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

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JoeMorgue said:
Expecting (even when hiding behind a weasel concept like "What? It's not like I can make them!") men to shave their faces or women to shave their legs is...problematic.
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I suppose I'll just have to take your word for it, as a skeptic. :rolleyes:

The aforementioned social norm causes problems, and we needn't actually say what the problems are (or provide any evidence thereof) so long as we convey a certain level of moral outrage when discussing the topic and maybe throw in a gratuitous reference to patriarchal dystopia.

Totally not a weasel word, "problematic." :D
 
Belz... said:
Like hell it isn't. Even with the more "modern" definition of gender as behaviour, it's quite observable.
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Feel free to answer the same question then: What experiment could I perform that demonstrates someone's gender identity?
 
caveman1917 said:
Nope, gender identity is claimed to be fixed by age 3.
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Who claims that? Is it correct? And what does it even mean?

If you've ever actually parented a 3 year old, you will discover that they don't even really understand what gender is, and they've got a limited grasp on language as well. Whether they call themselves a boy or a girl is largely a function of what you told them, regardless of whatever kind of internal model of gender they might have working in their brains.

If it is neuroanatomical then the group under consideration should also have identified as boys in pre-pubescent childhood. Them identifying as girls before puberty but as boys during and post puberty suggests a social basis for gender identity and not a neuroanatomical one.
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No, it does not. It suggests that social conditioning can override biology pre-puberty, but that once hormones assert themselves in puberty, biology will override social conditioning in most cases.

If testosterone levels determined gender identity then everyone should identify as girls before puberty.
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Nope. Even before puberty, testosterone levels aren't the same. The difference is just far more pronounced after puberty.

Plus, of course, we tend to socially condition biological males to believe that they are male and biological females to believe that they are female. And in most cases, their anatomy correctly reflects that difference even before puberty, which children will discover and learn about as well.

Now, it might be interesting to raise a bunch of children without ever telling them about sex differences in humans or what their own sex was, or letting them see anyone else naked to compare themselves with. And maybe they wouldn't conceptualize such differences until puberty hit. But you can't do such an experiment for obvious ethical reasons.

You seem to have this weird idea that somehow testosterone levels are explanatory for, well, pretty much anything.
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You seem to have this weird idea that somehow testosterone has no affects on behavior at all.
 
d4m10n said:
Totally not a weasel word, "problematic." :D
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Jesus Goddamn Christ what do you want me to say?

I think it's wrong. Define "wrong" however will get you through the day.

I don't think men and women should have expectations put on them based on their biological sex unless their biological is the actual determining factor in it. The fact that at some point in the last... 7 second that somehow became an controversial opinion I'm getting the "no true Skeptic" card played against me on is rather troubling.

I said waaaaaaay back when this thread (and the thread before it) started that Transgenderism required us to put gender stereotypes back on the table and that called a strawman.

No someone's doing it and me saying that's what they are doing is a strawman.
 
d4m10n said:
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?
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That's a side-effect of the feminism of old: once they were done with trying to make men and women equal, they moved on to trying to make them the same, either because they're confusing the terms or because they see the latter as a means to reach the former, which they believe hasn't been reached yet.

Not saying Joe's thinking like that, but that sort of odd logic has crept into the collective counsciousness.
 
Ziggurat said:
Who claims that? Is it correct? And what does it even mean?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity#Age_of_formation

Personally I don't think it means anything, but I happen to be arguing with someone who asserts that gender identity is phenomenal.

No, it does not. It suggests that social conditioning can override biology pre-puberty, but that once hormones assert themselves in puberty, biology will override social conditioning in most cases.
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Given that large groups of children are placed on puberty blockers whereas their peers are not there should be some sort of experiment that can be devised to test which hypothesis is correct.

You seem to have this weird idea that somehow testosterone has no affects on behavior at all.
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Not at all. I do think you can't just throw out "testosterone levels" at any problem and expect it to be considered a valid explanation.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
I don't think men and women should have expectations put on them based on their biological sex unless their biological [makeup] is the actual determining factor in it.
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I think there is a biological reason why men typically have more trouble presenting a baby smooth face to the world than women do.

JoeMorgue said:
Define "wrong" however will get you through the day.
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As a consequentialist, I like to be able to point to some cognizable harm done whenever I say something is wrong.
 
d4m10n said:
I think there is a biological reason why men typically have more trouble presenting a baby smooth face to the world than women do.
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Okay before you go full Bob on me and start getting treated as such, I need to know where I'm losing you exactly because you're off somewhere beyond the event horizon of the formless at this point.

What in the bloody, blue, blazes does the difficulty in shaving have to do with anything?

Yes men have to shave and women don't because men grow beards. How does this in anyway connect to "Men are expected to shave?"

Men are expected to shave to be smooth faced and women aren't so men... shaving is... sexist because they wouldn't be equal any other way or something? Is that where you are trying to land on?
 
caveman1917 said:
Feel free to answer the same question then: What experiment could I perform that demonstrates someone's gender identity?
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One post ago you said "gender", and now you've switched to "gender identity". Which one is it? Because the former, as I said, can be observed objectively. The latter is subjective and based on report. However, one's identification does not change objective fact -- in this case the gender.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Men are expected to shave to be smooth faced and women aren't so men... shaving is... sexist because they wouldn't be equal any other way or something? Is that where you are trying to land on?
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You're the one who brought up sexism, just a few posts up. I'm the one who thinks this particular gendered social norm is mostly harmless.
 
Belz... said:
One post ago you said "gender", and now you've switched to "gender identity". Which one is it?
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There's a difference?

I thought sex was the external thing and gender was the internal thing.

To me it's like the weather man saying "rain" or "rain event."

I love how the more pedantic arguments get the less anyone actually the uses the language with any clarity.
 
Belz... said:
Joe, it doesn't help to flip the table over with every post. Could you calm down and discuss this more dispassionately, please? I have quite a bit of trouble following your arguments and positions in this thread.
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I'm sorry I'll take being called a transphobe by one side and a rape enabler by the other with my customary good humor.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I thought sex was the external thing and gender was the internal thing.
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Well, there's the problem. Not long ago the two were essentially the same. Then it was a set of behaviours associated with sex. Now it's whatever the **** we want, which as you said is akin to the soul debate.

Me, I'd rather avoid the third definition and stick to either the first or second. In both cases, however, it makes how you identify completely irrelevant.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I'm sorry I'll take being called a transphobe by one side and a rape enabler by the other with my customary good humor.
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That has nothing to do with what I posted, Joe. You think I haven't been called that? As I said, I can't follow your argument, so I don't know where you stand. It's hard to address someone's points under those circumstances.
 
Belz... said:
Pretty incredible that, in this day and age, we have to remind some people of something we've been aware of since, like, ever.
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I think it's a little more complicated than that.

The problem is that over time, societies have evolved a lot of non-biological norms and expectations on top of this basic biological fact. I think that many of them probably started out in societies where group survival was much more closely tied to realistic assessment of sexual dimorphism. Even as civilization advanced and survival depended less and less on being a man and easily producing surplus food, or being a woman and trading other things for some of that surplus, the existing norms and expectations remained and continued to evolve into the rather baroque and apparently pointless conventions we have today.

So you're not really having to remind people of the sexual dimorphism. You're having to remind them that we're dealing with tens of thousands of years of evolved tradition, stemming from this sexual dimorphism. And you're having to remind them that even though civilization has greatly narrowed the raw power gap between men and women, or even eliminated it altogether in some areas, the dimorphism still exists, and some version of the social norms and expectations that arise from it will probably always be with us.

Joe's proposal to just abolish them probably won't work. And as long as we have competitive sports, gender dimorphism will mean gendered roles, and transgenders will still have a venue for their disphoria and a preferred mode of treatment.
 
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