Cont: Trans Women are not Women II: The Bath Of Khan

[Rolfe]

That happened once. Didn't go well. Really, really horrible story.

The story of David (or Bruce or Brenda it got weird) Brenner.

First Bruce, then Branda, then David Reimer.

 

[mumblethrax]

I don't accept completely internal criteria in the way you are asking me to do. "Identity" isn't a thing that I factor in how I view the world in the way you're telling me to.

I'm not telling you to do anything. If you want to take the view that you aren't conscious, that's fine by me.

We're disagreeing and having a discussion about that.

No, you're disagreeing with a straw man, and thus not having a discussion at all. If you want to have a discussion, you'll need to stop doing that first.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I'm not telling you to do anything. If you want to take the view that you aren't conscious, that's fine by me.

What does conscious have to do with anything?

This is more and more like the Jabba Immortality Thread every post.

 

[mumblethrax]

What does conscious have to do with anything?

If you don't accept internal criteria, then you should reject the idea that you are conscious.

At least, if I've understood what you're trying to say. It's a bit word salad-y.

 

[d4m10n]

2. Social roles placed on the sexes (Men have to do this, Women have to do this, Girls are expected to do this, boys are expected to do this) that we should be working to get rid of.

Why should we be working to get rid of them? I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea that women wear sundresses and men (generally) don't, or that men wear neckties and women wear some other form of gratuitous silk ornamentation. I’m okay with the fact that men are generally expected to go without makeup and nail polish, whereas women get to choose. I'm even okay with the fact that people are significantly more likely to ask (politely) for my help with the Ozarka bottles and other such heavy lifting tasks.

Has anyone in this thread (or its lengthy predecessor) argued that all gendered roles and expectations must be abolished in favor of some other system?

 

[JoeMorgue]

If you don't accept internal criteria, then you should reject the idea that you are conscious.

At least, if I've understood what you're trying to say. It's a bit word salad-y.

No I just reject that your internal opinion of how reality should be is some form of objective reality in and off itself.

You keeping get mad that I'm equating "Gender Identity" with "The Gender I want to Be" but I still don't get difference you think there is.

I keep having to go back to asking again and again the most simple and basic of questions that I haven't got an answer to that I can't move forward into until I do.

Standing in front of me is a person. This is person is biologically male. This person tells me they identify as female.

For your concept to make any sense, something has to change here. Something meaningful has to change.

What is this change? What do I do, say, think, conceptualize, act, react, or otherwise is any way do differently with this new information?

If you can't answer this question in a way that is completely self referential I've got nowhere to go and right back to choosing whether I get transphobe screamed at me by your side or rape enabler screamed at me by Rolfe's side.

 

[theprestige]

Yeah and let me tell you adding "transgenderism" into the mix has really made the "we don't treat the sexes fairly/equally" problem go away.



Again, this can't be your go-to excuse to wave away everything that doesn't make sense.

It's my go-to excuse for this one thing, because this one thing happens to be more understandable as a human idiosyncracy rather than as a logically coherent proposition.

You were asking about subjective height or eye color. But nobody seems to be struggling with issues of subjective height and eye color. So what's your point in asking about it?

Is there some insight there you'd like us to see? Some new perspective that sheds light on the question of gender identity?

Why is the question of subjective height relevant, JoeMorgue? Because it seems to me that, knowing what we know about humans and human social issues, subjective height is a complete non sequitur that adds nothing to the discussion about subjective gender.

If you think differently, please explain.

Fine. I'll settle for informal logic. Or any logic. Or even just someone explaining anything beyond "Because the person says so."

What do you need explained? Why subjective gender is a real social issue that concerns us today, but subjective height isn't and probably never will be? How do we as a society work with things that are both subjective and very important to a lot of people? What kind of formal rules we can establish about subjective values and how they work in society?

You are (presumably) a human being living in a human society. What have you figured out for yourself so far, about how subjective values work in such a society?

 

[mumblethrax]

No I just reject that your internal opinion of how reality should be is some form of objective reality in and off itself.

I don't think you can reject that, since I've never asserted it.

You keeping get mad that I'm equating "Gender Identity" with "The Gender I want to Be" but I still don't get difference you think there is.

I've never once expressed any anger about that.

I keep having to go back to asking again and again the most simple and basic of questions that I haven't got an answer to that I can't move forward into until I do.

You do get those answers. Every time you ask. Then you wait a few minutes and ask again. Certainly, you will never make any progress doing this. The rest of us are not so hidebound.

For your concept to make any sense, something has to change here. Something meaningful has to change.

"I'm was born male (or assigned male at birth, or whatever) but identify as a woman" is perfectly intelligible. Nothing has to change in order for me to accept that this as a true proposition.

What is this change? What do I do, say, think, conceptualize, act, react, or otherwise is any way do differently with this new information?

You seem to have to have this hang-up where you think description implies prescription. It doesn't. I'm sure transgender people have some advice for you here, but it's just immaterial to understanding gender identity as a phenomenon.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Has anyone in this thread (or its lengthy predecessor) argued that all gendered roles and expectations must be abolished in favor of some other system?

I certainly have, which is why (as I've stated multiple times) that leaves me nowhere to go.

I don't put roles on men and women outside of what is literally required by pure biology, therefore "Man who identifies as a woman" has as much literal meaning to me as "Crankshaft that identifies as a meatloaf."

A man who wears a dress isn't a woman, or "a woman on the inside" and there's no scale or dial that tips just a little toward "woman" or anything else.

So there's nowhere for me to go, so I'm everyone's bad guy. Person with a vagina in my bathroom? Don't care. So Rolfe thinks I want her to get raped. But since I don't think the woman in my bathroom "identifying" as a man or a woman matters or indeed even makes sense, I'm the other side's badguy as well.

Can't win, can't lose, can't quit the game.

I'm not even gonna touch the whole "Getting rid of Gender Roles? Why (gasp) when did anyone ever suggest that?" revisionism because I don't feel like playing a rousing game of "Show me where someone said exactly that in those exact words before I'll admit the idea was ever even on the table."

 

[d4m10n]

I'm not even gonna touch the whole "Getting rid of Gender Roles? Why (gasp) when did anyone ever suggest that?" revisionism because I don't feel like playing a rousing game of "Show me where someone said exactly that in those exact words before I'll admit the idea was ever even on the table."

Expect to be met with skepticism if you don't want to play a rousing game of "I have at least some evidence for the proposition I put forward in a skeptic forum."

ETA: If you're literally the only gender abolitionist here, I don't see any reason to take the idea seriously.

 

[JoeMorgue]

So that's it? We've done a 360 back to "Women stay in the kitchen"-lite?

So now I have to put societal role back on men and women to be "woke?" and "Get ride of stupid rules put on the genders that we don't need" is such a fringe belief it's dismissable as not worth considering?

 

[TragicMonkey]

ETA: If you're literally the only gender abolitionist here, I don't see any reason to take the idea seriously.

No, he's not. I think we're all just clumps of matter and for the sake of convenience people invented categories for easy classification, but the need for that classification is mostly archaic cultural baggage. Also the classes were never as sharply defined as the proponents assumed they were, but there's insufficent significance to the classification to justify effort to clarify it.

 

[theprestige]

So that's it? We've done a 360 back to "Women stay in the kitchen"-lite?

So now I have to put societal role back on men and women to be "woke?" and "Get ride of stupid rules put on the genders that we don't need" is such a fringe belief it's dismissable as not worth considering?

Rule of So aside, I don't think it's a dismmissable fringe belief. I think we absolutely consider it. I think the first thing we need to consider about it is how do we figure out which rules we don't need, what might replace them (if anything), and what happens when we get it wrong. See also: Chesterton's fence.

 

[d4m10n]

Can you see a difference between these two proposed reforms, Joe?

Social roles placed on the sexes . . . we should be working to get rid of.

Get rid of stupid rules put on the genders that we don't need...

I can see a pretty obvious difference, in part because I agree with the latter claim but not the former.

 

[caveman1917]

You could try giving sex reassignment surgery to boys born with deformed genitalia and then look at the outcomes.

That's not a valid description of an experiment, you didn't specify which outcomes of this would entail which conclusions. Furthermore, even if it were, your proposal only concerns boys born with deformed genitalia who are a small minority of the population. So I ask you again: What experiment could be performed that allows one to determine someone's gender identity?

 

[caveman1917]

Gender is relatively easy to observe if you take it to mean what I take it to mean. [emoji14]

True, but then it isn't cross-culturally invariant and the claim for a neuroanatomical basis fails.

 

[caveman1917]

Can you see a difference between these two proposed reforms, Joe?





I can see a pretty obvious difference, in part because I agree with the latter claim but not the former.

By your own definition of gender the latter is nonsense.

"Get rid of stupid rules put on the genders that we don't need..."

Gender = A set of behaviors, roles & norms typically associated with one sex.

Substituting: "Get rid of stupid rules put on the set of behaviors, roles & norms typically associated with one sex."

 

[caveman1917]

Yet they seem oddly willing to accept sexual orientation at peoples word with out any kind of strict medical proof of such a thing.

The difference is that sexual orientation is empirically observable, namely by whether you engage in intercourse with people of the same sex or of the other sex. Gender identity is not empirically observable, it is not phenomenal. What can be observed is that someone says they have a gender identity, but that doesn't mean that gender identity is phenomenal. For the same reason that just because it can be observed that someone says they have a soul doesn't mean that a soul is phenomenal.

 

[d4m10n]

By your own definition of gender the latter is nonsense.

Which is why it's charitable to assume Joe wasn't using it in that context.

 

[ponderingturtle]

The difference is that sexual orientation is empirically observable, namely by whether you engage in intercourse with people of the same sex or of the other sex.

Except of course when it isn't. Clearly people who have not had sex have no orientation.

Gender identity is not empirically observable, it is not phenomenal. What can be observed is that someone says they have a gender identity, but that doesn't mean that gender identity is phenomenal. For the same reason that just because it can be observed that someone says they have a soul doesn't mean that a soul is phenomenal.

And yet it certainly is as well