What is a "Woman"
Let's talk about women's bathrooms:
If the women's bathroom were labled "XX" as opposed to "Women," that would discriminate on the basis of sexual designation and not on the basis of gender, protecting that class of XX's who wish that space be protected, but offer no commentary on social gender definitions.
The disambiguation of the term "woman" is completed by drawing a bright line between the sexually defined and the gender defined, which is what the transsexual accepting crowd advocates. That is, the dispute arises when the right decrees that gender and sex must be correlated. Accepting that they need not be, the solution is not to permit all "women" into bathrooms demarcated "women," because there are two types of women in this scenario, (1) those of sexual orientation "woman" and (2) those of gender orientation "woman."
To state that they are both "women" and therefore both permitted in bathrooms designated "women" is to equivocate with the term "woman," as it has two meanings. Since the historical basis of the seperate bathrooms was the result of the sexual distinctions and not the gender based distinctions, you cannot allow the gender based women access simply because of the happenstance of their both now using the term "woman."
Women, under this analysis, were permitted into the women's bathroom at a time when women had the confined meaning of being XX individuals. Now that the term "women" has evolved to include XYs that gender identify as women, the label on the door needs to be modified to its current usage, which is that of XX. To do otherwise permits XYs into the XX bathroom. The reason the bathroom is labled "woman" is not an indication it was meant for XYs because when the sign was placed on the door it was intended only for XXs because the concept of XY females was not socially recognized and within the vernacular of what it meant to be a "woman."
This is not to suggest that gender identifying women be forced into the XY bathroom if that causes them discomfort or safety issues, but it also doesn't permit XYs into XX bathrooms that will cause discomfort or safety issues (real or perceived) to XXs.
This is also not to suggest that XYs cannot be true "women" as that term might be used or that it relegates them to second class women because they are XY women. Since XY women are distinct and there can be a rational basis for discriminating which are XY and which are XX women (as in public restrooms or sports competitions), such discrimination ought be permissible. This is just as we have done in the past, which is to discriminate on the basis of XX or XY designations without regard to gender self-identfication.
This is to say we can discriminate on the basis of gender and sex at different times for different purposes, and we can within differing contexts refer to both as "women," but to call both XXs and XYs "women" in different contexts does not give rise to consider both of the same ontological status in all contexts. They are all women, but different types of women, and therefore having differing rights.
It is also not to say we can discriminate on the basis of gender or sex identifcation for malevolent reasons, such as to ostracize, bully, ridicule or harrass. To the extent someone reads the above as license for that, take your comments elsewhere. These comments are not intended as a clever way to promote a hidden transphobic agenda.
Thoughts?
If the women's bathroom were labled "XX" as opposed to "Women," that would discriminate on the basis of sexual designation and not on the basis of gender, protecting that class of XX's who wish that space be protected, but offer no commentary on social gender definitions.
The disambiguation of the term "woman" is completed by drawing a bright line between the sexually defined and the gender defined, which is what the transsexual accepting crowd advocates. That is, the dispute arises when the right decrees that gender and sex must be correlated. Accepting that they need not be, the solution is not to permit all "women" into bathrooms demarcated "women," because there are two types of women in this scenario, (1) those of sexual orientation "woman" and (2) those of gender orientation "woman."
To state that they are both "women" and therefore both permitted in bathrooms designated "women" is to equivocate with the term "woman," as it has two meanings. Since the historical basis of the seperate bathrooms was the result of the sexual distinctions and not the gender based distinctions, you cannot allow the gender based women access simply because of the happenstance of their both now using the term "woman."
Women, under this analysis, were permitted into the women's bathroom at a time when women had the confined meaning of being XX individuals. Now that the term "women" has evolved to include XYs that gender identify as women, the label on the door needs to be modified to its current usage, which is that of XX. To do otherwise permits XYs into the XX bathroom. The reason the bathroom is labled "woman" is not an indication it was meant for XYs because when the sign was placed on the door it was intended only for XXs because the concept of XY females was not socially recognized and within the vernacular of what it meant to be a "woman."
This is not to suggest that gender identifying women be forced into the XY bathroom if that causes them discomfort or safety issues, but it also doesn't permit XYs into XX bathrooms that will cause discomfort or safety issues (real or perceived) to XXs.
This is also not to suggest that XYs cannot be true "women" as that term might be used or that it relegates them to second class women because they are XY women. Since XY women are distinct and there can be a rational basis for discriminating which are XY and which are XX women (as in public restrooms or sports competitions), such discrimination ought be permissible. This is just as we have done in the past, which is to discriminate on the basis of XX or XY designations without regard to gender self-identfication.
This is to say we can discriminate on the basis of gender and sex at different times for different purposes, and we can within differing contexts refer to both as "women," but to call both XXs and XYs "women" in different contexts does not give rise to consider both of the same ontological status in all contexts. They are all women, but different types of women, and therefore having differing rights.
It is also not to say we can discriminate on the basis of gender or sex identifcation for malevolent reasons, such as to ostracize, bully, ridicule or harrass. To the extent someone reads the above as license for that, take your comments elsewhere. These comments are not intended as a clever way to promote a hidden transphobic agenda.
Thoughts?
Comments (346)
That's correct. My stance is that in communities where the majority are ok with the ambiguity, they'll allow trans women to use the women's facilities. Where the community is generally opposed to it, they'll act accordingly.
There isn't a clear logical answer to the problem, and people are generally irrational anyway. My impression has been that the recent attacks on LGBTQ have been politically motivated (as opposed to offering solutions to real problems). I think Republican politicians find that they stand out when they approach the edge of decency? I'm not trying to be insulting. That's just really the way it seems.
We already do and have done so, because the "check" at the bathroom door is a social check, not a biological one. Even if you put "XX" and "XY", these will simply work as substitutes for "Woman" and "Man", and the people who "pass" will get to use the bathroom they want to. I think it's always been a gender-based social enforcement, even if we used the language of sex.
The question 'what is a woman' can be unpacked in numerous ways. This question is usually a surrogate for: 'Is transgender identity legitimate?' Because that's where this line of questioning always seems to head.
It's interesting that no one ever raises the issue of female to trans-male. No one seems to care and perhaps this says something about attitudes to women more generally.
Quoting Hanover
Interesting. I don't quite know what to think about this. One tentative thought for me is that many trans women 'pass as female' to use the old language. Do we want to create a separate category of female that forces all trans people to out themselves as trans? Are we not hoping for something more seamless or streamlined? Bear in mind that there are diverse views amongst trans people and what is irritating in discussions is when outliers are invoked as representative of all. The hasty generalization fallacy is alive in this space.
Quoting frank
That's what it looks like to me. If you also roll into this religious positions of putative voters, which support certain politics, and comes with (shall we say) bigoted social views, the trans issue can be readily be used as welcome evidence that liberals are trying to destroy the fabric of society and go against nature and god. (That's not to say that atheists aren't also sometimes bigoted.)
Quoting Moliere
Agree. No one ever checks your biology when you go take a piss.
Something like that, yes. The trans issue really hasn't been a problem in most American communities. Corporate America loves all citizens who have money. Viva diversity. Republicans need to show their asses at every opportunity (some of them, anyway.)
How has it been in Australia?
That's interesting and nice to hear.
Quoting frank
Hard to say. Certain negative voices are loud and 'outraged'. We seem to copy a lot of politics from your country and the Right and Left have cultivated a similar culture war style approach. But I generally avoid politics and the news and political discussions. I find politics unattractive for the most part.
So do I. Its nice to hear the same from an intelligent person I respect.
I agree with both of you about politics...if only it weren't necessary!
:up:
My concerns about bathrooms would primarily be a) Trans women being forced to use the men's bathroom and being harassed or assaulted there on being identified as trans. b) Bathroom talk lending to a false narrative that trans women are a "threat" in women's bathrooms, reinforcing societal transphobia.
I agree the topic can be debated in a reasonable way but the most neutral approach for me is not to give self-fulfilling credence to potentially irrational fears but to ask for real evidence to support the idea that trans women should be considered a disproportionate threat in women's bathrooms such that denying them access can be justified. It's the same principle as not allowing an irrational fear of e.g. black people to dictate social policy.
The term "sexual/gender orientation" doesn't help discriminate between one kind of "woman" and another kind. Would "sexually" or "chromosomally" defined and "gender defined" be better? Or just say, "real woman" and "fake woman" (real man and fake man).
You have written about the difficulty of defining "woman" because, apparently, "new categories of woman" have been created/floated/tried. In your view, is it equally difficult to define "man"? An XX woman, born with breasts, ovaries, uterus, and vagina (BOUV) could have her distinctive BOUV organs removed, and replaced with testosterone injections, a penis like fleshy tube, and a skin pouch with plastic testicles. A beard and body hair might grow. Some changes in musculature might occur, depending on age and activity level. Is this person a 'real man' or a 'disfigured woman'?
Is the issue charged because some sort of (apparently disguised) female-like potentially predatory person could use a woman's toilet, and this would be very disturbing to 'real women'? And on the other hand, men wouldn't be disturbed by a (apparently disguised) male-like person, predatory or not, using a man's toilet?
But then one might ask, are F to M transsexuals at risk of attack while using men's toilets? I suppose it would depend on the toilet. A F to M could safely urinate in the toilets of the Campaign of Human Rights, but maybe the toilet at Tea Party HQ, or a really rough biker bar would not be a good place to test things out. Is anyone safe in a Tea Party toilet?
Rather than cede the language, the bathrooms, the sports, though, all of which pertain to sex, we should abandon the use of gender altogether. If the sex surgery, the puberty blockers, the desire to compete with members of the opposite sex is any indication, it all has to do with sex anyways, and the use of gender only muddies the water.
Each state will come to its own conclusions about how to do it. That's democracy.
Quoting Baden
Having unisex bathrooms might be fine if each one held just one person, but larger locations tend to have communal bathrooms. As I see it, it's reasonable for a biological female to be uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with a biological male, no matter how that biological male identifies. It is not unreasonable to restrict certain bathrooms for use by biological females. It is not necessarily bigotry for a biological women to be unwilling to share a bathroom with a transgender women.
For me, it comes down to the fact that transgender people make up less than 0.5 percent of the adult population. A fair and humane society will find a place for them as members of the community. That doesn't mean that social institutions that have been in place for a very long time have to be discarded immediately for their convenience.
The difference between a men's and a women's lavatory is the urinal.
Odd, then, don't you think, that this sort of discussion is posed as about women's bathrooms, when it is men's bathrooms that are problematic?
Quoting Tom Storm
Indeed.
Evidence that trans women are a threat in women's bathrooms, please. If there is no evidence for that, fear of them being in these bathrooms is irrational, no? And do you really think it's reasonable to discriminate against groups of people simply because we are "uncomfortable" with them. Is that not the very basis of bigotry?
Actually, the built environment does, by differentiating the room you use based on your genitalia.
One presumes that urinals are cheaper, and faster, which perhaps explains the shorter cues for men's toilets at intermission.
That's a good question. Do trans women actually have to be a threat before it is reasonable to exclude them from women's bathrooms... I'll think about that.
I don't have any statistics, but if you look on the web you'll see instances of people who call themselves transgender women raping other women. How many do there have to be before it is too many? The vast majority of men would not rape women if they shared bathrooms with them.
I guess it comes down to that for me - if it's not reasonable to exclude trans women from women's bathrooms, then it's not reasonable to exclude men either. Perhaps @Tom Storm's idea of only unisex bathrooms is the way to go.
OK, but excluding men from women's bathrooms doesn't put them in a situation where a) they are misgendered and b) they are in disproportionate danger. If it turns out to be the case that forcing trans women into men's toilets results in more violence overall against the innocent (whoever they may be) then it would seem the most humane policy would be not to do that.
We have more important issues, such as drag queens reading books to children in public libraries...
The broader question is whether it's appropriate to designate XX women as such when that designation matters. To assert it doesn't matter in the bathroom scenario simply avoids the question momentarily until the scenario meets your approval to then have to consider unless you take the approach it per se cannot matter.
So, substitute for bathroom, gym locker room, which does in fact have fully naked people walking about.
Quoting Tom Storm
That's not what this thread is about. I made that clear.Quoting Tom Storm
Either that, or I didn't think it mattered, so I chose MtF.Quoting Tom Storm
When it matters we do. If it's an XX sports team, then XYs shouldn't be on it. Keep in mind, even if we're creating a sport team based on gender identification, we are going to require the person out themselves if they identify as a woman but appear entirely as a man.
The correlation between appearance and gender identity is a choice, not a requirement.
And what do you think is the issue here? What's the problem that results from folk wandering around naked? Fill it out.
Should a MtF preop be permitted to walk about in the women's locker room fully naked?
Should the MtF play on the CIS women's soccer team?
That is, is there an instance where you would permit desparate treatment of XX and XY persons who both identify as women?
If the answer is no, then that speaks to an unrealistic understatement of the impact of genetic composition on behavior.
The concept of modesty may seem quaint to you, but it is an area of concern for most cultures, and asking that it not be respected across gender lines is certainly as culturally insensitive as forcing a transsexual into a locker room opposite their gender.
This is to say, I think a CIS woman is within her rights not to be expected to shower with the men today due to her locker room being full.
But you tell me, why don't you show up tomorrow at work just in your shirt like Winnie the Pooh?
At first reading this seemed downright nonsensensical to me. I'm not part of trans communities, but whenever I came across transpeople talking about their experiences, the opposite seems to be true; they'd rather blur the line and/or de-emphasise it, while it's the opponents who re-inforce the line and make it a tad brighter when they're talking about how trans-people's identities are invalid.
When I first read the post, there were no replies yet; I spent the time between then and now trying to figure out where I differ from you, how we could have such different intuitions (or, as a possibility, that I totally misread you).
I think my main point is pretty convoluted, though, and trying to stick with what you've written is... tough. I'll try to pick out some quotes and respond, but the danger in the approach is that I fragment my attention too much and confuse even myself (it happened before).
Quoting Hanover
Hm, the thing is when we assign sex to children we tend to check for genitals rather then chromosomes, as this is usually accurate enough, and testing the genome is too expensive and not worth it. You can correct me if I'm wrong about this; I'm not actually certain about this. I am certain that the concept of man/woman is way older than our knowledge of genes, though.
I feel like the retreating from genital sex to chromosomal sex means something, but I'm not sure what exactly. Maybe it's because operations can change that stuff, but we're not yet at the point where we can modify the chromosomes?
Quoting Hanover
That's when the dispute may arise, but the problem arises earlier - with intuitions. You see, I don't think think the sex/gender distinction is that clear cut to begin with, and that may be why the opening quote confused me. "Gender" is indeed a social attribute, not a biological one. I don't disagree here. But the alignment of gender and sex is not as straightforward as one might intuit. All sorts of things are gendered, down to grammatical gender (whose ties to sex are spurious, and whose ties to social gender have occasionally been researched - mostly I think through the lense of cognition? Don't take my word for it.)
But "gender" as a social category is a more comprehensive interpretative scheme than just a tool to sort people into categories. One of the things, I think, that's gendered is how we think about sex, and for that very reason the distinction between XX and XY may not be as relevant as people think. One of the things, for example, that I hear challenged a lot is that gender needs to be a binary. And while this is indeed mostly social talk, it's not entirely clear if some people among the trans community mightn't benefit from knowledge we might gather by thinking of sex not as a binary: that is, maybe there's knowledge to be had out there that we don't have, because we gender sex as the common male-female binary? Then there's the additional gender category of cis and trans. The social indentity category is difficult enough as it is, but is there something in the biology that favours the social distinction? That is: could "cis" and "trans" be at least partly an attribute of sex? The answer to question is one of practical research, and that would need theory, and there might be theories that restructure the way we think about sex? Now consider the political landscape: who would reject such a restructing, and who would seek it? There's a problem of continuity, of acceptance on one side, and of bias and wishful thinking on the other. Who would fund such research? Where would it be published?
So my suggestion is not "sex" on the one hand and "gender" on the other, but the other way round: sex is "gendered biology". This is where I should lay my bias open. I have a degree in sociology, but have never done anything with it and am out of the loop. The theories that attracted me most were usually interpretative or constructivist approaches (many deriving from Husserl - such as Alfred Schütz, or Berger/Luckmann). What this means is that I think of "gender" more as basic interpretative scheme than as an attribute given to things and people.
This important, as the distinction between gender and sex is somewhat different in daily language. English (unlike my mother tongue German) has different adjectives for sex (male/female) and gender (masculine/feminine). So it's sort of tempting think of gender as the things that are "masculine"/"feminine" and sex as the things that are "male"/"female". But this is problematic, because it forces trans people into a more complicated terminology. You see, there's (at least in theory) such a thing as a masculine trans female, in the same way that there is a masculine cis female. Something that's terribly confusing for some people is a trans woman with a beard, for example.
I have two examples where this matters:
1. To be recognised as trans in Japan, you need to take the operation. Not all trans people want to.
2. Voice training: Some trans people may not see the need to talk any differently than they're used to, but will still undergo voice training so they sound more feminine, not because that's closer to some ideal they invision, but because it's less confusing for non-trans folk. I've read reports from transitioning folk who felt pressured into voice training by their trans support structue (with the justification being something like: "if you don't train your voice, you make things more difficult for us to gain trans acceptance).
So basically drawing a bright red line between biological gender (sex) and social gender, would usually not be in the interest of the trans community. De-emphasising the importance of biology altogether, it seems to me, would be more in line with what they actually say. And it might discourage or inhibit research into whether there are biological components to being trans that are part of your sexual make up we haven't found yet.
I'm really not sure I made much sense to anyone but myself, but if you're reading this I managed to stay coherent enough to make sense in my own mind, which - considering that I often confuse myself enough so I'm unable to finish a post - I consider an accomplishment. I may be embarrassed by this post tomorrow, though.
I'd argue that democracy doesn't work that way, as if a vote occurs and the lovers take their lumps and the winner gets his way. The losers protest and continue to push back. I'm not suggesting that's a bad thing, but democracy doesn't equal harmony.
Quoting frank
I suspect they think themselves decent.
If the issue is modesty, then design dressing rooms for modesty. Put up more dividers.
You are way overthinking this.
Or is "modesty" a proxy for some other problem, unaddressed?
You have no idea about the darkness that lies within.
I think as this situation matures, a trans woman will be satisfied saying that she's living as a woman, but that she's not a biological woman.
I think the issue you're pointing out is temporary zealousness. As Judith Butler said in that video, the important thing now is to nurture a climate where trans people aren't subject to violence. Over zealousness doesn't deescalate tension.
What do you think?
And I thought I made it clear that this is the unavoidable outcome of your question. It's how it looks the moment you explore it.
Quoting Hanover
Sure, but I think this is instructive regarding how almost all aspects of this conversation are framed in general.
Quoting Hanover
Hmmm. A choice for whom?
Carry on. :smile:
I have a couple of problems with this. First, if you're saying that it's ok to put more women in danger as long as the overall level of danger is lower, I doubt that will sell very well. It certainly doesn't convince me. Second, putting biological men in women's bathrooms is very clearly going to increase the danger of violence for them because it's going to make people angry. If you want trans people to be accepted, it doesn't make any sense to make a big deal about an issue like this.
Which brings us back to the fact that 99.5% of people are not transgendered. My high school had about 1,000 students. That means about five of them would be trans. Even if it's significantly more than that, does it make sense to disrupt all the other students lives and make the community furious for the benefit of so few? The obvious solution is to provide a separate a smaller unisex bathroom and locker room for anyone who wants to to use it. It could have private dressing rooms and showers.
In 10 years, maybe it won't matter anymore. In the meantime, the trans community is going to have to be accommodating to public sentiment.
For many of us, it seems; the result of the Good Lord putting the playground next to the sewerage works. Evolution, of course, would never produce something so ad hoc.
Good OP, by the way; enjoyably satyrical.
I still don't see why any of this philosophy/sociology/psychology/anthropology/politics makes any difference. Is it reasonable for women to object to sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with trans women. I say yes. What's the solution? Make reasonable accommodation, e.g. a separate unisex bathroom and locker room. Asking for more before the community has come to terms with the troublesome moral/religious/social/political issues involved is unreasonable. It will also obviously also lead to more conflict and more violence.
Whether to present as a man or woman is a choice to the person doing it. Do you suggest otherwise?
Safety first, yes. Should violence occur, I would blame the actor, to a much less extent someone specifically inciting it, to no extent someone who just has a different point of view, even if they hold it passionately.
I raised that very issue in my post above.
I'm no expert on this issue and certainly no spokesperson for the trans community. Nevertheless I suggest this might trivialize the matter - like it's a simple case of merely ticking a box. The word 'choice' can hide a multitude of sins. My trans colleagues would say it isn't a choice, it's who they are.
One of the criticisms we can make of the Cis understanding of the issue is that we often seem to think trans, or being gay for that matter, is a lifestyle choice and people can stop 'doing it' just like they should say 'no' to drugs, etc, etc.
You did. :up:
I've not suggested one can choose not to be gay, straight, CIS, or trans. I said one can choose one's behavior, which is true.
I can choose to not have sex with women despite being straight. Such is a prerequisite for consent, without which one can't legally have any sex.
Since you point to this, I'll better respond.
I didn't focus on the safety issue as the basis for my bathroom signs, although I can see that as being an issue more a concern for CIS women than CIS men because CIS women are genetically physically weaker than CIS men and are statistically far greater at risk of assault than a CIS man is, so the FtM issue would be less an area of safety to consider.
But in any event, our dearth of women in this thread deprives us of the first hand account of whether they would feel threatened by a FtM in their gym locker.
1 in 7 Americans have a disability that interferes with ordinary life activities. Even so, advocates and legislators have been working on accommodations for people with disabilities for over 50 years. The ADA federal bill was passed in 1990. There are still plenty of barriers which disabled people encounter, though a lot of progress has been made over the last 50+ years.
Transseuxuals / transgendered people have been present for the last 50+ years, but have become an organized advocacy group much more recently. In addition, the age at which some persons declare themselves to be trans has fallen into the years of childhood.
Perhaps there are as many as 1/2 of 1% trans people. What counts as "trans" varies. Some people's 'trans' status seems to be ideational and emotional. They may not alter their appearance at all. Conversely, some people require a change of costume, change in circulating hormones, and a radical restructuring of their anatomy.
Thousands of cities, businesses, and building owners have discovered that making the required accommodations for physical disability are quite expensive. Creating a fully accessible bathroom can run into many thousands of dollars. Eliminating steps into a building can require a lot of construction work. Establishing systems and facilities for the hearing and visually impaired, to cite another example, requires considerable institutional effort and commitment
My point is this: providing gender neutral accommodations--toilets, locker rooms, and so on is not a trivial expense, and the number of beneficiaries doesn't justify the required spending, especially when we have not met all the very definite needs of 60 million disabled Americans.
I presume that being trans, like being gay or straight, is NOT a choice. The style in which one lives out his or her sexuality, however, is a choice, moderated by circumstances. As a gay man, I could elect to wear black leather and chains or corduroy suits. I could choose to be sexually promiscuous, sexually abstemious, or something in between. I could solicit sex from inappropriate people (like students, clients, choir boys, etc.) or not. There are all sorts of things that I could do as a matter of lifestyle choice. The same goes for heterosexuals. And the same goes for trans people.
here are, however, costs associated with any given choice. Sexually promiscuous men are likely to experience more infections and if they are reckless, are likely to get arrested or worse. Trans people have to elect their lifestyle options in light of their (social and material) environment, just like everybody else does. Society is no more obligated to accept all trans lifestyle choices, any more than they are obligated to accept all gay or strait lifestyle choices.
Accepting lifestyle choices is not the same thing as accepting someone's right to exist.
That's certainly not true to the extent that it is for the disabled. For almost all conditions they do not require special physical accommodation. The only things I can think of off the top of my head are bathrooms and barracks/dormitories. You don't really need a lot of special facilities. As I noted, simply including a few unisex bathrooms along with the regular men's and women's could suffice. Can you think of anything else? Gay people don't require special accommodation. Except as noted why should trans people?
[Edit] Should have included issues with sports teams.
I would say that anyone on either side of the issue not willing to make reasonable compromises to minimize the danger of violence shares in the responsibility.
I don't think people care nearly as much. I doubt anyone cares if trans males want to compete on a men's sports team. I read an article in the past couple of years about a trans man who competed on the Harvard swim team with no problem. The rest of the team accepted him.
You haven't demonstrated any danger. I have no evidence to suggest trans women are a "danger" in women's bathrooms.
What if someone doesnt know what their sex chromosomes are because theyve never been tested? Although theres a strong correlation between sex chromosomes and appearance there are all sorts of genetic conditions that differ from the common, and not everyone with them knows that they have them. They might be very rare but whatever laws or rules you have in place will need to account for them. Will all bathrooms and locker rooms require genetic testing?
What if someone is neither XX nor XY? Again it might be rare but again they need to be accounted for.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-survey-idUSKBN13X0BK
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/transgender-teens-restricted-bathroom-access-sexual-assault/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8022685/
Thanks for this. The evidence suggests the whole "trans people are a danger" narrative is false and as I pointed out earlier turns reality on its head. Ultimately, a reflection of a transphobic culture. I had dozens of trans students in Thailand and the thought of what bathroom they were using never occurred to me nor do I remember it ever being mentioned by anyone else. No one cared because there was nothing to care about.
Sounds like a pretty weak argument - the church used to say to gay people (and still does), 'It's ok to be gay, just choose not to love another man or have sex with one."
If someone is trans, I don't think we have the mandate to say - 'Be trans, just don't behave trans.' This is why I said choice hides a multitude of sins.
Most of the trans people I know have been beaten and spat on regularly. Quite often by people referencing the Bible, and in a couple of instances, the Koran. The advice they have been given by police is often, 'Sure, you're a trans woman, just don't dress like that around here.' Sounds like bigoted bullshit to me.
https://gcn.ie/trans-dehydration-avoid-school-bathrooms/
''A mother to a transgender Leaving Cert student recently spoke with the Irish Independent on how her son fasted during the school day in fear of using the schools bathrooms, a struggle relatable to many trans students throughout the country. The mother has remained anonymous in order to protect her sons identity.
Her seventeen year-old son first registered to a secondary school in Dublin as a female student. At this stage, he avoids using the bathrooms at all costs, to the extent of not eating or drinking during the school day. The mother touched upon the impact of fasting on her sons health and academic performance as she recollected noticing him looking ill when picking him up from school'
That may be a weak argument, but it's not one I made. I never suggested transsexuals shouldn't express themselves. I'm not real sure what you're responding to.
What I said is that sexual expression is a choice. That one chooses to have sex with men, women, as a man, as a woman, or however is not of concern to me as long as it's consensual, meaning by choice.
You're reading things in my posts that aren't there and then telling me you disagree with what I didn't say.
That's good to hear. If I misrepresented you, I apologise.
Quoting Hanover
I'm not sure why this point was made then. What behaviour are you referring to in relation to trans?
To abstract it:
You have an X and you want to know how it might be used. You establish that it can be used only if A, B, and C occur. An objection is raised that B is not rationally related to the objective of the rule. What then follows is whether it's rationally related.
There will obviously be disagreement, but we can only make rules as best we can.
More concretely:
We distinguish on the basis of "men" and "women" In a variety of contexts: locker rooms, bathrooms, sports teams, individual dating decisions, social presentations, and I'm sure others could be identified.
Some of those distinctions are arguably worth preserving, like perhaps the locker room or sports teams examples. Assuming that, which @Banno challenges, and which I disagree, we have to now define the signs above the door, meaning what are "men" and "women."
I do believe that in many of these instances XX and XY accurately describe what the speaker meant when he hung the sign, not what the word eventually evolved into and what it was meant to protect.
If the rational basis for maintaining the historic distinction is comfort or perceived safety of the vast majority of users, that seems sufficient to me unless you wish to override the majority with a declaration of special minority rights that hasn't previously been declared. That is, unless the regulation of a transsexual from certain restrooms is a violation of human civil rights guaranteed under some special rule, the majority has the right to enforce their rule, even if it does not precisely and exactly achieve its every goal under every hypothetical.
A transexual and CIS woman both choose daily whether to wear male or female clothing for example.
A heterosexual and homosexual both choose who to have sex with.
The word "prefer" doesn't appear in these statements, meaning what they prefer is set, what they do is a choice.
Maybe that's true of the person who hung the sign (assuming they have a basic understanding of biology), but our use of the words "man" and "woman" and our separation of bathrooms and locker rooms long preceded our discovery of sex chromosomes in 1905.
At the most you could argue that the words and separation was determined by phenotype as historically there was no means to distinguish between a typical XY male and someone with XX Male Syndrome, and so it's a stretch to argue that genetics had something to do with the conventions of our language use, even if there is a strong correlation between genotype and phenotype.
But your response doesn't really address my questions. Should someone who has physically transitioned use the bathroom associated with their sex chromosomes? How would anyone know what someone else's (or their own) sex chromosomes are? What about people who are neither XX nor XY?
I think practical considerations are far more important than the intentions of the person who painted a sign on a door, so your argument is a red herring.
It's not a rational basis as has been explained. Without evidence to show trans women are more of a threat in bathrooms than cis women, it's simply transphobia.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gwao.12545
Sports, in general are very problematic. This is probably because sport is an entertainment based industry, and activity. And the inclination to entertain may lead the mind of the actor in many strange directions. Some of these directions are demonstrably unhealthy and that's why censorship is a real feature of the entertainment industry.
The boundary between healthy and unhealthy is ill defined, and we still allow people to make unhealthy choices until it becomes a burden on the welfare system, or has a noticeably bad effect on others, as the freedom to smoke cigarettes demonstrates. When the unhealthy choice affects others, second hand smoke, not wearing a mask in a pandemic, etc., restrictions are enforced. In the entertainment industry such restrictions occur as censorship.
Sports are generally viewed as healthy entertainment, censorship not required. But, there is another feature of sports which complicates the issue, competition. This produces another requirement for restrictions, the need to create fairness in competition. Now sports has two incompatible principles for restrictions, the requirement of healthiness, and the requirement of fair competition. This is because natural healthiness is not conducive to fair competition, and this is at the base of evolutionary theory. So sport is a very complex psychology and not something one can just wade into.
The comparison to African Americans would elevate the scrutiny under which a law is evaluated, but by making that turn, you now have to explain why you've elevated that class of people over others.
African Americans are afforded special status (as are others) due to specific laws and court decisions based upon historical discrimination. You must now explain how the transsexual experience is sufficiently similar to blacks should you want both to be subject to the same sorts of protection.
Those arguments have been made, with some positive and negative responses, some of the negative coming from the African American community, but it certainly was not a unified position.
Quoting Hanover
Let's take it step by step. We presumably agree that if there is no evidence trans women are more of a danger then cis women in bathrooms then excluding them on that basis is irrational. What is the next consideration for excluding them then and we can discuss that.
This seems like a non-sequitur. The purpose of the comparison was simply to make the point that both in a transphobic and racist society, false justifications relating to public health and safely will be used to maintain the status quo.
I blame the patriarchy.
Because property, status, name and title are passed down the male line, and because patrilineal is not self evident the way matrilineal is, Men require to control the sexuality of women. Are you bored with this yet, I do keep saying it?
Rape and the fear of rape is an important part of the control of women's sexual freedom, along with body shaming.
Quoting Hanover
The threat of sexual deviance is a threat to the deepest fabric of society, the basis of property and privilege, and heritage itself, including nationality ethnicity etc. The male fear is that another man might have sex with my woman and my child not be mine. Even the women's toilets are not safe, and we must patrol them!
There is no issue with a female to trans male individual for the same reason that female prostitutes are no threat we don't care who the father of their child is. Wives and daughters have to be controlled though.
Assuming the only basis for gender seperation is safety and that it has nothing to do with discomfort related to sexual tension, attraction, or just a desire not to unclothe in the presence of the opposite sex (which is why I'd prefer not to use the women's locker room even if invited, despite me being in no fear of assault)
I recognize that MtF transsexuals are at higher risk in male restrooms than they'd be in female restrooms, but I've not suggested (and have stated my opposition to this) that MtFs be forced into mens locker rooms. Allowing them access to a seperate facility seems fine by me, but I don't think that equates to permitting them into the women's restroom. That is, we can protect their safety without subjecting them onto the unwilling woman population simply because women aren't as violent as men and will tolerate the transsexuals without presenting safety issues, although I would expect many to speak out.
I would assume that if I walked into the women's gym locker and began disrobing, I would face hostility from the women, even those not in fear of assualt, but just pissed off that I invaded their space and exposed myself to them.
Quoting Baden
I was actually reciting the way American jurisprudence treats this topic.
For example, and this references @Michael's comments:
If I pass a law that regulates the speed limit on Hwy 10 at 60 mph, but it can be shown that certain stretches are safe at 70 mph, that certain cars are safe at 75 mph, that older drivers are safe only at 50 mph, that on certain curves it is safe only at 55 mph, that at night it's safe at 57 mph, at low traffic times it's safe at 80 mph, etc, then you might have an argument that my general safety justification isn't valid in every instance. The reason this law would pass muster is that all I need to do is provide any rational justification for it and I wouldn't need to strictly scrutinize the rule because the class affected (i.e. motorists) isn't one that is particularly worrisome in terms of being discriminated against.
On the other hand, if I pass a law that seems to disproportionately affect blacks, then that law will face an entirely different type of analysis, where it will be subjected to very strict scrutiny, looking at whether there is any better way to acheive my objectives instead of attacking this historically discriminated against class.
That is why I asked whether we should treat transsexuals as more akin to blacks or to motorists. If the latter, then we are well within our rights to do what we want without paying special attention not to impact that group. I do think we've taken an overly expansive view of affording rights to more and more classes of individuals, and I'm not sure I'm prepared to add transsexuals to that mix. I can see why some might take a different stance though or to at least offer a heightened level of scrutiny to laws affecting transsexuals even if not as heightened as to other minorities.
How would sexual deviance threaten to cause my wife to be impregnated by another? She'd be just as likely to get preggers whether the sex was vanilla or a total freak show.
And why am I now being accused of not being a sexual deviant? Have you not read the shit I've posted in the Shoutbox? Ten years of trying to establish a reputation down the drain with this thread I guess.
You indicated that I took the position that transsexualism was a matter of personal choice. I denied that. You then provided a quote you felt contradicted my denial. I pointed out that the quote you provided didn't indicate a prior statement by me that transsexualism was a matter of choice, but that behavior was a matter of choice.
I then offered an explanation for that, describing how my heterosexuality, for instance, was not a matter of choice, but my decision who to have sex with, if anyone, was a matter of choice. That logic applies to homosexuals as well in terms of who they choose to have sex with and transsexuals in terms of how they wish to present themselves to the general public.
What we each prefer is not a matter of choice. What we each do is a matter of choice.
Not if it's unsafe, nor should they use the opposite bathroom if it's unsafe or causes discomfort among the others in that bathroom. If there were someone who transitioned so completely that it was unknown by the others that the person was of the opposite sex, then it wouldn't matter because no one would know.
That XY who looked XX got away with the crime of using the XX bathroom I guess. It's sort of like when the kid eats at the 12 and under price but he's 13 even though he eats like a 12 year old anyway.
Not a great example, but an example nonetheless.
I think this is the crux of the matter. If I claim that transwomen aren't women, you'd think I'm transphobic?
I think this goes directly to my OP, which is the attempt at the disambiguation of the term "woman." There are XX women and XY women, both rightfully called "women," but two different groups. Claiming that XX individuals are not women because they don't gender identify as women seems as dogmatic as claiming that XY individuals who gender identify as women are not women.
An entire political debate centers around an equivocation fallacy where we then impose ontological status to all women regardless of whether they're XX or XY because we assume "woman" always has the same referent. From there all women play sports together because they are, afterall, all "women." Except they aren't the same type of women.
Well, sure, but I understand @Michael received applause that one time he did it by mistake.
Quoting Baden
This is horrifying. Here's a genuine problem that needs to be dealt with.
There is an odd point here though, in that if this student identifies as a girl and wants to present as a girl (I presume) and be allowed to use the girl's restroom, that would be some kind of solution for her at least -- before we even get to the question of how other girls would react.
On the other hand, there is no solution for a boy who has been branded as a "sissy" -- whether he's gay or not.
I do not believe the genuine danger faced by boys and girls at the hands of other boys is a necessary (you know, biological) feature of our lives, but a result of fucked up parenting and fucked up ideas about what being a man is.
Firstly, to give some context, I think society in general is transphobic and many intelligent and genuine people will unknowingly reflect transphobic attitudes. For those whose positions are based on bad information, misunderstandings, and misguided fears, I don't think the label transphobic is always helpful or appropriate. Plus, there is complexity as @Hanover is pointing to. Taking all that into consideration, I'd personally want to approach individuals charitably re that claim. However, in a more generalised sense, I do think a blanket denial of trans womanhood that simply designates trans women as men who "like to wear dresses " or change their bodies to look like women is transphobic, though not necessarily ill-intentioned (this seems to be @NOS4A2's stance). Going beyond that then you have hatred, mockery, and disgust which is unambiguously transphobic and needs to be pushed back against firmly.
:100:
Apparently people on social media are attacked for rejecting the equivocation. It's silly, and I think it will go away eventually.
There's a judicial sound to this post, or did I read that in?
I mean, I respect your opinion on this, and your right to forcefully advocate for it. I don't see you as a judge on this issue, though.
"Disgust" I think is the key word here.
It's been mentioned a couple times that FtM transitioners are of much less interest in the debate. For the anti-trans activists, they're sort of a curiosity, but MtF -- these are men who are shirking their sacred duty, cowards and weaklings, worse even than gay men, who, it turns out, can still fight and play sports and stuff --- aarrrggghhh -- even though they have, let's say, a hobby that's weird and kinda gross. At least some of them, maybe even most of them, are still men in some of the ways that count. (Hitting stuff and/or people.) Not 100% real men, but pretty close in some cases. But those men that want to be women? That is literally like being a traitor.
NOTE: everything after the italicized phrase is written from a point-of-view not mine.
I'm guessing you experience this yourself. Do you think society should "push back" against your feelings here? Or just let you express how you feel?
Um, no.
I really thought the italics would do it. Adding a note now.
What makes you think "disgust" is the keyword then? Do people express this to you?
Have you been living under a rock?
I'm not testifying here, but offering an explanation for why an "issue" that affects almost no one, that need not even be thought of as an issue at all, is sucking up so much oxygen these days. Disgust, moral revulsion, what have you, these can produce outsize responses, and we have beyond question one of those here.
Do you disagree? Do you think where some kid pees is an important issue that adults should be talking about all the time, holding press conferences, making speeches, arranging panel discussions and debates, proposing and passing laws about?
Not judicial, but judicious I hope. I gave more context on my opinion because I want to be nuanced. What exactly constitutes transphobia isn't clear cut.
Agreed. One of the original TERFs, Kathleen Stock, is all for gender-affirming care and also for excluding trans women from traditional women's spaces. Is it helpful to label her transphobic or not transphobic? I'm not seeing it.
I think one way you can approach it is empirically, in other words, don't try to read people's souls. You don't have that ability. Plus if you ride in like the Knight of Wokeness, you'll end up creating a problem that wouldn't have been there if you just stay in your office chair tapping your finger tips together.
If someone proposes that it should be illegal to be trans, or spouts violent rhetoric, you have a transphobic on your hands. If they tell you they respect the humanity of trans people, but deny that a transwoman actually is a woman, or that a transman is a real man, that's not transphobia. It's definitely in opposition to certain woke party lines, but it's not transphobia in and of itself.
Don't try to do social engineering with your political views. That's just going to create tension that makes the topic harder to talk about.
Yes, but it's mostly made out of cement and little sticks I found. There's a snake in here. I named him Leggy.
Yup, your hetero-normal conventionality has been totally exposed.
I don't work in an office and in light of the very nuanced view I gave, your characterization seems a little odd. It should be clear I don't believe in aggressively targeting people who are simply a bit ignorant. But maybe you don't mean me...
Quoting frank
Recognizing gender identity has nothing to do with the dreaded "wokeness", it's just the ability to understand social reality. Anyhow, we can disagree, but I'm confident the overall trajectory is towards greater understanding and sensitivity to trans people, including recognizing them as women as social science, dictionaries, and the governments of most advanced democracies already do.
Whereas your accusations of "wokeness", dogmatic assertions, and strange talk of office chairs is designed to reduce tension? Honestly, I'm confident I have reason on my side here and I'll continue to debate the topic the way I have been doing in a nuanced and charitable manner.
Why is it transphobic?
No, I was just saying that aggressive wokeness isn't helpful. I wasn't saying you do that.
Quoting Baden
You're absolutely right. The way this ties back to the OP is this:
there are approaches to the topic that blur the boundary (clearly set out by Judith Butler) between biological identity and gender identity. I'm not saying that you do that, it's just that some people do, and I'm sure you'd agree that it's an untenable position. It just makes no sense.
This has nothing to do with the right of people to transition in terms of gender. It has nothing to do with affording those people the same constitutional rights as everyone else. It just means that we don't have the means to transition people in term of biological identity. We just don't. Lets all just get reasonable and recognize that. Right?
Quoting Baden
I really didn't mean to be taken that way. It's the opposite of what I meant. I was trying to say that before any of us speak, let's try to have a little respect for one another (until someone clearly shows they don't deserve respect, then open fire.)
Yes, but there's not always a separate facility and maybe those who are unwilling are so due to misunderstandings concerning safety etc. The women in Thailand don't seem to be bothered and certainly not all women are bothered.
Quoting Hanover
I'm talking primarily about MtF access to bathrooms here. I might move on to locker rooms later but the fact that in the latter case or in a case where a woman walks into a male bathroom, opposite genitalia may be exposed creates an issue of modesty and embarrassment that isn't relevant to just washing your hands next to someone in front of a mirror or having them in the next cubicle.
Ok, thanks for clarifying. :up:
(I would also be against aggressively targeting people as transphobic for having traditional views on gender and I agree it is sensible to maintain a distinction between biological sex and gender. But maybe you can point me to a reference for the specific view you're criticizing here. )
Quoting NOS4A2
Because it's a stereotypical and superficial generalization of this group that ignores trans identity and experience. It suggests to me you ought to make some trans friends or read up more on the issue. What would you say for example to the trans student who doesn't eat or drink in school because they are afraid they'll have to go to the bathroom? What is the humane approach to that? Telling them they're really just a man who likes to wear dresses is not it.
That's it! We agree. The rest is gravy.
Oh, cool...
I do think Thai culture is very different in this regard, or at least that's how it's portrayed to me from 1000s of miles away. Quoting Baden
I had a conversation with a woman at work once regarding the use of urinals by women, and she told me that she would likely back up to the urinal as opposed to straddling it, which is something I never thought of, but maybe that makes more sense. She also asked me if guys pissed in the shower because she thought we were sort of like wild animals. I told her I didn't, but I really didn't know what others did. My guess is that there is a healthy mix of behavior in that regard.
The point here is that this separation of genders into separate facilities has left us ignorant as to what the others are doing. If we do finally shed the remnants of sexual separation, think of all that we'll learn about one another. Based upon many of the five minute documentaries I have seen on this subject, there is a tremendous amount of woman on woman sex in the showers.
But I digress.
Don't think for one second your reputation for depravity can be restored that easily.
Thank you for this. @unenlightened's comments sort of rattled me a bit, having in a single sentence dismantled my life's work.
A transgender female will likely dress as a woman because that helps to make the transition psychologically effective for her. Should she 'choose' to dress as a male instead? It seems we're back to the word choice being used here in a slightly shady way.
Pragmatic - solves the problem - but it's not very philosophical, sociological, or political. I don't think this whole question is about people's comfort and safety, it's about stuffing it down the throats of people who disagree with us.
It doesn't seem like you understood what I wrote. I don't see any value in trying to explain more clearly. We can leave it at that.
No. The focus of the debate should be on figuring out how to help transgender men and women become valued members of our communities without having to pretend they're something they're not. Sounds like that may already have happened in Thailand. We have to find a way to do it here. I don't think what you suggest will do that.
I think your post is a good summary of the issue. I'm not someone who cares much about sports, but I do care about fairness. From what I've read, biological males who compete as women in mixed martial arts consistently beat the crap out of biological females, sometimes causing serious injury. That's not fair.
What I said is compatible with helping them become valued member of our communities. But what I've been suggesting has been mostly restricted to the bathroom thing so yes that's not enough. I think what happens in Thailand is trans people are accepted and people don't at all seem to have the disgust and fear reaction. However, anecdotally, I feel they tend to get pigeonholed as human novelties and taken less seriously as a result.
What I said was:
Quoting Hanover
There's nothing shady at all going on here. A heterosexual will likely choose a member of the opposite sex to have sex with, a dog lover will likely choose a dog over a cat, and a baseball player will likely play baseball than football. By the same token, a MtF will likely choose to present as a woman. If he doesn't, he's still a MtF, just lilke I didn't become straight suddenly when I stole that first kiss.
All I've said is that actions are choices and preferences are not. What you want can't be controlled. What you do can be. If you can't understand that to be an innocuous statement, there's nothing more that I can do.
Somewhere you've read into this that because presenting as a woman is a choice that I think it's subject to moral criticism and that I'm somehow condemning it. My personal view is that I do not think the choice to present one's self as the opposite sex is immoral. I couldn't care any less about that. But, if you're sure I all I say is a ruse and that I really do care what people do with their intimate body parts, then think that and be wrong.
I think this is the heart of the matter. People don't seem to want to solve the problem, they want to change society. The way to change society is to solve all the problems, one by one, until it doesn't matter anymore.
I would not characterize you position, as expressed here, as nuanced and charitable. I see it as rigid and uncompromising and I think approaching the problem that way makes things worse.
I not sure that's true, but even if it is, I don't think your approach will be effective.
Further, the unaddressed point is that the policing of gendered spaces is social, and not biological. The biological is what we refer to, the social is what we mean. So, yes, a woman can have XY chromosomes, and a man can have XX chromosomes -- "woman" and "man" having always been gender roles, even if we thought biology had something to do with those roles.
Some would view this start of the OP the evidence of all things wrotten in our American(Western) culture. This is what holds interest in a Philosophy Forum in the 21st Century.
Ah, the decandence of our times, this joyful enjoyable decadence. :razz:
Ok. I fail to see how this is a helpful idea. For many transgender people their appear is who they are. It is a requirement. It's almost impossible to go from David to Daphne without changing appearance. I think your line of thinking can lead us to - 'Be who you are, just choose not to appear that way.' Anyway... I'm not accusing you of bigotry. Go well.
The genetics lines up pretty rigidly with the body functions.
Approaching the problem what way? What is rigid about it? Asking for evidence of a threat? Defining transphobia the way I have? You're putting forward a list of criticisms without specifying what you're talking about or engaging substantively. I am able to defend my position, so if you could please quote where my reasoning is faulty in your view, I'll respond.
I'd submit that gender dysphoria is exactly the opposite of the way you characterize it here. The person believes their appearance is not who they are and they try to alter their appearance to match their internal view of who they are. They did start being transsexual when they began altering their appearance anymore than did I start being heterosexual when I had my first romantic moment with a person of the opposite sex.
You can be a practicing heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual or not. The act is a manifestation of the internal state. If you want to say the act is the transsexualism, then we can wipe out a good amount of transsexualism with some makeup remover.
We refer to genetics, to body functions, or even just descriptions of the body.
We don't mean that though. We mean "Woman" and "Man". We're not referencing studies about hormone concentration effects on bone density. To be a man is not to have the right chromosomes. In fact, many people who have the right chromosomes are often denigrated as not being real men. Masculinity refers to the penis, but the performance is in defeating someone else -- or at least trying and accepting the outcome if you lose. Like a man.
I didn't say gender identity comes down to molecular biology. Bodily functions do.
Quoting Moliere
They all line up pretty rigidly. You can use "XX" to describe typical female anatomy and physiology. You'll be talking about the same thing a Neanderthal would recognize as female.
Quoting Moliere
We have gender roles and we have biology. The two are distinct. That's the whole point of philosophy of gender.
I'm not disagreeing with this. I'm saying that the act of transformation is critical in people being who they need to be. At least that's what trans people have told me over the years. My point is that to call this a choice is not useful, it minimizes trans identity.
Quoting Hanover
The identity completes the process of becoming who you are.
Yup.
And what I'm claiming is that we don't use biology to police gendered spaces. We use gender. So putting "XX" or "XY" on the doors won't address anything at all, since the topic is social rather than biological. It's the biological definition being strictly applied which is novel. Historically speaking "Woman" and "Man" have social, rather than biological, meanings.
Yes. It's an unfortunate fact that few transwomen go undetected. It's usually pretty obvious.
The pressure on trans people is to "pass" -- they can be themselves as long as cis people can't tell and treat them the same. With further pressures on gendered spaces from political reactionaries the desire to to be "pure", the desire to transition *rightly* is intensified.
And, truth be told, we don't know if "few" trans women go undetected. That's the dream -- to be undetected, and finally be treated as one is.
Testosterone is performance enhancing for female athletes. And of course that male athletes are stronger, quicker than female athletes. And notice other subtle things what the records show: look at how many World records are from the 1980's. With men, there's one. With women, there's four. In the 1980s growth hormones and and anabolic steroids, which mimic testosterone, were widely used and only later more tighter control were brought in.
Current womens world records in track & field:
100 10.49 Florence Griffith Joyner (US) Indianapolis, Indiana 7/16/88
200 21.34 Florence Griffith Joyner (US) Seoul, South Korea 9/29/88
300+ 34.41 Shaunae Miller-Uibo (Bahamas) Ostrava, Czech Republic 6/20/19
400 47.60 Marita Koch (East Germany) Canberra, Australia 10/06/85
600+ 1:21.77 Caster Semenya (South Africa) Berlin, Germany 8/27/17
800 1:53.28 Jarmila Kratochvílová (Czechoslovakia) Munich, Germany 7/26/83
1000 2:28.98 Svetlana Masterkova (Russia) Brussels, Belgium 8/23/96
1500 3:50.07 Genzebe Dibaba (Ethiopia) Fontvieille, Monaco 7/17/15
3:49.11p Faith Kipyegon (Kenya) Florence, Italy 6/02/23
Mile 4:12.33 Sifan Hassan (Netherlands) Fontvieille, Monaco 7/12/19
2000 5:21.56 Francine Niyonsaba (Burundi) Zagreb, Croatia 9/14/21
Steeple 8:44.32 Beatrice Chepkoech (Kenya) Fontvieille, Monaco 7/20/18
3000 8:06.11 Junxia Wang (China) Beijing, China 9/13/93
Current mens world records in track & field:
100 9.58 Usain Bolt (Jamaica) Berlin, Germany 8/16/09
150+ 14.35 Usain Bolt (Jamaica) Manchester, England 5/17/09
200 19.19 Usain Bolt (Jamaica) Berlin, Germany 8/20/09
300+ 30.81 Wayde van Niekerk (South Africa) Ostrava, Czechia 6/28/17
400 43.03 Wayde van Niekerk (South Africa) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 8/14/16
600+ 1:12.81 Johnny Gray (US) Santa Monica, California 5/24/86
800 1:40.91 David Rudisha (Kenya) London, England 8/09/12
1000 2:11.96 Noah Ngeny (Kenya) Rieti, Italy 9/05/99
1500 3:26.00 Hicham El Guerrouj (Morocco) Rome, Italy 7/14/98
Mile 3:43.13 Hicham El Guerrouj (Morocco) Rome, Italy 7/07/99
2000 4:44.79 Hicham El Guerrouj (Morocco) Berlin, Germany 9/07/99
Steeple 7:53.63 Saïf Shaheen (Qatar) Brussels, Belgium 9/03/04
7:52.11p Lamecha Girma (Ethiopia) Paris, France 6/09/23
2000 Steeple+ 5:10.86 Mahiedine Mekhissi (France) Reims, France 6/30/10
3000 7:20.67 Daniel Komen (Kenya) Rieti, Italy 9/01/96
Which should at least hint at showing how the biological isn't what we mean, but only refer to.
Thats what Im struggling with. My conscience wont let me abandon the truth of the matter, nor will it let me abandon compassion and manners. I believe abandoning one or the other is fracturing the issue and leading to the division, on what in my mind should be a matter of health.
It seems to me that if it is a matter of health we should be focusing on the dysmorphia, the question of why one cannot identify with his own body, those strong desires and incongruities which directly causes most of the suffering. That in my mind is the humane approach, while it is not clear that satisfying these desires is, especially when we risk violating the rights of the other sex.
Accessible toilets are gender neutral.
So here's your answer: make accessible, gender neutral toilets a norm.
It's ridiculous to frame this discussion as a fight between trans and disabled folk.
That's just not true. What's recent is the general acceptance of socially recognized female traits to biological males in Western society. That's what this change is about.
Your OP was not in jest? This ridiculous thread got to five pages overnight. You must be so proud.
Here's a read for all of you. It won't be that easy for those with little background in philosophical thinking, as it covers ground from Aristotle and Kant through analytic treatments of reference and necessity and natural kinds and Kripke and Rorty and Heidegger before pulling the issues together using the later Wittgenstein. At the very least, this article summarises the real philosophical issues that sit behind the trivial, pop-culture posts that make the bulk of this pathetic thread.
There's even a paragraph for you, @Hanover, explaining who your simplistic xx and xy "solution" ignores.
Trans folk are challenging us to reappraise our assumptions. This is not about chromosomes or genitalia or societal expectations so much as it is about urinals and stalls and keeping people safe.
Read this: Are Sex and Gender Natural Kinds? A Wittgensteinian Investigation
Cheers to , , and those others who show compassion for trans folk.
Removing commentary from your post, I'd replace "unfortunate" with "evolutionary."
"biological males" -- that's not a biological term at all. In general we call males those who provide gametes to eggs, but there's nothing about Western society in that. Seahorses, for instance, on the biological level, function on both sides of what we call male and female.
What I'd say is recent is that people who thought biology mattered have found out that it doesn't.
The reason for mentioning disability is that I am aware of the substantial cost for building out additional bathrooms that weren't in the original floor plan. If a building has a bathroom that can be neutered (changing the signage) that's not a cost issue. If building out is required, then cost is an issue,
It ignores no one. I've not suggested transsexuals are not full fledged women. I've only pointed out that the term "woman" is used differently in different contexts, which is screamingly obvious. I also don't believe anyone can dictate the proper usage of the term, as if to suggest an XX person cannot be referred to as a woman in polite company if they gender identify as a man.
To neutralize the language, I'll call female gender identifying XYs "A," male gender identifying XYs "B," female gender identifying XXs "C," and female gender identifying XXs "D."
As aren't Bs aren't Cs aren't Ds.
We have historically treated Bs and Ds distinctly. It's not shocking that we treat As and Cs distinctly as well. It's also not correct to say A = C simply because they share one trait and not another. The same holds true for trying to say A=B or C=D simply because they share one trait.
My position is not binary.
Sometimes it matters what your sex is and sometimes not. That shouldn't be controversial.
It matters sometimes, not others. Is that not obvious?
I'm only objecting to the use of biology as an obvious thing -- it's not as obvious as we thought, in my opinion at least. The relationship between biological description and man/woman designations is not so easy as I once thought.
It's about all sorts of things, which include comfort levels of women and men, sports programs, and treatment of children. You may have concluded what you think the solution is, but it is about all those things and it is for that reason it is hotly debated.
It is not, as you would frame it, about sympathetic, kiind hearted, forward thinking intellectual folks and prejudiced, hateful, backwoods rednecks. In fact, half the battle is just responding to the ad homs and the refusals to accept I have no problem with people transitioning and doing as they wish. This isn't a moral issue for me at all, and I'm fully supportive of safety and protecting everyone, especially our most vulnerable. I don't throw those words out there just to say the right thing. I sincerely believe it. Justice is blind.
None of this requires me to turn off my brain and declare something is something that it is not though.
Yes, I very much agree with you here. As I've framed it, I don't deny female gender identifying XYs are women. It's not as simple as it would have been framed 20 years ago.
But, where I push back is in deleting prior designations when they continue to have application in particular contexts.
Quoting Hanover
It ignores Aneuploidy; but that's not so important. The problem is in part the insistence on "As aren't Bs aren't Cs aren't Ds", the failure to account for real discrepancies in how we categorise stuff, on understanding necessity and kinds and how sometimes it's a family resemblance. But mostly, it's about misunderstanding what is at issue.
Again, the difference between a men's and a women's lavatory is the urinal. The issue in your OP should be the built environment, not your unenforcible solution to a nonexistent problem.
I don't think it misses that point at all. The issue I've described doesn't attempt to hammer a preferred definition onto a word. We have a real world equivocation problem here, with different communities using the same designator for different referents. The battle is over who gets the word and all privileges attached to it.
My point is that just because you get the word doesn't mean you get the privileges attached to it unless there is a reason for it. Like in sport's, for example.
I doubt it - though I didn't read most of the pages.
What is a woman?
According to the evidence here presented, it's someone who can be discussed, argued-over, judged, categorized and decided-about in her presence, as if she were inanimate.
That's was kind of my impression as well.
Well it's philosophy, isn't it? Abstraction, argumentation and judgment is what we do here to everything... :razz:
It's about toilets!
Anyway, How is this a philosophical question, and how can it have a philosophical answer ?
What is a man, a woman, a person, a camera, a tv? Define them how you want, posit ideal forms of each in hyperspace or whatever, the items with conscious intelligence will insist on their own identity and the inanimate ones don't care.
Carry on as if we were not here.
The post below describes the difference between your position and mine. As I've said in several posts, forcing acceptance of transgender people's demands down the throats of the other 99.5% of us is not an effective way of keeping trans people safe.
Quoting T Clark
How do you define "fair" in a competitive sport? Is it a matter of following the rules? How do we know if the rules are "fair"? Consider @Mark S 's thread on the science of morality. There, morality is defined by cooperation. But competition is directly opposed to cooperation. So we have a big problem right off the bat. Competitive sport is fundamentally immoral according to the science of morality. How do you propose that we can make "fairness" a principle in any competitive sport, which by its very nature is immoral. Fairness would have no real bearing in an immoral activity.
Of course, the solution here is to realize the benefits of competition in general, and to see that morality is not restricted to cooperation, because this would exclude the the good of competition. So when we proceed to look at competition as a good, we need to put that into context, what is it good for. If it was only good for entertainment, this would provide the guidelines needed. However, competition is good in many ways, primarily in the sense that it builds strength in character. And, we see it in the market place, in the office, and in many other places where it often is good. Therefore I ask you, if it is morally correct, for men and women to compete against each other for the same career positions, how could it be moral incorrect (unfair) for men and women to compete against each other in competitive sports?
I don't believe any and all requests for accommodations from disabled persons are justifiable (in terms of expense and disruption) and the same goes for accommodations for trans people. As I said, if a bathroom or locker room can be neutered with a change in signage, fine. If it takes a large construction project to produce a neutered bathroom or locker room, then... maybe one or two trans people don't get one.
Hm. The thread's title is 'What is a "Woman"', but it's not about definitions.
Ok.
No comment as yet on the article. I look forward to your response.
You're in the US? From what I've seen, you are right that there is no where enough support for those with a disability over there.
As you note, competition is not immoral. It has benefits and I think it's a fundamental part of human nature. It doesn't have to be taught. Little kids playing non-competitive soccer argue fiercely over who won.
I hope you dont mind me entering your conversation, but I disagree that anything in the science of morality would necessarily classify competition as immoral.
The function of cultural moral norms and our moral sense is to solve cooperation problems. The rules and ideas about fairness we establish regarding competition are cooperation norms. Competitors who violate those rules are thought to deserve punishment. Violators deserving punishment is the mark of a moral norm. That is, we have moral norms that enable us to cooperate to sustainability obtain the benefits of competition.
Competition is not inherently immoral. What is immoral is violating the rules people established to sustainability obtain the benefits of competition, whether that competition is in sports or in economies.
For example, it would be immoral for one competitor to trip another in a foot race, and (I assume) there are rules against that. Or it would be immoral for one business to steal the intellectual property of another business.
Really, it's entirely their fault. If they had worked harder, saved more money, had not used the products of some Fortunate 500 companies, if they had been more disciplined, studied harder, eaten healthier food - which they couldn't afford, and exercised more - which they were too tired from work to do, they wouldn't have all these problems. So fuck the who lot of whining cry babies!
It's either the fault of the individual for his situation or the fault of another. If only the individual hadn't been so lazy, expecting others to assist versus if only the other individuals hadn't been so heartless, refusing to share.
It's all how you wish to cast the characters in your narrative.
It is about definitions. The word hammer is meant to indicate i'm not forcing definitions, but looking to usages and noting varying uses and the confusions created by different users using terms differently and then imposing their norms on those meanings in inconsistent ways.
Quoting Banno
I appreciate that reference and read through some of it and intend to respond. I debated whether to place this thread under the language or current events category, opting for the latter, but thinking this has more to do with language to me in the emotionally divorced way I'm trying to analyze it.
I'm not in your 99.5% and neither are a huge number of others who find the idea that a simple thing like a trans woman using the woman's lavatory should not be an issue in any reasonable society. That's all I've got to say about it. Peace.
I don't dispute the claims against essentialism, meaning I don't suggest to be a "woman" there is one particular criterion that must exist else you cease being a woman. My position has not been XX is necessary for all womanhood. In particular, I do consider an XY female gender identified person to be a "woman."
As to the family resemblence argument, that is obviously well known and it's not entirely clear to me what that specifically means other than to say that if things look sort of enough alike then they are sufficiently similar for naming purposes. Obviously it is not limited to how things look, but as to all the things about them, including what they do, how they behave and so on.
Nothing I have read in the article has given me pause to think I've violated any of the principles she's identified, and everything I've said can be described in ways that would be consistent with her primer on lingusitic philosophy. That is, we have a good number of folks who identify as "woman" and we have some dispute among those in the language community as to how the term "woman" is to be used. The author asserts this dispute is contrived by those with a political agenda because it should be clear within the whole language community as to what the resemblance of all the folks claiming themselves "women" to be and that the reference to XX and XY are diversions designed to trounce upon the rights of transsexuals.
I don't agree with this, largely because XY chromosomes, as well as the testosterone that comes from it, the musculature that comes from it, and all the primary and sexual characteristics that come from it, result in a being with a certain resemblance that is of critical enough variance that it does not fall within the resemblance of those with XX composition. It is also obvious that the genetic differences lead to different behaviors, both in physical strength and in emotional reaction. We can debate the extent to which societal factors affect the emotional responses of individuals, but we cannot as to the physical strength issues. I do not believe it ought be controversial that men and women respond differently emotionally due to genetic differences as well, but I expect more dispute in this area than with physicality.
When we wish to use the term "woman" we therefore must do so within the context we're in. To the extent there are irrelevant differences in family resemblance, we can disregard them and refer to them all as women. Such is the case if a female gender identifying XY were working at my office. It makes no difference that she might look or act slightly different from a CIS female because the resemblance would be sufficient enough to refer to her as a woman and afford her whatever rights we typically afford a woman in her situation, including how to dress, how to speak, and so on.
On the other hand, if we're having tryouts for the women's soccer league or allowing certain members into bathrooms or locker rooms, the actual physical appearance and functionality of the person is relevant. At that point, the transsexual "woman" and the CIS "woman" no longer share a family resemblance in the manners relevant to this context. If we do choose, however, to call them both women for politically demanded reasons, we may, but we need not then confuse ourselves that the two are the same for the purposes of affording them the same rights of entry into the same previously separated spaces.
If there were a magic pill that a man could take to transform himself into a perfectly appearing woman with all behavorial aspects of a CIS woman yet the XY were maintained, then I would allow that person full access to the CIS women spaces. This extreme hypothetical is offered to acknowledge that it is not the XX/XY designation that is essential for the CIS definition, but it is the manifestation of that genetic composition that we're looking at. I think it's just a scientific fact that genes are determining these things, and so it's easy enough to refer to the genes as a representation of expected behavioral characteristics, and thus how they will look and act (and what they will therefore resemble).
All of this is to say that XX female gender identifying folks are different from XY female gender identifying folks in certain contexts, enough so that offering them differing labels in is order. Calling them both "woman" results in an imprecise language in certain limited but important contexts, resulting in offering them priviledges not properly due them, and then leading me to ask for a more proper A, B, C, D designation system be used when needed.
And I do realize we can eliminate some of these concerns by building more walls in the bathrooms and gym lockers and perhaps doing away with contests of strength and maybe even stigmatizing those men who insist upon only dating CIS women so we can avoid this dispute. I have misgivings about such a solution, which is a different conversation dealing with pragmatics and the how the rights of the entire community ought be respected, not just a particular minority. I leave that as an aside for the moment, though, and focus just upon the language issues you've brought up.
This disputes what the outcome of what the vote would be, but do you dispute that it should be a matter decided by vote?
Quoting Baden
Of course I don't think you should have a national or local referendum on every issue of social policy, large and small, as sometimes moral leadership is necessary. E. g. The Southern states would have overwhelmingly voted against the civil rights act, presumably out of ignorance, fear, and simple racism. In any case, my claim is that a society that would vote to exclude trans women from using women's bathrooms would be an unreasonable and transphobic one.
The reason I claim this is there is no evidence-based justification for taking such a position, the main argument for which is the transphobic, sexist, and patriarchal (thank you, @unenlightened) lie that trans women are a threat to cis women in women's bathrooms, whereas the truth is that trans women are the ones under threat from stigmatization and verbal and physical abuse, not just in bathrooms, but everywhere.
To sum this up, yes, lies, ignorance, and irrational fears should not lead social policy, regardless of their popularity. Compassion, intelligence, and understanding should. There's a simple dichotomy here, scaremongering and ignorance wins or we take an opportunity to show a very vulnerable group that society cares about them, starting with trans kids at school who have enough problems as it is.
Anyhow, I don't hold animus to those of you who disagree. I think you will come round as will society as a whole. My position on this has developed a lot in recent years, particularly after some conversations with my wonderful sister (who is currently writing a TV series about a group of women fighting the patriarchy. ... hey, un ).
Just because it's the only argument you're willing to consider doesn't mean it's the only argument or the main one.
The problem with your argument is that you're not making an argument about trans' folks and bathrooms, you're making an argument just about bathrooms. That is, nothing you've said suggests that all bathrooms shouldn't be unisex and that I shouldn't be allowed to enter a woman's bathroom if I wanted to. It's not like I wouldn't shut the stall door, and what difference does it make if I'm just washing my hands next to a woman? And even if we still have a urinal, it's not like a woman is going to look around the corner to see me, right?
So why don't you just eliminate male/female bathrooms?
But enough of this easier issue. What about gym lockers and sports teams? That's a problem, right?
Quoting Baden
I'm not suggested direct democratic voting, but I can allow for a representative democracy. My point in asking was only to see if you thought it was a matter for people to decide or if you thought it was a matter of civil rights, that it violated some inherent principle of fairness not to afford trans people the exact rights of CIS people in all instances.
Quoting Baden
I have compassion for those women who don't want a pre-op transsexual (and post-op as well probably) in the gym locker with them and I have compassion for those women who can't compete in sports against transsexuals. I also have compassion for children who might be being subjected to questionable medical treatment. This is not fear mongering, but areas of legitimate concern.
I'm just wondering where we're drawing the line, if at all. We can quibble about which doors we'll open to transsexuals, but I'm trying to figure out if you're opening them all or leaving some closed. The problem with closing some is that you slip into my camp because at that point, you're going to have to explain why some women are not women like other women in the very way I've pointed out.
Quoting Baden
No, you just think I've not caught up with the times, sort of like in the 40s and 50s when everyone was openly racist, but now they've realized that was wrong.
When we're both 100, still pissing around in the Shoutbox, we'll be able to look back and one of us will be able to tell the other "I told you so."
Indeed. Here's a scientific take.
I'll take a look. Thanks.
One wonders how different the issue would be if the pictograms on bathroom doors were penises and vaginas.
Quoting Hanover
I haven't made any arguments about any of those things. I've only done what you directed us to do in the OP.
Quoting Hanover
I've nothing against making all bathrooms unisex btw. I said that already. But we need to deal with reality as it is now. Sometimes the choice for a trans women really just is binary.
Quoting Hanover
:100:
Alright then, what's your position on those things?
I didn't sign up to this OP to talk about that stuff but...
On locker rooms, I don't know. Hadn't honestly thought about it until it came up in this thread. It is tough because any basic rule you apply seems like it could put someone in a position of being in the wrong exposed-genitalia-environment. Therefore, as @Banno suggested, maybe more partitions or something. In sports, hormone testing is the way to go, I guess. As for medical treatment of kids, there has to be major safeguards in place. There's a high suicide risk for trans kids so it's about trying to mitigate potential mental health problems in the least invasive way possible. I'm no expert on that. Maybe e. g. @frank knows more (at least I think he's in the health industry).
That probably isn't, unless he tried to use a urinal and failed.
In case anyone wondered, here's an unscientific, non-philosophical, unsophisticated POV:
In my last year of high-school, I had a summer job in a bowling alley that included janitorial duties. I.e. cleaning the bathrooms.
The woman's was routine: soap scum, bits of paper towel and toilet paper stuck to the floor, maybe a splat of gum or cigarette butt, the odd humorous message in lipstick or eyebrow pencil on the walls. Scrub the sinks, mop the floor, polish the mirror, empty the bins and fill the dispensers.
Then take eight or nine deep breaths, steady yourself on the wall, take a good grip on the mop handle and... approach... yes, you have to actually open the door the and enter ... the men's. Which was usually a nightmare. Some of the users had evidently not been house-trained. And this was back in the 1960's when a lot of people still ate with a knife and fork, crossed at the traffic light and wrote comprehensible son lyrics.
I'm comfortably cis, but if I shudder at the thought of going into a public mens' room, I'm sure a lot of people who were born with what looked like a tiny penis and female sensibilities would, too.
Yay. A new argument. It's not right to send trans women, any woman, into men's bathrooms because men are disgusting.
Apart from the fact that they are women so they shouldn't have to no matter what size deal it is, there's also e. g. higher risk of abuse, assault etc.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/transgender-teens-restricted-bathroom-access-sexual-assault/
Try not to panic chaps, pregnancy rarely results from eye contact with genitalia. Being as how we are all so enlightened and scientific these days, why not let's dispense with the taboo on nudity altogether? The fig-leaf thing was a mistake anyway, and it was a long time ago, now. As to sports, I find I am discriminated against because I am a wimpy spastic weakling. Why isn't there a category for me?
Right now? Well, ok then, pass the Zoom link. :fire:
I never said that! Over a long life - more at the short end, admittedly - I have found some men very, very far from disgusting. I said some users of public facilities have unhygienic habits, and that in my limited experience, these individuals have displayed their proclivity disproportionately in segragated washrooms.
In a sane society, there would be. Everyone would be able to participate in a league of their peers, and nobody would be paid astronomical sums to play games in deadly, life-threatening earnest.
But that's just another silly idea....
There is. You are left without a team, which is where women will be left if forced to compete with men.
"Dispense with", I said, not "transgress".
Quoting Vera Mont
Play games just for fun? It'll never catch on.
Quoting Hanover
God forbid that any woman should suffer my miserable fate!
Hey, some of us are okay playing with the men who chose the alternate gate. We'll make a fine, convivial team and have more fun than the rah-rah-rah elite ones.
So you represent 100,000 in your district, and you're going to vote to build partitions for the 0.05% (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-study-estimates-16-million-us-identify-transgender-2022-06-10/) who are asking for them, which is 50 people. Good call. Quoting Baden I guess. Or maybe not. "For instance, most studies have shown that men have a greater proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers, a difference traditionally attributed to genetics." https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/4-myths-about-testosterone/
If you rebuke me for trying to claim XY is the essence of maleness, I rebuke you for trying to claim testosterone is the essence of maleness. At least XY is more fundamental. Quoting Baden
The UK, Finland, Sweden, and Norway have illegalized the use of puberty blockers on children. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/06/06/increasing-number-of-european-nations-adopt-a-more-cautious-approach-to-gender-affirming-care-among-minors/?sh=7d68e9e27efb I point this out because in the article @Banno cited, the author lamented Arkansas' same limitation, which goes to show the rampant bias in favor of supporting the trans community without regard to consequence.
I think the opposite of you, which is that we're all slowly going to jump on this bandwagon. What I think actually is going on is that people jumped on too fast and they're starting to jump off. The true beleivers think this is just backlash. I don't. I think people are starting to slow down and think this one through. That's my position at least.
Surely with the bathroom you agree that it has always been a gender-based policing?
And that's where we started.
With sports I feel like the only reason womens sports exist is because it was a compromise -- women's sports didn't get funding until title 9, as I understand it historically. But we could just fund "sports" -- and people could compete regardless of their sex, may the best person win.
Locker rooms -- @Banno covered that with more dividers. That's not a big demand. That's something like the ADA accommodations.
What other context?
The reason I wasn't interested in a detailed debate on all those topics was because I only have some rough ideas on them, which I'm working through. On bathrooms, y 'all just need to get in line.
Apparently, the real big issue is concern for the safety of 'genuine' females if false claimants are allowed into their sacrosanct space.
I rather think we're in more danger from puffed-up politicians, preachers, entrepreneurs, movie moguls, sport and screen stars, future SCOTUS frat boys, commanding officers and shift foremen, not to mention incels and their older counterparts in state legislatures, than a few - so few they're not worth the expense of better partitions - men in skirts needing relief.
Worldwide thats 40 million people. Not a small number. US-nationally that's about 1.6 million people.
That's a lot of people.
That's the imagined issue. As @Baden has pointed out, that fear isn't based in facts.
"Data indicate that 82% of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40% have attempted suicide, with suicidality highest among transgender youth... Interpersonal microaggressions, made a unique, statistically significant contribution to lifetime suicide attempts and emotional neglect by family approached significance. School belonging, emotional neglect by family, and internalized self-stigma made a unique, statistically significant contribution to past 6-month suicidality." NIH, pubmed
Those are frightening statistics.
Yes. Even if we don't understand why they want to transition, we understand that we need to help them.
The question of what is a woman goes back to comments by JK Rowling and culture wars. After many successful attempts to bring acceptance of trans issues and people who don't fit into the binary, there is a current backlash. It seems to often revolve around the right of cisgender to suggest that people, mainly women, are likely to be offended, especially by people who began as male, biologically, in women's spaces.
This idea is not new because it was raised historically by lesbian feminists but it is now perpetuated by the media. It rests on an assumption that men can rape women and that a pre-op male to female could rape a female potentially. It is sometimes backed up by concerns about transwomen who have committed sexual offences, which portrays a negative stereotype of a transwoman rather like the film, 'Silence of the Lambs.'
With the current focus on 'what is a woman' in the media there is a question how far it will go in ushering in a backlash. I read recently than in South Korea there is an introduction of legislation to allow police to inspect the genitalia of transgender people in toilets by a member of the police of the person's assigned gender. There is also a lot of hostility to LGBTIQ throughout the world, so any genuine philosophy discussion needs.
The attempt to ask what is a woman, which is sexist without the equivalent one of what is a man, can become shallow if it is simply about trying to reinforce the binary. It is this strict binary division which may drive people to 'fit in' as opposed to a more critical and fluid understanding of gender stereotypes about behaviour and bodies.
The place of philosophical analysis here is in setting out what it is that is at issue.
How would this thread be different if it were entitled "What is a real man?"
And why is sport such a fetish?
I think it sowed a smackdown. :razz:
The fun won't last long when every woman is cut, that is, when all the coaches realize that the only way to compete is by filling the roster with men.
It is my prediction (given that this trend continues), that diversity requirements will be introduced into competitive female sports (and eventually men's sports). It will begin with mandating the roster to meet a quota for cis-women. Down the road we will likely see race and disability added to the list of diversity requirements. In the end, the goal of sports will be no longer be "winning", but "diversity". From competitive sports to pointless activities, they will have lost all entertainment value (not that they had much to begin with). But not to worry, as long as sports gambling continues to increase in popularity, women's athletics will survive.
My contention is: it isn't a fear at all; it's a pretense and part of the mask behind which systemic misogyny lurks.
It would be shit. Women are intriguing, nobody cares about men
Important to note this. One of the narratives going is that being trans is just a fashion or a lifestyle choice which is being peddled by the liberal-elite-woke-brigade. This reminds us of what's at stake.
Have you actually met any people of any sex, or are you just going by magazine models?
I have met people, but I don't see sex in people because it is a tool of patriarchal oppression and I'm not sexist (sometimes).
What do magazine models have to do with making a roster?
That question would require its own thread
I have a radical solution: we designate all restrooms to cis-men, and everyone else has to go out in public.
Not much. No more, in fact, than making up a league of peers for any given sport.
Oh! Well -- I'm interested then. Care to say more?
isn't this another example of addressing the wrong issue? It's not being trans that is wrong here, but being a rapist.
Let's address the actual problem.
Quoting T Clark
Why? And further, how can they tell that the other folk in their restroom are trans? Is this an argument for better makeup for trans folk? Or do women in restrooms routinely look at each others genitals?
Peers as a selection process for a roster are perfectly fine when sports are non-competitive and pointless.
But in competitive sports, all that matters is "winning!". Even within the confines of a roster there is competition amongst teammates in the winning of a position - to effectively stand out from one's peers. There is no denying that in comptetive sports, there is a necessary dynamic that separates the superior from the inferior...from what would otherwise be peers (more or less).
You are right, but, the actual problem he is addressing is one of rapists pretending to be trans. You know, to easily infiltrate safe spaces that harbor "easy" targets.
I don't think this is correct. "Fairness" based rules for competition are derived from equality norms, rather than cooperation norms. And equality norms are fundamentally different from cooperation norms because there is no requirement for the intent to cooperate for there to be a desire for equality. That is to say, that when people compete, and there are rules established to ensure fairness of competition, that is the only required end, fair competition. And fairness is based in equality. There is no requirement that the people also cooperate, they simply desire equal rights.
I think perhaps you are under the impression that competing while following rules is a form of cooperation. But that is an illusion, the people are really competing against each other. That they agree to follow rules is a form of cooperation, but this type of cooperation is a restriction on what they are doing, so it is directed toward some other end, not toward the competition itself. The competition remains the primary end, and the agreement is simply to hold up some other end, that of fairness or equality.
So I think we need to separate equality based principles (therefore "fairness") from cooperation based principles, and see them as being derived from distinct ends, i.e., the means to different ends. The end for competition is a "win" which belongs to the winner only, the end for cooperation is something which is shared. Cooperation allows people with distinct differences, performing distinct activities, to work together toward the same end. "Equality" intends to make distinctly different people equal, in some sense the same. This makes "equality" an ideal which is fundamentally flawed, as oxymoronic, attempting to apprehend different things as the same.
Since the ideal itself is fundamentally flawed, problems will follow from its applications in practise. The problems become very evident in competitive sports. Rules of fairness are intended to ensure that all competitors start on an equal footing. Of course the competitors themselves are not "equal" in any absolute way, or else there'd be no competition. There would be a draw every time because everybody would have equal skills.. So the basic rules of fairness are actually intended to emphasize inequalities which are internal to the competitors by reducing external differences. This is done to encourage a "fair win".
Now the problem is that "equality" as an ideal, must have its limits. We define the boundaries, human equality means that all humans are equal, despite differences, and the boundary is at the limit to the species. In competitive sports we are inclined to put a boundary within the species, such that men and women are not equal. We justify this by saying it is required to make the games fair, and have a fair winner. However, we must respect the fact, that games are artificial, creations of human beings. And this sort of game produces a boundary or division between men and women in relation to equality.
So we need to ask the question of why would men create games to be played by men, for the purpose of displaying their manliness. Or is it the case that women created these sports so that men could show off their abilities, and the women could use this to judge them. Understanding the intent behind this type of sports is crucial to understanding this proposed inequality between men and women. Consider, that if men created these sports for the purpose of demonstrating to women that they cannot compete with men, and that they are therefore unequal to men, then this is nothing more than systematic sexism. Furthermore, if this is the case, then the men would not even actually be competing, they'd be cooperating in this system, by participating in these sports. Then, that this is competition is really what is an illusion, because the design of the game is not based in competition, it is based in the difference between men and women. So the players would be nothing but actors in a sexist form of entertainment.
Well put.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think it's crucial to understanding "this proposed inequality", but it can probably shed some light on the issue.
I remember reading somewhere that the novelty of competetive sports evolved as a nonlethal alternative to lethal combat. And, its cultural prevalence can be correlated to the advances in war technology, as the distance between combatants increased, so did the interest in and necessity of competetive sports.
If this scenario is the case, then i can conjecture: competitive sports are merely a way that men sort out their rank amongst their peers without having to risk death. Now, why would a man want to achieve glory, and stand out from his peers? As it turns out, men who are successful in competetive sports are likely to command special attention from a wider selection of ladies, and all without the risk of death. A possible reason. It is hard to deny that women have encouraged competetive sports amongst men (wittingly or not), so men have continued doing it because it gave them all the glory, all without the risk of death.
So, given all this conjecture, if men originally endeavored in competetive sports for honor and pussy, can we contrast it with the original reason women began to endeavor in competetive sports? I can't think of a reason women first endeavored in competetive sports. My instinct tells me it was imposed on them by the patriarchy - to demonstrate woman's inherent subordination to men by manipulating them into immitating man's activity. I could be wrong.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A bit far fetched, I'd say.
I have.
I rather think we're in more danger from puffed-up politicians, preachers, entrepreneurs, movie moguls, sport and screen stars, future SCOTUS frat boys, commanding officers and shift foremen, not to mention incels and their older counterparts in state legislatures, than a few - so few they're not worth the expense of better partitions - men in skirts need of relief.
Can't you see the smoke-screen? Creating yet another pretend bogey-man and making a big fuss, while they're dismantling civil rights?
Seems I accidentally hit the wrong key and lost all my links to Trump, Weinberg, Cosby et al.
Pity!
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I did posit a sane society in which everyone can participate in in recreational sports in a league of their own weight-class and skill level. I forgot to add: with non-bigoted coaches.
Sane society in the present day? Nonexistent.
I reside in the insane USA, and here anyone can participate in recreational sports, with both bigoted and nonbigoted coaches. But recreational games are a non-issue. When it comes to competitive sports, gender differences in skill and physical attributes are undeniable and reaffirmed in every actual example that has taken place in reality.
There are few issues with recreational sports that seek equity through equality:
How would you determine each participant's skill level? And what about those who could not find equals in skill and/or physical attribute, will they be left out completely?
Hypothetically, if we actually could assemble a large enough group of players that were unequivocally determined to be equal in skill and physiological attributes, wouldn't that set the stage for every match to be a draw?
Then I supposed we can abolish scorekeeping since every match ends in a draw. But...that begs the question of why we are measuring skill and physiological attributes to play games that always amount to the same thing in every case. Why not just include everybody, regardless of skill and attributes? After all, it is only play, and none of it matters in the end.
But then some would dominate others, inevitably introducing a heirachical stratification in what is intended to be equal in all aspects...that is the reason all included must be equal. Yet, this brings us back to the first problem that excludes those so-called "perpetually unequal folk" that can't fit in.
With coaches, how would we determine which coaches are genuinely bigoted, and which are genuinely trying to win at all costs? And if a player in a recreational athletic league did not like the coach, they could simply change teams without issue since it is recreational and does not matter.
It could be that these sports developed as training exercises for soldiers. But this brings up another issue, historically only men wage war. So we might consider whether only men are inclined toward such battles, as a product of hormones etc., or whether women were excluded due to a lack of strength or some other reason. I think it would be some other reason, like they were being protected as valuable. The possibilities are endless, but if the former scenario is the case, then we might consider that the competitive attitude which leads to war and such sports, is itself a masculine trait.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
According to the speculations above, it would be the case, that women simply do not have the same competitive attitude which men do. If we can blame their inequality in sports on a lack of testosterone, and perhaps other innate physiology, then we ought to look at how these factors might affect their overall mental attitude as well.
And here we have an issue. If morality is associated with cooperation, as described earlier, and this competitive attitude is opposed to cooperation, then men are inherently lacking in morality. But again, it might be a mistake to associate cooperation with morality, at the exclusion of competition. Classically, morality is associated with the good, and the good is what is desired, as the end. War, and competition in general, are the manifestations of conflict in what is desired, ('I win vs you win'). So reconfiguring morality to exclude this intention, the good, might not be the proper thing to do.
However, I've laid out the parameters for a distinction between the kind of thing which men desire (the good for men) and the kind of thing which women desire (the good for women). If it is possible to make such a categorization, it might shed light on the question of whether men are truly more competitive than women.
I'm aware. And professional-level sports bore me rigid, so I don't care how you select for them.
Do you think we would reduce the female concern about competing against transwomen at say running, if we took all the gold medal fastest males at running, like Usain Bolt, and made them all race against a cheetah or even a fairly old household pussy cat? I also have no interest in competitive sports.
It would probably have quite small national teams but it could perhaps become as popular as the Eurovision song contest and be an event that speaks for world peace and unity in a similar way that that competition tends to.
The Rainbow Olympics? Oooo, I'd watch that! I can think of some new events to introduce. And, it wouldn't need the local population to pony up vast sums of money for their government to waste on building new sports facilities.
Of course, some countries - also some states and provinces - would be ineligible to host it.
My feeling is that it is a species of homo-erotic fear. If a man dresses as a woman, a 'hetero' man might 'accidentally' be attracted to him. Best beat them up to make them ugly, and disprove any slur of homosexual feelings.
And misogyny.
Yeah, I was thinking on that as well :rofl: The 100m mince! :rofl: I hope I haven't caused any offense, but I can't help it, if I find that imagery funny. I hope trans/gay folks do to.
I see where that may be part of the mix. The far right seems to have collected just about every irrational fear, loathing and phobia in its deplorable basket of grievances.
Thanks for your considered reply.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I will argue the contrary, that fairness and equality moral norms are norms for solving cooperation problems.
Do to others as you would have them do to you and Do not steal or kill are all moral norms which are heuristics (usually reliable but fallible, rules of thumb) that initiate indirect reciprocity. (An example of indirect reciprocity is you help someone else in your group with the expectation that someone in the group will help you when you need help, and that the group will punish people who refuse to help others.)
Following the Golden Rule, you would treat others fairly because you would like to be treated fairly.
Following do not steal, you would respect others equal rights to their property with the expectation that others will respect your right to your property and that society will punish those who violate that right. Following do not kill, you would respect others equal rights to their lives for the same kind of reasons.
Equality norms are equal rights norms, not norms that would incoherently somehow claim equal capability. Equal rights norms are reciprocity norms that solve the cooperation/exploitation dilemma.
The rules we impose on competitions are cooperation norms.
That is, we must cooperate to establish these limiting rules on competition.
So, what is the one feature distinguishing moral competition from moral cooperation?
Consider two groups. Each cooperatively makes and tries to sell widgets to the same outsiders. As part of this competition, one group figures out how to make better widgets cheaper than their competitors widget. The group that makes the worse, more expensive widget loses all their investments and are now unemployed. The losing competitor has been harmed.
Has the winning group necessarily acted immorally in causing that harm? No, so long as they acted fairly in the competition and limited the harm they did to the generally agreed on limits to that harm.
In a foot race, that accepted limit to harm might be that one person would have the disappointment of losing and perhaps loss of scholarships and other rewards.
In business, that accepted limit to harm might be loss of investments and unemployment.
Moral competition requires treating competitors fairly (as defined by general agreement in a society) and limiting harm to what is generally agreed to in a society.
The feature that distinguishes moral competition from moral cooperation is that harm is moral if it is within the general agreement limits for harm between competitors in that society.
The following books explain fairness as the keystone of morality:
Justice as Fairness by John Rawls
The Fairness Instinct: The Robin Hood Mentality and Our Biological Nature by L. Sun
THE ORIGINS OF FAIRNESS How Evolution Explains Our Moral Nature by Nicolas Baumard
Isn't the basis for having separate gym lockers right now in part hetero-erotic fear?
You'd have to spell that out before i could assent to it. I don't know what you mean by hetero-erotic fear.
I am familiar with people being called faggot and beaten up as if gays are a huge threat. Does this happen to straights where you live? I haven't seen any signs of fear of being or being thought to heterosexual.
I'm familiar with the same phenomenon regarding Jews, Sikhs, Catholics, Muslims, Black people, kitchen maids, women, children, dogs and horses. Sex doesn't necessarily figure in the fear of non-submission. Insecure egos do not wield power well.
No, not at all what I was getting at.
You said you thought maybe closeted homosexuals didn't want transsexuals in the locker room because it would be too erotic for them to bear.
I wasn't disagreeing with that necessarily, but I was just remarking that part of the reason they don't let women squeeze into the men's showers along side men isn't just because the women might fear assualt, but it might also be that the heterosexuals would find that too arousing.
I don't know if I'd find it arousing to shower next to an attractive woman who I was not otherwise involved with. It would be very uncomfortable though. Like very. Especially if it was like a neighbor or something, or like the neighbor's 19 year old daughter. In fact, I feel like I need to go wash my hands after typing this.
Sounds terrifying.
You're saying that the reason we have separate changing rooms is because men are frightened they might get aroused? Really? Bizarre.
Prescribing therapy: https://www.tripstodiscover.com/top-nude-beaches-in-the-united-states/
Like so many things we fear, it's just a question of acculturation.
You don't seem to be grasping the incompatibility between "cooperation" and "competition". We cooperate, help each other, as the means to an end. So cooperation requires an agreeable end, such that people will work together to achieve that goal. Without the agreeable goal, people can be nice to each other, and behave respectfully, but this cannot be called "cooperation", because they are simply being respectful of each other without cooperating (working together). On the other hand, competition between you and I means that we are both striving for the same goal, but the goal can only be achieved by one of us, exclusively. This rules out the possibility of cooperation.
Now, when people cooperate there is no need for any fairness or equality norms. If we are cooperating, like a man and a women raising a family for example, we are each contributing what we can, toward the common goal, and whether we do this in a fair and equal way is completely irrelevant. Since we each contribute something completely different, toward the common goal, how could one even begin to judge whether the contributions were fair or equal? Fairness and equality are concepts which cannot even be properly applied to cooperation, which is derived from the will to help out.
Therefore fairness and equality norms cannot solve cooperation problems. Cooperation problems are the result of a lack of a common goal, or a failure of agreement on the goal, which kills the will to cooperate. No amount of fairness or equality rules can restore the will to cooperate, only the initiation of an agreeable end, and the will to help obtain it can.
Quoting Mark S
I think you are misrepresenting the golden rule here. When it says "as you would have them do to you", this is spoken as an example of how you should treat others. In no way does the golden rule imply that you expect an equal, or fair return on the goodness which you give. This is the meaning of Christian/Platonic love, to do good without the expectation of reciprocation. Therefore it is a significant misunderstanding, to represent the golden rule as principle of equality in this way, that one only ought to do good in expectation of reciprocation.
If the moral will of human beings, to do good, is dependent on having others do good, then everyone would be looking for bad behaviour from someone else, as an excuse to do something bad, and all of humanity would slip into evil at a very rapid rate, as one bad deed would incite many more.
Quoting Mark S
That you can point to a "cooperation/exploitation" dilemma ought to be an indication to you, that this is the manifestation of the cooperation/competition incompatibility. Money is one of those goals which we compete for. If there is a fixed amount of money on the table, and everyone in the room wants as much of it as they can get, then there is an inclination to compete rather than cooperate. Therefore equal rights norms solve the "cooperation/exploitation" by addressing exploitation as a competition induced problem. They do not address cooperation at all, they address a breakdown in cooperation which has emerged from competitive urges. The competitive urges are the manifestation of goals which are personal, and cannot be shared with others. Cooperation, as explained above requires a shared goal. If my goal cannot be shared with you, then there is no cooperation, and my desire to be competitive will lead me to exploit.
Quoting Mark S
Remember Mark S, I did not say that competition is inherently bad. I only said that it is inconsistent with cooperation. That's why I said that cooperation does not suffice as a first moral principle, because it cannot account for the good of competition. And I further explained this above, cooperation requires an agreeable end. So the agreeable end is logically prior to cooperation.
In your example here, you show competition between the two groups, and the competition results in a better, cheaper product, which we can say is good. But you do not show any cooperation between these two groups, which brings about this good. And, since it wasn't cooperation, but competition which brought about this good, there was a bad side-effect, the one group lost their jobs. This sort of bad side-effect seems to be a feature of life in general.
Quoting Mark S
If fairness is the keystone of morality, then cooperation is not, that's plain and simple. This is because cooperation is based on having a common goal, as explained above, and fairness is not at all required for cooperation.
Once we plug our brains back in, that's obvious. :up:
Following the Golden Rule includes being nice to each other. The Golden Rule advocates initiating indirect reciprocity, it is a powerful cooperation strategy. Being nice to each other is cooperation. Will you argue the Golden Rule is not a moral norm, indirect reciprocity is not a cooperation strategy, or that the Golden Rule does not advocate being nice to each other?
Competition can provide net benefits to society. To sustainably obtain those benefits, all advanced countries cooperatively advocate morally limited competition, which is largely beneficial.
Sure, competition without moral rules can result in exploitation and even extinction of subgroups which is the opposite of moralitys function and, therefore, immoral. But we can compete morally by cooperatively agreeing on rules (as part of cultural moralities) that limit that harm to agreed-on kinds and that prohibit other kinds of harm. For example, the agreed-on permissible harm (as part of a moral system) of economic competition might be limited to loss of investment or employment.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You and I are describing two perspectives on the same phenomenon. Your perspective to do good without the expectation of reciprocation is a standard perspective for people in a well-functioning society.
I describe the same phenomena of moral behavior but point out these unselfish behaviors exist because they provide net benefits. When societies fail and the rewards for acting morally in the larger society stop and become losses, I assure you that people will stop acting morally in the larger society because they no longer benefit from those moral acts. (In failed societies, moral behavior does not stop. It is refocused on a smaller group such as family where the benefits of that morality are more reliable. See Peter Singers The Expanding Circle)
It is an important insight that Properly understood, morality is not a burden, it is a means of accessing many benefits. But I take your point that this insight can be confusing for people who hold the standard perspective you describe for people in well-functioning societies.
I'll also quote the earliest known version of the Golden Rule from Ancient Egypt's Wise Peasant:
"Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do."
This version explicitly calls out why we should follow the Golden Rule. I am a bit dubious about the translation since the translator made it rhyme, but I expect he got it mostly right. Several sources suggest this implied understanding of morality as cooperation strategies was a common view at the time. We just got confused about morality for a few thousand years.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The fact is that everyone is always looking for bad behavior from someone else. But this vigilance (innate to our moral sense) is not primarily an excuse to do something bad, but a reason to do something good punish the moral norms violator. Punishment of moral norms violators is necessary to sustain the related cooperation strategy.
One punishment for moral norm violators is a refusal to cooperate with them in the future. In dysfunctional societies, this can lead to refusal to cooperate with (to act morally toward) anyone who is not a member of your most reliable ingroup usually your family.
Competition is not the opposite of cooperation. The opposite of cooperation is creating cooperation problems rather than solving them.
Cooperation to limit the harm of competition and increase its benefits is what makes our societies work as well as they do. We can cooperate or compete to achieve the same goals. They are not opposites, but alternates. The difference is that people who agree to compete are agreeing to the potential for harm (limited harm if the competition is to be moral).
It seems we have two very distinct ideas of what constitutes cooperation. I know of no other definition of cooperation other than to work together. And so it follows that people can be friendly toward each other without necessarily cooperating.
Quoting Mark S
You are proposing an unjustified cause/effect relationship which is inconsistent with my interpretation of the golden rule. You are saying that the benefits of working together, cooperating, cause people to be friendly and unselfish. However, I am saying that the golden rule says that we ought to be friendly and unselfish without any view toward benefits. Therefore according to the golden rule, benefits cannot be perceived as the motivating force, or cause of people being unselfish and friendly.
This is why your description is not objective. It contains a cause/effect assumption which you have not justified, and this assumed cause/effect relation is inconsistent with the moral principle we know as the golden rule. Therefore this proposed description is not a sound observation.
Quoting Mark S
This is pure conjecture, so it does not adequately justify your unsound observation.
Quoting Mark S
It's good to be dubious about the translation, because I think this material was written in hieroglyphics so the translation of verb tenses and causal relations would be rather subjective.
To support your position I think you would be better off to look at something like "Karma". This concept expresses a clear causal relation. The way you behave will have consequences toward what happens to you in the future.
The problem though, is that this still does not support the causal relation which you assume. You are claiming that actual benefits which have occurred in the past, benefits which have actually materialized, are the cause of unselfish behaviour now. But Karma works with a temporal relation which is inverted to this, by asserting that unselfish behaviour now will cause benefits in the future.
So you haven't presented the means for your inversion. You say "unselfish behaviors exist because they provide net benefits", implying that benefits have caused the existence of unselfish behaviour. However, Karma says that unselfish behaviour will cause benefits. You propose an inverted form of Karma which you have not justified.
Quoting Mark S
Since you have a backward, inverted perspective on morality, you think that human beings are digressing instead of progressing in their morality. You think that the Christian Golden Rule which states that we ought to do good without any expectation of benefit or return, is a case of being "confused about morality" in relation to Karma, which encourages us to do good at the expectation of return. Then you yourself digress even further from the true nature of morality, to suggest that the benefits, or return, are what actually cause us to do good.
Quoting Mark S
This is the type of confusion which results from your backward way of looking at morality. You portray inflicting "punishment" as doing good. But the inclination to punish is nothing but vengefulness, which is not good at all, and inconsistent with Christian principles of confession and forgiveness. But of course you look at Christian morality as a step backward, so it makes sense that you would look at punishment as a good.
Quoting Mark S
Well, I think that if you are not prepared to inquire into the true nature of competition, and simply represent it as a form of cooperation, this discussion has no place on this thread. The whole point of me bringing this up was to expose the reality of competition, and how it relates to the subject of the op, "what is a 'woman'".
When we "agree to compete", we have an artificial form of competition. The ensuing engagement will be restricted and greatly limited by rules and regulations. If we want to understand the real nature of competition we need to look at it independently from such artificial restrictions.
What I said already, is that equality norms, and fairness norms, are produced as required for such artificial restrictions to competition. To understand competition in its natural form we need to see it as based in inequality. Inequality is what is essential to, and what enables, or capacitates, the real and natural existence of competition.
My understanding of cooperation is based in game theory. That game theory explains why the Golden Rule is such a powerful moral norm and why we often take the trouble to be friendly to people we have just met. Being friendly to people we have just met is a marker strategy for being a good cooperator. Being a marker strategy makes being friendly part of a cooperation strategy - part of cooperation.
What evidence do you have that your perspective on cooperation that does not include being friendly is useful?
And seriously, do you think that the Golden Rule is either not a cooperation strategy or does not advocate being friendly to other people? I see no justification for your assertion that cooperation does not include friendliness.
That's a very unreliable principle. If I meet someone on the street who is unusually friendly toward me, I am very wary that the person is trying to take advantage of me in some way or another, because that is how the con works.
Quoting Mark S
It's very useful to distinguish differences between concepts, in analysis, to better understand those concepts, and to apply deductive logic. Cooperation involves working together toward a goal, and you may say that being friendly is a necessary condition for cooperation. I would not argue against that.
However, being friendly is not the same thing as cooperating. Being friendly is the wider concept, so cooperation is not necessary for being friendly. This means that being friendly is logically prior to cooperation, as a necessary requirement for cooperation, but being friendly does not necessarily result in cooperation.
As an analogy, consider that being human is necessary for being a women, just like being friendly is necessary for cooperating. But being human doesn't mean that you are a woman, just like being friendly doesn't mean that you are cooperating. This implies that people with very different goals or ends, may be friendly to each other, but because their goals are quite distinct, we cannot say that they are cooperating. This is the principle which allows that competitors, who are obviously not cooperating because they have opposing goals, can still be friendly to each other.
So it is not the case that my perspective on cooperating doesn't include being friendly, it's just that being friendly does not necessarily mean cooperating. And I think that this perspective is useful to help us understand what it means to cooperate, and what it means to be friendly. Further, it allows us to properly relate these concepts to competition, which is where we came from in this discussion.
Quoting Mark S
I explained already why the Golden Rule is very clearly not a cooperation strategy. Cooperation requires a common end. The Golden Rule as commonly stated has no implications of any end. You simply misinterpret it to claim that it states that one should treat others in a particular way, with the end, or goal of getting treated that way back. And I already explained why that particular goal, which is inserted by you in your interpretation, is clearly not a part of the Golden Rule.
Furthermore, because the Golden Rule stipulates that we ought to behave in this friendly way, irrespective of what our goals are, it encourages you to act this way toward people regardless of whether the person is cooperating with you or competing with you.
Quoting unenlightened
I'm with Hanover on this one, even though unenlightened finds it bizarre. However, I think it's more of a young man's, or even boyish, problem, and the separation is imposed to help those boys develop in a healthy way. Being aroused in a public place, like having a bulge in your pants, would produce serious embarrassment for many boys, (exceptions like Robert Plant), quite conducive to fear. In my old age, I would never have such a fear, but still great discomfort as Hanover describes. Part of that discomfort might be a holdover from the days of that boyish fear.
It's hyperpeckererecterphobia. It's a youthful affliction. It's followed later in life by hypopeckererecterphobia, it's evil opposite.
Tender loving care is the cure for either though.
Speaking of male/female differences, any chance a female would ever be having this conversation?
A personal account: https://kriswilliams.medium.com/de-sexualizing-nudity-2e5673d7ae25
I don't think so, I've seen other animals get erections. Notice how the "de-sexualizing" described in your referred article requires effort, so it is not what is natural. Maybe the embarrassment, shame, discomfort, and fear, come from the taboo aspect, but not the sexuality. Still there is a certain natural discomfort associated with an erection, which inclines the male toward further action, and this natural feature cannot be neglected either.
Well change your mind, because you are wrong.
https://www.all-about-psychology.com/social-nudism.html (1933 article)
ibid.
I don't see how this psychology has provided any evidence to support your claim.
I believe that the facts are quite obvious. There are two primary factors involved in male arousal, imagination and sensation. Imagination is the primary, yet sensation plays a role which is also very natural. Any sense may be involved, including the visual sense of sight. Clothing serves as a filter between the sensing subject and the body being sensed. It is very effective to the sense of touch, but also quite effective to the sense of sight. As a filter it affects the way that the sensation influences the primary cause of arousal, the imagination. So clothing can have either a positive affect on the imagination which causes arousal, if perceived as provocative, or it can have a negative affect if perceived as plain covering. Since it is a filter between the person sensing and the body being sensed it cannot have a zero effect.
It seems to me like you are not properly apprehending the ground, or base. The grounding point is that sensing another body provides the potential for sexual arousal. We can do things to that body, like put clothes on it, to either raise or lower the level of potential, but we cannot remove that potential in any absolute way. It appears to me like you want to start from the assumption that there is no such basic potential for arousal involved with sensing another body. You want to say that the potential for arousal is a product of the taboo. But this is an unnatural starting point, and simply false because sensation has a real and natural influence over the imagination.
Thus far I agree, but in general, the way we 'put clothes on' the body or rather socialise a dress code with legal sanctions, does as a matter of fact serve to raise the level of potential arousal. 'In olden days a glimpse of stocking...'
To give a very simple, direct example, it used to be, and to an extent still is, a 'normal' behaviour in the workplace for men to give the arse of a good looking woman a friendly slap, as a signal of sexual desire and appreciation, (and also dominance). The clothes make such uninvited intimacy possible. Such behaviour in a nudist camp, or to a nude model in art class, would be unthinkable.
Clothes make the porn industry possible, and allow in men in particular to form a fantasy of the female body which women are then pressured to try to conform with. Example, again is the fashion for shaving pubic hair which has arisen and been popularised by the need of the porn film make to give an ever more clear and intimate view of actual penetration - not something I would spend much time trying to get a view of myself while actually having sex. But folks conform to the fantasy created by the (strictly virtual) breaking of the taboo against nudity.
Familiarity with the reality of the varied manifestation of the human figure, would reduce the power of fantasy, to intrude into normal interactions.
I will simply note that taboo is essentially a religious form of socialisation that works to intensify feeling towards its object and imbue it with "spiritual"power. That is how it invariably works, and this society worships sex.
I think that thus is a misrepresentation of so-called "fact". Your claim that clothing necessarily rases the level, instead of my claim that it may raise or lower the level, cannot be supported simply by examples of when the potential is raised. You need to show the necessity, that clothing cannot have effects in the other direction, to support your generalization that clothing "does as a matter of fact serve to raise the level of potential arousal". But I suggest that you accept as reality, that the effects of clothing can be either negative or positive.
If we look at the sense of touch, instead of the sense of sight, the possible negative effects of clothing on arousal are very evident. Consider Hanover\s example of squeezing into the shower, skin on skin, as compared to squeezing into an elevator, cloths on cloths. It's very evident that cloths can have a very negative effect on the sensual stimulus which provides the potential for arousal.
Altering the sense stimulus is more than just a matter of messing with the taboo, because sense stimulation is essential to sexual acts. So altering the stimulation can alter the nature of the act itself, and this goes beyond any taboo which deals with the perception of the act.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/
On the other hand, there's no good evidence transitioning reduces suicide or suicidal thoughts.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10027312/
That is true also, but irrelevant to the effect of the taboo. On the contrary, the effect of a norm of nakedness would be to make overcrowding unacceptable for just those reasons you suggest, unless close contact was also desexualised as occurs to a great extent in 'touchy-feely' communities.
I wouldn't call that low. That means for every 100 surgeries, one person regretted doing it. I would tend to avoid any research that announces a political bias at the outset, as this one did, but since this survey basically affirmed a study from 1993, I don't doubt their results.
But anyway, the person in that video is an example of a woman, both biologically and in terms of self perception. As she stated, her presentation is always going to be androgenous.
I don't know the hangup people have in limiting their sexual activity to private places. If a boyfriend and girlfriend wish to shower in the gym and time constraints demand they relieve themselves sexually in the instant, why should us prudes interfere? We all need to nut from time to time. It's a natural function, so let's just grow up and let them have at it.
"Taboo" I'd submit is the dysphemism for "community standard."
What I suggest is that even if we can offer no immediate acceptable reason for why we impose such rules on expected civil interaction, and even if our most progressive thinkers believe they can prognosticate our eventual state with all these antiquated vestiges of our sexually repressed history finally being purged, i still object to the process being hastened due to the concerns of a micro-minority, but insist the change occur organically with acceptance occurring at whatever rate it might.
That is, one day we might all fuck like rabbits in a field and it'll be like shaking hands, but it's going to take some time for that change to happen, and I'm not going to hurry up that change because it is affecting someone's special sensitivities right now.
Yes indeed. I have community standards, you have quaint customs, they have primitive taboos.
Fer fuck's sake! Has no one on this site read any sociology or anthropology?
Only for the points that support my biases. But point me to your articles.
I can name three or four members who probably have. Only slightly fewer than those who have read any philosophy.
Irrelevant to the effect of the taboo, but relevant to the cause of the taboo. So I don't understand the objection you have towards Hanover's statement, why you find it bizarre.
You agree that sensation is stimulus for arousal, and you also recognize that naked skin is often more of a cause for arousal than covered skin in a similar situation. Do you also see why a young man or boy might not like the idea of being aroused in a public place? Sexual arousal might influence one to act in a way which one might regret later, for example. So, doesn't it seem more likely that this would be the cause of existence of the nakedness taboo, the reason for it becoming a taboo, rather than the effect of the taboo?
Let me restate it:
You've identified that public nakedness is taboo and argued it is without justification. I've indicated a justification beyond it being a community standard isn't required and that any change to it should come organically, as opposed to decree, especially one motivated by a select few being inconvenienced by the standard.
Beyond that, I pointed to another taboo, which is that we don't have sex openly in public, despite that taboo resting on the same rules that prohibit public nudity, which are generally considered the modesty rules.
That is, we needn't place all these taboos on the agenda to consider them for change and dramatically restructure our social norms just because we now face challenges from a very small minority as to what a man or woman is.
I have not said anything about justification; I have said it has a function in patriarchal society. I have not made any suggestion about what changes ought to be made.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, was that supposed to be significant of something?
Quoting Hanover
Oh yes, it signifies that we have to change all our taboos if we even question one of them, and I am advocating that.
And you have the gall to accuse me of snark, along with your strawmannirg.
Mine is a reductio argument, not a strawman, asking why change one and not the other unless you can show how in principle they're not the same.
But who argued for a change? Where is the argument to reduce to absurdity?
That is apart from the conflation of nudity and sex, of course which is exactly the effect of the taboo on nudity that I have been pointing out. And of course the evidence of the Naturist movement is that it is perfectly possible to dispense with the taboo on nudity without dispensing with the taboo on public sex. But don't let the evidence undermine your straw man.
What is wrong with the taboo against public nudity? Why must it hinge upon proof that it violates the taboo against public sex is my question?
That is, I'm just saying the rule of modesty justifies the rule against mixed nudity as it justifies the rule against public sex. Why make some taboos taboo? Can't it just be that I find showering beside children not my own uncomfortable enough that I'd rather maintain that rule? It's not like fear of arousal is what makes me not want to see most of my neighbors having sex.
Is there something wrong with it? I can make no sense of your second question. you brought up the question of public sex, and I have no idea why. My claim is that the taboo on nudity sexualises nakedness. you may think that is a bad thing, or a good thing. As far as I can tell talk of having sex in public is a red herring of your own, and it smells extremely fishy, when you want me to explain it.
Doctors and nurses of course already have a desexualised attitude to nakedness, by and large, as distinct from and opposed to those who like to 'play doctors and nurses'.
In several Middle Eastern countries, it's taboo to kiss in public. Suppose we suggested to them that that taboo was unnecessary and their response was "so, by the same token, we should just let people have sex in public!'' I think the point is we choose our taboos (at some level) and we can examine their individual merits. @unenlightened's point about sexualization and nudity is at the very least worth thinking about.
I believe the public nudity taboo is in place, not because of the potential of sexualized nudity, but because 99% of people are in disgusting shape and look gross naked. More people should be ashamed of their body - clothes simply enable people to be disgusting.
:chin:
But quite possible that people originally started wearing clothes for other reasons, e. g. warmth, protection etc. and this, following Un's logic, is what sexualised nudity and brought the taboo into being.
The question is, what was the taboo effect of clothing once it became normalized? Did it cause people to notice how sexually enticing a human body could be...or did it cause people to notice just how disgusting most human bodies actually are?
You may think that, but I think that clothes enable the disgust. What is hidden becomes emotionally charged. If you go to life drawing class, you will see naked men and women of all kinds, fat and thin, hairy and smooth, young and old, light and dark, whole and deformed or scarred or mutilated. All just something to sketch or paint. Disgust is a limitation to be overcome. One may not like blue cheese, but to be disgusted by it is never to find out.
Then we agree, I think. Clothes enable the disgust by creating a taboo around nudity. And, this is counter-effective in desensitizating people to the regular sight of a disgusting naked body. I would argue that such desensitization towards such a shameful thing as a disgusting fatbody is neither good nor healthy for society.
Quoting unenlightened
I'm an artist and I've attended 100's of life drawing classes. I would say at least 9 out of 10 models (if not greater ratio) were in decent to great shape, all without evident mutilations. I think this is the case because they are trying to teach anatomy, particularly the superficial muscles, and once this facet of life drawing is advanced it is quite easy to extrapolate fat on any person. Whereas the reverse is very difficult for the advanced student.
Whatever the case, the classes all had a very professional and sterile atmosphere, similar to the medical field.
Quoting unenlightened
To be overcome in some cases, and not in others. In many cases, similar to fear and anxiety, it helps us stay healthy and alive.
Disgust with blue cheese doesn't necessarily mean that the thing is alien to the disgusted person. It often comes from a too intimate experience with the thing. In one case, it is unwarranted disgust based in ignorance, and should be overcome...but in the case of having familiarity (say with rancid dairy products), blue cheese is likely to have something genuinely and objectively disgusting about it, and for good reason.
The fact that disgust with blue cheese can be overcome, theoretically means disgust is possible to overcome in any given case (say with poop). But this doesn't mean we should seek to overcome everything we find disgusting. Afterall some things, like poop, or disgusting fatbodies, have much father reaching ramifications in society than blue cheese.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Do fatbodies have societal-wide ramifications?
I'm a good ol' fatbody. I don't mind being naked, but some others mind it if I am. But, really, I didn't care anymore when I was a young-body, either. Shaming people for the body they have is not only unkind, it's unnecessary.
What does your disgust of fatbodies do for you?
Only the disgusting ones, especially when they are naked. On the other hand, some fatbodies are very aesthetically pleasing. But, for the record, I believe it would be preferential if the laws against public nudity be applied equally to all, whether fat, skinny or in between.
Quoting Moliere
I'm not disgusted by all fatbodies, forgive me for speaking so generally. But, for the ones that do disgust me, it gives me something interesting to draw.
Quoting Moliere
I disagree. I like shame, it keeps me honest with myself. And I think it does the same for many others. Unfortunately in the present day, people are soft, brittle and full of excuses for why they cannot adequately handle their shame...and they have blamed shame, and shamed shame in order to escape what would otherwise be their own shame. It is a shame.
In some situations you have to look at the person within the body and hold off on judgement. Then the body just becomes part of the human potential, and what you think of it reflects how you see humanity in general.
Absolutely, much of life is situational. In fact, merit and character should always trump body shape when judging an individual.
How I view humanity is very inconsequential, however I must say I hold it in the greatest of contempt and have little hope for it as a whole, and although it will continue getting stupider, ironically, it will survive.
That's a heavy load to carry.
Do not worry my friend, I carry it very lightly. I have chosen much heavier metaphysical and existential loads for myself which dwarf the notion of "humanity" into absolute insignificance.
Wow! What are they?
I think we ought to question all base principles, not only basic taboos, but fundamental axioms of mathematics, foundational laws of physics, and assumptions of biology as well. This gives the skeptic a useful place in our society.
The problem is that the more basic, or foundational, that a principle is, the older it tends to be. But the human world, is a living, changing, and evolving world, as are human beings. And these old principles which were established way back when humanity wasn't the same thing which it is today, really need to be revisited.
Nothing special. Somewhere in there it involves philosophy, that's probably why I like TPF. I might be able to start a new thread calling for TPF members to detail the metaphysical and existential loads they carry in life. What do you think?
Humanity is the same in some aspects, and different in others. For instance, its contemptibility is the same as it has always been, however, its technology and stupidity has increased dramatically and in direct correlation.
To what extent can we attribute the progress of todays world to tradition?
Why would you say that humanity's contemptibility is the same as it ever was, and then say its stupidity has increased dramatically? Do you not see this as blatant contradiction, or is stupidity not contemptible? If the stupidity you are talking about is an innocent naivety then perhaps the latter would be possible, but you position it in relation to technology.
First, remember that my opinion on humanity is quite inconsequential. So, I was speaking off the cuff, let's see what it means...
Stupidity can be contemptible. But i am speaking of stupidity as an enabling factor that gives humanity the greatest excuse in the world to blunder with impunity, despite it's technological ability. Is it the indicator of contemptibility? I would say it is one amongst others, like cowardice or greed.
So...without stupidity I would still find humanity contemptible, in fact, it might be more contemptible, being more clever in succeeding with its treachery (assisted by technology).
Whatever the case, it is fun to point out the dialectic of stupidity and technology.
I wasn't dismissive of it. I was trying to arrive at a reason why the nudity taboo ought be reconsidered. The basis provided by me was not that nudity necessarily leads to arousal, but that it's a social norm related to modesty. My suspicion is that it's possible to desensitize ourselves from arousal when watching others have sex as well. My question is why we ought abandon a social norm because it makes things less workable for 0.5% of the population.
Do I have the right not to shower alongside a fully physically appearing female who identifies as male? I think I do, else somewhere we've assessed his right to avoid the discomfort of showering in the women's shower higher priority than mine.
Telling me to get over it and deal with the naked person of whatever stripe is next to me sounds as reasonable as me telling him to get over it and shower somewhere else.
Given sex segregated showers I think you do. But given only non-sex- segregated showers, no you do not. It's a matter of what segregations are mandated and recognised in society. For sure there were times when facilities were race segregated, but times can change, so we can debate.
Mixed facilities are not all that uncommon.
Probably unsurprising, but I'm going to say that all bodies are not disgusting. Bodies are an abstraction from the concrete perception of another individual. In the present you see a form, and that's all you can say theoretically. Your disgust is only yours, and not a society-wide disgust. I can honestly say I don't care (EDIT: in terms of disgust -- obviously I have sexual desires) about seeing naked bodies in the least regardless of their form.
The only condition I can think of in which some bodies are disgusting is that if I desire all bodies to be attractive to me, sexual or otherwise. But that's clearly a groundless desire, given how our notions of aesthetics are different from one another.
I don't think you've over-thought this at all. Just the right amount. :up:
Maybe it has?
I, and virtually everyone, would be similarly wary of unusual friendliness.
Why? Because we suspect it is preparatory to an attempt to exploit us by asking us to do them a higher cost favor.
Why would we suspect that? For two reasons. First, because friendliness initiates low-cost cooperation with the goal of mutual small psychological rewards directly from the friendliness. Second, friendliness is a marker strategy (a fallible heuristic) for being a reliable cooperator for higher-stakes exchangers.
Our innate interest in, and ability to detect, cons is necessary for sustainable cooperation in groups. Otherwise, exploiters and free-riders would destroy the benefits of cooperation and therefore any motivation to cooperate. Our interest in, and ability to detect, cons is part of a cooperation strategy.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The Golden Rule advocates initiating indirect reciprocity, the most powerful cooperation strategy known. Indirect reciprocity has no stated goal - it is a cooperation strategy, not a goal generator. The Golden Rule is inarguably part of a cooperation strategy. If you want to understand morality you must understand at least a little about game theory.
The Golden Rule is a heuristic (a usually reliable, but fallible rule of thumb) for how to achieve shared goals by sustainable cooperation. Burdening the Golden Rule with specific goals would be counter-productive. The lack of goals in no way inhibits, but rather augments, the Golden Rule's cultural usefulness and applicability as a moral reference (as part of a cooperation strategy).
I can make no sense of your claim that "the Golden Rule is very clearly not a cooperation strategy."
As I've repeated already, I believe there is no reciprocity implied by the Golden Rule, and I think that this represents a gross misinterpretation on your part.
It appears like neither of us has any will to compromise on this issue.
I agree with you that the Golden Rule advocates behavior independent of conditions or consequences such as the expectation of reciprocity.
However, following the Golden Rule INITIATES indirect reciprocity, regardless of any lack of awareness of that being the case. People acting in accordance with the Golden Rule without consideration of consequences is the main mechanism for initiating indirect reciprocity in societies, the main strategy for maintaining a well-functioning society.
People can and do act consistently with cooperation strategies (act morally) without awareness that their behavior has anything to do with cooperation (with forms of reciprocity).
Quoting Hanover
Is this to say, "We can discriminate, just not for malevolent reasons," or is it more true to say, "We shouldn't do things malevolently, including discriminating (malevolently)"?
The difficulty is that introducing the word "malevolence" is often a move into vacuity given that the word usually has no substantial definition. In other words: what is the moral status of discrimination?
(Good OP, by the way)
Quoting Moliere
I think the question is not so much, "What have we done in the past?" as it is, "Why have we done it?"
Why did we make two bathrooms in the first place? That is where the discussion needs to start.
Quoting Moliere
The common premise here is that, "We now think of gender and sex as different things, therefore we always thought of gender and sex as different things." Hanover says we used to think about them as different things and "man"/"woman" referred to sex, and Moliere says we used to think about them as different things and "man"/"woman" referred to gender. I say we didn't use to think of them as different things. Bathroom labels didn't use to mean sex-but-not-gender or gender-but-not-sex. Actually, they still don't for the vast majority of people.
Oh, discrimination is not only not a negative, it's essential to human existance. Since in it's absence we'd treat each other identically ie we'd never learn from experience.
Of course, there is a key difference between discrimination between groups and individuals. For example it is more than reasonable for an insurance company to charge more for all businesses in a neighborhood (that happens to be majority Black) that experiences more vandalism. It's completely unreasonable to charge a business that happens to be own by a Black man but located in a neighborhood with average vandalism, a high premium.
What is an adult? Is it legally set by the State? Or biologically by puberty? What if one is a eunuch and does not go through "puberty" per se? Or has some other condition where the biological process of adulthood does not occur? Does a person require mental faculties and sanity to be considered an adult? What about an adolescent who has seen and been through more than most adults can and will and has an IQ of 200 and has physically developed to full physical and mental maturity? If that person is not an adult then it means "adulthood" is set by the State and very well could be declared tomorrow that being eight years old is now an adult.
Quoting Captain Homicide
What is a human? What if one's brain has been altered to fundamentally operate as an AI or replaced altogether with an AI brain? What if science reaches the point of head transplants and one becomes just a brain in an entirely robot body?
Quoting Captain Homicide
This is simply glossing over and rephrasing the term that is currently under scrutiny, is it not?
1. an adult is one who has reached sexual maturity. However, given that we're trying to argue about definitional norms, one who has reached the age of majority is hte correct answer. This leaves a huge amount of wiggle room for different institutions to think about different policies, and the knock-on effects of higher-level policies (like age of majority). I don't think, in that context, you can just throw up your hands - OR completely reinvent the wheel, with any success.
2. The 'what if's' are prevarication in this area. We all know what a human is. If you don't, that's not really an issue anyone else needs to explain. If your questioning tactic were taken seriously, we're looking at Furries are legitimately (lets say) reptilian beings, when that is not the case. The AI example is a red herring. Is the person Human? That can be ascertained prior to any 'changes'.
3. No. No it isn't. A female is well-defined across several contexts (electronics, for example) and humans are no different. There are precisely zero humans who are not male or female. There are no in-betweens. They do not exist (unless you've got one hidden away, which would be fine with me)This is because the species Human is sexually dimorphic. Phenotypic ambiguity is irrelevant. Is your SRY active?
None of this is to say "use the above to write policies, and leave the rest alone". But it is to say pretending these fundamental starting points are seriously questionable is not reasonable.
Quoting LuckyR
Discrimination is literally the function of higher-order thinking.
I agree. :up:
Quoting LuckyR
Well, if the insured businesses are more likely to be vandalized then it is reasonable for the insurance company to charge higher premiums, regardless of whether groups or individuals are involved.
You can rearrange this sentence to adequately respond to most charges of racism/sexism/transphobia etc..
Generally speaking, that aspect of the person/group/behaviour/whatever else... is actually not relevant to the policy, and some other aspect is. It is not the fault of policy that it has more frequent interaction with a particular group due to their behaviour or self-affected identity.
You use "group" in your commentary, which is reasonable. My point was it isn't reasonable when group statistics are used on individuals. In just about all variables involving humans, the statistical differences between cultural or gender or geographical or racial or sectarian groups are smaller than those within those groups. Thus when dealing with individuals, it is not reliably predictable whether they will fall above or below average in whichever variable you might name, merely based on their being a member of a particular group.
Of course some zealots pretend that there aren't differences between groups, which is erroneous BUT their conclusion that we should each be evaluated on our individual merits is not.
But those lets call them arbitrary attributes youre complete right. But if a particular issue exists only in that group, regardless of prevalence, were right to ascribe it to that group. But this takes beinf an adult which most discussing social politics are not. Vibe tends to be that Their group is diverse despite being a special interest group, but the out-group is not despite being literally everyone else seems the common take so your point is very apt
As far as the toilet discussion is concerned, the solution for ridding of even the need for distinction is a simple one - single stall restrooms.
It's completely illegal to charge a black owned business a higher premium based upon race, but whether it's statistically unreasonable is a matter of math. That is, correlations between risk and race, religion, hair color, shoe preference or whatever might or might not exist such that insurance premiums might be reliably set by it to be profitable.
Insurance is a highly regulated industry though, with elected insurance commissioners in most if not all states, meaning premiums and underwriting standards are not set by the free market.
The point of this is just to say that public policy isn't set by just a few fundamental principles of logic or even fairness. It's set by the millions of interests of the public in a democratic way.
This is to say if we wish to treat cis males just like transsexual males, we may or we may not as a matter of policy, with no specific single reason controlling, but all interests more or less being considered in the typical democratic way.
To the extent though anyone actually argues that cis and trans folks can't be meaningfully distinguished, that is stupid. I don't think people really do that, but the definition games often get played in a way that it pretends there is some confusion there.
But it is reasonable. If group X has Y percentage chance of committing action Z, thenall things being equalsomeone belonging to group X has Y percentage chance of committing action Z on average. Progressives have a difficult time recognizing the simple fact that there are rationally sound inferences which move from group data to individual data.
That there are reasons to do something doesn't mean it ought be done. The "ought" question is a judgment call that is based upon which objectives you wish to promote.
If I increase auto insurance premiums based upon age, I fulfill my objective of assuring profitability while still insuring the less safe driver pool. I also don't offend social sensibilities because we accept that young people should bear a higher cost due to their inexperience.
However, if I find that Native Americans pose higher risks due to perhaps their reduced driving experience as well, I don't increase their rates using their genetic heritage as the basis even if that acts as a good risk marker.
I don't do that because it offends other social objectives of not discriminating for racial reasons. What everyone has to understand is that economic reasons are not the only reasons for decision making, but the reasons chosen are a matter of democratic consensus.
That it might increase profits to be racist doesn't force a conclusion that one should be racist.
Sure, but we are discussing whether it is reasonable, not whether it ought to be done.
Quoting Hanover
The lurking question here is, "Is racism irrational?" Or also, "What is racism?"
For Aquinas that which is immoral is always also irrational. For us something can be immoral and rational. This is a problem beyond the instrumentalization of reason, and goes to the fact that many of our taboos do not have rational grounds. It is that something can even be moral and irrational. For example, our colloquial definition of racism would seem to be, "Discriminating on the basis of race without having any good reason to discriminate on the basis of race," and this verges on psychological impossibility. Or closer to this thread, sexism would be, "Discriminating on the basis of sex without having any good reason to discriminate on the basis of sex." This looks like liberal-egalitarian dogma. "Don't do it even if you think you have a good reason to do it."
So now just making up an example, suppose I am in a combat situation in the military, and our liberal-democratic dogmas have prescribed that women must be admitted to the military on equal footing with men. I am paired with a woman in combat; I go down; she is not strong enough to carry me out; I die. Why did I die? Because the liberal-egalitarian legislation irrationally created a suboptimal situation on the basis of the falsehood that women are equal to men in strength. Irrational failure to discriminate can have real consequences.
Quoting Hanover
But of course people do this, and the reason is transparent. Discrimination (or "distinction") leads to unequal treatment, therefore it cannot be allowed. For example, should I be able to filter trans folks out of my eHarmony search? Many would say 'no'.
Every time I engage in an act of discrimination I do so in order to act on that discrimination, either in thought or in outward action. So if I discriminate the white from the black chess pieces, I do so in order to determine which pieces to move. Discrimination is logically necessary, discrimination always results in unequal treatment, and sometimes unequal treatment is illegitimate. So the question is always whether to err on the side of free discrimination or to err on the side of opposing unequal treatment.
Huh? Philosophy degrees need a statistics requirement. If I tell you that the Atlanta Braves team batting average in 2024 is .244 (the median in MLB), what does that tell someone about Marcell Ozuna's batting average in 2024? Nothing. He's got the 5th highest average in baseball.
If I may. I think he's suggesting the fact that Marcell Ozuna happens to have an exceptionally higher batting average than the rest of his teammates is a rarity. Out of all the Atlanta Braves team members, any given one would likely be much lesser and closer to .244 than to be in the 5th highest average. In other words, if you picked the Atlanta Braves (batting average of .244) and were to make a bet that a player, selected at random, assuming you don't know the identity or batting averages of any of the players, would be in the top 5 highest averages, over say, the team with the highest batting average, that would be considered foolish as it is much more likely for a randomly-selected player from a team with a much higher batting average to have a higher batting average than one from a team with a much lower batting average.
I realize this is a sub-discussion that happens to be about racial tendencies, which I find iffy, but context-aside, for the sake of the larger, more general discussion not about race from which this one is derived from, that is the bare bones logic as I see it.
But I say, it entirely depends on the context and what information is available to you. Are you judging two candidates for a job? Well if you are, then you probably have a whole lot more relevant information than their race to determine if they're fit for the job. Job candidates don't just tell you their race and that's all you get to know about them before you hire them, you can see their CV, their work and education history, you can speak with them - you can get a whole lot of information about them that's way more relevant to the question then just their race.
Maybe there are other circumstances where you don't have a lot more information than their race to go on, so that might change the dynamics a bit, but neither of those guys is talking about specific circumstances because they're taking too broad of a position. Imo
From a small business owner's perspective, the idea of having to have a third bathroom on top of the two required many can barely afford as-is would be a nightmare.
29 CFR 1910.141(c)(1)(i) states:
"Except as otherwise indicated in this paragraph (c)(1)(i), toilet facilities, in toilet rooms separate for each sex, shall be provided in all places of employment in accordance with table J-1 of this section. The number of facilities to be provided for each sex shall be based on the number of employees of that sex for whom the facilities are furnished. Where toilet rooms will be occupied by no more than one person at a time, can be locked from the inside, and contain at least one water closet, separate toilet rooms for each sex need not be provided."
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So basically, if my business or establishment "requires" or has the level of activity that demands or otherwise makes the use of a single-occupancy restroom unfeasible, I would be required to completely overhaul basically the entire fundamental structure of the building, which mind you is already occupied to make maximum use of the space provided (no structure of business or public use just has "free unused space" lying around that can be used because "oh there's nothing going on here", every space of the structure is either currently in use or is already well designated for future use). Imagine the permits, planning, closures for renovations, and the financial costs as well as time. It would change the maximum occupancy of the building in accordance to fire code, which in turn would change basically everything about how the business operates, down to the scheduling, inventory, staff, etc. The pipework, which might require a complete excavation job to allow more water, or something of that nature. All for maybe a percent of the population to use, once for 2 minutes, if they happen to have to pee whilst patronizing my establishment. That's crazy. And often times a technical impossibility, depending on the structure, infrastructure, space, etc.
The fact remains an XY (biological male) is significantly, incredibly, indisputably more likely to have an urge and act on said urge to unwantedly, violently sexually assault (rape) an XX (biological woman) who is vulnerable with her pants down in an enclosed, private area than the other way around. That's indisputable. Anyone who suggests otherwise is either not being serious or is dangerously out of touch with reality to the point they need to be institutionalized for their own safety and that of others.
The idea that having to use a bathroom that isn't "made" for your gender, is some sort of rights violation or identity-crisis-forming scenario is ridiculous. If I have to take a whizz, and go on a tree, or something, I do it because it's what's available. I won't suddenly start having an identity crisis wondering if I'm a fox or a bear and not who I identify as after doing so. Anyone who feels otherwise clearly has something else going on irrespective of gender identity. It's simply not related.
So, for the protection of women, (XY) uses facility A and (XX) uses facility B. There's no prejudice or discrimination involved whatsoever.
Interesting fact: there are more toilets in the United States than there are people. I'm sure there's a pun there but in all seriousness the economic cost alone (not including the feasibility and flat out impossibility to add a third restroom to every two sets of standard restrooms, however many that would be) would be astronomical. Nothing short of mind-boggling.
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In short, it's a discussion. The OP is trying to have a discussion. It's as meaningful as those who participate in it wish it to be.
My take is: I don't believe something as insignificant as the lettering on a placard that designates what room you take a dump in (of all things) amounts to any real, measurable form of discrimination or any sort of realistic identity-crisis-causing factor. If so, the problem clearly lies elsewhere, not in one's gender identity. I just don't see it as realistic or feasible to legislate mandatory third-gender/transgender/"female" identifying XY restrooms for the reasons explained.
Not to make light of the issue, but it is a known fact or "running gag" non-female-identifying males jokingly identify as "women" when "caught" messing around (whether "innocently" as in "just taking a peek" for purposes of non-physical, non-violent sexual gratification or maliciously ie. considering actually performing a violent criminal act) in or near women's restrooms. To me, legally and morally speaking, this is a clear-cut risk for women everywhere. That risk being, there is no legal distinction, no form of discernment, between a transgender female who honestly identifies as a female who has undergone surgery and everything else, and a standard biological male who got caught and claims "no I just now realized I identify as a female, five minutes ago". Absolutely none whatsoever. That is a clear and present danger to women. I don't see how any argument contrary to that is even remotely defensible. I'd honestly welcome and challenge anyone to dispute that.
You're going to have to spell out for me why you're talking about a third bathroom. I didn't see anything in the law you quoted saying you have to have a third bathroom. I also don't believe I said anything about a third bathroom. I can't see the relevance of what you're saying about third bathrooms given the words you quoted from me
Sorry, 90% of the reply was to the OP due to the only compromise that respects women's desire (however prevalent it may or may not be) to restrict XX persons to women's restrooms (considering there remains no legal distinction between a legitimate female-identifying person and one who makes a false statement to that affect on a whim), along with the desire of legitimate female-identifying persons to use the restroom aligned to their gender, would be a third "gender-neutral" restroom, which is in fact a thing. A widely-discussed and popular thing, at that. Highly relevant to the topic at hand (see first sentence of the OP: "Let's talk about women's bathrooms.")
This portion was you for: Quoting Outlander
It's late. There's not much activity this hour. Just a simple reply, nothing more. :up:
If the objective in your example is to equalize the treatment of men and women at the cost of additional death, then the egalitarian dictate makes sense. What you're simply pointing out is that decisions are made without thinking through the consequences and not properly prioritizing objectives.
If we both prioritize creating the most capable military, then it is irrational to do things that don't do that. The proof of the best decision can be empirically shown. If not having women in combat roles wins more wars, then they shouldn't be there if you see the military's entire role as winning wars as opposed to also creating a more equal society.
If, at the end of the day, the left's military results in some military losses and greater deaths but greater domestic equality among the sexes, then the final question as to whether that result is better than more military wins and less gender equality, that can be answered by the democratic vote. I'm voting for the more military wins, but I don't know that makes me more rational. It just makes me someone who prioritizes safety over domestic equality. Obviously if the left's military is so weakened by their desire to create gender equality that it cannot protect itself from foreign invaders, then it would be irrational, but as long as the plan is to give more people the opportunity for military advancement without overly weakening the military, then it could be rational. From my perspective, sacrificing people for an objective of equality is a stupid idea because I do not consider equality a social virtue.
Your objection is that of enforcement, not that the OPs suggestion is incorrect. That is, you're not objecting to the suggestion that XY gender identifying women should be denied access to XX bathrooms. You're just saying that without a genetic testing kit, we won't be able to enforce the rule that XXs and XYs not enter one another's bathrooms.
This objection at best is a pragmatic one, but it's really not one that creates a meaningful enforcement problem. In over 99% of the cases it's abundantly clear whether the person is XX or XY by a variety of markers that don't require additional genetic testing. Those markers don't need to itemized because we all know exactly what identifies for us who is male and who is female.
But, to the extent there will be some wedding crashers (so to speak) that go entirely undetected, that isn't a basis for allowing those without proper invitation to attend. If you're not supposed to go in the bathroom, you shouldn't go, but, sure, someone is going to get away with it from time to time.
You've thought about false negatives but neglected false positives. What about the women who are going to be harassed, or worse, because they're ugly or tall or have a hormone condition that means they have a little bit of beard, or look a little too much like Justin Bieber?
Since we're talking pragmatics here, hypotheticals have to be subject to this same pragmatic analysis. That is, has there really been a case where an ugly woman was thrown out of a women's restroom because someone thought them to be a man? Is this really happening?
Actual sexual ambiguity is very limited and it's not something that has caused a problem in determining which restroom would be appropriate in the past that I am aware of. That is, in the decades that preceded transsexual protections, we didn't have issues where sexually ambiguous people were being denied access to their rightful bathrooms. But, should that occur, I guess those people could offer additional evidence to substantiate their sexuality, first relying perhaps on government documents, but eventually if there really were profound confusion, they could conduct a test. I suspect that would occur close to never, which is about as good as any rule is ever going to be.
If you're going to make the argument that an XX/XY rule is hopelessly uneforceable, you're going to have to offer empirical evidence that truly is going to occur in a meaningful way. If a handful of people are denied proper bathroom access over many decades (and we don't even have data suggesting that would happen), then we have a pretty solid rule. Enforcement at 99%+ is a higher level of enforcement than we have for most of our rules.
Yes, there have been masculine-looking women harassed for going into womens toilets.
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/18/11690234/women-bathrooms-harassment
It's not a hypothetical, it's already happening. And a reasonable person would expect that to happen - androgynous-looking women are not that uncommon. If the only criteria you have to go on to decide if you want to harass someone for going into the wrong bathroom is how they look, a reasonable person with knowledge about the world should expect that people will get it wrong sometimes.
Yes indeed!
Quoting LuckyR
You don't think the team batting average of the Braves tells us anything about the batting averages of Braves players? Pray tell, where do you think "team batting average of the Braves" comes from? It comes from the individual members of the team! It tells us, for example, that any player on the Braves will probably have a higher batting average than any player on a team with a lower team batting average. Your counterexample fails because the logic does not tell us exact data about each player on the Braves. "Ozuna's batting average is not .244, therefore the team batting average tells us nothing about individual players' averages," is a fallacious argument. The group statistic informs us of probabilities, and we are constantly using probabilities to make decisions.
Yes, this is a large part of it.
Quoting Hanover
This is precisely where I take you to be mistaken, here and in previous posts. The democratic vote does not determine whether gender equality is better than less military deaths. Perhaps simply pointing it out is sufficient for you to see that? If Plato is right then the democratic vote will tell us much the opposite.
In a democracy we determine whether to implement that form of gender equality by a democratic vote or process. Such is the reason for the decision, not the measure of the decision. Presumably you will now want to argue that democratic procedure produces optimal decisions.
Quoting Hanover
I agree very much, but my point was that, "This is a problem beyond the instrumentalization of reason, and goes to the fact that many of our taboos do not have rational grounds. It is that something can even be moral and irrational."
For someone like (and very many otherwise rational progressives), being moral means that I cannot admit the mathematical fact that group data provides statistical information about individuals in that group. They will deny the legitimacy of "profiling" even to the degree of denying mathematical facts. This is more an individual issue, but it creeps into law and policy as well. Now you might say that it is not necessarily irrational to prefer death to inequality (in the military), but is it irrational to deny mathematical facts?
Oh I know that's what he's trying to say, problem is that because the difference between groups is smaller than the differences within groups, examples like this are, in fact NOT rare, they're common. Hence the inability to reliably predict individual variable stats from group averages.
Though the erroneous belief that they are is the "rationale" behind stereotyping.
Your commentary would make logical sense in cases where individual data doesn't exist (all you have to go on is group data). However, no thinking person would use group "probabilities" preferencially over individual data. If another team is going to trade for a specific Brave, no one is going to conclude, "well, since the Braves average batting average is low, we'll get to offer a low salary" for a specific player. They'll base their offer on the specific stats of the player, the Braves team averages don't enter into the calculation.
Of course, you know all of this already, hence my surprise why I'm forced to to review the obvious.
It is valid to make inferences from group data to individuals regardless of whether we have the individual data that produced the group data. Whenever we aggregate the data of individuals into group data we are doing so in order to use the group data, and that group data can provide us with information that was not available at the individual level. Hence the whole point of sampling.
Quoting LuckyR
No one said they would.
Quoting LuckyR
I think the reason you are forced to offer strawmen is because you won't admit that you are wrong. You are wrong in claiming that it is always invalid to make inferences about individuals based on their statistical group data. Your point was false, "My point was it isn't reasonable when group statistics are used on individuals" (). The inability to admit that it is not necessarily unreasonable to make inferences about individuals on the basis of group statistics is a form of irrationality that accompanies progressivism.
If I may. Again. I think he's asserting the fact that current circumstance is a poor indicator of future circumstance and resulting potential ie. reality. Sure, a person fresh out of high school is not wise nor likely to be very skilled. I suppose you could say close to 100% of persons who fall in this category are neither wise nor skilled. However it would be foolish and irrational to assume that because of this state of factual circumstance, a person has poor chances to become wise or skilled. That I believe is the disconnect between the opposing views present in this exchange. Something surely the three of us could jollily agree on and make a toast to! :grin:
No, I see no evidence of that. Here is the statement that Lucky has attempted to disagree with:
Quoting Leontiskos
Note that this has nothing to do with a present/future distinction.
You will note I said views not the current argument brought about by said views.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is the point of contention: "on average." As it stands, your statement of fact is correct. However one is best to bear in mind that that is all that it is: a statement. One that stands alone, isolated from factors that contribute to best discernment of actionable reality and best course of action. Not past or future, simply present. A snapshot. Akin to renting a room based on a single photograph of the interior from the most convenient, readily-available angle. Sure, you'll likely get what you expect. Unless you don't. :smile:
Not a particularly great example but sufficient for the moment. Perhaps this prospective room has a magnificent view overlooking the sea (representing the increasing opportunity for positive and lasting change for group X) that is not present in said snapshot (your sampling data of group X). Or, of course, perhaps there is a rather unpleasant occupancy of bed bugs (representing the ingrained habitual patterns and, yes your "likelihood" of regression and perpetuation of said undesirable outcomes) also not present in said snapshot. As you can see, this "snapshot" or "current sampling of available data" is a fickle indicator, whether it be positive or negative, for what the future truly beholds and as a result the best choice of action to take.
And again, I see no evidence of that.
Quoting Outlander
No, you just contradicted yourself. It is not just a statement, it is a correct statement. It is a true statement. There is quite a large difference.
Quoting Outlander
Whether a truth can be incorporated into your hotel will of course depend on how amenable your hotel is to truth. Maybe your hotel can't handle the truth, and maybe the truth is not welcome. Maybe you have to lock and bar the doors lest certain kinds of truths come 'round, looking for lodging. I suspect you will need a healthy helping of discrimination in deciding which kinds of truths are acceptable and which are not. :wink:
As I've said, progressives lock and bar their doors against certain truths of the mathematical variety, and it looks like you are up to the same thing with the aid of some flowery rhetoric. This is more or less the definition of ideology: sacrificing truth to one's agenda. Brainwashing out the truths that do not suit the agenda. Such is always a house of cards and a matter of time.
Are you some sort of arbiter of truth? If not, that's fine and respectable. But of no relation to any sort of absolute value or meaning. Unless you do believe there is no further or greater state of understanding, knowing, or being that could possibly be achieved other than that which you now "possess" (or as I attest, possesses or rather, restricts you).
Quoting Leontiskos
This is the word that begs further inquisition. Why not discernment? Discernment is active, alive. While discrimination is passive, dead, if you will. Completely unresponsive to new information. What makes a man an intellectual corpse, little more than a ghost whose actions, thoughts and very life become little more than but a haunting in the arena of true philosophic discourse. Sure, it's natural, wise even to believe the repeated actions of one will indicate the future action and inevitable fate of those who act on them. But seeing beyond what can be seen, beyond the arbitrary faux limits of what men think can be, is what separates the philosopher, the rightful ruler, whose proclamations or "truths" that are not based on so-called rationale propped up by inorganic states of detestable action, a dynamic of perpetual hypocrisy to simply maintain but a foothold in the mind of man instead of a persistent truth intrinsic to men rich and poor and even in infancy can recognize, the True Sovereign, from the commoner. Being alive, or open, knowing "statistically" (based on the view of the majority or "what is apparently, if not glaringly, seemingly-evident") is but a transient state of affairs that can be turned on its head in a moment's notice.
In a democracy we allow the variety of viewpoints to determine which policy we want to implement. I don't think that a democracy always gets it right. We have plenty of examples of the creation of bad policy. You seem to be suggesting some sort of moralitocracy (a word I just made up), that is akin to a theocracy in that it posits that the ultimate goal of a society is to be as moral as possible.
What would then follow is that since morality is objective and absolute, we should be bound to maximize military survival over gender equality because the life of a solider is more important than whatever societal harmony results from gender equality. The use of the democracy I guess in this system is to figure out what the dictates of morality are and then to enforce that as law.
I apologize if I've over-extrapolated your position from what you've said, but this analysis follows from the suggestion that the democracy must set it's objectives due to some some higher good that stands above the democracy dictating what is good. That is, why can't Society A decide gender equality is its highest good and then set policy from there without having to contend with objections from a small minority who believe that military might is the highest good? The measure of Society A's policy would not be whether it effectively promoted military might (as that is not it's goal), but whether it effectively promoted gender equality.
To erase the ideosycratic desires of a society in exchange for some type of objective ideal that must be obtained seems problematic to me. . It would suggest that if the democratic belief were 99% in favor of allowing its citizens to choose their gender and then to compete athletically with members of their chosen gender it couldn't do that because the minorities' viewpoint, even though microscopic in terms of acceptance, is correct, so, as a matter of inalienable right, the minority viewpoint would need to be imposed upon society.
And this isn't to suggest there aren't rights and that minorities don't receive protection from majority rule, but it also doesn't take the polar opposite extreme to suggest everything is a matter of right.
My view is that female identifying XYs shouldn't compete athletically with XXs because I don't believe that equality is a virtue worth pursuing. I don't think society is better off if we think men and women the same. I do think XXs should be provided their own bathrooms and their own playing fields, free from the athletically superior XYs. I see no value in blurring the male and female distinctions.
I also don't think I have the right to be king of Hanoveria and dictate that my vote prevails because it's right. I'm just one guy with one vote with all sorts of reasons I hold dear, and so I cast my ballot and watch things unfold. But, again, that's not to say that there are no rights at all. They just don't extend all the way down the line to where an XX has the god given right to compete only against XXs. Let the nuts in San Fran do as they will and let the right thinking folks in my neck of the woods do as they do.
You seem to agree that individuals being judged on their own merits (individual data) is superior to judging individuals based on their being a member of a group (group data). That's my main point (which I predicted above that "you knew already").
Arguing whether inferior data is of no benefit, marginal benefit or minimal benefit is a perfect example of a distinction without a (practical) difference.
Well, if you have followed my posts on morality you will know that I view modern approaches to morality as flat-footed, so I think you've started off your journey in the wrong direction here (e.g. "The Breadth of the Moral Sphere").
Quoting Hanover
When you yourself say, "I don't think that a democracy always gets it right," you are already subordinating democratic decision-making to some higher good: in this case "rightness." You are saying that the purpose of democracy is, at least in part, to try to get it right.
Quoting Hanover
You cannot consistently claim both that democracy might "get it right" and that there is nothing to be gotten right. If you sit on that fence then you will be able to play both sides, just as you did in our discussion on determinism vs. free will in the thread Fate v. Determinism.
Either there is a correct proportion between gender equality and military effectiveness or there is not.
Quoting Hanover
This is really the question of whether democracy is the best form of rule. Obviously a minority viewpoint does not hold sway within a democracy.
Quoting Hanover
That strikes me as an odd dichotomy. We seem to conceive of rights as free-floating things, like celestial bodies that might crash into each other at any given moment. I don't know if that is a great way to think about rights.
Quoting Hanover
I agree, but the question here is whether you think that you are right. Whether you think your answer is the right answer, and that if the democratic process arrives at the opposite answer then it has arrived at the wrong answer. Of course one could claim that the democratic process arrived at the wrong decision while at the same time abiding by the decision, but there is a difference between democratic relativism and democratic objectivism.
Quoting Hanover
The question of inalienable rights is an interesting one, which I believe will become more pressing as secularization continues. In my opinion inalienable rights have very little to do with democracy, and are in important ways anti-democratic.
The false premise in your thinking is the idea that we always have access to superior individual data, and therefore never have need of recourse to group statistical data. If everyone were omniscient your argument would be valid. There would be no need for statistical generalization. Given that we are not omniscient, your argument fails.
Inalienable rights are guaranteed by Nature. It's basically stoicism.
Quoting Outlander
I like your thinking here. It reminds me of my favorite psychologist, George Kelly:
Now you're just trying too hard. (As you know) I never stated that individual data is always accessible. Merely that (when available) it's superior to group data. Thus when making important decisions, the prudent judge seeks out the best input. Not controversial.
Quoting LuckyR
I'm not suggesting there isn't a correct answer for how one is to get from point A to point B. I'm only saying there isn't a single correct destination to desire.
If there were but one right preference, then every nation would have the same buildings, roads, military, houses, healthcare, etc. Not every prohibition is a malum in se, but plenty are instead malum prohibitum. That is, we can create objectives for our society that have no moral value but are just expressions of our preferences caused by our particular histories, happenstance situations we find ourselves in, mythologies and whatever else. We then arrive at ways to achieve those objectives, and that decision can either be right or wrong.
This isn't to say we can't form immoral objectives, but it is to say there are a variety of flavors of moral choices we can choose from.
It's not strikingly obvious to me that a society that wishes to promote gender as a matter of personal choice is an immoral one. I also don't think it's immoral to wish to promote the opposite. Others do, which I think is the cause of polarization, arising from moralizing everything.
If someone believes the proper objective for society is to free its citizens of male/female assignment based upon biological sex, that's neither a moral or immoral objective. If that is achieved through a weakened military, then that's a rational way to achieve that goal. This has nothing to do with morality. It has to do with personal choices and the effective way to achieve them. Quoting Leontiskos
There are moral choices and immoral ones. That holds true for single individuals and legislative bodies. When you walk down the street, there are thousands of immoral, moral, and morally neutral things you can do. Democracies can select their objectives from the buckets marked "moral" or "morally neutral," but not "immoral."
That would be wrong. Quoting Leontiskos
Except all democracies I am aware of offer protections for minority rights. Quoting Leontiskos
I think certain laws are preferable because they advance my interests and ideologies, but I don't believe every opinion I hold aligns with God's will or that God cares which side of the street I drive my car.
And, as if said, sometimes God (so to speak) does care. That my objective might be to corner the agricultural market doesn't mean I get to have slaves. That choice is wrong regardless of pragmatic merit. The cereal aisle has plenty of healthy and unhealthy choices to choose from. I can only properly choose from the healthy ones.
Quoting Leontiskos
The right and left both hold rights near and dear to their hearts. They just argue over what they are, but not whether they exist. The left says abortion is a right, the right says guns are. Neither denies ights exist though.
Uummm... if acknowledging the reality that groups stats are designed to describe groups and don't describe individuals as accurately as individual statistics do, is "undermining", then I guess you're right, I'm an underminer. Though just to be clear the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two would still be the case if I never posted in this thread. It's not about me.
Let's address the sophistic claim again:
Quoting LuckyR
There are so many problems with this sort of claim, so it's hard to know where to start. Perhaps we should just start with the fact that group statistics are enormously powerful and influential in modern life. They are of great benefit. But the question of whether they have predictive power is of course a distinction with a practical difference. Your counterargument is, "Ah, but if we had data for each individual in the group, then that data would supersede the group data for understanding individuals." Sure, but the fact is that we don't have data for each individual in the group, and that's why we use the group data. You should look up "random sampling" to understand how group data is generated, for it is the key to understanding how the generalization occurs and why it is useful and powerful.
That's the point I'm making. Glad we agree.
My comments stem from the very common dismissal of members of groups based on their group membership alone when individual data is available, typically in the form of an application form, CV or test score.
As an aside, I've acknowledged several times that group data excels at describing groups (what it's designed to do). Though I haven't focused specifically on the idea that in the absence of individual data that group data is better than nothing. Just as you haven't that when using group data on individuals, one should continue to collect new individual performance data as the chance of an initial miscalculation is moderate.
Sure, but given that we are discussing the legitimacy of individual inferences from group data, your omission here is the problematic one. I claimed the inference was valid, you objected and gave a few different arguments, but eventually settled into this idea that:
LP1:
The problem is that this idea of yours fails to connect to the larger issue of inferences from group data to individuals. In that sense it is a red herring and also invalid. This form of sophistry brings back memories of OnlinePhilosophyClub. In order to avoid these problems you would need to address how things like LP1 relate to the larger discussion we are having.
Phrased differently:
Even if we ignore the equivocation between what is invalid and what is otiose, your response that
But I preempted this at the outset, "This is a problem beyond the instrumentalization of reason..." (). Again, "Now you might say that it is not necessarily irrational to prefer death to inequality (in the military), but is it irrational to deny mathematical facts?" ().
The primary question here is whether it is irrational to deny mathematical-statistical facts in favor of a progressive agenda, and this is not a question of "a single correct destination to desire." You keep wandering down a road that was preemptively addressed.
-
The related problem here is your construal of these disputes as a matter of values or arbitrary moralities. You are saying, "Well if they value gender equality more than military deaths, then who am I to tell them that military deaths should be given more weight?" But sexism is not ultimately a matter of values. It is a matter of reason and rationality. If two people are equally capable of doing something, then it is irrational to claim that they are not equally capable of doing that thing. It is this kind of argument that undergirds sexism, racism, etc. It is not some arbitrary value. Anti-sexism is originally a rational argument, not an arbitrary imposition of a value. It is something like, "Women are equally capable typists, therefore it is irrational to discriminate between women and men when it comes to typing."
Quoting Hanover
The key point you are missing is that instrumental reason is also not determined to one effect. For example, when a nation decides that cars should drive on the right or left side of the road it is a way to achieve an objective, and neither way is right or wrong. The objective of safety is objectively good, but the indeterminacy in this case comes from a legitimate plurality of means, not from a plurality of ends. Binding that indeterminacy up with value relativism (i.e. an indeterminacy of ends) is incorrect.
Quoting Hanover
I don't think it has anything to do with morality either, so I don't know why you brought up morality. I would not even feel comfortable venturing the question of what you mean by "morality."
The point is that if we promote gender equality at the expense of mathematical facts, then we are being irrational. I have not made any points about so-called morality.
Quoting Hanover
You are doubtless limiting your sample to modern democratic forms.
Quoting Hanover
But if you are talking about something that democracy might get right or wrong, then you are obviously not talking about morally or rationally indifferent things.
Quoting Hanover
Actually plenty of democratic political philosophers hold that natural rights do not exist, and it is logically impossible for a democratic vote or consensus to generate a natural right. I think you are conflating democracy with liberalism. Not all democracies protect minority rights, and that all liberal democracies protect minority rights has everything to do with liberalism and nothing to do with democracy. I would say that democracies invariably reject minority rights in large and small ways.
Well, given the extreme frequency of ecological fallacies when Real World inferences to individuals from group data is attempted, one practical solution involves using individual data (LP1).
But you don't have to take my word for it, how about the National Academy of Sciences?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6142277/
Yet highly effective as they turn even your own into such of similar nature.
You feel the need to neglect reason, virtue itself in condemning your fellow man. Sure if one is correct such factual arguments are a mere commodity.
Why is he wrong? If you are so evidently correct, such reasoning should be a natural repertoire, riposte, even. Yet you present nothing. Why is that?
I totally understand where you're coming from. It's naturally frustrating when real life statistics don't match up with theory.
Though I have to admit that this is the first time I've observed a reference to a journal article on an online Forum being labelled as an invalid argument.
Have a nice day.