that though. I believe you can sexually commit to anyone you want as long as they are not a child, an animal, dead, or severely cognitively impaired. The reasons of course being the inability of the other party to make a clear decision on the matter. Two people who want to hook up and commit for life are all good.
Quoting Joshs
Here we've discussed at length about clear lines and divisions. It doesn't matte what they say, it matters what's been discussed here. I've demonstrated, and you've confirmed, the problem with gender as a subjective, wishy-washy, line blurring definition. Its not that they aren't clear from the one's who invent and use them. When a person has a clear idea of what "feminine" is, they can list off all the features easily. The problem is that we can very easily find another person, ask them what feminine is, and they could easily list off a set of completely different and contrary points.
Quoting Joshs
The practicality is irrelevant. The rights are already there to do so are they not? Do we not have free speech? Should we not have the right to act, wear, and dress as we wish within the privacy of our homes? I would love to say public places, but abuse, and not of the sexual sort, has long shown there needs to be some regulation to assure public safety and health. I would definitely argue that the limitations on dress and actions should be minimized, and only limited if real public harms can be demonstrated by their allowance.
Quoting Joshs
Of course, but that's in full agreement with my definition of gender as well. Gender is socially constructed, and gender is often used as a binding or enforcement tool for behaviors that the particular culture desires people to act on. That actually doesn't change the questions I've put forward.
I see you haven't addressed those questions directly, and if I had to guess, it is because you are concerned that this could somehow be used against sexuality itself. I assure you, it does not. Having spoken to several different people within the sexual variance community (I much prefer that term to the alphabet mix), I believe they agree in essence with what I'm stating, but are afraid that they will be seen as hypocritical in someway, or damage their own societal acceptance they have worked so hard to gain.
Such fear is often damaging, because this causes lies, half-truths, and evasive answers. But that is not the intention here. In philosophy we must be willing to examine issues at their core without fear of where people will try to go from there right? But I understand the fear. So don't answer my questions, its fine. I've ascertained enough at this point to hold to my original conclusions.
Foucaults approach is quite different from Butlers. For Foucault, gender is the effect of the ongoing transformations and intensification of supple forms of power. He argues that the nineteen-century growth of perversions is not a moralizing theme that obsessed the scrupulous minds of the Victorians. It is the real product of the encroachment of a type of power (biopower) on the bodies and their pleasures. (HS, 1; pg 48) Unlike Butler, Foucault asserts that biopolitical norms do not primarily work to exclude the deviating individuals; instead, they work on accounting for them as such to render them normal or abnormal.
Quoting Joshs
Foucault rejects the essentialist perspective on the source of power as an ultimate instance of rights, identity, intelligibility, or recognition. There is no power- sovereignty, based on a monarch or communitys subjectivity. Biopower does not bear on legal subjects but enacts various strategies embedded within social practices and comprises the entire political technology of life.
I thought your definition of gender was whatever someone says it is, because your view of social construction is randomly assigned behavioral definitions by individuals, or groups who wield power over individuals to force them to act in certain ways. Foucault wrote a book called The Order of Things. In it, he presented what he called an archeological model of modern cultural history, extending from the Renaissance to the Modern era, and dividing this span into three segments, which he called epistemes. Each episteme ties together ideas from a range of cultural modalities that includes linguistics, the sciences and economic theory. Specifically, the various cultural modalities within an episteme fit together as variations on a shared theme or logic defining that era.
As Western culture shifted its thinking from one episteme to a new one, all these cultural modalities were transformed as aspects of a unified pattern. For Foucault, the ideas that comprise an episteme are the result of power flowing through and between individual subjectivities. This power is not to be understood as being controlled by any group or individual to be wielded against others they dominate. power is everywhere not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere. Power is not possessed by a dominant agent, nor located in that agent's relations to those dominated, but is instead distributed throughout complex social networks. Put differently, a culture produces its sciences and other forms of knowledge via a reciprocal interaffecting that incudes material arrangements and practices.
The key notion I want to emphasize from this summary is that for Foucault socially constructed knowledge and values are not imposed on a community by an individual or group wielding power and desiring that the community act a certain way. Instead, they form an integrated pattern of understanding with its own internal logic not imposed by anybody in particular, and not in top down fashion but disseminating itself through a culture from the bottom up , as a shared pattern of thinking and behaving. As I pointed out earlier, this notion of pattern of experiencing shared by a community but not arbitrarily imposed on it by an individual or group is missing from your concepts of social construction and gender.
I know that Foucaults approach is different from Butlers. I was simplifying my argument to focus on a notion of discursive formations as thematically patterned structures or epistemes.
Quoting Number2018
Im aware of this. While this is true of Foucault , it is not true of transgender activists influenced to some extent by Foucaultian ideas who nevertheless retain a rights-based political orientation. Again, my aim in this discussion is not a correct reading of Foucault but an explication of how current concepts of gender invoked by transgender activists and feminists have been influenced to an extent by Foucault and social constructionism.
The transgender view of gender is a consequence of gender being a social construct. Just as two citizens of a nation could debate whether music or food is a more important aspect of their culture, two individuals can argue about what gender norms should be, what qualifies one to be a gender, whether it is a spectrum or binary, and whatever else. The lie about gender is that, unlike culture, there is scientific truth to gender, to the extent that people will try to defer to the science on the matter.
Essentially, there is nothing unscientific about rejecting the idea that gender is a spectrum, or that one's gender shouldn't be tied to one's sex, many different options are possible, we're just making it up after all. What should be based on gender versus sex? We need to evaluate the choices based on merit and our values, and hopefully some common sense.
The reason why we do stupid shit like allowing biologically male athletes into female sports competitions, in my view, is primarily due to political correctness, and the notion that putting forward contradictory ideas on gender is intolerant and hateful. Unsurprisingly, gender isn't alone, concepts such as culture, race, sexism, racism, nationality, class and so on are in the same situation.
Even if one's view on gender isn't ill-intentioned or hateful, the consequences of your definition can lead to it being interpreted as hate speech. So long as this is okay, any view of gender that doesn't accommodate trans people can be considered immoral.
The transgender view of gender is clearly optimising to allow the transition to be as complete as possible. The goal is to reduce the differences between what it means to be a biological man/woman and being a man/woman by gender as much as humanly possible. Any reason to treat people according to sex over gender will be opposed wherever possible.
The more socially constructed being a man/woman is, the more a person can transition from being a biological male/female to a male/female in terms of gender. However, it's also possible to argue that trans people are born with brains more similar to the other gender, so then a transition in appearance from the male/female sex to the opposite male/female gender can be complete even while acknowledging fundamental non-physical differences between sexes. It's not a coincidence that these two entirely contradictory views that both conveniently facilitate more effective transitions are prevalent among trans supporters.
The "science" is just people doing whatever they can to prove ideas true that would be useful in this aim of validating as complete of a transition as possible. The issue is that gender and gender-based ideas are being changed to accommodate the concept of transition, without any actual care as to the larger consequences, and any attempt to speak against this is very successfully silenced as hate speech.
No, my definition of gender is clear, its simply a social construct. Of course that construct can be used for good, evil, power, pleasure, etc. Social constructs are tools, and humans use tools in every way possible.
Quoting Joshs
Certainly, there are groups of people who use gender exactly like Foucault states. Does everyone? Per my first set of comments, of course not.
Quoting Judaka
Yes, the transgender idea is that you can cross the culturally perceived gender barrier. The arguments you present are commonly known. However, if such arguments settled the issue, it would be done by now. I find there is a lot of vitriol between parties when the discussion is approached this way, and so this was an attempt to make the argument which sometimes has subtle notions of power and manipulation at play from both sides, and instead focus on the logic of the language.
Philosophy is best when it can look at a problem that people are stuck on, and find a new way of approaching it that can settle the issue. Philosophy should not care about the politics of the issue, and its intent should be a fair and equal logical conclusion for all parties involved.
This was that attempt. I simply find that the language of sex and gender, when taken to their logical conclusions, entail that separation by sex should never be overriden by gender. Its not political, personal, or intended to harm anyone. Its just what logically works best for all involved.
On a personal note, I do sympathize with people who feel the need to switch sex, know they are unable to truly do so, and so desperately cling onto gender as a lifeline to fulfil their fantasy or erase their distress. But, when you have to lie or hold illogical statements for emotional value, I have found this inevitably causes harm to yourself and those around you. It is not truth. And a life not lived true, is a far worse life than lived as a lie.
The politics on this issue are the result of the differing philosophical views of opposing parties, your view clearly shows which side you are on, there is no transcending this. The problem with focusing on the "logic of the language" is that language, generally, but especially with the word "gender" is deeply influenced by one's views on the matter. To the extent that the way one defines the word gender is likely to strongly indicate their stance on this issue.
Even if that wasn't true, how a word is defined shouldn't compel anyone to think in any specific way. If the language around sex or gender didn't fit the logic that I thought was accurate or best, then I would simply use the words in the way I wanted instead, and that's 100% common practice. Just as I'm sure when you say "philosophy", your use of this word entails your personal feelings on what philosophy is and isn't.
You aren't even remotely neutral here, your political views are included in your interpretation of these concepts and ideas, and I say that as someone who pretty much agrees with you.
Though for me, the reason why separation by sex shouldn't be overridden by gender is that the reasons for separating people by sex are primarily physical and have nothing to do with gender. Most of my problems with transgender issues are in the handling, and the reason the handling is so bad is that common sense safety measures are considered bigotry.
The barrier of entry to transitioning is so low, and how you self-identify is the priority, a trans person could mean anything from not passing whatsoever to someone who lives and passes as the opposite gender. We're also in such a rush, there's no caution in anything here, and we're no longer even accommodating transgender people, we're straight up promoting transitioning in every way we can, it's crazy.
I disagree. Logic allows you to question your views on the matter and offer a stable reason where bias and subjective opinion may have once been your influence. I do not say this as a matter of opinion, I say this as one who has lived it.
Quoting Judaka
It is common practice, but it is not a practice that entails a solution that all parties can logically agree on. At that point its a power struggle of opinion and emotions. You will never get anyone to agree with you who does not share your emotional desires. If you can remove subjective prejudice and focus on the logic of the situation, I believe it is conclusive that a subjective identification of oneself should never override societies objective classification of biology. My conclusion is a logical conclusion even a transgender person cannot refute. It has nothing to do with how we feel about the situation.
Quoting Judaka
Incorrect. I have attempted to look at both sides of the issue. I've attempted to take the definitions that the community has provided and largely agreed upon, and come to a logical conclusion. My feelings on the matter are irrelevant and unknown to you. A problem in trying to be a neutral party and discuss such things is that people rush to assumptions and political emotions that cloud the ability to judge accurately. This causes people to not think of the idea, but instead simply accept or reject the person. That is not thinking, that's just bias.
Quoting Judaka
Agreed. The point of this OP was to analyze why that was at a deeper level. To explore that gender is entirely subjective, biology is objective, and even if there are slight overlaps in some areas, why those overlaps are not enough to override the biological divisions we've created. We need more conversations with each other instead of camps where we insult each other as "an other". Logic can break down such walls and remind each other we're both people who even if we cannot come to a common agreement, can discuss and hear another way of looking at the issue.
I was very glad to hear Josh's viewpoint on the matter. I very much considered his points, despite them not changing my mind. I am now aware of a viewpoint that I had not considered before, and I can take it with me in future conversations. If we had just yelled at each other, that never would have happened.
In the context of philosophy, both sides should be making logical arguments, that's just a pre-requisite for reasonable discussion. You've interpreted gender as overriding sex, which it might be based on your perspective on gender & sex, what you think these words mean and based on what you consider "overriding" but that's where the subjectivity is.
I don't think political disputes are resolved by peaceful discussion, and I'd wager your position is mostly a moral one. In politics, "Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent". The worst thing you can try to do is change the minds of those who staunchly disagree with you, a lot of effort with no payoff. Instead, convince people on the fence, or those who were slightly on your side to fully commit.
It's kind of funny honestly, those who claim to care about logic try so hard to act morally, and the despicable screeching harpies they hate are punching so far above their weight class in terms of accomplishing their political goals. Who's really being pragmatic here? A minority of trans supporters have changed a civilisation with their methods, and the diplomatic, logical types have just had to sit on the sidelines watching it happen.
Its not interpretation. Its using the definitions provided in the OP which the transgender community accepts to come to a conclusion. Hopefully a logical conclusion, but that's what debate is for.
Quoting Judaka
There is wisdom in that, but if I wanted to discuss politics or try to change the political world, I wouldn't be on a philosophy forum. :) I was once deep into religion Judaka. I had a mother who was highly manipulative and used lies and half truths to get what she wanted. I know what its like to be emotionally manipulated into something that another person wants without regard to logic or an objective world view. I have no desire to do that to anyone else.
Logic and philosophy is not about convincing others to change. Its not about our own personal egos. Its about finding a logical conclusion that at the end of the day, can be discussed objectively. A person then chooses to change their life based on what they've read. Its not manipulation. There are people like me who need more than politics, religion, or a whole host of emotional sways. Sometimes we just need to think and wonder if our emotional impulses and cultural beliefs actually make sense. People like me reject the emotional manipulations of the world. Let others do that, that is their job in life.
Maybe there is someone else like me who is tired of manipulations as well. And if not? I got to think through it myself. Philosophy after all is not the love of debate or the love of politics, its is the love of wisdom.
Quoting Joshs
It is worth considering again the principal difference between Foucault and Butler. Butler writes: I contravene Foucault in some respects. For if the Foucauldian wisdom seems to consist in the insight that regulatory power has certain broad historical characteristics and that it operates on gender as well as on other kinds of social and cultural norms, then it seems that gender is but the instance of a larger regulatory operation of power. I would argue against this subsumption of gender to regulatory power that the regulatory apparatus that governs gender is one that is itself gender specific. Gender requires and institutes its own distinctive regulatory and disciplinary regime. (Butler, Undoing gender, pg. 41) On another side, Foucault asserts that biopolitical norms do not primarily work to exclude and repress the deviating individuals; in contrast, they encompass the whole spectrum of practices, producing an account of what is normal and abnormal. Power that comes from everywhere animates the discursive formation and the encompassing greed of intelligibility concerning gender. So, while Foucaults project is based on constitutive inclusion, Butler insists on the principle of constitutive exclusion. Even when a form of recognition is allegedly extended to all the people, there remains an active premise that there is a vast region of those who remain unrecognizable. (Butler, Notes toward a performative theory of assembly, pg. 5) A disenfranchised group should find a way to claim effective all-embraced recognition. An open-ended hegemonic struggle should produce performative effects reconfiguring the general field of acceptability and identification. To a considerable extent, Butlers approach expresses todays dominating tendencies in the struggle for gender equality and identity politics. Yet, contradicting her premise of the importance of a precarious community, Butler underlines a crucial role of media globalization: The performativity of gender presumes a field of appearance in which gender appears, and a scheme of recognizability with which gender shows up The media does not merely report the scene of appearance; it constitutes the scene in a time and space that includes and exceeds its local instantiation it depends on that mediation to take place as the event as it is (Notes toward a performative theory of assembly, pg. 92) Here, Butler does not refer back to Foucaults discursive formation of socially constructed shared pattern of thinking and behaving. Instead, she implicitly invokes the decisive role of the global digital medium. Accordingly, as Deleuze points out in The Postscript of control society, we should discern the bits and flows of data that make up dividuals and data banks, always passing beneath the individual. The newest techniques of power permeate the patterns of desires, ideas, and imaginations that constitute our subjectivity and agency.
Quoting Number2018
Thats interesting, thanks. So you think that Deleuze is in closer accord with Butler on this matter than he is with Foucault?
I think that in spite of his statements, Deleuze is close to Foucault; he tries to further reinterpret, radicalize, and reapply the deindivinduation segment of Foucaults propositions on power. Yet, unlike Foucault, in The Postscript he just briefly outlined his latest perspective on power. Further, it seems that Deleuzes framework is utterly incompatible with the entire approach of Butlers
project, and her resonance with the ideas from The Postscript is just an unintentional coincidence. The final analysis may indicate that despite the advantage of witnessing the latest developments and taking an active role in contemporary social movements, Butler overlooks the newest technologies of power.
.
Quoting Philosophim
Definitions aren't enough, even if the "transgender community" accepted them, that doesn't mean they would accept your conclusions using these definitions. That is the case with most words, but especially one as complex as gender. The devil is in the detail, as they say, a one-sentence definition just serves as the fence to generally indicate what is being talked about. You've been challenged on your interpretations by many posters throughout this thread, and that's unsurprising given the context.
I generally think that you've taken logic & objectivity wrongly, though I have issues with both these words. In so far as we agree, it is really just common sense. We've separated sports by sex because it's unfair and unsafe otherwise, we can't make exceptions based on gender. It's a simple, but intellectually and emotionally compelling argument, and that should suffice. It would've probably would've been if people weren't afraid to speak against this movement, or if the people who did weren't so successfully demonised and slandered. That is the real problem here, not that, for instance, people are actually too stupid to realise that it's absurd to allow a biological man to compete in women's sports regardless of gender.
Quoting Philosophim
Hmm, is it that simple though? I think you would like to change the political world, and you are indeed discussing politics, but philosophy as a recreational activity is a lot more fun. That describes how it is for me at least, I don't want to spend my time in politics, but I'm far from indifferent in my preference towards political outcomes. Nonetheless, my aim was to provide an explanation for why political discourse has strayed so far from how we might wish people would act, I hope you continue to conduct yourself as you have.
Before crowning some trans activists as secret monarchs of the world, it might be worth glancing over Wikipedia's article about the issue in sports. Things have happened you may disagree with, other things you agree with, but it should be pretty clear that sports associations have not universally rolled over when someone is mean to them on Twitter. It's complicated. The rules rule-makers are coming up with are complicated, and many associations are on their second or third attempt at this point. Of course trans activists have some influence, but that doesn't mean everyone is just following their orders or something.
I talk the way I do about the influence that trans activists have had because I believe that we are talking about an extreme minority of people, with neither wealth nor power. To have even a moderate influence on how sporting associations rule on trans athletes is an astonishing feat.
It defies common sense to permit the things that have happened, such as athletes who transitioned long after puberty, in some cases just a year or so before competing. To influence these powerful sporting associations to act so irrationally and irresponsibly, despite the actions being unpopular with ordinary fans, is quite something.
So, I am not hyperbolising, rather, I feel to accurately account for what has happened, the explanations must be somewhat dramatic. It is a nuanced and complex matter, and all I can say is that rarely is anything ever so simple as x causing y. I definitely don't think what I said was wrong, but if your main point is just saying it's not the whole truth, then sure, I agree, not even close.
Has happened, sure, but I was genuinely surprised when I looked at Wikipedia how many associations have really gotten in the weeds with this issue, and a lot of them no longer allow this, even if they did in the past. Nothing is universal across all sports in all nations, but it appears to me that in mid-2023, there are in most cases considerable hoops for a trans woman to jump through before she can compete in women's sports. Having gone through puberty as a male is in itself permanently disqualifying for a surprising number of sports.
Its not a matter of whether someone accepts the conclusions, its whether the conclusions are logical. People dismiss logical conclusions all the time, but objective society can dismiss those subjective conclusions in favor of the objective ones.
Quoting Judaka
Fair enough, and kind words Judaka, thanks.