Tranwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?
I've been interested in this little philosophical puzzle that has popped up in regards to trans ideology and politics. I think its going to go down as a classic. I'm going to break it down here and see what people think.
A few definitions first:
Sex - A species expressed reproductive role.
Gender - A cultural expectation of non-biological behavior in regards to an individual's sex
With that in mind, what is a trans x? First we need to define man and woman.
Man - adult human male by sex
Woman- adult human female by sex
But sometimes people want to claim that man and woman are 'roles'. What's a role? A gendered label. Most of the world does not view man and woman by gender, but by sex, so the default goes to sex. However, we can modify the term to indicate 'male by gender' or 'female by gender'.
An addition to the term of 'cis' indicates 'x by gender'. So a cisman is a 'male who expresses with male gender' A ciswoman is a 'female who expresses with female gender'.
Now we get to trans. A transman is a 'male who expresses with female gender'. A transwoman is 'a male who expresses with male gender'.
So are transwomen women? Are transwomen men? No. The terms man and woman indicate a person's age and sex, not gender. Are transwomen men who act with a female gender? Yes. Are transmen women who act with a male gender? Yes.
A few definitions first:
Sex - A species expressed reproductive role.
Gender - A cultural expectation of non-biological behavior in regards to an individual's sex
With that in mind, what is a trans x? First we need to define man and woman.
Man - adult human male by sex
Woman- adult human female by sex
But sometimes people want to claim that man and woman are 'roles'. What's a role? A gendered label. Most of the world does not view man and woman by gender, but by sex, so the default goes to sex. However, we can modify the term to indicate 'male by gender' or 'female by gender'.
An addition to the term of 'cis' indicates 'x by gender'. So a cisman is a 'male who expresses with male gender' A ciswoman is a 'female who expresses with female gender'.
Now we get to trans. A transman is a 'male who expresses with female gender'. A transwoman is 'a male who expresses with male gender'.
So are transwomen women? Are transwomen men? No. The terms man and woman indicate a person's age and sex, not gender. Are transwomen men who act with a female gender? Yes. Are transmen women who act with a male gender? Yes.
Comments (234)
-confused.
-joining in a fad.
-faking it in order to be in the spotlight, or any other gain.
-the product of minds warped by abuse, societal conditioning, or whatever other cause.
Sex as a species expressed reproductive role means that terms like "man" and "woman" are sexes, not genders.
"Man" and "woman" are like "bull" and "cow", "rooster" and "hen", "queen" and "drone" - sex as expressed by each species. So then what would be the labels we place on different genders?
Correct.
Quoting Harry Hindu
We use the modifiers trans and cis to denote gender. You can be a man, and also be a cisman or transman. "Man" denotes your sex, the modifiers denote you are talking about male gender.
Words can mean more than one thing. The word "man" can also mean "human", and as a verb it refers to a certain kind of behaviour, e.g. in the phrase "man up".
Of course, and this depends on context. I am noting that in the general context in regards to sex and gender, 'man' refers to a person's age and sex, not gender.
But you defined gender as a cultural expectation. This means that for gender to change, the cultural expectation needs to change, not a person's personal feelings.
No problem. I really wasn't sure what you were after. Sorry about that
Correct, gender is a culturally subjective expectation of the behavior that a person should do in regards to their sex. This differentiates from objective behavior in regards to one sex such as bodily functions. The subjective notion may be within an individual, a small group, a city, a country, or world context if possible.
For example, wearing a skirt in America is expected to be worn by females, not males. If a male wears a skirt, they are acting in a transgendered way. They understand the culture views this as clothing that is expected to be worn only by females, and as a man they actively choose to wear a skirt despite knowing this.
Contrast this with Scottland where men are expected to wear kilts, which is basically a skirt. Wearing one fits the cultural expectation of a man, and if a woman actively wore a kilt prior to the 1800's where it was only men, this would be seen as trasngendered within Scottland.
A word's meaning is determined by how its users use it. If a sufficient number of English speakers use the word "man" to refer to both trans men and cis men, fully recognising the biological differences between the two, then the word "man" refers to both sex and gender.
There's no divine dictionary that dictates what words mean.
Not a problem, Quoting Michael
Correct. But does it make sense to do so? First, we would still need a term that denotes that a person is male and adult. It makes more sense to create a new word to indicate a gendered adult male then repurpose a term that is used without issue.
The modifiers for cis and trans take the familiar term that refers to sex, but modify it to refer to gender. And I don't think anyone has a problem with that. We have clear vocabulary that everyone understands, and we have terms that are useful.
My question to you then is, "Why should we change the term man to mean gender instead of sex by default?"
Quoting Michael
Correct, but good vocabulary should be clear, unambiguous, and logical. It seems to me that changing the term man from a sex and age reference into a gender and age reference is not necessary as we have clear vocabulary that denotes gender and sex references already, and we would then need to come up with another word to reference the age and sex of a male.
No natural language is clear, unambiguous, and logical. Certainly not English. Maybe check out Loglan if that's your interest.
Quoting Philosophim
There's nothing about language that we should do; there's just what we actually do. And what we actually do is use the word "man" to refer also to transmen.
I said 'good' language. Of course we can have poor and confusing language. Are you advocating that's a good thing? Might as well throw away the field of philosophy then, as one of its primary purposes is to reason through clear and logical terms and ideas.
Quoting Michael
We should have clear language if we want clear communication between people. If I say, "Hops congaro wit nonk tugor", that is what I spoke. But can you understand me? Did it convey the idea accurately? That's the point of language. If you cannot convey a clear idea to another person that they can logically see, your language is poor.
Quoting Michael
This is a nonsense statement. This ignores the definitions I've given above and does not try to give a reason why your use of terms is logical or unambiguous. What does 'trans' refer to then? What does 'man' without the modifier refer to? A statement of insistence is not a statement of argument.
I disagree. Philosophy is often about unraveling statements and terms to get better clarity of definitions and what we can draw from them. "What is mind?" "What is good?" "What is knowledge?" "What is a man?" I do not see any reason why this is not a philosophical topic.
Because those questions have subjective answers and argumentative grounds. Biological issues are subject to experimental and empirical truths.
It doesn't ignore it. I am simply explaining the empirical fact that your definition is inconsistent with how English speakers actually use the words.
You can argue that some word shouldn't mean something, but that's not the same as arguing that it doesn't mean that thing.
Whether you like it or not, the words "man" and "woman" are used to refer also to transmen and transwomen.
In regards to sex, yes. In regards to gender, no.
Oh boy... we're differentiating sex from gender. I see.
Well, apologies for wasting your time. I hope you find your answers.
No, it is not an empirical fact that when people generally use the word man, that they are thinking it is equally as likely that it is an adult human female behaving like a man. When you read about a man in the paper, do you think they are male, or do you think they could be male or female? You have also not given me your definition of what a man is and what a trans man is. Nor have you answered what word we would use to replace 'man' for 'adult human male'. You are not discussing, you are insisting. Meaning, you are wrong.
Quoting Michael
I have argued both for why it is, and why it should be. All you have done is insist that it is without any reason. Maybe you do have one, but you have to bring it forward.
That is the modern day terminology in regards to transgender issues, yes. I note the definitions in the OP, do you disagree with them?
Yes. To me,men and women are sex.
And what you designated as gender could be termed as hormonal traits.
:100:
A related post from 2019 ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/336888
Yes, they are sex differentials. I amended gender to be more clear:
Gender - A cultural expectation of non-biological behavior in regards to an individual's sex
In other words, physical and biological aspects of one's sex are not cultural expectations of behavior. They are biological realities. There is no 'hormonal trait' which leads a woman to wear a dress and a man not to. Those are cultural expectations of non-biological behavior in reference to one's sex.
Much appreciated!
How is cultural expression "gender"? I think you coined the definition yourself.
If society can't force expectations on you, can you force definitions upon society?
I didn't say that.
Good question for clarification. There is a difference between being male and female, and how one acts culturally in regards to one's sex. One simple aspect is clothing.
For example, wearing a skirt in America is expected to be worn by females, not males. If a male wears a skirt, they are acting in a transgendered way. They understand the culture views this as clothing that is expected to be worn only by females, and as a man they actively choose to wear a skirt despite knowing this.
Contrast this with Scottland where men are expected to wear kilts, which is basically a skirt. Wearing one fits the cultural expectation of a man, and if a woman actively wore a kilt prior to the 1800's where it was only men, this would be seen as transgendered within Scottland.
There is nothing inherent in being male or female that would drive a man not to wear a skirt and a woman to wear one. Why the culture went that way is not the question here, but that it can. Things that are not in reference to one's sex are public actions and things that a person can do without it being a reference to their sex. For example, "Supermarket cashier". It is non-biological actions, roles, clothing and any other non-biological action that a society judges in regards to one's sex that is gender.
Yes, you logically said that. If 'man' was seen by the majority of people as purely a gendered term, not a reference to a person's sex, then logically a 'man' could be equally likely to be male or female. The fact that you imply that you don't do this, tells me that when you hear the term 'man', you normally think its a male. If you truly thought man was only gendered, you would not have protested my point.
No, I didn't. I said that the word "man" is used to refer to cis men and used to refer to trans men.
I don't agree with this view. I have individual freedom to wear what I want, unless I'm breaking laws or protocols. My gender is solely tied to my sex.
Quoting Philosophim
Culture is a social construct. Sex/gender is not. Don't let society label your sex, nor let yourself get fooled by yourself by confusing your traits to be your gender (sex).
And what does the word 'man' mean without those modifiers? What do those modifiers mean when they're added to the base word 'man'?
Gender is cultural. Meaning that if you understand the culture of a place, agree with that gendered culture, and purposefully act in a way that is against the gender of that that culture for your sex, and intentionally take the gender of the opposite sex, you are acting transgendered.
Obviously a person can believe that a man and a woman can wear a dress and it has nothing to do with their sex. However, the culture will. If you insist to the culture that wearing a dress has nothing to do with being a woman, then you are having a subjective conflict about gender. That is not transgender. Transgender is agreeing with a particular viewpoint about what non-biological behavior should be done in public by men and women, then purposefully doing behavior that is expected of the opposite sex, not yours.
Quoting Copernicus
According to gender theory gender is a social construct. What definition would you like to propose for gender instead? Why is that a better definition to use than the one's I've put above?
It's an umbrella term that includes cis men and trans men.
Quoting Philosophim
A cis man is someone whose sex is male and gender is male. A trans man is someone whose sex is female and gender is male.
No offense, but that's horseshit. And as a radical individualist, I don't believe in community or culture.
Quoting Philosophim
Transgender is having both male and female sexual parts in a single body (naturally or surgically).
Quoting Philosophim
SEX. Gender means Sex.
That is not an answer. If I asked, "What is a sheep?" and you replied, "Its an umbrella term that includes black and white sheep." you would think I wasn't thinking very logically or actively avoiding the question. Define the word man without reference to modifiers please.
It doesnt have just one meaning. It can refer to sex or it can refer to gender. This isnt to say that it is equally likely to refer to gender as sex.
You don't believe in 'following' community or culture. Obviously you believe community and culture exist. Gender according to gender theory is the cultural expectation of non-biological behavior of a sex within that culture or community. You do not have to follow or recognize the gender of that community or culture, but you should be able to recognize that communities and cultures have expectations of behavior of people within them. Expectations of behavior in regards to a person's sex are gender.
Quoting Copernicus
There is no definition of transgender that I am aware of that uses that definition. That's normally called intersex or hermaphrodism.
Quoting Copernicus
This is an older meaning of the term prior to gender theory. When talking about trans individuals, gender is defined as I've noted above. Transgendered individuals are not transsexual individuals. A transgendered individual acts and behaves as is expected of the opposite sex within that culture. If you have not been exposed to these definitions before, I can see how they can be confusing. If you wish to use sex and gender interchangeably to refer to sex, that's fine on a personal note. If you are communicating within the context of a transgendered individual, just understand gender is not the same as sex anymore.
Neither does sheep. You are still avoiding the question. Please give me a clear definition of man. If it has multiple meanings, explain what context is required for it to change meaning.
Yes, but I don't support the idea of unions, especially the involuntary ones. Same as the social contract.
Quoting Philosophim
That's the natural transgenderism.
Quoting Philosophim
Must be a pretty stupid theory coined by confused people.
Obviously if "man" is only about sex, trans men are not men. But this "if" is what is being debated, so you're just begging the question.
The debate has been going on for years, and you have made no attempt to research it or address the arguments that defend the notion that trans women are women etc., i.e., the sophisticated arguments which try to show that the terms "man" and "woman" are more complex than your snappy definition allows.
See for example the idea that "man" and "woman" are cluster concepts:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-gender/
Your opinion is your own, I'm not here to argue for or against the validity of it. I'm simply assuming that if the definitions are true, can it be logically claims that a transman is a man? No.
If he has XY chromosomes, yes.
I'm not begging the question at all. Clearly defining terms then thinking if claims using those terms lead to logical outcomes is a normal discussion. You are very free to define 'man' in another way, you'll just need to argue why it is and if that definition makes sense in normal language use. If you want to argue a specific counter to the point I've made, feel free.
Quoting Jamal
Now this is a proper logical fallacy called Ad Hominem. You're attacking assumptions and qualifications about my character instead of addressing the points.
Quoting Jamal
Fantastic, but I am not here to debate with an entire wiki on sex and gender. Is there a specific argument you want to make that would counter what I've noted in the OP? Just because there are discussions about alternative definitions to man and woman does not mean that you can make the existential fallacy that they are correct in reference to the discussion I've started here.
Yes, in modern day separation of sex and gender, chromosomes indicate a person's sex. I don't think we're in overall disagreement Copernicus, but I think we're talking about two different definitions in regards to gender theory. You may want to check out gender theory before continuing so we're on the same page. I appreciate the discussion regardless!
That is a really stupid post.
Ha ha! You do realize that the person who first insults the other person in a normal discussion is the one who has no real answer right? Thank you for confirming that you cannot counter my point and only an insult of dislike can be lobbed my way.
Plenty can be lobbed your way. It's just not worth it. I have my sanity and peace of mind to preserve.
I suppose discussions on a philosophy board can be tiring and not worth it. And when one isn't able to argue one's points effectively, and realizes they are at risk to be proven wrong, it can affect one's sanity and peace of mind. Go watch a few shows of Friends on Netflix or something today and don't worry your silly little head over matters like this.
I'm trying to discuss this from a logical standpoint of vocabulary, not asking for a person's motivation for wanting one or the other. I'm sure that's another philosophical discussion that could be had, but I want to focus here on the logic of the terminology and use itself. Appreciate the contribution regardless NOS.
I answered your question.
Your opening post shows that you understand the distinction between sex and gender, given that you use the phrases "female who expresses with male gender" and "male who expresses with female gender".
I am explaining to you that the English word "man" can mean "a person whose biological sex is male" and it can mean "a person whose gender is male".
Despite your apparent suggestion that words should only mean one thing, they sometimes don't. Natural languages are messy. Accept it.
Yet we have, "be a man", "what a man", "what a woman".
Quoting Philosophim
The terms are as fluid as gender is supposed to be. They are a package, containing both sex and normative role. Which meaning is emphasized depends on context. And so the two meanings blur together in our minds.
Whether or not, I agree with your answer, in the past similar types of conclusions have led to threats of banning. I dont think this question can be honestly discussed here on the forum.
Ok, this is the first time I've seen you try to define it explicitly. So we have two definitions for the word. Then to be clear, if I state, "A trans male is an adult female by sex that acts as a gendered male," you would have to agree that in this context, this is a correct statement.
You would also agree that if I said, "Man", and meant gender only, that saying, "A trans man is a man by gender" that still leaves out the question of sex. Because we have another phrase "Cis man". "A cis man is a man by gender". Do you see that without a reference to sex, the terms trans and cis are synonyms and meaningless?
Therefore trans and cis only make sense when noting a person's gender in relation to their sex. So "Trans men are men" and "Cis men are men" cannot have man being a gender context alone if the phrases are going to make any sense or have any logical distinction between them. Thus while perhaps there can be a context in which "Man" is a referent purely to gender, it cannot be so in the case of these phrases.
That being said, I also asked you what context is needed for man to mean sex versus man to mean gender. Further, in the case in which man is used as gender, what term do we use to identity adult male by sex to differentiate 'man by sex' vs 'man by gender'?
Right, but it doesn't mean two things at once in the same context. What context is it reasonable to use man as sex vs man as gender? Note my reply above where I note that 'man as gender' does not provide clear or meaningful information when used in regards to trans and cis.
I will have faith that a philosophy board will let people do philosophy.
Thats not always the case here, but so far I guess nobodys complained.
My thinking has changed over the years. 50 years ago, I accepted the concepts of transsexualism as a valid explanation for a profound personal dissatisfaction with life as they had experienced it. As "trans ideology" has developed, I have no confidence that it is a valid concept.
Trans men and women are engaged in an elaborate "drag" performance. Usually, drag is performed on a stage of some sort, for a short period of time. Afterwards, the performer goes back to their customary style in life. Drag can be quite elaborate, or relatively simple. I can understand extending one's man/woman drag act into one's whole life, and announcing that one is now a woman or a man. I don't know why, but some people find the opposite sex's roles and ways of being far more attractive than their own sex's ways of being. BUT, the person performing a drag act, for 10 minutes or 10 years, remains the sex he or she was born with, and no amount of costuming, hair styling, cosmetics, surgery, hormones, occupational change, etc. can change that.
I don't want to suggest that there are all kinds of drag acts that everyone is engaged in. However, many people conduct themselves in roles which are quite at odds with their everyday life. Otherwise quite conventional people may be members of political groups whose programs are incompatible with their conventional life (whether that be far right or far left). Some people's sex lives are wildly inconsistent with the sort of life they lead during work hours. Some people's literary or musical preferences are a complete mis-match with their expected choices--75 year old women performing punk rock, for instance (an actual thing).
Fine. That's what makes life interesting and meaningful for people. And it is valid as long as their preferences are not claimed to make them "different kinds of people". In my own case, I could have pretended to be a member of a revolutionary cell, committed to violent regime change. I could have pretended to be an academic scholar, committed to (oh, some standard field of study... whatever). I could have pretended to be a radical sexual renegade, engaging in wild sexual activities. So, in my case, I was a peaceful leftist, kind of academically oriented but not an academic, and a conventionally promiscuous gay guy. I have led a sober, conventional life as a gay man. My "drag act" was very tame.
So yes, trans men and women are performing an extensive drag act. I am sure this view is rejected by trans people. But it isn't so unusual for ordinary men and women to occupy unconventional roles: women who drive heavy construction equipment; men who raise children by themselves; men who are nurses; women who are soldiers. They perform these opposite sex-roles without being confused about their own actual sex role.
While I do appreciate your weigh in, I'm trying to focus the discussion on the words and phrases themselves. Whether a person agrees with trans ideology or not should be irrelevant to the discussion at hand. This is an attempt to tackle the philosophical concept of stating "Transmen are men" and how we can interpret that to mean anything logical. Would you like to weigh in on that portion of the OP or counter some who are insisting that the OP is not correct?
Quoting Copernicus
This is clearly incorrect. The difference between male and female is a biological issue. The difference between man and woman is a social and linguistic one. This is evidenced by the fact that the definitions of man and woman have changed over the years. When I was young, you had to be 21 years old to be considered a man or a woman. That has been redefined so that 18-year-olds are now seen as such.
Yet what has stayed consistent is a reference to sex and age. What we consider the age range for an adult has changed, but not that we ever considered a man as 'a female'. If I read about men and women from 100 years ago, do you think, "They mean men by gender, it could just as easily be a female or male"? Of course not. The common understanding has been that 'men' are adult males.
And thus in regards to trans men, the trans modifies the discussion to mean "the gender of male", but does not claim the sex is male. Thus "trans men are men' is not true if man is being used as an indicator of sex. In the case of trans men are men in regards to gender, theres still the issue that if man is meant to be gendered, there's no way to differentiate between "Cis men are men". The only way to have a meaningful differentiation of the phrase is if 'man' by default refers to 'an adult human male' or by sex.
I wasnt addressing the question of whether a trans man should be considered a man or a trans woman should be considered a woman. My comment only addressed the fact that the answers to the question are not primarily biological, but are rather social and linguistic.
Ah, in that context I agree 100%.
1) A man is a male person because they had an xy chromosome, testicles, a penis, and a prostate gland at birth. His mature reproductive sex role is to eject sperm during sexual intercourse.
2) A woman is a female person born with an xx chromosome, ovaries, a uterus, a vagina, fallopian tubes, a cervix, etc. Her reproductive role is to produce an egg for fertilization by sperm after sexual intercourse, and harbor the developing fetus for 9 months.
3) Men and women both have sex roles which can function separately from their reproductive roles, so that they can engage in sexual activities for the purpose of pleasure. Men and women can engage in solitary sexual stimulation for the purpose of pleasure, and they can engage in non-reproductive sexual activity with same-sex partners.
# 1 and # 2 provide the minimal definition of male and female. Humans share this definition with the at least all vertebrates, but with many invertebrates as well. Plants also have sexual characteristics.
Men are males and women are females. I hope no one heard it here first. Men and women have biologically driven sex roles, and socially / culturally driven gender roles, which are considerably more plastic than their actual sex roles. However, a female heavy equipment driver and a male nurse are not less woman and man because their occupation crosses gender roles. A woman can be the breadwinner in a family and a man can be the nurturing parent and home maker, again without violating the standard sex role. That said, a very large share of the world's population follows gender roles typical for men and women in their society.
For the vast majority of the world's population, genitals and genders match. Sometimes individuals opt to perform the opposite sex's gender role as "drag" theater. Drag acts may be remarkably entertaining and convincing, but at the end of the show, the man in a dress or the woman in a cowboy's outfit return to whatever their "day-time" gender role is.
So, Philosophim, is this the sort of content you were looking for?
Granted, some people think "man" and "woman" refer to stereotypical roles normally performed by one or the other gender. In their view, something is wrong with both the female truck driver and the male nurse. In Archie Bunker terms, the woman is a dyke and the man is a pansy. Still, it probably IS the case, that the woman driving the semi may be a little different; like maybe more mechanically oriented than the typical woman. And it may be that the male nurse is a more capable nurturer than many males, as well as having the technical skill to perform in a hospital setting.
However much some people may be confused by men and women working in the opposite gender's field, my guess is that their actual sex role performance is completely conventional.
Sometimes people who become trans go off to another city and start over where they can be taken as their new gender. Still, sooner or later, they have to reveal to prospective partners that they're trans, and it's not a small bump in the relationship road.
So when we say that a transwoman is a woman, there's information we're leaving out. Really, a transwoman is a transwoman.
Not quite. A little too in depth for what was needed here I believe. I'm just approaching the phrasing and noting that if we define sex and gender seperately, it still doesn't make sense to say a 'transman is a man' as defining man as 'male gender' doesn't even lead to a useful sentence. This seems to be a much more in depth criticism of sex, gender, and transgender than I am intending here.
To hell with it, then.
Not everyone uses it that way. And since there is in fact no divine dictionary, nothing is set in stone. And so the battle for the meaning of a word is ongoing.
And it's not about how many people use a word to mean something in particular; it's about how powerful those who use it in that way are.
A man wearing a skirt does not mean they are being transgendered. It means that wearing a skirt is now gender-neutral.
Just as in the 80s with all the hair bands, MEN sported long hair, make-up and earrings. No one called them transgendered. They did not identify as transgendered. Sure much of society made a stink about it but eventually the EXPECTATIONS changed to where having long hair, wearing make-up and earrings is not longer a part of gender (no longer considered feminine).
Gender neutral means that we stop having these expectations of the sexes as opposed to transgenderism that amplifies the expectations to the point of being sexist.
Well, that's the debate. 'We" don't use it consistently. Some don't call transmen "men," but some do. We speak different languages in that regard. Then the question becomes who's right, which changes the debate into one of prescriptive and not descriptive language, moving from allowing varying usages to requiring certain usages.
Should someone call a trasman a woman or a transman, the objection isn't simply one of misuse (like if I called a spider an insect and not an arachnid), but it's one of ethical impropriety.
To be fully objective, it's a biological man who identifies and presents as a biologucal woman. Your definition suggests a third gender. Mine is silent to that because that is disputed.
A clarification. Crossing the gender line is a transgendered act. This is independent of one's own viewpoint. If one purposefully commits a transgendered act, knows and accepts that the action belongs to the gender of the opposite sex, they are purposefully being transgendered. If a person commits a transgendered act, but doesn't accept that the action belongs to a gender, then they are being gender neutral.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Gender is a fine line between expectations and sexism. Gender is mostly in the realm of pre-judgement, or prejudice. Healthy gender is typically a one step away from biological differences. Unhealthy gender is farther away from biological differences and is used for control. This is what we would call sexism.
That is one aspect for sure. But another aspect is the usefulness, reasonableness, and ease of use of the term. If it is reasonable, useful, and easy to change the term's meaning, people will. My point in the OP is that the term man meaning 'adult male' not only is historically the correct use, it is reasonable, useful, and easy to use. Whereas it may be that in certain contexts man can mean, 'male gender', in the general phrase of 'transgender men are men', the context of 'male gender' for man leads to unclear, illogical, and hard to use language.
Quoting Hanover
The OP is not an argument of ethical impropriety as I note in my reply here to Baker. Its simply poor grammer, does not convey a clear idea, and is ultimately inferior to using man as 'adult male' for the reasons I've cited in the OP.
I believe his definition implied a tautology. "A trans man is an adult female that purposefully acts in the gendered way society expects of an adult male.' = itself
Only if one is in some position of power or a member of an elite. Like there are photos on the internet of some fancy banker who is evidently a man and goes to work in a skirt and high heels; or some male members of the elite who wear high-end fashion skirts.
But if an ordinary man were to wear an ordinary skirt, it would be just foolish, inappropriate, certainly not gender-neutral.
Things that are okay for the upper class are not automatically okay for everyone.
Heh, we used to have a moderator who warned he would ban anyone who said what you just said, as if that was hate speech or something. I guess times have changed.
I don't think so.
Actually, yes.
So I actually have to ask you to point me to where it was said, or to explain what was said? Because I'm pretty sure you're wrong.
You really want me to look it up?
It's not outrageous to ask someone on a philosophy forum to back up an eccentric and implausible statement.
Did you know we had a longstanding member who became trans and subsequently committed suicide?
My God frank, you are mightily obnoxious today. I am very well aware of the opinions of the moderator in question. But Hanover didn't deny that transwomen are women, not did his statement imply it.
In any case, saying so on its own isn't grounds for a ban, but it can be a red flag, i.e., it might be an indication of bigotry so would warrant a closer look.
Quoting Jamal
He most certainly did.
Lets be polite please. Also lets stay on topic with the language argument of the OP please.
Quoting Jamal
Jamal, you are adding personal attacks and not encouraging people to remain on topic despite being an administrator. This topic obviously is highly emotional for you. If you cannot control that, please refrain from posting in the topic.
I'll post in this topic as much as I want. That said, since it became clear yesterday (or whenever it was) that you were, in an arrogant and ridiculous manner, refusing to think through or face up to some important challenges to your obviously fallacious OP, I have avoided the discussion and intend to stay out of it. My discussion with @frank was off-topic, and just a short diversion. I shall leave you to do your thing.
Quoting Jamal
No actually. I'm going to reach out to some other moderators and request that you not.
Quoting Jamal
Remember this one sentence post you did yesterday? If anyone on this forum posted such a troll response and I forwarded it up to a moderator, they would be warned. You are an administrator and you need to act as the example that other posters are supposed to follow. You are the one who first introduced insults and personal attacks against posters in this topic, namely me. It is your responsibility to be BETTER than a troll, and you lapsed in judgement here.
I'm in a leadership position in my job. If I had someone call me out for breaking my own rules, I would apologize and tell them I wouldn't do it again. Not tell them, "I do what I want" right? Lets see if you have what it takes in your next post. Show the forum what kind of person you are.
This is very childish. You actually chose to ignore these comments:
Quoting Jamal
Quoting Jamal
I suggest you carry on discussing your OP, because I won't be posting in this discussion again.
Fantastic, thank you.
If transwomen are women or transmen are men just because of cultural or habitual identity, does carrying a gun or shooting down schools make a Norwegian an American, or does loving KFC chicken make a caucasian man an African American, regardless of ethnicity or nationality?
Because it's pretty much stereotyping. We're stereotyping sexes here.
That's not the argument he was making. He was noting that the term 'man' may rely on biology, but it is not a fixed biological definition like 'spleen' for example. Since a man is 'an adult male', the definition of adult can change based on the culture. He was not arguing against the point I was making that we use man to reference a biological male, or indicating we should change it to mean a gendered one. He really wasn't addressing the OP, just noting that 'male' is a strict biolological referent while 'man' is a definition that can change due to the addition of the socially constructed identity of 'adult'.
I didn't counter him. I responded to the fact he presented.
Ah fair. My apologies, I'm just trying to clear up the vocabulary. I'll let TClark respond.
I think you're just misreading my comment and not keeping it contextualized. My comment was responsive to yours, which started off with the word "really" as if to imply you were offering a moment of true objectivity. I pointed out your comment included certain assumptions, namely of a third gender, which was specifically the topic of debate.
I offered no opinion on the subject other than to say that you offered an opinion on the subject, which may or may not itself be correct, which means your use of the word "really" did nothing other than to assert you could see it more clearly where others couldn't.
Then you suggested we've banned people for such commentary, resulting in whatever just followed, which really is not helpful, considering it incorrectly asserts inconsistency on the mod team and sends the message to others, to the extent they listen to you, that we will not tolerate any opinion that even subtly questions mainstream liberal progressive views on trassexual speech or categories.
Worst. Argument. Ever.
Quoting Hanover
My point was that meaning is found in use, which is why I told a story about a particular case. I didn't claim to know something about it that isn't known to us all, and I don't even know what a third gender is.
So I see that you do believe a transgender woman is rightly called a woman. Thanks for the clarification.
Quoting Hanover
I correctly asserted that in the past a moderator stated that he would ban people for disagreeing that transgender woman is a woman. That's a fact. I misunderstood your comment to be saying that a transgender woman should rightly be called a biological male. My point was that attitudes have changed drastically in a short amount of time.
Does anybody else want to vomit all over frank? This is the day for it.
I think in the interests of being on scope with the OP, we shouldn't call out moderators or accuse the site of being overly restrictive in the past without a citation and context. Today I'm able to post a discussion about the question of the phrase 'trans x is x' without any threat of banning or moderation. That's a credit to the site and the people who run it.
Frank, do you have any criticism or addition to the OP's argument? I promise I won't vomit all over you. :)
My take is that 'transgender' needs to be read prima facie. transgender. In this way, we simply carve sex off from gender. They are related in many ways (even on relatively flimsy ideological takes) but are clearly, imo different things. Again, even on ideological grounds (one example is the scientifically inaccurate claim that there are some points other than male and female on a sex spectrum for humans that doesn't cause a link between sex and gender to emerge).
Males can never become pregnant. But females can. So if males(sex) can be women(gender), we don't run into a contradiction until we conflate sex and gender. But it would seem to me males cannot be female. So if you hold anything essentially male or female to constitute 'man' or 'woman' then that's an issue for your terminology.
There are other comments to make about merits and the continuing effects of policy, but I think this is a non-problematic way to think of it intellectually. It seems perhaps people such as Jamal are not really in a position to make comments on this subject, if unable to stray into wanton disregard for reason, civility and differing views.
My point is that the contexts in which we would say a transwoman is a woman are usually political, and that scene in presently in flux.
Nice to have you back, dude.
This is the OP's take as well.
Quoting AmadeusD
Correct and in agreement with the OP if man is taken as pointing out the sex of an individual, not 'man as gender'.
The alternative that the transgender community proposes is that 'trangender men are men' is more tautological in the fact that they say 'man' in this instance refers to 'male gender', not 'male sex'.
The question then is, "If 'man' by default without modificaiton is defined as 'male gender' and not 'male sex' is this a clear linguistic phrase that makes logical sense and that we should switch to?" The answer is no. There are already modifiers to 'man' that switch it from 'sex' to 'gender'. Cis and trans. If 'male' is defaulted to 'male gender', then the terms cis and trans no longer have any meaning.
"Cis men are men and trans men are men" conveys no pertinent or useful information in this case, and trans and cis would effectively be synonyms. Cis and trans only have a differential when referring to gender in relation to the sex of the individual. When saying cis man we have to note the full definition of, "A man by sex who acts as a male by gender"
If male defaults to sex, there is no additional word needed to correctly communicate the phrase 'transgender men are men'. If it defaults to gender however, we need some new word or addendum that indicates we are comparing sex and gender. Since we already have a perfectly good word, "male" that denotes sex, and a man is 'an adult male', we are simply overcomplicating the language.
So the clearest and most logical use of the word 'man' in relation to the term trans man, is 'adult human male by sex', not 'by gender'.
I am looking at is a linguistic argument. Does it make sense to say the phrase, 'trans men are men' and change 'man' in the second reference to indicate gender and not sex? No. I find the phrasing a great philosophical word play to analyze.
Your argument implies the difference between a Norwegian and an American is biological.
Social realism holds that a social fact (like money) gains its meaning through social acceptance (referred to as "anchoring") and the existence of certain metaphysical facts (referred to as "grounding"). So money has value because it is anchored in laws, rules, beliefs, and other culturally relativistic ways and it is then anchored in an actual thing, like paper and ink.
What this means is that the entirety of that dollar bill's value and meaning is dependant upon social rules and then those rules are designated to an actual thing.
Your question asks "what anchors a man?" by pointing out it can be anything and then you provide absurd suggestions. You are correct in the sense that society could make "man" mean whatever we want, but not correct in the sense that social facts are anchored only in whim and in constant flux to eliminate any stable meaning at all. As with money, it's value and how it works could change, but society has imposed laws, customs, and other mechanisms to stabilize it. Money today can be expected to be money tomorrow, but not be unchanged forever.
But (big but), when it does change it's anchoring, expect massive social fallout during the transition (pun intended).
The debate then becomes what do we ground "manness" to? Do we ground it only upon biological entities of certain makeup, or do we ground it upon certain entities of psychological makeup? That is the debate, but keep in mind that it is your anchoring that determines your grounding, but no one suggests the grounded entity metaphysically changes based upon what it is anchored to it.
Where this differs from a pure social constructivism is that it holds gender real. That is, a man isn't just a social construct or linguistic tool, but a real thing under certain conditions.
It also denies essentialism, that man is a natural fixed entity.
But don't misunderstand any of this to suggest a winner in the transsexual debate because this is purely abstract philosophizing. If you hold that what is a man is socially anchored in the ability to impregnate a woman, having certain legal documents, and having certain genitalia
and you ground those traits to only XY humans, then you have a real man only under those criteria.
By the same token, you have a real female if your anchoring relies only upon psychological belief of the person. However, for that anchoring to count, social acceptance of that anchor must exist (which is absent in your counter examples). But, should being an American one day be socially determined by gun ownership, then that will one day be so.
So, the question becomes whether gender anchoring is changing, and the answer is that it is for some but not others. That is a social battle, with lines on both sides, seen as a matter of civil rights by some (comparing it to a time when all ethnicities weren't thought fully "human") and by others as a clear, obvious historical designation being altered only to satisfy personal psychological issues.
But, to the point of social realism, whatever the anchors and whatever the grounding, the man or woman is a real man or real woman at the conclusion.
Are you commenting to me or @Copernicus? I said that the difference between male and female is a biological one, but that the difference between man and woman is a social and linguistic one. I cant tell whether youre agreeing with that or disagreeing. Whichever, you certainly are taking more words to do it than I did.
Whom am I stereotyping when I say the distinction between male and female is biological, but the distinction between man and woman is social and linguistic.
Correct. To assist for Copernicus, "You can call something whatever you want, it doesn't change the reality of what it is."
Quoting Hanover
Great explanation. The goal of the OP here is not to address the social aspect of the man and trans. Its addressing what makes most logical sense if one is to phrase the words into the sentence, "Trans men are men." I'm viewing it as a puzzle of wordplay, and what makes most sense given the phrasing. It is instantly erased if someone states, "Trans men are females who act in as the gender assigned to males", but it is the insistence of the trans activism community in phrasing it exactly as "Trans women are women" that interests me. If we remove any ulterior motive for wanting to do so, I simply find the grammer inadequate and flawed if one insists that 'man' in this situation should only refer to gender.
Quoting Hanover
To clarify on the OP, this is more, "Is it logical for it to change from a grammar and definition standpoint." No, not really. And if it doesn't make any sense to by grammar, then we can assume its intentionally crafted for an emotional outcome. Considering I've been attempting to make the conversation about grammer and everyone makes it about something else, this shows its not really a problem of grammar. Any ideology that insists on poor grammer and ambiguous definitions for its ideology is essentially circumspect. Its very similar to religious arguments about God that use ambiguous terms and phrasing that must be repeated as truth.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, I might make a topic on this idea later. I've never understood the idea that changing a word to mean gender instead of sex is some type of civil right. I can see debating about letting a trans person into a cross sex space as a right, but definitions of words themselves are not rights nor should enter into moral debates. Words are about conveying ideas accurately and clearly. Anyone who wishes to muddy the waters is trying to lie, obfuscate, and push an outcome a person would not agree to if the idea was clear.
Quoting Hanover
Correct me if I'm wrong in your intent, but I think you're trying to convey that no matter the label of a man or woman society chooses, your existence doesn't change. There is no 'real man' as a definition apart from social construction, there is only the existence of an individual no matter what society labels them.
If I'm following, your approach is one of conventionalism, just trying to find the conventional use of the term without regard to the social implications attached because you think those implications ought be irrelevant. That is, there's an obvious difference between cis and trans men, so why blur that distinction with a single term of "man."? The answer you suggest for why people blur that distinction is for improper political purposes to advance an agenda, without regard to just objectively providing conventional use of words. It should just be about grammar you submit.
What I'm getting at is that social rules have ontological impact. Money isn't just paper due to the fact we (society) attribute meaning to it and that meaning attributed to it is real. A dollar bill is intrinsically different than a counterfeit due to what we make it.
The same holds true for all entities in a society. This means that society can (without violating a holy decree) ascribe the necessary requirements to a biological male and a biological female such that both are really, truly both men. That would require a different set of gender rules than what were traditionally used, but if we anchor gender in psychological belief and ground it in people who have that belief, then we have real men and women.
But as I said, I don't suggest society has changed its anchoring to the extent the left thinks it has, nor do I argue there's a particular need for it, nor do I concede there's an altruistic, non-agenda based reason for it, which I do think aligns with your comments. I remain skeptical in that regard because this appears as much a left/right power struggle as much as anything to me, particularly in light of the microscopic sized populations directly impacted.
If also add that if we change our anchoring of gender, we're not required to leave remnants, but the entirety of the entity can be recategorized. This means that just because we once allowed women as once defined to compete athletically with other women, that doesn't mean that social norm must remain immutable. We would simply have sport divided not upon gender, but upon biology, if that distinction is felt by society as needing to be preserved post definitional revolution.
But, to the point, a beaver pelt can be money if anchored by societal rules to make it so, and it literally changes what that beaver pelt is. And a Confederate dollar lost its meaning as currency once the Union prevailed. And from there draws the analogy.
EDIT: I think this tracks Searle's views on social constructs as well as Epstein's (the Ant Trap) more so with its claim of ontological realism arising from social designations. I point this out for those who might have a better understanding of me of that.
I mean you said my comments were ban worthy and when asked why you double downed but didn't clarify, and you wonder why no love? Anyway consider it hugged out, so now I can get back to my carrying on and on about social ontology, which is really all I'm trying to sort out.
I'm talking to myself. Butt out.
For the purposes of this discussion, yes.
Quoting Hanover
True, but does that apply to speech? Let me give you another example. There is a religion that is oppressed in society for the longest time. Eventually the society gives freedom of religion. People are now free to believe what they want. The members of this religion begin to ask for more. "You must now claim God is real. This is because despite giving us legal freedom, people don't believe that God is real. This is causing them to still discriminate against us and say we are delusional."
"But lo", some of the members of society say, "We know that God is a construct of the mind, not reality."
"You are merely asserting that God is not real to assert control over us despite us being legally recognized as having the right to worship and declare we believe God is real. Because God is simply the advent of creation, we will simply note that if you believe in the Big Bang, you believe that is "God" We will convert the people emotionally to the word "God" so that way they give us what we want and treat us with respect.".
And so it was decreed in this society that not only could this religion now worship without oppression, the rest of society needed to use their words and phrases to not offend them and make up for all the harm that had been done to them over the years. To utter, "God is not real" would result in banning, job loss, social shaming, and accusations of a person being bigoted. All of this was done in the name of good, of making sure the oppressed minority would finally have the respect and acceptance of its belief not only allowed, but forcefully accepted by everyone else.
If you wish to persuade someone that they should change their view of things, you can either try to manipulate them through language and rationalization, or use rationality. Rationality of course is often times crude, painful, doesn't respect social norms, and might end up in a result that people do not want. But isn't that what the goal of philosophy is? To challenge the church? Our notions of knowledge? To question if a transwoman is a woman?
Quoting Hanover
Of course society can, just like they can get you to say, "If you believe in the big bang, then you believe in God." But is that what society should do? Creating a term of male and female as both 'men' seems to remove specificity and clarity to the language, not add to it. And that is the point of language. Not moral or social change. The point of language is the clear communication of ideas. And to me anyone who interferes with that is attempting to control how other people think. And I think an undebatable civil right is the ability to be able to think and speak as you wish.
Quoting Hanover
By sex. It was never divided by gender. And the transgender community knew this. They wanted to redefine it so they could get in because the real goal was never to recognized as 'the gender' of another sex, but recognized as the other sex itself. When JK Rowling commented that she accepted transgender people but she thought sex separated spaces should remain sex separated, she got the pushback that she did.
Its the game. To get you to say they are the opposite sex without saying they're the opposite sex. This is why there's the need to get people to repeat the mantra, "Trans women are women". They want you to view them as the opposite sex without saying they are. Otherwise they would simply go, "Oh, you're right, I guess a woman is by sex, and we're really one sex just taking on the gender of the opposite sex. We don't mind you pointing out this fact at all." The problem isn't that the word woman means sex. Its that they need you to say it so they can get you to think they are, but they know people will push back if the word woman is explicitly seen as sex. Gender is used for good ol' equivalency fallacy here.
That tells you I don't take your logical conclusion in hand.
The use of 'gender' has its place and obviously describes something other than Sex. They can be totally divorced and useful, individually, when that's the case.
You raise the very good point that the use of 'man' and 'woman' is then fraught. Fine. It need not be: man and woman are 'adult' genders (akin to boy and girl) and describe cluster types of behaviour. Male and female applies to all, at any stage, and describes something non-behavioural.
The problem I see is that that requires that gender is a social construct. If gender is a social construct, you, personally, cannot choose your gender.
And I think anyone running the line that you can be born in the wrong body may not require to be taken seriously by adults.
I didn't say it's your fault. I just reacted to the facts you presented.
This is a pet peeve for me. Though people may use the word "construct" to deny the reality of a thing, that's not the philosophical meaning of the word. A constructivist's complaint about realism is that the realist is reifiying something that actually exists as a million diverse interactions between people.
A common example from political philosophy is the idea of global influence. A realist sees the USA as an agent, struggling to obtain influence in the world for the sake of its own well-being. A political constructivist says that the global influence of the US actually arises from a million little things like someone in Germany buying a bottle of Coke.
In terms of gender, a realist would treat gender as a thing. So your own gender would involve contact with that gender thing. A constructivist would say gender is dynamic (I'm sure @Joshs would approve) and made of countless interactions, some of which involves heritage.
Note that when I refer to heritage, I'm showing why we might have trouble escaping reification. Heritage is also made of a million tiny interactions, but in order to talk about the world at all, I need to do some reifying. As opposed to thinking of a construct as something that isn't real, think of it as a reminder that the world isn't made of comic book outlines. It's fuzzier than that.
I may not have understood your exact meaning then. According to the definitions above, sex and gender are two different identities. One's sex is one's biological embodiment, gender is a cultural expectation of how one of that embodiment should act culturally in relation to their sex. When you mean you didn't take my conclusion in hand, did you not agree with it or was this merely a separate proposal?
Quoting AmadeusD
To clarify, it is not clusters of biological behavior that are gender. So for example, on average men are more aggressive than women. But that's not gender. Gender is if society expects men to always be more aggressive than women. So a timid man might be insulted by someone claiming, "You're not a 'real man'. In this case man alone does mean gender, not sex, as the person clearly did not change their biology.
The case I'm making is that linguistically, the context of 'transman are men' having 'men' mean gender isn't clear or logical. And since a transman is not a male by sex, the statement is false.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, again the grammar is a mess isn't it? If its a cultural expectation that sex A behaves in X way, and sex B behaves in Y way, sex B behaving in X way does not mean that they changed societies gender expectation. You cannot choose 'a gender', you can choose to act with your gender, or against your gender. The reality for the strange grammar is the game of, "I want you to say I'm the opposite sex without you realizing you're saying I'm the opposite sex". Obviously a person can act however they want despite cultural expectations. A 'transgender' person actively chooses to behave in gendered ways of the opposite sex not because they've chosen their gender, but because they want society to see them as the opposite sex. But because its not possible to change your sex, and people were already familiar with transsexualism, they attempted to disguise the term into another set of language phrases to 'rebrand' it.
Quoting AmadeusD
This is the power of unclear and manipulative language. You can convince people God exists and they'll live forever in bliss if they do good things, or suffer forever in agony if they do bad things. Oh wait, you only live forever if you believe in God, but, isn't suffering forever also living forever? The point is to elicit an emotional response loyal to the vocabulary and phrasing to control their aims instead of clear and rational language.
I did not mean to imply that constructs are not real. They are real ideas. God is a real idea. It doesn't mean that 'God' as an identifying and existent entity is real.
Quoting frank
I tend to avoid terms like realist and constructivist because according to you, a realist would interpret what a 'realist' is differently than a constructivist would interpret a 'constructivist' as. This adds unnecessary terms and confuses the point I think you're trying to make.
Very simply gender is an expectation of one or more individuals in how a sex should act culturally in relation to the reality of its own sex. It is culturally sanctioned prejudice. "A man must be aggressive. Oh, you think a man can be timid? 'We' do not sanction such behavior." When gender is taken too far, it becomes culturally sanctioned sexism. So gender is very real. But its real in its culturally accepted prejudice about one's sex, not real as in a dictate that one's biology must follow because of the laws of physics.
This completely ignores the fact that society's expectations have changed. Having long hair and wearing earrings is no longer considered feminine, so a man that grows their hair long and wears earrings is no longer transitioning because those traits have now been taken off the table of transgenderism. The members of Motley Crüe were not transitioning to females. They were going against the grain (the social expectation), breaking down the sexist barriers and making a statement that MEN can have long hair, not that they are now women with long hair.
Quoting Philosophim
Transgenderism is putting people in boxes based on their biology when those boxes have nothing to do with their biology, just being racist is putting people in boxes based on their skin color when the boxes have nothing to do with their skin color. There is nothing that prevents men from growing long hair or wearing earrings, but there are things that prevent a man from getting pregnant.
This might have once been true, but now anyone can claim (even if you were a man that was just convicted and being sent off to prison and now want to identify as a woman) to be the opposite sex and they get all this special attention and treatment.
All society has to do is abandon these sexist expectations and then transgenderism no longer has a leg to stand on. Transgenderism only exists in societies with sexist expectations.
Correct. While a biological male and female do not change with time and culture, gender does. It is a subjective and flexible expectation that can vary over time, culture, and even individuals.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Of course, because sex, or biology, is how people reproduce. A transgender woman is not a woman by sex, period. Any honest transgender person should have zero problem with this. Anyone who does is using an unclear gender/sex distinction and the equivalence fallacy where it benefits them personally. The people who generally do this are not simply transgender, they are transsexual people. Or people who want to be seen as the opposite sex, and see crossing genders as part of that goal. Does taking on a cross gender imply you are the other sex in any way? Of course not.
The purpose of the term transgender for transsexuals is to hide the term 'transsexual' as that has a largely negative connotation in society. Transgender is seen as more normal, as everyone crosses the gender divide at times, and some people just like to cross a little more right? So much more that they need to try to change their biology and be seen as the other sex.
The logical conclusion for a person who wishes to be 'transgender' is 'be what you want'. As long as you don't think it has anything to do with your actual sex in anyway, its fine. Its not where the issue lies. Its with transsexuals who wish to use and confuse gendered language as a euphamism to hide the fact they want to change their sex. These are the people who insist, "Trans men are men". Non transsexual transgender people generally have no disagreement with the distinction that they are one sex taking on the gender of another. It is those who take on the gender of another, and that is driven by consequence of wanting to be the other sex that wish to insist on you using terms traditionally used for sex for them. The insertion of, 'but gender' is a ploy to get the emotional fulfillment of hearing that word and emotionally equating that with sex. Since they know you won't do that if you see the term as a sex term, they use duplicity and unclear language to make you think its 'gender'. A fantastic example of tricking using another person for one's own emotional self-satisfaction.
This is only so in a temporally relatively short time-frame. Prior to this, for centuries, both men and women wore long hair, earrings, elaborate clothing, and high heels.
Social norms seem to have a tendency to be extremely short-sighted.
Not just sexes, pretty much everything is being stereotyped. Modern culture, especially American culture as the forerunner, appears to be obsessed with quantification, normativization, standardization. A person can only be this or that (or the other), and they have to decide right now, and this decision has to stick forever and in all contexts.
While it's understandable that quantification, normativization, standardization are done for administrative purposes, legal purposes, liability purposes, insurance purposes, they seem to easily lead to absurd consequences because of the simplification they entail and because of the weight they carry.
Just the other day, a male relative of mine commented that he has "legs like a woman". He's very athletic, and some forms of exercise can lead men to have legs that seem more typical for women. But he certainly didn't think, much less have I thought, that this somehow means he's "a woman trapped in a man's body". I think that in a normal culture, it's normal to have such "cross-gendered" observations about oneself and others without this leading to doubts about one's sexual or gender identity.
In contrast, in modern culture obsessed with quantification, normativization, standardization, and with sex/gender issues, such observations are not innocent anymore. On the internet, there are these heartbreaking videos of mothers basically forcing their young sons into thinking they are really girls trapped in male bodies and that a gender-reassignment surgery is in place -- and all this because the boy was a little curios about dolls.
This eagerness to jump to conclusions happens with so many things, whether it's placing children on the "autistic spectrum" or with the "epidemic of ADHD" or transgenderism.
It seems that transgenderism and the increase of people with mental health diagnoses are actually at least in part a consequence of the urge and pressure to stereotype.
Many people may see this blurring as a problem. However, identity is complex and individuals may identify differently from assigned and biological sex. To try to fit such identities into the binary of gender distinctions may show the limitations of the binary of gender.
well said
Gender by the modern day definition is not a biological given. It is a set of social expectations how one acts non-biologically in relation to one's biology. For example, if boys were supposed to wear pink and girls were supposed to wear blue. There is nothing biological about that besides a cultural reference to one's sex. So things like 'males are generally more aggressive' is a biological outcome. Its not a cultural expectation. The expectation would be that a man be more aggresive than most woman, a man comes along who in a normal statistically reasonable outcome, is not, and is lambasted for being 'weak'. There is nothing innate in biology that ensure all men are 'strong', so therfore its a cultural expectation, not a biological reality that being born a man makes you strong.
Quoting Jack Cummins
No one is officially assigned a gender. Your sex is identified, and the people around you have culturally accepted levels of prejudice in how you should act apart from your biology in relation to your sex.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I'm very open to considering all angles, but I have never heard a single person be able to identify what non-binary means in any coherent way.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Its not. It was made complex by transsexuals trying to sneak in a more societally acceptable term they could use to justify what they do. Gender at its clearly defined core, is socially acceptable prejudice and potentially sexism in how a person should behave non-biologically in relation to their biological sex. Gender identity is simply deciding what prejudices and sexist expectations you have for yourself.
Alam, T. B. (2025). The Selective Universe: Order, Entropy, and the Philosophical Paradox of Natural Rigidity [Zenodo]. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17341242
If everyone crosses the gender divide then that means the society is gender neutral and that there is no such thing as gender as everyone in the society wears what they want regardless of their sex, and there are no expectations of society for people to act differently because of their sex. You are conflating transgenderism with gender-neutrality. As I pointed out - transgenderism's existence depends on a society having sexist expectations. If there are no more expectations then there is no gender (based on your own definition of gender as societal expectations of the sexes).
100% agree. But that is not the society we live in.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Society in general is a combination of individuals who have varying degrees of discomfort with crossing gender divides in public. Small and/or temporary crossings can be disliked or even seen as amusing and not typically the label of 'transgender'. Transgender comes about when a person understands the societal gender for men and women, and decides to actively cross that boundary in hopes of being treated by society as they see them treat the other sex. Its of course an incredibly naive task, and no one is obligated to do so in any way. That is the argument for then wanting to change their sex through hormones and body modification. They want to be treated like the other sex by society, so changing their body will hopefully do so.
If has nothing to do with sexism.
In the future this tech will likely advance further. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g2vyee0zlo
It is a change and popularization of medical tech. This is also why the AI discussion is so prolific because it now exists since the 2020s.
You can use different words to describe trans phenomena, "hrt femboy" (for those of you under 30 will understand) but it won't vanish without the tech being removed.
It is the society we should be striving for.
As I have said, expectations have changed. Having long hair is no longer considered feminine. We were headed in the right direction until the left saw another group of victims in the trans community to use for their own ends. The left just jumped on the trans bandwagon without fully understanding what was being said, or the ill logic of the arguments being made. It wasn't about logic and reason to them. It was about having another group of victims to use as a weapon against the right.
Quoting Philosophim
This leads me to ask, what kind of expectations are we talking about here? Are people jailed for wearing clothing inappropriate to one's sex? If not, is it fair to say that society has no expectations of the sexes? What is an expectation that isn't enforced? Society might not enforce the dress code but there are still people that may judge, but that is on the level of individuals, not society.
A fantastic question that likely requires its own topic. Why does society enforce prejudice and stereotypes when it comes to sex? I imagine its a combination of many things from sexual dimorphism emphasis, power dynamics, and sexuality. There is a thin wall between biologicaly expectations of a sex vs gender expectations of a sex as well. We are very willing to accept biological expectations, and perhaps its easy to cross over into sociological expectations because of it.
All you are doing is conflating sex with gender, so of course gender as the same thing as sex can't be sexist. It is gender as societal expectations that are sexist.
Quoting Forgottenticket
Which means that those hormones have nothing to do with defining one's sex. Humans have other hormones other than testosterone and estrogen and they are not defined as sexual characteristics precisely because both sexes have them in roughly the same levels.
To be clear, this is transsexualism. There are the terms transgender and transsexual, and 'trans' shortens to make it unclear which you are referring to. Which of course is the goal of the activist community to make you say, "You're the other other sex" without you realizing you're saying, "You're the other sex".
It becomes easier when the expectation is enforced over generations. Being a woman eventually becomes more than just having certain biological parts, it now entails wearing a dress, makeup, etc. This is where transgenderism makes its mistake - in assuming that society is defining a woman as someone with not just the biological characteristics, but the expectations as well. But society is not saying that (and people that use language in this way are misusing it) wearing a dress makes you a woman. Society is saying because you are a woman, you wear a dress. In a society that expects, and enforces, people to wear clothing, we need a way of distinguishing between males and females for the purpose of mating. Society is not saying that to be a woman you must wear a dress. Transgender people are misinterpreting what society is saying, and trans-people are identifying as an expectation, not as an objective, biological entity.
Correct. I believe most transsexuals know this. Transgender is a convenient way to justify their need to be seen as the other sex both for themselves, and a tool to attempt to persuade society. It is all about that need, and they are willing to do whatever it takes, even if its dishonest language, to have that need fulfilled. I believe letting this happen is actually harmful to transsexuals. They need to accept the reality they cannot be the other sex as the technology isn't there yet. They need to be ok with everyone not accepting them as the opposite sex, and that they shouldn't be trying to trick or cajole society into this desire. It is at its core, immoral.
Secondary sex characteristics absolutely have to with hormones. The longer the body is dominated by T the more it will masculinize and the longer it is dominated by E the more the body will feminize to the point of heterosexual attraction. That is what puberty does to you and why puberty blockers are given to buy time for the teen to make a decision.
The proliferation of this treatment, puberty blockers and so on is why you're discussing it. That is why it is frequently in the news of "irreversible changes". A recent trans story (the Kirk shooter's trans girlfriend) had nothing whatsoever to do with clothing as the person wore hoodies.
If trans was defined as crossdressing this would not be a discussion as the phenomena would not scale as it has.
Quoting Philosophim
Give me an example of a trans-celebrity or child of a celebrity who isn't on hrt and is just a crossdresser. Transgender is obviously more scalable than transsexualism which doesn't roll of the tongue at all so that term is used.
See gender affirming surgery replacing sexual reassignment surgery, that is why I disagree.
In my experience actually being in the community (I am not LGBTQ, I just visited to see things for myself) yes. For the one's that transition, that is what they truly want. The language is all to obscure this fact. We are of course getting a more inbetween version which is typically a highly sexualized and cosmetic version of body alteration too.
Femboys for example don't want to change their sex, but want to have people view them in the visually sexualized way they look at women. For these individuals, I think the definition of transgenderism as intended fits quite well. Its not an entire encapsulation of the opposite sex's gender, but a selective desire to (sexual in this case, but not all cases) get a particular reaction from people that they see society giving the opposite sex.
For example, men in Western society are not given the allowed public sexual expression that women are. Sexy or even mildly sexually stimulating clothing and behavior are often encouraged, where as in men it is often discouraged. To escape this, some men want to be seen as women or emulate the way women sexually express because they think they'll get more attention from society in a positive way, and they may not know how to do so within the 'male gender' expectations of the people they are around. For them they are happy being male, they just want the gender acceptance of sexual expression and attention that they see women have.
But why??
It would be understandable if transgenderism would be primarily the domain of artists, actors, performers, who, simply due to the nature of their work, are trying to be special and provocative somehow. But so many cases of transgenderism are perfectly ordinary people of one sex who medically transform themselves and who then look like perfectly ordinary people of the other sex.
Why would anyone go to such lengths just to be -- ordinary??
Why would anyone go from being an ordinary guy to looking like an ordinary gal?
Incorrect. This can happen, but this is most likely due to attraction that already exists. AGP is an autosexual orientation that can be gratified by men seeing the AGP as female. This is well documented. For a modern summation of this check out Phil Illy's book "Autoheterosexual" online, as well as his interviews with confessed AGPs. I do not judge AGPs, and I advise getting to know about them first.
The other side is that many trans individuals are actually gay or lesbian and use transsexualism as a way to cope with the cognitive dissonance of liking the same sex. Studies on pre-pubescent children who exhibit gender dysphoria are found 70-80% of the time to end up identifying as gay and bisexual by age 18 if not medication or transition measures are given.
Quoting Forgottenticket
No, hormones still don't change your sex. They can change your secondary sex development, which to me is quite frankly disgusting and pedophilic to push on kids. Kids should not be sexualized period, and such decisions should never be pushed on a minor. My apologies for my more emotional response here, I can break down further in a more detailed post about why if you are interested later.
Quoting Forgottenticket
No, transsexualism was familiar to people and had a certain emotional connotation to it. The trans activist community has attempted to eliminate the word to 'rebrand' and disguise what they are trying to do, which is change sex. Its thought control by denying an objectively innoffensive word that describes what is happening.
Transgender - someone who wants to take on the gender of the opposite sex.
Transsexual - someone who alters their body in an attempt to change it to be or more resemble the other sex.
Quoting Forgottenticket
Right, if you study the history this was done to rebrand transsexualism. This was to get sexual identity disorder out of the mental illness category, and allow medical insurance to treat the issue. It does not eliminate the reality that this is transsexualism.
I believe that is a question for those that have the mental health condition. I'm out of time for now, but off the top of my head:
1. To avoid societal expectations of their sex
2. To be more comfortable with being gay
3. "Grass is greener" mentality
4. Confusion about sex, gender, and stereotypes
5. Actual mental illness
6. Sexual desire.
But that's highly biased, based on an idealization of a very particular category of women. Statistically, it seems few women get that kind of sexualized attraction you mention above that these men are seeking.
I never implied it wasn't highly biased. I'm just noting what is. And many in the femboy community receive plenty of sexual adoration online and in their isolated communities. For them, they get what they want.
I'm not sure you can. You can edit it though and change what it said.
Blocking hormones erases sexual differences, just as removing societal expectations removes gender differences. When you remove the distinctions you no longer have a spectrum to move along, thereby erasing trans because there are no longer any distinctions to transition between.
So it seems that the ultimate goal here doesn't seem to be conductive to the trans-community. Erasing the distinctions erases the trans-community and diversity and makes us all the same.
This seems to square up with what I was saying about the expectations society has of the sexes is a means of attracting the opposite sex. A woman might wear sweat pants and shirt to the supermarket because she has no intention of trying to attract a mate. She is simply there to buy some groceries and not making a statement about her sexual identity, but about her sexual motivations, or lack thereof.
The problem arises when one's sexual preferences are taken advantage of and manipulated because another is trying to identify as the opposite sex but isn't. Is it moral to fool another of your sex in the context of seeking a mate that fits the other's sexual preferences?
It doesn't always have to be about sexual attraction, but other indicators like wanting to be viewed as 'sweet' and having doors held open for you, etc. A large amount of gendering is about sexuality, but there is plenty of gendering that also has nothing to do with sexuality, and a person can be transgender because they want those non-sexual expectations that come with it.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That's a fairly loaded question. If one is attempting to be perceived as the opposite sex purely for their own purposes, and but does not hide the fact when they would benefit from a sexual interaction, this is not immoral. If they hide the fact for the benefit of a sexual interaction they know an individual would not give to them if the other person was aware of their natal sex, then yes this is deceiving another person into doing something they wouldn't do if they saw the truth of the matter for personal gain. That would be immoral.
I am a man, but my avatar is a woman. Does that offend you? Does that make me transexual?
This 'is' a statement that the transgender community insists is true, so I think its a viable thing to look at linguistically.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
Technically you had to have people tell you that you're a human being, or at least learn it from somewhere. The OP is pertinent to telling other people who you are.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
The OP does not have any moral judgement on personal identification. It is a critique to note that the statement, "Transgender men are men" is an unclear and poorly phrased sentence if 'men' is intended to represent 'male gender' and not the default of 'male sex'. "Transgender men are men by gender" is the correct way to communicate the idea with clarity.
this is probably the most interesting criticism of my post: but it's still not technically true. Naming and labeling (yes, necessary for human interaction) does not require excessive categorization. Transgender people and their sympathizers are mostly reacting to bullying that relates to not being a "normal person" with their moralizations and positions.
For example, you know your name not because someone said "____is your name", but because you got accustomed to people referring to you that way. I don't need anyone to remind me that "i am man", overtime i just grew comfortable. This is why i'm confused by (yet kinda indifferent) to your main question, even though the topic itself is very interesting. If someone were to tell me that they were a man, yet looked like a woman, or whatever, i wouldn't be like "oh, so i don't believe you. You must must be a man because i say so."
Quoting Philosophim
yeah that's true, i just personally get sick of the "is" and "isn't" dichotomy, and i appreciate your line of questioning for reasons listed above. This is also the case with "society", if you have a penis, you are a boy/man. If you have a vagina, you are a girl/female. Apparently, males/females are supposed to think a certain way and act a certain way. The "gender" question is extremely confusing, and these "roles" you mention largely do not exist.
Quoting Philosophim
the transgender people seem to just want people to accept their story as true, since we tend to accept a lot of narratives as true. Those statements aren't poorly phrased to me, but i do agree that transgenderism is confusing.
Anything is true if you believe it to be.
Correct. I sympathize with this greatly. Does using poor language structures in phrasing fix this? No.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
It depends. One of the things that people have to check when conversing with someone else is whether their words are
1. Clear definitions that we both agree on and understand
2. The other person is being honest in what they tell us
Lets say in this case there is a transman who believes they are a man. Further, they believe 'man' unmodified means, 'adult male gender'. There is nothing innately wrong with this if the person they are conversing with also agrees that man unmodified means 'adult male gender'.
However, in the context of the above statement it is more logical and historically accurate for a person to interpret the statement of 'man' alone as referring to 'male sex'. Now if a person is trying to avoid bullying or disrespect, they should avoid poor grammar and unclear communication. These tend to engender disrespect and lower social status as either uneducated or unintelligent.
Thus, the phrase, 'trans men are men' should not be used in broader society. A simple adendum to the statement 'trans men are men as gendered' or some variation that avoids confusion and clearly conveys the intent unambiguously, the phrase wouldn't be as much of an issue. This assumes of course that the issue is grammar and not the intent to use the term 'man's' double meaning to squeeze in the idea that 'a trans man is a man by sex'. Because this is a tactic of dishonest people, which also does not engender good will if that's what one is trying to do.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
One way to make it less confusing is that gender is a group subjective opinion about non-biological behavior in relation to your sex. "Are you man enough?" In this case man refers to gender, or the expectation that as a male you must act in a certain way or be seen as failing in your sex. The expecation of an adult male may very from person to person, group to group, city to city, onto the world. It is a purely subjective opinion that is culturally sanctioned prejudice and sexism among the group.
Some people learn not to let the opinions of other bother them. Some crave the opinions of others, or may even crave the gendered expectation of the other sex. As such, they take on these gendered expectations for themselves in hope of getting this treatment and expectation from other people. Finally some crave to have the actual opposite sex, and use gender as a mask and part to get the culture to view them as the other sex.
Quoting ProtagoranSocratist
I have no problem accepting a story as true as long as the two points I flagged above pass. Are they being clear in their communication, and is there evidence to trust they are being honest with us? I would say most good people will accept a person's story if these two things align. If the trans community wishes to be accepted, they would much better be served dropping the poorly worded 'trans men are men' slogan and adjusting it to more clearly communicate to others what they mean.
unfortunately i have to go, but i do want to respond to this, as it's important: i tend to think of people as manipulative and sinister animals, so just because i don't question someone's statement, it doesn't mean i "believe them". The "is" and "is not" way of looking at things, without further elaboration (like definitions) is pretty empty. I think survival largely depends on what we do or do not say, and pursuing dishonesty puts one in danger, even though lying is not "wrong".
Huh. The preceding comments tells me we agree, so let me try to work through how I came to that..
Quoting Philosophim
I think, more discreetly, what I didn't take in hand here was that there's a logical reason to use the word this way. I think it's absolutely fine for 'man' to refer to gender (recognitiion of clustered behaviours, lets say) where male can be the biological counterpart. For me, this is the clearest and less-easily-fucked-with way of using the terms. I don't have much of a problem with how things shake out,. as long as we're not running into contradictions and redundancies (which conflating the two would do - and I think circumscribing 'man' in that way would, generally, deny a certain level of legitimacy to trans identity (although, I have thoughts there anyway...)).
Quoting Philosophim
Hmm. While i understand the impulse, I don't think this is quite accurate. The fact that men are, on average, more aggressive (using it as a biological term (both 'man' and 'aggressive')) is, as you say, not gender. BUT being more aggressive than the average female is one of the cluster behaviours that tends to be borne by a 'man'. The problem is that half of the ideology behind Gender Theory wants us to both take that on (cool) but also want the concept of 'man' to encompass typical female cluster behaviours. That wont work (though I assume you already see this). So I think the fact that males tend to me aggressive is a different fact from the level of aggressive one identifying as a man might represent.
Quoting Philosophim
I tend to think this is simply a polite way of saying "you have no balls" (the most common, and variant insult men face really - particularly from women). It strikes me a biological insult. Not too important, I wouldn't think.
Quoting Philosophim
For slightly different reasons, I run the same track to the same station. 'transmen are men', to me, simply means the term 'man' encompasses those who identify as such. Given my first little clarification in this response, that should sit relatively comfortably in my framework. I am unsure whether I would argue this if I were given the reigns of policy. But it, socially, seems totally fine to me. I don't see a problem with using 'man' for gender and 'male' for sex with only tenuous link between the two. I posit that Trans community (and TRAs more properly) want to see the link strengthened philosophically to the point of equivalence. That seems totally linguistically and socially untenable to me. I also note that the majority of those making these arguments (the only two examples hereabouts I've seen are Mijin and Banno) tend not to even engage the meat of the matter before simply saying "Well, bigots gonna bigot" type stuff. It makes explanation impossible, and compromise objectionable in some sense.
Quoting Philosophim
These are key points. I think I view 'being trans' a bit different to you. My experiences with trans people is not that they want anything specific. My take is that (delusion or not) they truly believe that gender is something constructed internally and projected, but not by choice. Lets avoid the 'sexed brain' type arguments, as I do not take those too seriously (as our next little exchange will make clear) but even without that, if the point is that you have some inherent tendencies, and those tendencies are other than your body's sexed tendencies, that there must be a social arena for that to be expressed. I have no problem with this. Gender seems a fine way to go about it. The conflict comes when policy is affected by personal perception (similar with hate crime, digital comms restrictions etc.. "perceived x" is usually the benchmark and that is almost fascist in nature). In this way, I fully, entirely agree with the final little stab. I think that is what's happened. Its a fig leaf.
Quoting Philosophim
I'm unsure whether we're agreeing - I think the point is to ensure there is no credible objection, because its posited as a metaphysical fact. If I say "No one is born in the wrong body" this is somehow scientifically ignorant. Which is, itself, not only ignorant by manipulative (as you say) and pretty dishonest. It is a fact no one is born in the wrong body. There is literally no benchmark that could possibly be used other than "God put you in the right/wrong body" that could get me there. No arguments i've heard are even worth traversing beyond genuinely listening to them and having to think "Good grief, this is a bit of a joke isn't it?".
Quoting baker
Wildly, the fact that the opposite of this is the case is one of the biggest reasons I've bene intent on movinv to the US for some time. As a third party looking in, it seems to me that takes such as this come from being embedded in the extant information ecosystem present in the US (well, present if you've bought in). I could always be wrong, just thought it interesting to note my diametrically opposed view on that lol.
Quoting baker
Having discussed this with several psychologists (friends, to be fair) the younger generation (honestly, mine included - im 35) enjoy collecting diagnoses. Anything that makes you interesting, quirky, out-of-the-norm etc... is desirable. They are socially pressured into not being normal. This is why there has been (and I am not saying this is wide-spread necessarily, but I've seen this with my eye owns so don't even start..) genuine bigotry against being straight, white, male, cis, conservative etc.. etc.. etc...Anything "predictable" is jettisoned. Ironically, this has caused a couple of cohorts to become completely predictable in their behaviour around these issues. They all expect each other, morally, to not be 'normal'. My time at University as an older student has been really eye-opening crash-course in the inanity of social politics among those below 30. The extreme and utterly perplexing response to "trad wives" has also been indicative. This report is one of many (and there are plenty of formal policy documents in the UK, Aus and NZ at least which support this) which outline how traditional values (basically "normal shit") are forms of radical content which push young people toward the right. This wouldn't be an issue except that it is standard to assume "the right" means bad, boogeyman, bigot, racist horrible deplorable. This is utterly unacceptable in a free society. It is fascism-lite. I know this has been long-winded and tangential - I am sorry for that. It strikes me as important that the social context is on the table too. With all of the above laid out, I think its pretty clear that the encouragement (there is plenty, and some of semi-criminal - Eli Erlick i'm looking at you) of transgender identities is an attempt for people with unstable or at least, socially undesirable traits and identities to pull otehrs into the realm of slight deception they find themselves in to assure social opinion is in their favour. Mill would be rolling.
Fwiw, on some more of Philosophm's comments - I wanted to be a girl most of my life for practical reasons. I now see that I felt oppressed and abused as a male and wanted to escape. I still feel that is what society wants, but I don't care anymore. Men kill themselves at such a high rate that I refuse to allow society to push me into that basket. It hurts too much.
Quoting Philosophim
I suggest that this is the basis for the deception. I don't think sympathy is necessarily the best move. It would be far more reasonable and sensible to simply be more demeaning of bullies. Make it easier to call people out, and easier for those 'in charge' to make a move. It shouldn't be possible for a person to make fun of you for being feminine and not being told that's wrong - if they do it again, up the ante. Don't convince someone their body is wrong. That's cruel and absurd.
Yeah, and unfortunately that is not enough sometimes. Sometimes you also need to not look "suspicous" or "sketchy".
I don't get your grammar/phrasing issues as they relate to trans though: to me trans is confusing because i can't relate to "a man being trapped in woman's body" etc., or needing to advertise pronoun preference. I can, however, relate to being deeply uncomfortable with describing myself, and that's as far as i need to go with my empathy in these matters.
I'm in Europe. Modern culture, and esp. American culture as its forerunner strikes me as extremely puritan and totalitarian. Sure, they encourage diversity -- but only under the condition that the differences are skin deep.
Americans invented the multiple choice test. They invented the extreme quantification and statistics in sports. All those checkboxes on insurance forms. Itemized medical bills. The DSM. Those social games where you're supposed to choose between just two options. Massively drugging little children with Ritalin and such so that they would appear more "normal". Forcing little children into medical chemical and even surgical procedures, so that they could fit neatly into either category "male" or "female". Denoting weight on personal documents. Denoting race on personal documents. Expecting from people to know their "net worth" at all times. Calculating a person's credit score. Measuring a person's attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10.
What is this, if not evidence of an obsession with quantification, normativization, standardization?
How do you up the ante??
Pretty much everywhere, people operate by the principle "Casting the first stone makes you innocent".
How do you propose to defeat that?
Just you look at the sexism: Women are constantly being criticized, and often told they don't look feminine enough. And this is never such a problem as when a man is told that he's not looking masculine enough. Women are expected to hate themselves by default; you can't be a good girl unless you hate yourself. But the same does not go for men.
To be clear, I have nothing against man meaning gender or man meaning sex based on context. My argument is that in the context of 'transgender men are men', reading 'men' as 'male gender' in this case is the less clear and logical interpretation of the word.
For one, 'transgender men' has already modified the term 'man' to indicate we're talking about gender. To mention 'man' alone is a pointless tautology if it 'man' means 'male gender' in this case. Add in the sentence, "Cis men are men" and this seems to be an unclear synonym between trans and cis. Trans and cis are supposed to refer to gender, but the only way they make sense here is if they refer to gender in relation to sex. Otherwise why bother saying it?
A more proper phrase would be, "Transgender men are men as gender" or some type of clarification that the 'man' in this case is not the context of 'male sex'. To insist on the previous phrasing is simply poor grammar.
Quoting AmadeusD
If the 'man' in question means, 'adult male sex', I agree. I do not agree that 'man' as indicating gender applies because of the biological reason. To be clear, "expecting" a man to be more aggressive when they are not, and claiming that they need to be more aggressive within the culture as a choice, is a gendered view of 'man'. A man naturally being more aggressive than a woman is a perfectly normal statistical outcome. A man being less aggressive than most woman is also completely normal. The
expectation that a biologically non-aggressive man should be more aggressive in their actions is a gender expectation.
Quoting AmadeusD
Absolutely. Its like watching a child lie badly and think they've fooled everyone. And watching someone hear correct pronouns and think they've passed as the opposite sex vs the obvious pity or fear of offending that the majority of people fear is embarrassing to watch personally.
Quoting AmadeusD
Its a gendered insult because that person has not risen to the social expectations put upon a person who is male. Only if the person literally lacked balls in a jeering manner would it be a biological insult.
Quoting AmadeusD
The 'want' that I'm referring to in this instance is a response from other people that treats them as if they are the opposite sex with the gender expectations that come with that. It may be that this want comes form wanting to avoid the expectations of their own sex. If a trans person had no wants, they would have absolutely zero consideration of how other people viewed them. But they do.
Quoting AmadeusD
I have a very dear friend who has been in the process of transitioning for the past few years. His reason is primarily sexual. He has had terrible luck with women all of his life and felt there is something wrong with him. He began to become obsessed with lesbian romances and fan fiction, writing porn stories about female characters. It came to the point where he no longer could envision himself as a male with a woman, but only a woman as a woman. Especially before he got on his pre-estrogen medicine which lowers his physical sex drive, he was also fairly sexually inappropriate with it.
We have talked about it but he goes into complete rage denial mode when I point out the obvious sexual reasons he's already confessed to me. His choice of course. He's as the age where he's not likely going to find an attractive woman (he's obssessed with younger women still) much less marry. Considering the loneliness has only been an oppressive despair and oppression for him, this at least gives him a sexual outlet to get past that. And for him, it might be the best call. It was like watching a captive parrot in heat as he would breath in through his mouth and lustfully talk about lesbian relationships.
At least with his sex drive lowered he doesn't have the intense need driving him, now its more the romantic and ideological side. His sex drive is still existent, its just reduced in the intensity that only an agonizingly sexually deprived male can have. I appreciate you sharing your experiences.
I hold doors open for others, regardless of their sex, to be polite. It has nothing to do with gender. To hold doors open for one sex and not the other is sexist. Would you not hold a door open for an elderly man? Being sweet has nothing to do with gender. Any sex can be sweet, or nice. What you are describing are simply human behaviors, not gendered behaviors, as these are not traits specific to one gender or the other, except if you are sexist.
Quoting Philosophim
The first part makes no sense. The immorality is in fooling another about your sexual identity which does not allow others to realize their own identities as either gay or straight. The intent is irrelevant because anyone with an ounce of brains would know that other people might be fooled by your charade, meaning that you would need be up front about what sex you actually are, so there will always be some intent to fool others in cross-dressing.
Notice I did not explicitly say "to get people to hold the door for me". If you're being honest when you see a woman vs a man, you do have a different initial impression and treatment of them. Some of this is likely biological, but part of it is also culture. A person who is dressing in a way to emphasize their sex may be desiring these other smaller interactions they see others doing (or they do themselves) like being gentler with their voice, not talking about sports, etc. It is not one specific objective action they desire, but a collective subjective treatment that they see.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Again, you're only emphasizing encounters of sexuality, not mere differences of sex expectation. In most general cases non-sexual gender treatment is mostly harmless. As you noted, most gender treatment should be equalized to people as a whole, and not merely given to one sex or the other. That is an ideal, but often not a real. In these cases, if someone mistakes a transgender person for the opposite sex in a quick public encounter, no one is wiser or cares. I do not view this as immoral, as the person may very well feel better and happier presenting as such for themself.
In the case of situations that impact the other person directly, like direct sexual interest, a trans individual should immediately let the other person know that they are in fact trans. To not do so would be sexual abuse.
See, this seems patently unrealistic to me. The entire point of the American project is to promote diversity, you're right, and the intention is that this diversity is genuine - from socialists, through to just-short-of-bigots can get along in one place without shooting each other. Apparently, that is unacceptable to some and in fact, when differences are deeper than skin, it becomes an hilarious caricature of a moral panic. This usually ends in utter destruction (BLM, Jan 6, Charlie Kirk (and surrounding issues since)). I do not think it is "American culture" doing this, but actually the proportion of activists (this, unfortunately, is what is exported via the media generally) who want to dismantle American culture and re-homogenize it under the guise of kindness. Its utterly preposterous and it seems to me an intentional scam to grab power. That said, these are opinions. Take them as such :)
Quoting baker
What's the issue, sorry?
Quoting baker
Enforce a policy which restricts that behaviour. Actually do something about it - exclude, remove, penalize etc... rather than just words. Eventually, it would become a criminal issue ideally (actually, it is. People just refuse to enforce these laws against certain groups for fear of being seen as the exact thing the laws are designed to stop you being).
Quoting baker
I'm unsure I understand the question properly. I agree, most people operate on that principle, but i disagree that it is genuine. Anyone who casts the first stone in this sort of context knows they are questionable and is getting out ahead of a fair assessment. I don't see any significant set of people who are doing what you suggest in good faith.
Quoting baker
This is, to my mind, utterly preposterous to the point that it feels redundant to address it, sorry that this is quite rude. The bolded is just bare-faced falsity that might have been true 40 years ago. Women hating themselves is one of the least helpful aspects of any society we have ever known about. It is ridiculous to suggest that this is encouraged in modern Western society - particularly when women are lauded, praised and lifted up over absolutely everything and anything (unless conservative, in which case fuck you, we will make fun of your appearance and everything we claimed to be principled against). If you mean to suggest this is true in places like Russia, the Middle East and South East Asia, I could agree.
Quoting Philosophim
That's definitely the case - and it conflates the two concepts. Untenable. We agree.
Quoting Philosophim
I don't understand how this is clearer or easier to carry through than my solution. Just don't use man to refer to sex. Simple. No confusion exists in this framework.
Quoting Philosophim
That was quite unclear I'm sorry. I should have simply said 'male' but my point was to sort of the language as it's used. So "a man is generally more aggressive than a woman" could (should IMO) apply to the gender, but on the basis that heightened aggression (in terms of above a mean, or something) is a typically 'male' trait and so goes into the cluster we use to determine 'man'.
Quoting Philosophim
Well, i disagree. It's just another way of making a biological jab at males for being less than to my mind.
Quoting Philosophim
Most do not. I think you are describing TRAs. Most trans people are not demanding anything (except to not be harassed, which is fair). This might just be differing experiences. There's also the argument that those behaving the way you describe are not trans but something like autogynephillic, sexually deviant but high-intelligence etc... that lead them to the same arguments and demands that others sexually objectify them.
Not everyone uses the word "slay" to mean "impressive" (or whatever it means to youths these days), but that is nonetheless one of its meanings.
If you don't want to use the word "man" to refer to anyone whose gender is male, regardless of sex, then don't. But it's bizarre to suggest that other people are wrong if they do use it that way. It's prominent enough to warrant being considered another meaning.
Earlier, you talked about being a fool for battling others on how to use words. Then, given your contibutions here, you must be talking about yourself ...
It is a readily observable fact that people fight over what a word means. And despite what might be new trends in lexicography, some people still believe that dictionaries should have a normative function, and that a word shouldn't mean whatever anyone chooses it to mean.
It's foolish to argue that words should or shouldn't mean something, or to deny the empirical fact that they are used to mean certain things.
Quoting baker
Well, they don't. Even the Académie Française, which is putatively the "authority" on the French language, can't do this. Natural languages just aren't the sort of things that can be dictated in this way. You can pretend, or say "well, it's not recognized by such-and-such an organization" but why should anyone care about that? I'm going to continue to slay despite your protestations.
The issue is that man is used both to indicate sex and gender depending on context. In this context its more grammatically sensible to read man as referring to sex when its alone and unmodified by the trans adjective. Since this is historically the way man has been read when unmodified, and it makes cis and trans modifiers, and we know the need for transgender people to conflate with sex where possible, we clearly point out the difference and no one should have an issue.
Quoting AmadeusD
This is still lumping biology in with gender. Gender as clearly defined is purely a social construct, a prejudice or expectation that someone with a particular biology should act a certain way purely based on culture, not biology. Statically expecting a male to be more aggressive than a female because of biology is not gender, that's simply ascertaining a likelihood of secondary sex traits. To be gender, it must not involve biology. For example, there is no biological incentive that a woman wear a dress vs pants. That's purely a social construct. If that social construct expects that only one sex should wear dress or pants, this becomes gender.
Quoting AmadeusD
You may be correct. The circles I have been around and in wish to push trans people into opposite sex spaces and be called particular pronouns. I think the community would have much less push back if they didn't care if they were denied entry into sex divided spaces or minded that people used pronouns as sex referents instead of gender referents.
*sigh*
No, it is not foolish at all. That's the entire point of English class. Present participles, conjuctive disjunctions (What are you functions?) are all a means to ensure that we have stable rules and approaches to grammar and communication. Because the entire purpose of language is to clearly communicate a concept in a way that can be easily understood by other parties in the language without debate.
And of course people will deny that words mean certain things. If I started calling the Big Bang God and told you, "You believe in God", you would have an issue. It is quite reasonable to debate why we should or should use certain language and meanings for those words. If I said "subjectivity" was actually the same definition as 'objectivity', there would be a lot of people on these forums telling me, "No, you're wrong".
To paraphrase Captain Barbossa, they're more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules. And, once again, natural languages just aren't the perfectly logical, consistent, and unambiguous things you seem to want them to be.
The above paragraph is a prime example. You "shouldn't" start a sentence with a conjunction. Except I do it all the time.
Quoting Philosophim
Get enough people using a word in a different-than-normal way and its meaning changes. That's how languages evolve. Imagine how silly Shakespeare would seem if we brought him back to life and he bitched about us not speaking Ye Olde Englishe properly.
That's not what I said. I said that the idea that because language can evolve a certain way, doesn't mean it should. If English evolved rapidly into an ambiguous and locally defined set of terms and meanings in each state, we would have a difficult time talking to one another at all. Just because something can occur, doesn't mean its the best outcome for what language's purpose is.
Quoting Michael
Of course, I never denied this, nor does this address my point. What I'm noting is that there are more beneficial and less beneficial ways for language to evolve. Its a constant balance between clarity of communication, efficiency in effort, and applicability to a wider audience. Thus, it is not foolish to debate whether words should mean something.
I don't know what culture you live in, but here in the U.S. chivalry is dead, and has been replaced with politeness towards all. I hold the door open for anyone that is right behind me when opening a door. Are you seriously saying that if I was right behind you, you wouldn't hold the door open, but let it shut in my face?
The way I might adjust my tone or avoid certain subjects with others has nothing to do with their sex. I have talked about sports with women, and spoken gruffly to them as much I have any man. The things you are saying are simply sexist.
Quoting Philosophim
Exactly. The quick public encounter is gender/sex-neutral - where one's gender/sex is irrelevant. That is why I am focusing on the scenarios where it is relevant.
Quoting Philosophim
Exactly.
So it's not wrong when other people use the word, "God" in a way that implies that it is male living in another dimension that wants you to do its bidding and exists? Mass delusions exist which can make many people say the same wrong things.
Me saying someone is wrong is not what makes them wrong. It is the distinction between the words they use and the reality of the situation that makes them wrong. Me saying they are wrong is just representative of that truth, but is not what makes it true.
Exactly. The thing is: According to you, so far, the trans community and its supporters are free to advocate for their particular language uses. But other people are not supposed to advocate for their own particular language uses??
I'm saying that words can have more than one meaning, and that one of the meanings of the word "man" is "someone whose gender is male".
I'm not sure what you mean by "advocating" for a particular language use. If you don't want to use the word "man" to mean "someone whose gender is male" or the word "slay" to mean "impressive", then don't. But to argue that these words don't also mean these things is factually incorrect. Such usages are sufficiently widespread that they count as alternative meanings and not (intentional or unintentional) misuses, e.g. using the word "cat" to mean "dog".
What you literally said, and what I am replying to, was "the terms man and woman indicate a person's age and sex, not gender" and this is factually incorrect. The terms are sometimes used to indicate a person's sex and sometimes used to indicate a person's gender.
Whether or not you think they should be used this way, and whether or not I think the word "slay" should be used to mean "impressive", is irrelevant to the factual matter of how English-speaking people actually use these words.
I don't understand what you're saying here.
Someone is wrong if they claim that God exists but they're not wrong if they claim that the word "God" means "creator deity" (or whatever).
And I don't understand how this relates to the topic under discussion. Are you saying that English-speaking people don't use the word "man" to refer to those whose gender is male (regardless of sex) or are you saying that people whose gender is male (regardless of sex) don't exist?
Are they wrong if they say "God" is the universe? Isn't that the point - that anyone can use the word the way they want, but does it make them correct in any instance of their use of the word? IS God the universe? "God" is a nebulous term, unlike "man" or "woman". They have a scientific basis, and any cultural expectations that exist are just that - expectations of the culture as a whole, not an individual's personal feelings. You're trying make these terms as meaningless as the word, "god" in that it means whatever anyone wants it to mean. Communication only works when we agree on the terms being used. So if you want to use words in a certain way it would only be in your own private language, or a small group that thinks the same way you do.
Quoting Michael
Male is a sex. Man is a specific sex of a specific species. We use those terms to refer to one's biology, not how they dress. If one does refer to a female as a male then they are either confused by the way they are dressing, because in a society where it is illegal to be naked in public we have established expectations of the sexes to tell the different for finding mates, or a someone who has simply jumped on the trans-gendered bandwagon without thoroughly reflecting on it.
Thats the whole ball game.
In order to speak at all, we need to objectify, to fix, something external to us both.
Is it gender or sex that can be fixed? Or both? Or neither (and to conclude neither, we must fix something else from which to measure the fluidity of these.)
The question of gender is a new flavor of what is justice or what is good? Or what is a banana?
What is it, about which you speak?
And I have never denied that. The argument has been noting that the issue is that the phrase 'trans men are men' implies 'man as sex' and is both grammatically incorrect and less logical to have the unmodified man be read 'as gender'. If you would like to give a reason why you think it should be read 'as gender' I welcome that discussion.
Quoting Michael
You are referencing slang which is terminology restricted to a context or group of people. Slang is not the general usage or meaning of the word. If I start using the term 'pizza' for apples as a formal word, this does not suddenly make my use of the term pizza correct in the English language.
Again, an assertion that 'some people (at least one) use it this way' is not an argument that it should be used that way if the intent is clear and unambiguous language that fits within what people generally would expect within the language structures.
The confusion stems from what the expectation of society is. The expectation is not that people that dress a certain way makes them men or women. This isn't even an expectation. It is a definition.
The expectation is that they are already men and women and we expect them to dress in a certain way to be able to tell the difference since their body is now covered. This is why there is a surprise when a man finds out his date is a man when they expected a woman.
If gender was actually the "expectation" (actually definition) that what you wear makes you a man or woman then there would be no surprises.
Right. Gender comes from and is defined by sex. Sex does not come from nor is defined by gender.
Long time no see, Philosophim! I hope you are doing well.
I know you are stipulating this definition for the sake of the OP, but it is worth mentioning that this precludes the main usage of the word throughout history. Gender has always been the upshot of biology (nature). With gender theory, we see a new development of trying to cleanly separate the two so that people that claim to be a woman or man without committing themselves to the absurdity of claiming to be biologically one when they are not.
If by woman and man you are referring to merely a set of social cues and behaviors that at person gives off that are typically associated with the given sex (of man or woman), then why semantically refer to these genders as men and women? It seems like a blatant equivocation that muddies the watersdont you think?
I mean, if it really is the case that being a man by gender is completely separable from being a man by sex and this is a new distinction one is making (that has very little historical precedent), then why not call it being a loto or some other word that isnt deeply entrenched in biology?
I think that is what the is a transwoman a woman political debate comes down to: conservatives do not want to reuse the biologically entrenched words to refer to something totally different, whereas liberals want to use it so they can piggy-back off of the various ways we deal with sex in terms of gender instead (like bathroom assignments).
You as well Bob! I hope life has been treating you well.
Quoting Bob Ross
True. But having been in the community for a while and seeing their desire to cleave it, I'm willing to do so and see if certain things they say make any sense even after this is given. I have no issue with new terms or approaches, but are the statements involved in these approaches valid?
Quoting Bob Ross
100% Part of the approach here is to demonstrate the poor grammar involved in this attempt. If someone actually felt that gender was completely divorced from sex, I would likely see an argument somewhere saying, "You're right, we need to be more specific," or trying to justify the grammer. The only reply I've seen so far is, "Well people talk this way now, and we shouldn't debate what words should mean."
Quoting Bob Ross
Agreed.
Quoting Bob Ross
Sounds fair to me, though I would be willing to listen to anyone who has a different opinion.
I dont think it succeeds, because they dont really divorce male and female as sex from as gender. They still refer to, e.g., female qua gender as what socially we expect normally out of female qua sex; so they are still viewing it through the prism of what should we expect this being of this nature to behave and represent?.
Lets say it is purely social though and that what we expect a sex to behave like is purely based off of unrelated factors to their nature. Then the view does succeed in divorcing them, but now it falls into superficiality. If gender is just some particular trope of expression that any person could decide to exhibit, then it is just a personal personality that someone is deciding to become; and then this would be utterly meaningless for important aspects of how we treat people of different natures. For example, is it meaningful to divy up bathrooms based off of purely subjective personality types? Not at all. We separate the bathrooms based off of natures to properly respect their dignities. Divvying up the bathrooms on personalities would be like having a chess player fanatic bathroom only, a gamers only bathroom, the ping-pong addicts bathroom; etc. This isnt a meaningful differentiator for driver licenses, prisons, bathrooms, etc.
This is why, going back to my point about the political tension, the important aspect of gender theory is not itself but, rather, what it is being developed for: it is being used to peddle treating people in the sense of gender as if it is in the sense of sex. Neo-liberals want to be able to present themselves as if they are the opposite sex so that they now get treated as if they are one; and they came up with gender theory to try and justify it. The common view on gender theory isnt merely that gender is analogous to social personality types and expressions: its the attempt of subverting normal gender (sex) roles for personality traits and social expressions. E.g., I am now a woman because I present myself as one, so now you should treat me as if I really am a woman (in terms of how we would treat one that is biologically a woman); and is the real meat of the disagreement.
If a person could truly change sexes, then this wouldnt be a political issue; but it not is the case that they cant but also for conservatives it doesnt help that they normally hold that the soul has a gender (sex) which cannot be changed without killing the person.
Fair enough. If I were playing devils advocate, I would say that gender is purely social; and sex is biological. How we decided to treat people based off of sex is truly social. So if you are treating a biological woman in X manner it would not be related to the womans biology or nature; if that is true, then if someone who isnt a biological woman presents the same social cues that you use to determine how to treat a biological woman, then you would rationally need to treat the non-biological woman the same way.
Agreed. I view gender as socially enforced/acceptable prejudice and sexism.
Quoting Bob Ross
Agreed. I mentioned to another poster here that the game is to get you to say a trans person is the other sex without having you think you're saying a trans person is the other sex. I find it beautifully twisted and deceptive.
And that was part of the experiment. Unveil the deception a bit. Force someone to come to the table and talk about it as if we took the distinction seriously and see if they agreed. So far, no one really has. Just a few individuals fooled into thinking it is virtuous to get people to play the game. I may post another thread later about whether transgender rights are really rights. A little tied up this week though and I would like some more time to address it properly.
It is explicitly not running them together. It is explicitly saying that biological tendencies are required for a 'socially constructed' gender to obtain. Otherwise, there is no such boundary line under which 'a gender' could be captured. Yes, sex and gender are different, but 'gender' is closely tied to sexual expression (i.e sexed behaviours and tendencies). You cannot tease these two apart and get anything coherent under the term 'gender'. This is why I am quite sure your use of these words is no better than current uses. They are conflatory (and, though neither of us puts much in this, also essentially means we cannot refer to trans people in a way they are comfortable with. My solution allows both: trans women are women, but female is the category any institution should be bent to care about). I am sorry if it was unclear enough to have this be missed.
Quoting Philosophim
Hm... I'm not suggesting that this is gender. I was quite purposefully separating this type of indicator from the tenuous claim that [i]behaving that way makes you a man[/i]. It can be one of the clustered behaviours (which are biologically derived) that constitutes 'a man' without any direct recourse to biology. It is gender. Because a female who shows male-level aggression isn't trans. But a trans-man probably wants to include that in their behaviour to fit the construct's criteria.
That said, if you do not openly expect a transman to be more aggressive than a non-trans female, I can't quite see what 'construct' we are suppose to be thinking of here. Genders are constructed from biological expectations that are applied to the categories not represented by those biological expectations. A female presenting typically male behaviours could conceivable transition 'properly'. A female who is exceptionally feminine in behaviour will never been taken even vaguely seriously in their transition other htan by sycophants and TRAs.
Quoting Philosophim
This also applies, as noted above, to biologically typical behaviours between sexes. If the only criteria for the construct are made-up nonsense then there is no basis for even discussing 'transition'.
Quoting Philosophim
Definitely agree and there are plenty of well-known trans people who do not think that way. Brandi Nitti, Blaire White, Debbie Hayton, Buck Angel etc..
Uh, im going to have cry fowl on this: when i was a teenager, i liked girls...so sometimes i would say stuff like "sweetheart" to them with sexual overtones. I realized later i sounded like "a creep", but the point is, my kinda grubby/masculine appearance is what made it look malicous. It doesn't carry the same overtones when a 40 yo woman says that to people affectionately, regardless of their sexual feelings.
The coding with is subtle in modern times, and is far from universal, but it does exist. Trans seems to be about personal preferences...
According to many on the gender side of the discussion, it is correct that there is no boundary line under which gender can be captured. Keep going with them and they'll start to say how even 'sex' doesn't have any boundaries either. Because the entire point is to get you to see them as the other sex without you realizing you're saying that.
Quoting AmadeusD
Correct. Gender is incoherent when you break it down into the meaning they want you to. It truly boils down to culturally enforced stereotypes and sexism.
Quoting AmadeusD
No apology needed. One of the main issues with gender ideology is its incoherent and unclear vocabulary. This is intentional, as it is meant to be conflationary. I did give plenty of people a chance to clear up any ambiguity who tend to support the ideology, and almost without fail they double down on it or reject clear distinctions. That's because its not about clear vocabulary or distinctions. Its a tool to rationalize, not a tool of rationality.
I disagree with your solution, though understand its good intention, because it only serves to allow this conflationary communication to continue. The only reason trans individuals want the phrase 'trans men are men' is because they really want to hear the idea that now they're actually the other sex. That's it. They don't want to clarify it to clearly mean gender. Its a deception that asks a person to have poor grammer, poor thinking, and is used by them to argue why they deserve to be in opposite sex spaces. Imo, its not only poor grammer, its a lie with wiggle room.
Quoting AmadeusD
And this is where the confusion lies. According to gender theory, gender is not constructed from biological expectations. It is purely cultural expectations. So prejudice, stereotypes, and sexism not based on biology, but culture alone. Think of someone wearing a suit. You make cultural expectations of that person because of that suit by observation alone. You think, "A person in a suit would never jump." The person jumps. They have defied your 'suit expectation'. That's gender in gender theory. It is a suit that you put on and take off like any other clothing. And you expect that when you are wearing that clothing, that other people will treat you as you personally feel someone should be treated while wearing that clothing.
Yes, gender when fully defined and understood is essentially the way a child views the world.
Quoting AmadeusD
Just a suit. Are they wearing male clothing and slouching like men should in public? That's a man.
Quoting AmadeusD
It doesn't matter. She's just a feminine behaving man because she's wearing male clothing. Don't be a bigot. ;)
Quoting AmadeusD
Correct! Because gender was simply a rationalizing tool to justify transsexualism. Transitioning your body to align with your 'gender identity' was always word salad gibberish to avoid the word 'transsexual'. Its a repackaging of transsexualism to be a more hip, modern, and virtue signaling identity so that way we can get you to agree with us having those surgeries funded by the medical community and hope we won't be seen as strange anymore.
Quoting AmadeusD
Correct. They're speaking to the truth of transsexualism as the mental health issue that it is. They don't want special treatment, they just want to be a part of society without bothering other people. I have massive respect for these individuals and hope that the loud trans activists who want special treatment don't ruin the peace and accepted place in society that many honest transsexual already have.
Sure, there are still sexist people in today's society, just as there are still racist people in today's society, but that does not mean sexism and racism are universal or systemic.
Don't we actually have laws to not discriminate, as in treating people differently because of their sex? Then what is gender as an expectation of the sexes, if not discrimination?
Some girls like to be called sweetheart. Some don't. My wife sometimes wears my lounge pants and my t-shirt to relax around the house. She is not making a statement about sex or gender. She is merely trying to be comfortable. So yes, it isn't universal now, even though it used to be, and what will happen is that we become separated as different groups use the terms how they want and stop communicating with anyone else that sees them differently. What would be the point when we would just end up talking past each other anyway?
According to the definition of gender, that's all it really is. Its simply culturally accepted prejudice and/or sexism.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Also correct. Because the point is to use the term 'gender' as a rationalization and rebranding of transsexualism. Its the reuse of common language to conflate and confuse people into thinking that gender bending, which is normal, can justify a transsexual as also normal who should be allowed into cross sex spaces in society.
Its quite brilliant really. They piggy-backed off of the good will shown to gays (which they deserve both morally and rationally), and appealed to people's good nature in an attempt to get people to see them as normal too. The difference is that the transsexuals behind all of this used deception because they believed honesty wouldn't get them what they wanted. Cross sex space access. Its been the entire focal point of the trans activist community.
Looking at the history, the denial of access to cross sex spaces is where the anger, revolt, and cancelling of people always pivots around. Look at JK Rowling. She wrote an immensely supportive letter to the trans community, but drew a line in the sand that being a transsexual doesn't give you a right to be in cross sex spaces. Pronouns are used by people to describe the sex of an individual, and the trans activist community insisted it be 'gender'. Of course they know that pronouns refer to sex for people. Its all a plan to get you to say it to convince you that 'they are the other sex' without you realizing you agreed to it. Because once you realize that's what they want, the only logical conclusion is to say, "But you aren't actually the other sex, you don't belong in cross sex spaces."
To me, the transgender issue is a fascinating use of words and terms to manipulate a population. It mirrors a secular religion in many ways, as well as a political entity. Philosophers should be pouring over these definitions and reasons to really see what works here, but they successfully cowed people to not think about it because they first painted it as a moral issue that should not be questioned or debated. It is a secular religion, and even many atheists fell to its message. History will likely look back and say, "How could people be so stupid back then?" like we always see in history when people fall for objectively stupid ideologies and outlooks. But we aren't stupid. Its just a reminder that you always have to be diligent with word use and rational thought despite the pressures not to. Especially for social conformity and cultural claims of virtue, the temptation and pressure to conform and not think about it is powerful.
A female that shows "male-level" aggression is non-sensical. The simple fact that a female is exhibiting the aggression is evidence that aggression is not a male thing. It is a human thing to show aggression. It is human behavior that is on a spectrum. If both sexes can exhibit the behavior then the behavior is not a criteria of one sex/gender or the other.
Transgenderism is like religion in many ways: It's a mass delusion and it makes people talk in non-sensical ways as they abandon all reason and logic in their discourse.
that's an excellent point that gender itself is a form of sexism: however, the laws to discriminate only apply to jobs and services, and the discrimination has to be openly spoke. Any employer can refuse to hire a pregnant woman ("she may not be as useful as someone who isn't expecting"), but the employer can't tell them it has anything to do with them being a woman.
Quoting Harry Hindu
this very well may be the case, yet as you were basically arguing in the quote of yours i just used, the more normal ways of looking at gender are also religious mass delusions. For example, women have always been prized by their societies for their effeminate looks, yet now adays the beauty standard is so high for some people that it basically alienates everyone (women and men included). I think our extreme attachment to youthful looks and beauty also has negative side effects like encouraging pedophilia, which people are ironically too childish to talk openly about....
Also, outside of school age I've found the expectations people have about me "being a man" are pretty much trivial and non-existent. However, there's that domineering attitude that men are supposed to be regularly having sex with women and that masturbating is the sign of "a loser". Luckily I don't have to talk to make friends with guys like that anymore. "Toxic masculinity" is one of those things where men tend to weave their own webs of destruction through more brutal attitudes about themselves and others, and it has a lot in common with the extreme attachment towards youthfulness and effeminate beauty.
I have differing views here.. but I see the issue you're raising.
Quoting Philosophim
I don't think you've understood what I've said here: It is that this isn't hte case and there is a totally reasonable use for the distinction, albeit derivable from sexed expectations.
Quoting Philosophim
Once against, it explicitly reserves the two words for independent use. There is no conflation, and it clearly demarcates when one is talking about sex or gender. There is no conflation. It is not confused. It just may be not hte preferred option.
Quoting Philosophim
They might not. That's a non-issue for this part of the discussion though.
Quoting Philosophim
I am not talking Gender theory, though. I am discussing solutions to the obvious problems it presents. I am not particularly interested in simply bagging on a prima facie absurd ideology. The problem you raise, I have acknowledge. I am trying to get around them so as not to have to kow to obviously incoherent policy thinking.
Quoting Philosophim
This is not my circus. I'm going ot have to ignore this type of stuff going on.. I'm not arguing about those issues. I get the distinct feeling you're not looking for solutions or coming-to-terms at all?
Quoting Harry Hindu
This is patently disingenuous. I said the italicised. Not the bolded(well, the inverse as makes sense given you're replying to me). They are extremely different things to claim. Females sometimes exhibit typically male levels of aggression. This is not controversial, nonsensical or any other bollocks you want to throw out. It's a psychological/sociological fact that is well-understood by behaviourists, sociologists and anthropologists. I have no further to talk about here.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You just conflated sex and gender, entirely jettisoning the purpose and fundamental ground of the discussion. That explains a lot.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It seems perhaps you are not giving as much of the good old faith as you'd like.
To a certain extent I could see that when it comes to the more loosely associated aspects of gender to sex (like hair style); but a lot of it seems to be legitimate to me (such as feminine vs. masculine traits and behaviors).
In post-modern society we are very inclined to treat people as if by being a person they are the exact same as every other person; but a person is an abstraction: not a kind of substance. Having personhood is an aspect of certain naturesnot a nature itself. Although men and women have the same moral worth, they are not equal in nature. They have different roles (teleological) in the human species: they are the yin and yang that solidify the survival and harmony of the species. To discriminate based off of sex just means to differentiateto treat differentlybased off of sex; and this is not per se wrong. You get a woman flowers when you wouldnt have if they were a man; you draft men and not women for wars; etc.
Exactly! Or it is a convoluted game of noting the superficial point that there are an indefinite amount of personalities that someone would express.
It sounds to me that this is an example of there being no general, overarching expectation of the sexes in our society as a whole and that it is only among smaller groups, such as your friends or local municipality or state, where these types of expectations exist and change from one group to another. Hence gender is not a social construct on the scale of society as a whole, but among certain groups that might have been raised a certain way, which in a free society can differ from one person to the next and from one region of society to the next. So, in western societies, one's gender is determined by the small group you are in, not in society as a whole, and your gender only changes when you transition from one group or region to another where there are different expectations (like moving from New York to Texas).
You're missing the point that I made quite clear. If a female can exhibit male-level aggression then why is it called male-level? The level of aggression between a male protecting its territory and a female protecting its young seems about the same level. So what exactly do you mean by "male-level"? Let the mental gymnastics begin!
Quoting AmadeusD
This is like saying that someone saying "god does not exist" jettisons the purpose and fundamental ground of a discussion about the relationship between god and nature - a discussion that assumes a premise and you not liking any type of statement that jettisons that assumption.
To me this is correct, even though the political left usually refuses to see things this way as it would unravel their worldview. The midwest is different from more metropolitan areas of the U.S., yet even with those areas, there are still major differences of opinion. It is a large scale construct, but not in interpretation.
For example, when i said "guys like that", i wasn't referring to the masturbation thing, but a trend within my party going social environments to rate people on how much they get layed. Sometimes i would have to talk to people like that through association. The shame over masturbating is only something me and one of my later friends noticed about the internet masculinity preachers, but i coupled them just because the mindsets are very similar...you see "getting layed" as some sort of spiritual status that's a sign of how important you are.
The fact that there are people that do not fit neatly into our conceptual boxes is evidence that those conceptual boxes don't actually exist. In other words, the transgendered notion of man and woman do not exist because much of western society no longer has those expectations, so there is nothing to transition between - which is why they are now making it about sex because sexual identities, compared to gendered ones, are real.
Aren't you a daisy! The foundation of American culture isn't some profound humanist insight that "all men are created equal" or some such. It's just pragmatism: declare all the various factions to be equal under the law, so that they won't have legal grounds to fight for supremacy to the point of destruction (and so there will be no collateral damage from those fights that someone else would need to clean up).
Then read again.
So you didn't up the ante and you don't have an effective policy. Hm.
So what? It obviously works, even if it's done in bad faith.
Well, a double daisy you are!
It's not confusing times - just some confused people. Logic and reason is what clears the confusion. It's just that some people do not value logic and reason, or are inconsistent in their application.
That, and overtime applying the logic and reason to understanding politics/power was helpful to me personally, but that also gives you a sense that "we live in confusing times", with the fragmented and separated nature of human activities.
I think that's right. There are local expectations which are essentially one of the organizing traits of a society. I don't personally see a problem with that, except that people tend be indoctrinated where those expectations are particularly strong. That can be a serious problem.
Quoting baker
I'm not quite sure what's going on here. Yes. That is a fundamental 'American' objective. All humans being created equal isn't profound, but its extremely important to enshrine for a wide-reaching society. I can't quite tell - this sounds like an objection? Is it?
Quoting baker
I have. I don't see an issue. It seems that you have a problem with those aspects of a society. I do not see why (that's not to say applications, and ways of going about it for <400m people is probably not going well...)
Quoting baker
I can't understand how you could say this. I literally explained how to up the ante (with examples of such) and this is an effective policy. It is hte strongest, most effective social policy ever used by any group ever - and it is ubiquitous. This goes to my reply to Harry - those local expectations are enforced by this social "ante-upping" until you get public beheadings. It seems like you might genuinely be trolling here?
Quoting baker
This doesn't butter any bread. I still can't understand what you were asking. Doing things in bad faith doesn't work.
Mindy Kaling is a source of utter drivel. That quote is patently false and I have no reason to take it seriously. I live with women. I hear their experienced. I watch media. I watch (in an observer type of way) social media. Women are encouraged at every stage of life to the detriment of men and boys. This has been fairly well established in the last 10 years. Women (females) are predisposed to anxiety.
To be honest, I'm not going to debate that issue with someone posting memes to support it. I will stick with the experiences of women I know, conveniently reflected in the statistics relevant to the questions.
Calling me a daisy just makes it seem like you have nothing..
My apologies for getting back late to you on this. I am curious about your view points on another thread I started analyzing which trans gender rights claims are human rights. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/16233/are-trans-gender-rights-human-rights/p1 then
Given your final line, do you expect a good-faith response? Or would it be more reasonable to simply not be a dickhead, and then expect to not have a dickhead respond? Consider that.
it is the level of aggression typical of males on average. This is not rocket science. This is uncontroversial, and well-known in the psychological literature.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031938496800308
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6318556/
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/711705
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-024-06859-9
I cannot conceive of how its upsetting to hear about hte typical differences in aggression between males and females. Where females exhibit heightened levels of aggressive, this is a 'more masculine' trait as compared to being less aggressive which is a seen as feminine, given the difference is typical between the two sexes on average. Conceding, as one must, that this is simply hte result of the research that's been done and not a knock-down, all-time answer to the issue - Its beyond me why this is getting your panties twisted.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You're going to need to figure out how to work language into making the connection between "God" and "nature" and "sex" and "gender" on the other, workable. This response just tells me you're happy to conflate separate concepts and just keep going as if anyone adequately discussing the issues must be wrong somehow. That seems, sorry to say, childish. Sex and gender are not hte same thing and that is the entire basis for the discussion. IGnoring this explains why you're not making much sense.
You are free to interpret the line how you want and to respond in any tone you wish. All that matters to me is if your response is sensible or not.
Quoting AmadeusD
None of your articles use the phrase "levels of aggression", and they all seem to support that aggression is biological, not social - that males are more aggressive because of their levels of testosterone.
If sex and gender were not the same then why do trans seek hormone replacement therapy to exemplify the sex they are trying to identify as?
Quoting AmadeusD
It's not upsetting to hear about the typical differences. What is upsetting is to equate these differences to differences in gender and not sex.
If you want to say sex and gender are different- fine, but then stop conflating sex and gender.
If sex and gender are separate then that means that gender has nothing to do with our physiology or our behaviors dictated by our physiology - like the level of aggression males have vs females. Males can't give birth and females cannot exhibit male-level aggression.
I do not respond well to children with fingers in their ears saying "I know you are, but what am i?". So I'll just not.
You must be delusional as I didn't see any children participating in this thread saying such things - just full grown adults that do not value logic and reason.
Because they are wrong (on my view, obviously but its a pretty widely-held one). It is hard to understand how you could ask this question. It requires a metaphysical leap that is simply not open to us, I think.
Either Gender and Sex are the same - in which case trans people literally do not exist, they are just deluded - or they are not the same - and trans people in fact, exist, and attempt to artificially appear as though they exemplify typical features of the opposite sex. I contend the latter is correct. Given the balance of logical considerations, it seems relatively unassailible that if "trans people" exist as some 'true' category, then it relates to gender (and explicitly, not sex). Are you wanting to say that trans people are born the wrong sex? That seems totally incoherent. In either case, the reason a male who wants to be female takes what's called 'cross-sex hormones' is to make it easier to behave the way they expect women to behave. Its all quite sexist.
This is what makes sense of the fact that trans women tend to be as aggressive as non-trans males(and represent similarly in crime stats (although, trans women are more likely to commit a sex crime than non-trans males). Because its typical of the sex (including the paratheses). They do, though, routinely repress that aggression to appear more feminine. This is pretty clearly an example of behaving in a way typical of the other sex. This is why I have always maintained that gender does not vary independent of sex (i.e genders themselves are obviously derived from clusters of typical behaviours attributed to the two sexes into clusters of "expected" behaviours rather than observed ones - though, as will be clear these rarely come very far apart) but is not sex and only requires sex as a reference point. The fact is sex is an extremely robust metric in humans, so the variance is quite low - despite it being theoretically possible to say "I'm trans" and present/behave 100% typical for your sex it is not possible to take that seriously, unless Gender is meaningless entirely.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It is possible you have either entirely misinterpreted me.
The differences between males and females have to be exemplified in the behaviours of trans individuals to even get on the ladder of being trans. A trans person who literally does nothing to alter their sex-typical behaviour is not trans. Plain and simple. They are not 'on the other side' of anything. Their sex is still their sex, and their presentation is still their presentation. This leads to the problem that there are only really two ways "gender" can go: Either gender refers to sex. In which case , you do not have a choice. You cannot self-identify as a sex, and therefore you cannot identify into a gender either.
The other way it could go is that gender is a social construct. In this case, society tells you your gender. You also do not have a choice here.
The argument which is made to circumvent this is that gender is self-identification. Ok. If that's so, then it is literally invented and not a description of anything but a desire, or thought. That's also fine. In this case, no one is required to participate in your self-image. At all. At any time. You can request, and polite people will acquiesce but no one is required to accept your self image. You can say you're trans all you want, but if every single person who interacts with you clocks a male who is also a man, you have failed and are not trans.
Are you trans? If not, then are you saying that you know better than the trans person in this instance? And is it that they are just "wrong", or are they "delusional"? What if they aren't identifying as a gender, but as a sex? How would you know? How would they know?
And why would it be hard to understand to ask this question when hormone replacement therapy is called "gender-affirming care"? :roll:
Quoting AmadeusD
No. I'm saying that is what trans-people appear to be saying. I'm asking what it means for a man to claim to be a woman.
Quoting AmadeusD
Which just means that our behaviors are rooted in biology.
Quoting AmadeusD
Then sex and gender are intertwined.
Quoting AmadeusD
...or that you have misinterpreted trans-gendered people, or that trans-people and their supporters have no idea what they are talking about and aren't really disagreeing with the idea that sex and gender are the same.
Quoting AmadeusD
Is gender a social construct or a self-identification that runs counter to the social expectation? It can't be both because one is the anti-thesis of the other.
If gender were a social construct then why is most of society surprised to see a man in a dress? If gender were a social construct then a man wearing a dress would simply be abiding by the expectation and there would be no push back from the rest of society. But there is and it is because the man is not following the rules - that women wear dresses, not that wearing a dress makes you woman.
If gender is merely a social construct then wouldn't that mean that transgenderism is a social construct? Wearing a dress does not require one to take hormone treatments or have any kind of surgery at all. The only way for a person to determine their gender is to choose ones gender based on gender stereotypes present throughout a culture. If gender is a social construct, then it describes the expectations and stereotypes historically linked to biological sex expectations that feminism worked hard to overcome. To say one can identify as another gender is to say that those outdated expectations still define what it means to be male or female. In other words, self-identifying as another gender merely re-affirms the very stereotypes that we're supposed to have been rendered obsolete.
I think probably most telling is the bold. Prefacing by saying it was "on my view". I know plenty of trans people, a couple quite intimately.
Yes, my position is they are wrong. You cannot change sex. They want to exemplify typical phenotypic traits of the opposite sex and there's nothing wrong with doing that, imo, for an adult (we both discuss this elsewhere, and itll come up further down here). But it is factually incorrect that they can change sex, as far as I know and think.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That's why its hard to understand. It affirms gender, not sex. Running sex and gender together as one thing doesn't seem a move open to any type of thinker on this topic. If they were the same, we would be saying humans can change sex. Is that what you're saying?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Ah, well fair enough. I don't think many of them are claiming that, but yes, some do. That's definitely true. There is speak of womb transplants. (I have deliberately put this response here, after my question, because I think they run together - if you don't think trans people are 'born in the wrong body' I suggest you can't claim humans can change sex).
Quoting Harry Hindu
To some degree, yeah definitely. I have no issue with that - i was speaking about this at some length recently. Females and males have average behavioural profiles, and the introduction of cross-sex hormones is to (ostensibly - it doesn't seem to work) engender a change of behaviour in the individual to be closer to the sex they want to be. They cannot be that sex, so the care affirms a "gender", rather than a sex. Does this make sense?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Conceptually, yes (as described above). But one can, apparently, claim a gender without any notable or visible change in phenotype, behaviour or anything else. I presume based on your responses you do not think that person can be considered trans? I'm unsure, and not trying to corner you - I just see some trip-ups in these sets of claims. For me, too. I don't see that sex and gender need be practically intertwined. But that said, I think "gender" can only go three ways. They are all quite well-defined and I presume you're about to respond to them :P
Quoting Harry Hindu
yes, that could be true, but I 100% reject that sex and gender are the same, and I stand behind this claim entirely based on my pretty thorough understanding of the concepts and discussions thereof. There is nothing to suggest that a person can change sex, but there is plenty to suggest one can change gender. They are patently, observably, not the same. The majority of trans people acknowledge this (as best I can tell.. don't shoot me for going on that haha). Perhaps five or six years ago there was more of that, but not only is identification as trans nosediving, the overblown claims about it are also dropping away - we have plenty of visible, public trans people agreeing with me (no, that doesn't make me right, but as I see it, the logic does).
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, that's what I'm trying to illustrate. It could only be one of the three possibilities:
1. Sex
2. Social construct
3. Personal choice (maybe that's a disrespectful work, but it seems true if we're taking self-ID seriously as a concept.
Quoting Harry Hindu
This is exactly what one would expect from a social construct. Society expects X due to its construction, but sees Y and is perturbed (or whatever word.. for me, its more amused or excited (in the general "Hey, that's interesting" sense)).
Quoting Harry Hindu
This is getting dangerously close to the point: Wearing a dress doesn't make you a woman. I mean, my position is that a woman is an adult human female and gender is a different use of the word woman, which is never adequately parsed, so perhaps we're both barking at the wrong tree here? But, Ill address for the sake of clarity: If Gender is a social construct, then society tells you your gender. If most people treat you as 'a woman', that's what you are. Doesn't matter what you think or feel. Same for being 'a man'. This accords with (2.) above. For my part, I find this one a good argument to get beyond claims that gender is fully variant and choosable. If its a social construct, you, personally, don't get a say. This means that if you're a man, and society treats you as a man, and you turn up in a dress, you'll turn heads. That fits perfectly with gender-as-social-construct.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, that would be the case. I think it's the case even with (3.). With that, you are making a personal choice derived from social expectation still. That seems to me a social construct, the same way something like lawyering is considered a 'male' job. There's nothing particularly male about it (as opposed to oil drilling, let's say). The difference between (2.) and (3.) is that you tell society your gender in (3.) but the opposite in (2.).
Quoting Harry Hindu
It should be clear that to me, this is (3.) and not a social construct, per se.
Quoting Harry Hindu
For both (2.) and (3.) this is one of the realizations that prevented me from continuing down the gender theory pathway. It is senseless and counter to progress. It is misogynistic and sexist in ways that somewhat explain why it seems more prevalent among males and children (its something like four times more likely in someone under 18 - but data between sexes it not available, I am speculating with decent data sets).
Quoting Harry Hindu
Hmm, I don't think so - but that's because for me sex and gender come entirely apart at this stage of discussion. I thnk I've adequately defended that position, though. So seems reasonable to say on this that I entirely agree, but those stereotypes are (while derived from biological expectations) no longer reasonable, and so bled into 'gender' expectation like being quieter as a woman, or less defensive.
False. They are "transwomen" (typical XY) and "transmen" (typical XX). Period. Usually they suffer from gender dysphoric disorder (GDD). Otoh, men are adult males (typical XY) and women are adult females (typical XX). Ergo: e.g. it's reasonable (i.e. fair) to prohibit "transwomen" (typical XY) from physically competing against women (typical XX) in organized sports.
Addendum to
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/336888 (re: the Junk)
Transitioning children seems... dubious at best. Abusive at worst.
It was a bad idea.
Modern day research demonstrates it seems to be medical malpractice on children. First, the research that showed kids with gender dysphoria were more likely to kill themselves was shown to be false. When comorbidities such as depression and other mental health issues were isolated, it turned out the suicidality rate was equal to the expected rate of those comorbidities. Gender dysphoria itself has no significant suicidality rate.
We've also know for decades, with the last paper published in 2021, that if kids are not actively transitioned from 12 to 18, 50-80% of them do not transition as adults. Other research shows that around 80% of those who do not transition turn out to be gay.
Finally puberty blockers are an off label use of the drug to block puberty for kids with gender dysphoria. The theory was that if their puberty was blocked for a year or two, that it would give the child time to figure out if they really should transition or not. A deep study found out that 99% of kids put on puberty blockers transitioned, basically making it a pathway to transition whereas 50-89% of them would never have transitioned at all.
There is still a powerful faction of transgender activists that are still pushing for puberty blockers and medical transition for minors despite the above research. Reasons I've seen: "If I could have stopped my puberty prior to transition, I would look more like the opposite sex today". "Its just transphobic research. (No counter research, only an opinion)" "Trans is a natural state of being that you have when you are born and can't be changed"
Its very much a "We have to save the children" mentality that seems to stem more about 'saving the ideology' than a fact based approach. I've commented that trans ideology in the activist community is very much a secular religion, and going after kids to secure ideas and 'make trans normal' also seems to be a part of it. I also want to be clear that trans individuals who transitioned purely due to gender dysphoria generally do not seem to be pushing transition for kids. It is those who seem to enjoy transition, 'gender euphorics' who want to push this on kids as a reflection of their own desires. Finally, in case anyone thinks I'm 'transphobic', I supported puberty blockers initially and believed that in rare cases transition for kids might be the best medical practice. As more research has come out and I got to see the community personally, I have naturally changed my position.
There's something going on there. Why is being put on a puberty blocker such a powerful determinant for transitioning? Is the puberty blocker a casual agent for transitioning? Why? Why not just stop the blockers sometime in the future and be part of the 50-89% that don't transition. Is it a correlation? Are kids who get puberty blockers also the kids that are very serious about transitioning?
Again, this isn't my view. I have not known any children who have transitioned (or teens, for that matter) whcih I take to be a good thing (largely because this indicates the prevalence of gender dysphoria among children is perhaps lower than posited by activists).
The current argument that makes the most sense to me personally is that you need to go through puberty to really understand what its like to be male or female. Because being male and female is primarily about sex, and puberty is coming to terms with sex.
The thing is. In this discussion people often become less fair. They make assumptions about such an OP..and as a result they suddenly stop being philosophers. Deeply unfair offcourse. To be unfair and then not engage in proper discussion and project unfairness.
That said. If it is really so that I can be a woman (sex) in a male (sex) body. (I know one could define it as being a different gender role in a different body. But most people wouldn't fully be man or woman then if we strip the need for genitals, and additionally, eventually people often do they to assume they are truly more then just the societal role in a different body, they often tie it to hormones) Then some form of dualism must be true. then that's not so hard really. And how do we track this dualism? If it's a soul
Good luck. If it's property dualism arising from the brain also good luck. That will get messy. Because in the end the premises and logic used to derive one is a woman (sex) in a male (sex body) is likely to be very very problematic.
But what people tend to do is either believe that somehow it's possible or that possibly something is going on that goes beyond bad logic and actually touches on something about the brain that is yet unknown. And that we should have empathy for whatever this something is. Because if we are wrong and deny their claims, that's a moral horror. Whereas if we are right and their claims about being x in a not x body are wrong. Then it also feels bad for them.
The problem though is that there are many other cases where people believe something very strongly and if they are denied assent on their beliefs they can also feel very alone. Some even get institutionalized for other types of beliefs. Maybe they'd also feel better if we played along? I guess the key difference is the other beliefs (non gender or sex related) are usually less trivial more dangerous.
I however don't think that an entire society should lie. It's best we make a a clear difference between my mom who's born with a vagina and can have children and someone born with a penis who can't ever have children , who has to take hormones to bodily become more like a woman (sex). We can call them 'woman' (gender) in most social contexts (for empathy and reason). But we also should refrain from calling them genetic or biological women. (As to not become unfair, unrealistic, nor commit philosophical suicide)
You could tie it to hormonal levels. But most have to take hormones to change. Showing that they weren't already thanks to hormones other then their body. But yes. We can choose to call them whatever they like to be called. It's not a big deal. But let's be fair.
True, but I understand that. There's a lot of emotion that can be wrapped up in this, and I try to have patience and guide it back to 'just thinking about things'.Quoting Jack2848
I agree. For me, terms are for conveying accuracy of intent, not to cater to someone's emotional reaction over those words. So if someone told me, "I'm a doctor" but it was just that they really desired to be a doctor, me replying, "You're not a doctor", is not intended to insult, demean, or make them feel bad. Its just a correction to align with reality. If a person gets upset over an observation of reality that is not intended to demean, insult, or diminish an individual, but is truly intended to describe reality, I don't think anyone is under an obligation to change their terms.
Quoting Jack2848
I suppose this is an issue for me. Someone feeling bad about other people's perception of reality just doesn't seem to be a viable argument of obligation. I want to be clear, I don't mean bullying abuse, or intentional disrespect. Its about feeling bad about reality. That's just life. Reality has its ups and downs, and there are many realities that are uncomfortable that we have to learn to deal with.
To show this is not an armchair claim, I have bad facial scars from years of acne. I have rolling scars not only over my cheeks, but my forehead. I take people's breath away. My initial reactions with most people are wide eyes, a bit of panic, or the inability to look at me at all during the conversation. My face is literally something you would see in a horror movie, maybe worse.
When I was young and immature, I became despondent because I realized how shallow people are and that I would forever be cut off from humanity at a fundamental level. Anyone who tells you looks don't matter is a naive idiot. Fortunately, I might be ugly on the outside, but I've fostered not being ugly on the inside. Not that anyone cares, I do it for myself. I thought about it a while. Do other people owe me special treatment because my face is messed up? No. Do I have the right to be angry at them for it? No.
You see that's MY problem. And that means I have to deal with it. Not others. The guy who's uncomfortable looking at me doesn't have to look at me. The person who has panic is blameless. The person who is uncomfortable is ok. No one has to call me handsome or good looking. No one has to pretend I'm attractive. People can believe they are superior to me. Its all ok. Because its my problem, and I have to deal with it.
Has it been painful over the years? Of course. "Hell" is an apt moniker as I'm shy on top of it. I hate to be noticed by people in general, and it is impossible to blend in. I do not question that there would have been other people in my shoes who would have ended it. So when I hear of the anguish of a trans gender person and talks of suicide, I know. Not in theory, but in life experience.
It does not excuse me to demand other people treat me differently. The solution is not to 'pretend everything is ok and I really don't look that bad'. The solution is to recognize the reality of the situation, and learn to emotionally and rationally come to terms with it. That makes you strong. I could wear a mask, make up, or even visualize myself as having a clear face when I was younger. All of that is delusion that will eventually break down and leave you in a far worse state than if you just accepted it.
Quoting Jack2848
Agreed. I think a nice compromise has been 'trans woman'. Its an indicator that a male is trying to live their life as a woman. It might be painful for a trans person to acknowledge that they can't ever truly be the other sex, but that's just delusion otherwise. To become strong in character one must face the challenges of their life head on, honestly admit what they are, and deal with them understanding what they are doing. Anything else is shameful and makes you a burden to others. Asking others to call you something that you and they know isn't real is you making yourself a burden onto another person. I feel bad for the person taking that burden, but I also feel bad for the person who is so weak in character that they think being a burden is an entitlement on others and not a big deal. It is a big deal for many people.
I want to be clear, I understand both the pain and the desire that many trans people go through. But it doesn't make them special. It doesn't mean society has to treat them with anything more than the legal respect everyone else is entitled to in society. So 'trans woman' works. They aren't women. Trans men aren't men. They and society should acknowledge the reality of the situation, and learn to accept each other best we can despite our differences. That's what wins respect in society.
And that is why this topic exists. I wanted to chat about it with other people with a philosophical viewpoint. If you want the outcomes in life that you think 'should' be, you must 'do' instead of relying on others to do it.