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Transwomen are not Women - Part 14

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JoeMorgue

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Continued from here.
Posted By: Agatha


We've yet again looped back to "well do they follow the gender roles of the opposite sex" when I thought those were supposed to be bad things.

"I wear a dress and have long hair and makeup therefore you have to accept me as a girl."

No because I don't think women should have to wear dresses, long hair, and makeup.

And yes this IS the same thing. You can't have gender roles that only work if they are being done non-traditionally.

Now someone is going to say "Okay but nobody said transwomen HAVE to wear long hair and makeup" and I'm going to go ahead and pre-answer with "Of course because what transwomen have to do to 'meet the roles of the other gender' has never been answered."
 
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No, sorry. I knew this particular kid since pre-school when they were in my son's class. They started with all the presentation of a cis-boy and gradually the presentation changed. I remember someone's birthday party where they were rocking a My Little Pony footy-pajama-hoody with a unicorn horn sort of thing. There was one Halloween where this kid pulled off an amazing Zelda costume, for example. With all of it, it was clear that they were not a strict adherent to gender conformity. Fortunately, the school kids and parents, at least, were supportive and didn't give them any crap for it. Their dad implied that other aspects of their lives hadn't been so open-minded.

Their actual transition was in either 2nd or 3rd grade, I think, and consisted of a new first name, new pronouns, switching to the girl uniform, and using the girls' restroom. Again, everyone at school accepted it because it really wasn't that big of deal.
I get what you're saying... but ti Lithrael's point, that kid still isn't going to be subjected to the social pressures that females get. To some degree they might hear some of them, but a whole lot of them aren't going to land at all.

For example... Do you think that young male, who presents as a "girl", is genuinely going to be subjected to the same social constraints about sex and sexuality that females face? Do you think they're going to be subjected to a constant stream of conflicting pressures, on the one had a need to be chaste and not be a "slut" because "loose girls are dirty" and they "might get themselves pregnant"... while also being deluged with messaging to constantly be more sexy and to appear sexually available to males because their worth is based on whether or not males want them, and they don't want to end up as a "spinster" or an "old maid"? Do you think the pressures of birth control are going to have the same impact on that male child? Are they going to be faced with risking pregnancy or taking drugs that have unpleasant side effects, all because society views females as being completely responsible for protecting themselves from pregnancy, to the point where most females are expected to carry condoms in case the male they're interested in is too ******* dumb to take responsibility for their own sperm? When that child hits puberty, do you think their parent's are going to *shrink* their freedoms, and start limiting their ability to spend time with males without direct adult supervision, be expected to be effectively chaperoned in public and never alone because of the risk of sexual assault? Or do you think that child's parents are likely to allow them greater freedoms, room to roam and explore, and greater autonomy which is what most males experience at puberty? Is that child going to be pressured to be discreet about their bodily functions, because "girls don't fart or burp or spit"? Will they face embarrassment and worry about whether or not their pad might leak and then everyone would know they were bleeding from their vagina?

Sure, there are going to be some experiences that a young male who presents as a "girl" might face, especially if they pass relatively well. But you severely underestimate the amount of pressures and expectations that are sex-based. Like, based on actual real sex, not on whether or not we like sparkly things. Even the most tomboyish, masculine, wild young female ends up being subjected to the sex-based pressures, no matter how much people like you think they don't "look" appropriately "ladylike".


But if you don't want to go on formally-twitter, there are situations like this where people tried to stop cis-women from using the women's restroom because others didn't believe they were biologically female. The first time I'd heard of that kind of thing happening was when it happened to a friend of mine.

The inability to discern sex from outer appearance is common enough that Aerosmith wrote a song about it 40 years ago.
First off, "Dude looks like a Lady" isn't about the inability of humans to discern sex. It's about a transvestite.

And that leads into my second point - we're EXTREMELY good at discerning the sex of adults. There've been numerous studies that demonstrate that even when you remove all makeup and hair, we can correctly identify the sex of a person from their face alone with about 99% accuracy.

On the other hand... when people make a concerted and intentional effort to obfuscate their sex and to mimic the markers of the opposite sex, yes, it gets more difficult. Sexual mimicry can and does complicate things. But that doesn't mean that we're not incredibly good at determining sex, it just means that we can be tricked by people who make efforts to present false indicators.

For consideration, we can tell an orange from a tennis ball pretty easily. But if you take a tennis ball and you layer on a textured coating, paint it orange, and glue a stem to the top, we're going to be fooled. That doesn't in any way suggest that humans are really bad at telling the difference between an orange and a tennis ball!

My point is that, from a purely biological fairness point of view, the contents of one's pants seems the least relevant of any of the physical traits for any competition that wouldn't be against forum rules to discuss.
This is where you start to sound like you're being intentionally disingenuous. You know damned good and well that the divisions in sports aren't based on genitals. They're based on the fact that humans are sexually dimorphic, and that dimorphism results in males being bigger, stronger, having more muscle, more fast-twitch fibers, greater lung capacity, larger hearts, and a femur-to-hip angle that is advantageous in running and most swimming. A male can totally cut off their penis and testicles, have an artificially constructed facsimile of a vagina... and they will STILL have all of the physiological advantages of being male.

This aspect of the discussion is not, and has never been, about genitals. Don't expect me to believe that you're completely ignorant of that fact.

Wouldn't segregation by height or, perhaps, arm span make more sense, if the goal was to reduce biological advantage and to focus on practiced and developed skill?
Sure, sure. But while you're at it, you might want to incorporate additional divisions around lung capacity, heart size, and the angle of the femur.

Or, you know, you could apply some very basic and well understood sense to the issue, and realize that all of those extremely important criteria are strongly correlated with sex, and then you can short-cut the entire process and just use sex as the dividing factor since that's what the resultant sorting is going to produce as an actual outcome.

Unless... unless the reality is that you give zero ***** about females, and you are quite happy to see females excluded from athletics and competition altogether.
 
We've yet again looped back to "well do they follow the gender roles of the opposite sex" when I thought those were supposed to be bad things.

"I wear a dress and have long hair and makeup therefore you have to accept me as a girl."

No because I don't think women should have to wear dresses, long hair, and makeup.

And yes this IS the same thing. You can't have gender roles that only work if they are being done non-traditionally.

Now someone is going to say "Okay but nobody said transwomen HAVE to wear long hair and makeup" and I'm going to go ahead and pre-answer with "Of course because what transwomen have to do to 'meet the roles of the other gender' has never been answered."

To be fair, it's a bit more complex than just that. It's not just the presentation aspects.

And yes, a whole lot of those social expectations are ******** that should be done away with. In fact, they *were* going away, all through the 80s and early 90s. But they've come back with a vengeance, and in part we have the trans movement to thank for that regression.

There are a LOT of social pressures that are based not on what a person likes or dislikes but on their actual, real sex.

Think about all the various aspect of your childhood and teen years that were related to your body. Even as infants, parents must treat male and female babies differently. Not in terms of what toys or colors or clothing they choose... but in terms of hygiene and care. Parent's are going to put a cone or cloth over the genitals of a male infant, just so they don't get peed on all the damned time. They're going to have to properly clean under a male infant's foreskin, and make sure their urethral opening is clean. On the other hand, they're going to have to make absolutely sure they're wiping front to back if the baby is female, and they're going to have to take extra care to make sure that the infant's vulva remains untouched by feces or they risk a UTI. And they need to check for labial irritation from improperly fitted diapers or diaper rash. As young kids, potty training differs for males and females too.

At puberty, there are a lot of differences that arise from sex as well. At a minimum, our bodies develop differently, and thus our education differs. Beyond that, there are different behavioral pressures that arise. Things like young females no longer being allowed to go topless (assuming they had liberal enough parents to allow it as pre-pubertal children). Females are conditioned to not expose a lot of flesh in early puberty, to be very conscious of how their breasts protrude, how much thigh is exposed, and whether or not their undergarments are visible through their clothes. It might seem like this is just social... but there's an aspect of biology here as well. As females become sexually mature males become very aware of it, and the risk of sexual harassment and assault rises dramatically. Females are taught to be aware of what inadvertent signals they might be sending, and to take steps to minimize undesirable sexual attention from males. We're conditioned to exist in the world in groups, never alone, for our own safety. Males have to learn to deal with random erections, wet dreams, etc. They also start being taught not to stare at female bodies (hopefully they're taught this, sometimes I think it gets missed), and what not to do with female friends. The dynamic between the sexes alters, and the nature of friendship between males and females changes as sexuality enters the picture.

There's a lot of social claptrap that is unrelated to sex. There's a lot of stereotypes and conditioning that should rightly be called "gendered expectations". Things like males being expected (and often encouraged) to be loud, opinionated, adventurous, energetic, and competitive. Things like females being expected to be quiet, docile, cooperative, calm, and to sublimate their desires to the desires of others. All of that is crap and needs to go.

But not all of our conditioning is purely social. There's a fair bit of it that is directly related to our sex, and is a component of us being a sexually dimorphic species with different bodies and different risks.
 
Which again, brings us right back to first principles.

When a person identifies as trans rather then cis, what changes? And I mean what actually, functionally, measurably, objectively changes.

We've been having this discussion for years now, it's one of the major social debates going on, and the degree to which that most basic and simple and core question not only hasn't been answered but hasn't even been attempted to be answered at this point since it's the whole point is frankly absurd.

1. "It's complicated" is not an answer.
2. "It's a spectrum" is not an answer.
3. "It's a case by case basis" is not an answer.
4. "An entirely internal and non-falsifiable sense of self identity changes" is not an answer.
5. Something is functionally equivalent to "They want to be the other sex" is not an answer.
6. "I don't understand the question" is not an answer.
 
Upchurch

I notice you have studiously avoided answering the question I posed to you in this post....

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14221258&postcount=3012

Care to have a go?

Can you reconcile your answers with your earlier statement that "We very rarely directly observe a person's sex"?

Or would you prefer to continue dodging inconvenient questions, and feigning a lack of understanding?

Inquiring minds want to know!
 
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Hey Upchurch...

CatImpatient.gif


Still waiting!
 
Care to have a go?

“Won’t you drink from this not-at-all poisoned well? *wink*”

You already know my answer, because:
  1. I’ve made no secret that I reject essentialism, as have most sociologists since at least the 80s.
  2. the idea of that photos of people with even hignly normative gender expressions are deterministic of a wide range of their biological characteristics is reductive.
  3. you already have poisoned the well by saying that anyone who does not assume binary 1-to-1 determinism is, and I directly quote, “a ******* moron”.

So, no. I don’t care to have a go. After all, I’m the disingenuous one.

Thanks for the offer, though.
 
“Won’t you drink from this not-at-all poisoned well? *wink*”

You already know my answer, because:
  1. I’ve made no secret that I reject essentialism, as have most sociologists since at least the 80s.
  2. the idea of that photos of people with even hignly normative gender expressions are deterministic of a wide range of their biological characteristics is reductive.
  3. you already have poisoned the well by saying that anyone who does not assume binary 1-to-1 determinism is, and I directly quote, “a ******* moron”.

So, no. I don’t care to have a go. After all, I’m the disingenuous one.

Thanks for the offer, though.


Weasel-worded philosobabble!

You made a claim, and now you are not prepared to back it up.... how surprising! :rolleyes:
 
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Good we've made it a philosophical question.

At this rate we'll soon get to "I can only speak English when making a point and can only speak pidgin when answering a question."
 
They're sociology terms, not philosophy.

If you're going to make fun of how stupid I am, you should at least get the field of study right.
 
We've asked you simple, reasonable questions and you've avoided them.

You're not the victim here.
 
And yes, a whole lot of those social expectations are ******** that should be done away with. In fact, they *were* going away, all through the 80s and early 90s. But they've come back with a vengeance, and in part we have the trans movement to thank for that regression.

As a woman who has spent her whole life fighting gender stereotypes, ever since starting my first engineering job in 1970, this is what I find particularly depressing. Why can't people just wear what they want to wear, behave as they are naturally inclined to behave, without needing to "identify as" anything at all?

I've encountered some prejudice whilst pursuing a career in a predominantly male industry, but the only difference my being female has made to my choices and actions has been due to the fact that it inevitably makes me vulnerable to male sexual predators. Now I'm seeing women's ability to keep themselves safe being eroded in order to perpetuate the very stereotypes my generation rejected.
 
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They're sociology terms, not philosophy

Really??

Terms you used....

Essentialism - Essentialism: The belief and practice centered on a philosophical claim that for any specific kind of entity it is at least theoretically possible to specify a finite list of characteristics, all of which any entity must have to belong to the group defined.

Determinisim - Determinism:The philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition, decision, and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences.

Reductive - Reductionism: A number of related, contentious theories that hold, very roughly, that the nature of complex things can always be reduced to (be explained by) simpler or more fundamental things. This is said of objects, phenomena, explanations, theories, and meanings. In short, it is philosophical materialism taken to its logical consequences.


Hilarious. You don't even understand the terminology of your own philosobabble!
 
As a woman who has spent her whole life fighting gender stereotypes, ever since starting my first engineering job in 1970, this is what I find particularly depressing. Why can't people just wear what they want to wear, behave as they are naturally inclined to behave, without needing to "identify as" anything at all?

I agree 100%, but can tell you why they do it. Because they have been told to do it by the pro self ID idiots and their supporters. Its not enough to just be allowed to tell themselves who they are, they MUST tell everyone else and push it in their faces. They must force their ideas on everyone. They want the public at large to play by their rules.

Well, **** them! I refuse to play along with this stupid game of theirs. If someone who is obviously a man, tries telling me they self-ID as a woman, and that I must use "miss" or "mrs" pronouns, I will simply refuse to do so. I will avoid using any pronoun at all in most situations, an in those that require one, in the first person I will use their surname if I know it, or "you" if I don't, and in the third person I will use "them" or "it".
 
As a woman who has spent her whole life fighting gender stereotypes, ever since starting my first engineering job in 1970, this is what I find particularly depressing. Why can't people just wear what they want to wear, behave as they are naturally inclined to behave, without needing to "identify as" anything at all?
I've encountered some prejudice whilst pursuing a career in a predominantly male industry, but the only difference my being female has made to my choices and actions has been due to the fact that it inevitably makes me vulnerable to male sexual predators. Now I'm seeing women's ability to keep themselves safe being eroded in order to perpetuate the very stereotypes my generation rejected.
Indeed.
 
All science is rooted in philosophy. It's not unusual for terms to be borrowed from it. Physics, for example, had it's own version of determinism until it got wrecked by quantum mechanics. Now, whenever it is used, it is forever firmly affixed with an implied asterisk.

I didn't think it was necessary, when talking about sex and gender, that I would need to specify that I was referring to "gender essentialism" or ..."sex-gender determinism", I guess? I'm not sure it has that specific of a label in that context. Both terms have specific meanings. But I will admit, I consider "reductive" to just be a common ol' descriptive word. It didn't even occur to me that it's etymology is specifically philosophical in origin.

I'm getting mixed signals whether more precise language is better or not. However, I have no problem with the idea that I'm defending sociological ideas using the science that studies them. I will happily "hide behind" the science.


And not to be left out, I'll follow the trend of bumping posts. In this case, ones that show me doing the thing I've been told I'm not doing:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=14220914#post14220914
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=14221365#post14221365
 
Really the whole "Identity" and all the weird baggage that comes with it seems to be the major point of dispute here.

Take the "I identity as this and you have to accept that" off the table and this discussion doesn't get easy, but it gets a lot easier.

Again if we could just go "How should we treat other people and not worry so damn much about how I label you in my brain" that would go a long way.

But I've been screaming, crying, begging, pleading, everything short of bribing anyone who will listen to explain to me what changes when a person "identifies" as something and at this point not getting an answer has to be deliberate.
 
All science is rooted in philosophy. It's not unusual for terms to be borrowed from it. Physics, for example, had it's own version of determinism until it got wrecked by quantum mechanics. Now, whenever it is used, it is forever firmly affixed with an implied asterisk.

I didn't think it was necessary, when talking about sex and gender, that I would need to specify that I was referring to "gender essentialism" or ..."sex-gender determinism", I guess? I'm not sure it has that specific of a label in that context. Both terms have specific meanings. But I will admit, I consider "reductive" to just be a common ol' descriptive word. It didn't even occur to me that it's etymology is specifically philosophical in origin.

I'm getting mixed signals whether more precise language is better or not. However, I have no problem with the idea that I'm defending sociological ideas using the science that studies them. I will happily "hide behind" the science.


And not to be left out, I'll follow the trend of bumping posts. In this case, ones that show me doing the thing I've been told I'm not doing:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=14220914#post14220914
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=14221365#post14221365

All you did was link back to posts where you didn't answer anything, you just said "It's complicated" for 3 paragraphs.

Simple questions have been asked of you. You haven't answered them and have accused other members of things they didn't do.

Please actually answer the questions. Don't talk about why you can't answer them.
 
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Here's a question I've asked multiple times to the trans side.

Can a person say 'I am this gender' and be wrong? If not this is an amazingly meaningless distinction to make.
 
“Won’t you drink from this not-at-all poisoned well? *wink*”

You already know my answer, because:
  1. I’ve made no secret that I reject essentialism, as have most sociologists since at least the 80s.
  2. the idea of that photos of people with even hignly normative gender expressions are deterministic of a wide range of their biological characteristics is reductive.
  3. you already have poisoned the well by saying that anyone who does not assume binary 1-to-1 determinism is, and I directly quote, “a ******* moron”.

So, no. I don’t care to have a go. After all, I’m the disingenuous one.

Thanks for the offer, though.

JFC.

This is not biological essentialism. Essentialism is:
The belief that ‘human nature’, an individual's personality, or some specific quality (such as intelligence, creativity, homosexuality, masculinity, femininity, or a male propensity to aggression) is an innate and natural ‘essence’ (rather than a product of circumstances, upbringing, and culture).

It's also not determinism. Determinism takes the position that a person's genetics alone determines their personality and their behavior. In the context of sex, it gets used synonymously with essentialism.

We're not talking about people's personalities, and what their "natural" behavior is, and what roles in society that "essential nature" makes them suited or unsuited for. We're talking about physical reality, the phenotypes associated with our reproductive role (which is NOT social in nature) and the associated secondary characteristics that are a result of sexual dimorphism.

Your extraordinary claim that we're completely unable to tell what sex a person is unless we literally see their genitals uncovered is fantasist claptrap. It defies millions of years of evolution, not just of the human species but of nearly all mammals.

We're not talking about "gender expression" either. Gender expression is the set of external accessories that get used to "signal" our sex. These are socially constructed, but they're also not rigid. And with the exception of extremely rare cases, they don't obfuscate our observation of a person's sexual characteristics. Those rare cases, by the way, are nearly always ones where a person has gone to great lengths to intentionally hide their natural secondary characteristics and to mimic those of the opposite sex.

Once again, I will point out that if YOU toss on a dress and some lippy, you're not going to suddenly be mistaken for a female. Similarly, if your female spouse tosses on some dungarees and work boots, nobody is going to accidentally assume they have a penis.

Take a collection of 1000 bog-standard adult human males and put them in dresses and heels, and 999 of them will be CORRECTLY identified as males by random passersby. Take a collection of 1000 bog-standard adult human females and put them in trousers and loafers, and 995 of them will be CORRECTLY identified as females by random passersby.

You might note that there's a slight difference there - it's easier for females to pass as males than the other way around. There are a host of BIOLOGICAL reasons for this. I could explain them to you, but it requires you to actually acknowledge that males and females are different in some fundamental ways, and that those differences begin in the womb and are significantly increased at puberty.

And at the moment, you seem to be making the transparently false claim that there's no observable differences between the sexes, it's all just based on clothing and make-up. Please stop uttering nonsense.
 
As a woman who has spent her whole life fighting gender stereotypes, ever since starting my first engineering job in 1970, this is what I find particularly depressing. Why can't people just wear what they want to wear, behave as they are naturally inclined to behave, without needing to "identify as" anything at all?

I've encountered some prejudice whilst pursuing a career in a predominantly male industry, but the only difference my being female has made to my choices and actions has been due to the fact that it inevitably makes me vulnerable to male sexual predators. Now I'm seeing women's ability to keep themselves safe being eroded in order to perpetuate the very stereotypes my generation rejected.

It's distressing, isn't it?

I'm a bit younger than you, having entered the workforce in the mid-90s. But even through my college career studying mathematics, there was so much less reinforcement of stereotypes than there is now. Pretty much the only time that typical female clothing and makeup came into my mind was when I was trying to attract a sexual partner... or as you say, trying to avoid the attention of predators.

It's come back as I've progressed in my career though. As a lower level analyst, it didn't matter at all that I almost always wore trousers and flats, with no make-up. As long as I was clean and looked like I picked my clothing on purpose, nobody cared. When I moved into lower-level management, it started to matter more. I noticed that higher-level leadership (especially males) didn't take me seriously unless I fit their view of "professional woman", which often meant heels and make-up, though I still didn't wear make-up.

Right now, I'm progressing into upper-level leadership, and it's a decision point for me. I don't dye my hair, and it's graying in a rather nice fashion IMO. But I'm now at a point where I really do need to wear make-up if I'm interacting with peers and executives. I'm still not doing heels though, those are the invention of sadists. But I find myself choosing pant suits that are tailored to a female form. It sucks, they're not generally as comfortable... but the reinforcement of stereotypes is making it nearly impossible to avoid. :(

And I get downright depressed when I talk to younger females, especially those in their twenties and thirties. The expectation that they not only dress in "feminine" attire, but outright sexualized attire is rife. If they don't show some skin, they get ignored... but if they do show some skin, they get objectified. It's a catch-22.

When I'm feeling particularly conspiracy-minded, I imagine that there's some sort of Illuminati of Males out there, engaged in concerted social engineering with the objective of coercing females to become subordinate vessels owned by males. :(
 
I agree 100%, but can tell you why they do it. Because they have been told to do it by the pro self ID idiots and their supporters. Its not enough to just be allowed to tell themselves who they are, they MUST tell everyone else and push it in their faces. They must force their ideas on everyone. They want the public at large to play by their rules.

Well, **** them! I refuse to play along with this stupid game of theirs. If someone who is obviously a man, tries telling me they self-ID as a woman, and that I must use "miss" or "mrs" pronouns, I will simply refuse to do so. I will avoid using any pronoun at all in most situations, an in those that require one, in the first person I will use their surname if I know it, or "you" if I don't, and in the third person I will use "them" or "it".

:thumbsup: It's actually not as hard as I thought it would be. It's been... at least two years now that I've been using exclusively neutral pronouns here. So far as I can tell, nobody has yet been confused with regard to who I'm referencing. Sometimes it takes an extra second of read-through to make sure I'm disambiguating, but it's been easier than I expected.
 
Why can't people just wear what they want to wear, behave as they are naturally inclined to behave, without needing to "identify as" anything at all?
Indeed.
Slight aside for the fun of it... When I was in my freshman and sophomore year of college, I dated a male who routinely wore a skirt. It was some hippie-wear thing that was sold as unisex, and could be easily converted into weird wrap-around tie-dyed pants, or left loose as a skirt. They had three or four of them in different colors, and always wore them as skirts... because it was more comfortable and kept their balls from getting sweaty.

No "identity" was needed - this was the early 90s, and it was okay for males to wear makeup and lace and spangly stuff if they wanted to. Prince would roll over in their grave to see what's become of the world these days.
 
At this point I don't even know what "identity" means. It certainly seems to have taken on a meaning beyond "The collection of factual demographic variables that I am" to some people and has morphed into something somewhere between a horoscope sign and a soul.

I don't "identify" as anything in the sense of making conscious decisions to be this or that. I am certain things that are objectively true. I am biologically male, left handed, a Type O+ bloodtype, about 5'9, 185 lbs on a good day. But these are things that are up for debate. You can't argue them. I don't "identify" as them as if it were a verb, I just AM those things.

Those things are part of my identity but I don't "identify" as them. It's not a verb, it's adjectives.

The trans side seems to be using "Identify as" as a way to take "I want to be" and codify it into some special kind of actually, literally being.

And honestly I sorta think that is what happened. "I was born a man but I wish I had been born a woman" makes 100%, absolute, not complicated, not a "spectrum" sense. I fully understand it and get it. You tell me that, and there is no confusion.

But sorry changing the inherent sexual dimorphism of the human species is hard. We can barely begin to do it and questions as to whether we can ever fully do it is complicated.

And that's frustrating for people who feel they were born in the wrong bodies and I have sympathy for that. And it's doubly frustrating in a society which still puts so many nonsense rules on the sexes. Being in a society that makes men and women do a bunch of stupid crap just because they were born men and women AND feeling like you were meant for the other role must suck and I mean that.

But it's still to big a jump from that to "Therefore I can just identify as the other side."
 
The whole mythology of the "trans person who can perfectly pass" is something we've had to deal with before. And nobody is buying it. The trans closet is about as closed as the gay closet was and newflash my homie sexuals the gay closet was NEVER as closed as you thought it was. The "Closet" was always more about plausible deniability and being able to maintain the illusion that nobody knew rather then literally not knowing.

There was a period a year or so back when the discussion was just flooded with insufferable people who thought it was a trump card to post pictures of post-op trans people who had A) where obviously lucky enough to be somewhat androgynous to begin with, B) had obviously had a LOT of work done, and C) were still images taken in perfect lightning that we couldn't see in motion or context and go "Oh so you're saying this person should us this bathroom?" over and over and over and over and over.

And no. in 99.9999999999999999% of cases you don't "pass." There is just too much sexual dimorphism in the human species. Things like height, weight, build, shoulder width, hip width, Adams apples, facial structure, facial hair, breasts... they don't change when you "identity" as something else.
 
Exactly. This debate would be a lot different if it were about naturally effeminate males who wish they could just be left alone to pass as women like they naturally tend to do anyway.

The whole point of preferred pronouns is that the people that prefer them aren't passing.

ETA: And while I am not saying Upchurch should shut up, I do wish he'd engage with the actual problem, rather than chasing every single red herring in the TRA playbook.
 
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At this point I don't even know what "identity" means. It certainly seems to have taken on a meaning beyond "The collection of factual demographic variables that I am" to some people and has morphed into something somewhere between a horoscope sign and a soul.

I don't "identify" as anything in the sense of making conscious decisions to be this or that. I am certain things that are objectively true. I am biologically male, left handed, a Type O+ bloodtype, about 5'9, 185 lbs on a good day. But these are things that are up for debate. You can't argue them. I don't "identify" as them as if it were a verb, I just AM those things.

Those things are part of my identity but I don't "identify" as them. It's not a verb, it's adjectives.

The trans side seems to be using "Identify as" as a way to take "I want to be" and codify it into some special kind of actually, literally being.

I think this has been posted in various forms before, but it's not a common bit that's been talked to death, so I'll toss it out here again :)

There are two commonly used meaning for "identity".

The first, and by far the most common, is the set of objective characteristics that other people use to disambiguate you from other people. These tend to be physical most of the time - height, weight, eye color, hair color, etc. These are the types of things that end up on your various identification documents, which you use to prove that you are you to officials. Sometimes, this sort of identity extends beyond the physical, in which case it's usually associated with either a career or a very strong reputation. Again, though, these are items that other people use to pick you out of a crowd.

The other, less prevalent type of "identity" is a psychological aspect. It's the set of characteristics that forms your view of yourself for yourself. It's usually a combination of how you see yourself and how you want other people to see you, and it's usually based on personality and behavioral characteristics. For most well-adjusted people, how we think of ourselves is a fair reflection of how other people think about us - we are what we present to the world, we're honest in how we interact with others, and we're fairly objective about how we see ourselves. A lot of people have an element of psychological identity that is important to them, and it's very rarely something physical. It's usually associated with accomplishments, overcoming challenges, etc. Sometimes it's a little more nuanced. So for example, part of my psychological identity is associated with being an actuary, in particular with the type of thinking about uncertainties that comes with that. But another part of my psychological identity is associated with being a clear communicator. It's important to me that I feel that I'm understood, and to meet that need, I've put a lot of work into making sure that other people understand what I'm saying. I work with a lot of very complex information, with a high degree of uncertainty and varying degrees of materiality - being able to explain why my recommendation is a good recommendation, and support how I've come to that conclusion is vital to both my career and my sense of well-being.

I don't have the reference for this... but there's been some psychological research done that touches on these two types of identity. When we're asked to outline another person's identity, we tend to lean heavily on physical attributes (the first type of identity). When we're asked to outline our own identity, we tend to incorporate a lot more psychological and personality characteristics (the second type of identity). This is of course because we understand our own reasoning and thinking, and that's all opaque when we're talking about someone else. :)

There's a fair amount of the DSM-5 that is focused around Identity Disorders. In some people, the way they see themselves is in contradiction to how other people see them. These aren't perception disorders (like anorexia), where a person's perception of themselves differs from objective reality. These are based on the psychological characteristics that a person associates with themselves, but which are not in evidence by their observed behaviors and personalities. Identity Disorders often occur in tandem with various Behavioral or Personality Disorders, to greater or lesser degree.

The problem with the whole trans thing, to my mind at least, is that these are people who take their Psychological Identity and want to force other people to perceive them that way. How they view themselves is in contradiction to how other people view them... and they want other people to be required to adopt their own psychological identity as if it were reality. They think of themselves as having the psychological characteristics (which are often incredibly sexist in nature) of the opposite sex, regardless of whether they actually exhibit those characteristics or not. And they want other people to interpret their physical identity differently. So a male might psychologically see themselves as being delicate, feminine, graceful, sexy, sensual, submissive, emotional, etc. And because they believe that those psychological characteristic are an innate aspect of females (note that this is actually biological essentialism) they then wish for everyone else to see them as being female. In reality, most of the time, they aren't seen as being female by objective observers, and a whole lot of the time they're not perceived as having any of the behavioral traits they associate with females either. Many of them are quite aggressive and dominating, and are observably male. So at the end of the day, their "identity" becomes a force of coercion and control of those around them.
 
Yeah and like I said the second definition is functionally 100% identical to "Things you want to be."

Sure there's semantics at play here but there no functional difference between a desire to be something else and this "psychological identity."
 
(...)we're EXTREMELY good at discerning the sex of adults. There've been numerous studies that demonstrate that even when you remove all makeup and hair, we can correctly identify the sex of a person from their face alone with about 99% accuracy.

Who's 'we,' giimoozaabi? Outliers exist and those of us who don't clock gender at all well are some of the people most thrown by all of this.

On the other hand... when people make a concerted and intentional effort to obfuscate their sex and to mimic the markers of the opposite sex, yes, it gets more difficult. Sexual mimicry can and does complicate things. But that doesn't mean that we're not incredibly good at determining sex, it just means that we can be tricked by people who make efforts to present false indicators.

OK but I feel like here you are conflating like actual medical intervention 'false indicators' and just plain 'what do you mean? I woke up like this!' hair-and-makeup 'false indicators' and the distinction is important if you claim to be frustrated with what you see as transgenderism's reinforcement of gender essentialist gender performance. If ideally it should be ok for a guy who thinks of himself as a man to dress all the way up to the wetlook lips and high heels, is he still gonna be described as 'tricking' people?

Lastly I'm gonna be doubtful that 'you gotta dress up more like a lady from TV to be taken seriously as an exec or as a new hire' is a corporate pressure that's either a) actually suddenly resurgent after having gone away or b) got much to do with the influence of the transgenders being more of a thing now.

Joe: Yeah nothing, just the way they'd like to be adressed, that's it, gender is fake but that's a truth the world is not ready for

Upchurch: Again though, families that don't do a strong gender lean still don't get you a kid that is socialized as (gender) for the gender-socialization effects we're talking about, like baseline encouragement/discouragement for a range of gender normative activities. Apart from anything else, the immidiate family aren't the only people the kid will ever be interacting with. Again, the gender enforcement stuff isn't done by EVERYONE, just by enough people that a kid picks it up.
 
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The whole mythology of the "trans person who can perfectly pass" is something we've had to deal with before. And nobody is buying it. The trans closet is about as closed as the gay closet was and newflash my homie sexuals the gay closet was NEVER as closed as you thought it was. The "Closet" was always more about plausible deniability and being able to maintain the illusion that nobody knew rather then literally not knowing.

Look ok look for real.
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. I disagree as strongly as it is possible to disagree. Like, adrenalin amounts of disagree.

In the Venn diagram for both of these groups 'it's obvious, you're just in denial' is a smaller circle inside a circle that's bigger than you apparantly think.
 
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Yeah and like I said the second definition is functionally 100% identical to "Things you want to be."

Sure there's semantics at play here but there no functional difference between a desire to be something else and this "psychological identity."

:D The only difference is that for normal, non-disordered people, they don't desire to be something else. Their psychological view of themselves is fairly well aligned to their actual behavior.

Like, I'd guess that most of the posters here see themselves as "intelligent". And for the vast majority, they're pretty much right. Virtually everyone who posts here regularly is more intelligent than the average person, often by a fair margin. So their internal view of their personalities is largely in agreement with how other people perceive them.

;) Sometimes they aren't perceived as being as intelligent as they think they are, but compared to an average person, they're still accurate.
 
Look ok look for real. **** all the way off. I disagree as strongly as it is possible to disagree. Like, adrenalin amounts of disagree.

In the Venn diagram for both of these groups 'it's obvious, you're just in denial' is a smaller circle inside a circle that's bigger than you apparantly think.

So you're telling me that you are of the opinion that there is a statistically meaningful number of people out there that I am/would be wrong about their biological sex based on their outward, for lack of a better term, presentation and the fact that I disagree with you about this makes meaningfully angry?

I'm just laying out in plan words where this discussion is at right now.

You're mad at me because I said in most cases a person can't fool another person for any reasonable length of time as to their biological sex.
 
:D The only difference is that for normal, non-disordered people, they don't desire to be something else. Their psychological view of themselves is fairly well aligned to their actual behavior.

Like, I'd guess that most of the posters here see themselves as "intelligent". And for the vast majority, they're pretty much right. Virtually everyone who posts here regularly is more intelligent than the average person, often by a fair margin. So their internal view of their personalities is largely in agreement with how other people perceive them.

;) Sometimes they aren't perceived as being as intelligent as they think they are, but compared to an average person, they're still accurate.

I don't think they are disordered. I think they are wrong about the practical application of how they choose to express and perceive gender roles. Again I've never let myself demonize them.

I consider myself intelligent and there are plenty of things I'd rather be then "me." I'd much rather be 6'4" with far less body fat and a stronger jawline, I just don't think "identify" as that when I'm demonstratably not has any meaning.
 
Who's 'we,' giimoozaabi? Outliers exist and those of us who don't clock gender at all well are some of the people most thrown by all of this.
"We" being the overwhelming majority of human beings. If you, specifically, suck at this, that's your problem. And your outlier status does not redefine reality for the whole ******* species. FFS, this is some argumentative playground BS. This is more or less up there with people wanting to pop in and say "What do you mean "we" are a bipedal species? I only have one leg!!!!!" It's inane on its face, so please don't do it.

OK but I feel like here you are conflating like actual medical intervention 'false indicators' and just plain 'what do you mean? I woke up like this!' hair-and-makeup 'false indicators' and the distinction is important if you claim to be frustrated with what you see as transgenderism's reinforcement of gender essentialist gender performance. If ideally it should be ok for a guy who thinks of himself as a man to dress all the way up to the wetlook lips and high heels, is he still gonna be described as 'tricking' people?
"I just woke up like this" is mistaken as the opposite sex so extremely rarely that an intelligent and good-faith interlocutor would not try to foist it off as having any relevance to what I said.

Lastly I'm gonna be doubtful that 'you gotta dress up more like a lady from TV to be taken seriously as an exec or as a new hire' is a corporate pressure that's either a) actually suddenly resurgent after having gone away or b) got much to do with the influence of the transgenders being more of a thing now.

:rolleyes: Okay. You doubt away then. You've already claimed to be an outlier in a whole lot of ways, so if you're also painfully oblivious to the resurgence of stereotypes and the pressure they exert in professional roles, I'm supremely unconcerned by your doubt.

But hey, why don't you go do some research? Go look at female executives throughout the developed world... and get back to me on how many of them conform to female clothing standard expectations (dress or skirt suit, or female-tailored pant suit, makeup, hair style) and how many don't? That would be a good start to test whether your argument from disbelief holds any water or not, and maybe give you a chance for some introspection.

You might also note that I didn't attribute all of this reinforcement of sexist stereotypes to transgender ideology. You might note that... if you actually read for comprehension rather than your de rigeur opportunistic drive-by to let us all know that you're an exception and don't agree with me or the other females who post in this thread regularly. We get it, you're "not like other girls". Great for you.
 
I don't think they are disordered. I think they are wrong about the practical application of how they choose to express and perceive gender roles. Again I've never let myself demonize them.
It's disordered in the same way that my bipolar sibling's perception of themself as being a true sweetheart who never hurts anyone's feelings, and is really just the victim of an entire world full of meanies is disordered.

It's not a demonization. It's an accurate term for someone whose beliefs and self-perception are significantly in contradiction to objective reality.

I consider myself intelligent and there are plenty of things I'd rather be then "me." I'd much rather be 6'4" with far less body fat and a stronger jawline, I just don't think "identify" as that when I'm demonstratably not has any meaning.
Sure, but you understand the distinction between what you wish you were and what you are, don't you? You comprehend that your wishes are just wishes, and that no amount of wanting is going to make it materialize, right?

That's where the difference between ordered and disordered thinking comes in.

If you started going around telling everyone that you "identify" as a 6'4" person with Bruce Campbell's chin, and then insisting that they must all accept you as such for realsies... Then I would say your thinking was disordered. ;)
 
Over and over we get someone popping in and saying that trans is so incredibly rare that it totally doesn't matter at all if transgender identified males compete in female sports. It's a non-issue, and essentially, females should just STFU and let the males win.

I'm going to try to add a link whenever yet another male wins a female competition, thereby displacing a female and depriving them of fairness in sport.

Here's one from today:
https://twitter.com/ReduxxMag/status/1734282808443466060

A trans-identified male is now the Women's Singlespeed national champion after seizing gold at the USA Cycling Cyclocross Championships last week in Louisville, Kentucky.

Kylie Small was competing with men as recently as April of this year.
 
Over and over we get someone popping in and saying that trans is so incredibly rare that it totally doesn't matter at all if transgender identified males compete in female sports. It's a non-issue, and essentially, females should just STFU and let the males win.

I'm going to try to add a link whenever yet another male wins a female competition, thereby displacing a female and depriving them of fairness in sport.

Here's one from today:
https://twitter.com/ReduxxMag/status/1734282808443466060
Let’s grant for the sake of argument that trans folk winning sports championships is very rare. It won’t matter, then, to the vast majority of competitors. But it will matter to the competitors that get beaten by the trans person. Those competitors by themselves deserve some sort of accommodation.
 
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