It’s not that they want it to be indefinable it’s just that it really pretty much IS. It’s too variable and too personal. Seriously, it’s like defining God. Definitions broad enough to apply to everyone are really just overviews of what the concept is. The more precise the definitions, the fewer people’s ideas of the concept will line up with it.
Cont: Trans Women are not Women II: The Bath Of Khan
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Yeah and that's why people's personal definitions of God don't get to (in theory) make changes to how society functions either.
I was being a little snarky earlier, but I was lying or even being outright dismissive or insulting when I said at this point "Gender identity" has basically been watered down to a "Soul." All actual... meaning the terms sex and gender are gone, replaced with "Whatever I say."
"Hi there's this completely internal thing that I get to define however I want, up to and including the point of it even remaining internally consistent, and you are't allowed to even ask clarification on" isn't a thing you can ask other people to factor into their existence.
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Belz...
Fiend God
It really isn't.
We managed on the binary, sex-based definition for thousands of years. Can we really say that our understanding of gender changed radically in the last few years? Or perhaps that we'd rather not discuss how dysphoria doesn't mean the concept of gender has changed in any way?
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
But more like why would Rachel Dolezal call herself a black woman instead of just a woman.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Yup. I went a couple rounds with TA a couple years ago. Once he made his axioms clear, the conversation seemed to reach a natural stopping point.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
All we're doing differently in the last few years is taking a closer look at the edge cases and rare manifestations.
Gender dysphoria affects a very small percentage of the population. In the past, we'd probably just have said, "these two buckets work for almost everybody; figure it out; pass as whatever you can pass as; or find a subculture that accepts your differences; don't make things difficult."
This is an easy and convenient solution, but is somewhat inhumane. What we're seeing today is people calling that out. People saying, "no, I don't give a **** that I'm a tiny minority. I'm still a person. I still deserve to be treated like a first-class citizen. I refuse to be exiled to a subcultural ghetto like some sort of freakshow. I refuse to sit down and shut up and not make things difficult for everyone else. Things are mother ******* difficult as **** for me, and that needs to change."
They have a point, we as a society are going to have to sort this crap out sooner or later.
Gender dysphoria affects a very small percentage of the population. In the past, we'd probably just have said, "these two buckets work for almost everybody; figure it out; pass as whatever you can pass as; or find a subculture that accepts your differences; don't make things difficult."
This is an easy and convenient solution, but is somewhat inhumane. What we're seeing today is people calling that out. People saying, "no, I don't give a **** that I'm a tiny minority. I'm still a person. I still deserve to be treated like a first-class citizen. I refuse to be exiled to a subcultural ghetto like some sort of freakshow. I refuse to sit down and shut up and not make things difficult for everyone else. Things are mother ******* difficult as **** for me, and that needs to change."
They have a point, we as a society are going to have to sort this crap out sooner or later.
Belz...
Fiend God
They have a point, but there's quite a gulf between "treat me as a human" and "accept my factual claims at face value".
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Yeah. Bridging that gap is going to be a royal pain in the ass, no matter how we go about it. Especially if it's a gap between believing you're Napoleon and actually being Napoleon.
But my point was more about how it's no longer sufficient to appeal to tradition in this case. The tradition is hurting people, and that's a problem we need to confront, not dismiss. Even if the best solution is to keep the tradition and accept that it's not perfect.
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This looks like a swing and a miss to me. ‘We’ is just ‘the majority mainstream in the west’ opinion, and happened to be a very widely held belief. If you use the God metaphor, your statement would look like ‘We managed on the Catholic definition for a thousand years. Can we really say our understanding of God changed radically since those Protestants showed up in the last few years? Or perhaps that we’d rather not discuss how Martin Luther’s ****-stirring doesn’t mean the concept of God has changed in any way?’
ETA: I mean seriously it sounds like a joke but a bunch of humans going ‘sure ok that works for me’ to a concept already embraced by the society they find themselves in, doesn’t particularly lend that concept any ring of truth, IMO. It just means it’s broadly acceptable and doesn’t break the society as a whole.
ALSO ETA: appreciate Prestige’s comments there.
ETA even more: and I don’t get the impression that gender was something that many people ever really sat down and thought about throughout history. I think most people just set it and forgot it so to speak. When you got outliers people would just sort of be locally notorious.
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ponderingturtle
Orthogonal Vector
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Yea we accepted women as the property of their husbands for thousands of years why are we getting all radical recently that they should have rights and be listened to, and that they can even refuse to perform their wifely duties!
And of course this is also ignoring all the cultures that have more than 2 genders in them as well.
The Atheist
The Grammar Tyrant
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Alas, the behaviour is not a solely American trait - patriotism is on the rise everywhere, which unsurprisingly leads to a rise in nationalism, and we see where that leads.
Anyway - shocking derail I'm always happy to discuss elsewhere. Another thread is fine with me.
More importantly, we're right back on subject: (The OP even!)
Mate, that's the exact problem, and why the thread was started.
They don't just want to call themselves women - which is fine by everyone, I would assume - they want to be acknowledged as being women and gain access to all the rights women have mostly fought for, and agencies they specifically need.
Some of it is plain insanity. No matter how trans a trans woman is, she doesn't have a uterus, won't ever need a cervical smear, and is highly unlikely to develop breast cancer.
On the other hand, she might well develop prostate problems later in life, and is definitely subject to prostate cancer, completely unlike women. Imagine going to your gyno as a trans woman - how much experience does this person have with prostate issues?
Looking at it logically, I would have thought that acceptance by the world would be the only priority for trans people, then they'd insist on retaining some kind of unique identity for precisely the reasons I just mentioned - no matter how girly they are, they will have a unique physiological and psychological issues that just won't fit in a specific camp.
But who does logic? It all about the feels, man.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Didn't we just see a story about someone who went to the hospital presenting as a man, and calling themselves a man, and they ended up having a miscarriage because the hospital staff didn't realize they were treating a woman who might be pregnant?
p0lka
Illuminator
I'm perfectly ok with treating a transwoman as a woman and a transman as a man, (I don't treat males and females differently anyway, so makes no odds to me), I'll treat people how they wish to be treated as I like seeing smiles on peoples faces, define yourself and I will just go along with it to make you ok.
But I am suspending reality as I do so.
IsThisTheLife
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Apropos the chatter about racial discrimination - some biology for you;
the healthiest, longest lived, the 'fittest' and most 'viable' genome of any higher animal is maintained by its individuals breeding within c. six generations of removal.
"Hybrid vigor" is a phrase used by Victorian botanists to describe the fecundity observed in sub-species of plants hybridised after divergence through separation in time and space of millennia and oceans.
Hybriding sub-species of higher animals, such as mammals, which have the diverged in the same way (usually called 'genetic drift') rarely if ever produces offspring that are superior in any way to the parent species, in fact it can cause some serious congenital problems.
Animals, observably, tend to 'breed true', keeping to within the 'degrees of separation' mentioned above where the option exists, but with a powerful instinct to mate outside their family group (also beneficial, obviously).
Humans, though, are completely different.
the healthiest, longest lived, the 'fittest' and most 'viable' genome of any higher animal is maintained by its individuals breeding within c. six generations of removal.
"Hybrid vigor" is a phrase used by Victorian botanists to describe the fecundity observed in sub-species of plants hybridised after divergence through separation in time and space of millennia and oceans.
Hybriding sub-species of higher animals, such as mammals, which have the diverged in the same way (usually called 'genetic drift') rarely if ever produces offspring that are superior in any way to the parent species, in fact it can cause some serious congenital problems.
Animals, observably, tend to 'breed true', keeping to within the 'degrees of separation' mentioned above where the option exists, but with a powerful instinct to mate outside their family group (also beneficial, obviously).
Humans, though, are completely different.
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quadraginta
Becoming Beth
We know they had a miscarriage, and we know that there seems to have been some initial confusion about the hospital's treatment regimen as a result of their trans status. It seems apparent that fetal distress was already in progress when they presented themselves to the hospital
But as far as I could determine from the articles I read, there was nothing which established that any different treatment regimen would have prevented the miscarriage or substantially changed any outcomes.
That's all conjecture.
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Are you arguing that gender dysphoria is caused by, or results in, miscegenation?
If you are, that's nuts.
If you're not, then your ideas about proper mate selection to achieve the healthiest offspring seems more than a bit off-topic.
What the ****? I wouldn’t mind reading a bit about what makes for healthy genetics but your zinger ending is true enough to make the whole thing irrelevant. Humans can’t have health problems from species hybridization because there’s not more than one species of humans.
p0lka
Illuminator
RE: the highlighted. How are humans completely different?
Or in other words, bollocks.
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Ron_Tomkins
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