Astro Cat wrote: ↑Sat Jul 02, 2022 3:50 am
The reason other animals don't have cultural genders is easy: they do not have highly complex and abstracted cultures.
So you're thinking that human beings must have an essential exceptionalism? That is, all other mammals are subject to one kind of rule, and human beings are essentially not subject to that same rule? Chimps, cats, dogs, emus, and even birds and fish -- all animals, regardless of the complexity or simplicity of their social structures -- have two sexes: human beings have this thing called "gender"?
Can you explain why I should think that human beings are the lone exception to this biological universal?
But identity is often a social construct,
Well, I would say that the folks who say that are playing a trick.
It's true that some aspects of normalization are products of social construction. That boys wear blue and girls wear pink may be purely a social convention, for example. But that's not what they're wanting you to hear when they say, "Identity is a social construct," they're wanting you to hear, "Identity is NOTHING BUT a social construct," so that they can go on to argue that everything is up for grabs.
Don't fall for it. It's a twister's game. Almost everything to do with identity is biological. You don't get to dictate your own height, weight, creative ability, intelligence, athleticism, natural hair colour, eyes, cultural birth location, and so on, and so on, and so on.
Most of what you are is simply a "given." And being a good person means coming to grips with this "given," and learning the difference between what we can change and the things we have to learn to work with. Most of what we have to work with is pretty fixed, and the culturally maleable changes afterward are pretty minimal. I can get a tattoo...but I can' t make my arm longer to hold more of it. I can dye my hair, but it's going to grow back to what I was given, if I don't fight that continually.
Transism is a particularly bad problem. It dooms an individual to spend all of her (artificially shortend, mutilated and sterile) life fighting against the "given." Her body is her permanent enemy, always betraying her by reverting to female, whereas she's desperately trying to make it male. And in the end, it will cost her everything, and she will inevitably lose that battle. And a thousand years from now, her DNA will still be female, if there's any of it left by then.
Sad. Tragic. What we need to do instead is tell young women, "It's
good to be a woman; it's noble, it's desirable, and it's an achievement to come into the fulness of womanhood; and you can be helped to step up and come to appreciate being one." Certainly no course of action promises our little girls any more happiness than that. A person who is permanently at war with her own identity is inevitably going to end badly.
"Having fun hair" can be said to be something like a mini-identity because it goes along with vaguely being a part of a subculture in a way.
I get that. I used to be a punk. Being different was a liberating way of declaring my non-identity with toxic society and conformism. And it was necessary for me when I was an adolescent. It's not necessary for me now. I know who I am.
I identify as a scientist, I chose that. That has nothing to do with my biology. All kinds of identities are invented and chosen.
But "scientist" is not the totality of your identity. Your identity is much more complex and important than a mere career choice or label. And what I'm advocating for here is that we are happiest when we take proper stock of what we have been given to deal with, and make the most of that. "Who am I" is a fundamental question, one that is a precursor to happiness, fulfillment and meaning: and it cannot be answered by people whose idea is "You can be anything." They have no helpful information to share with you.
Gender is chosen for everyone.
I don't think "gender" is anything at all, actually. (Well, other than a grammar word.) And I think the use of it signals a lack of attention to how much of identity is really a "given." So I think it's a dangerous concept to believe in, primarily because it's so empty. Framing something as important as identity in vaccuous terms can be very bad, because it really leaves the individual at sea and without a compass.
I haven't seen trans people trying to assert that women liking women means one of them is a man.
If you go on trans websites, you'll see lots of it. Any young woman who expresses any uncertainty about her identity is invited -- nay, encouraged and groomed -- to interpret that as proof of a need to trans.
Dr. Deborah Soh makes a strong point of this, as I said. She interprets it as a kind of "lesbian genocide." I think that may be strong; but I don't doubt that some young women misinterpret their early confusions as proof of a misfit between their biology and their identity. That uncertainty is highly exploitable...particularly in young girls.
I'm not even doubting this story that you've laid down.
Well, as I say, Soh may be overstating a little. It might not be any deliberate attempt to subvert lesbianism in favour of transism: however, it could very much have that net effect anyway. Certainly there are plenty of cases in the
de-transers to show that that has happened.
This issue is complex.
Not necessarily. Maybe it only becomes complex when we try to interpret it through an incoherent paradigm. It seems to me that body dysmorphia is what's involved...mental illness. But mental illness has been turned into a fad, through social contagion, which is powered by a combination of both social media and the virtue signallers in the public. And the victims of it are primarily young women going through their normal uncertainty period in the early teen years.
That's what all the data shows. So I think we should stick with the data, not with a speculative narrative arranged for us by the mentally ill or mendacious. The data will be our friend here.
I don't think this is a reason to cancel trans people.
Nobody's arguing for "cancelling," and certainly not "cancelling
people."
Rather, what we're discussing is whether or not mentally ill individuals can be cured by "normalizing" them and not actually treating them at all, or are better treated by being helped to accept themselves as they truly are, by understanding the givenness of their bodies and reconciling with themselves.
I'm for the latter, not the former.
It's a reason for conversation and understanding from involved parties.
As I suggested, I think we must certainly include the de-trans people. We need their input most of all. Because they're living evidence that horrendous abuse has been perpetrated, and if any lobby at all is deserving of our sympathy, it's they.
I guess I've just never seen any trans people talk negatively about detransitioners.
You should watch Matt Walsh's film. It's really done in a way that is fair.
All he does is go to various "experts" and advocates, and ask them, "What is a woman?" Then he lets them talk freely. It's most illuminating. But the most unforgettable part is his interview with a de-transitioner, a very courageous woman who looks very much like a man, and who has had the full "treatment," top and bottom. Her words are utterly unforgettable.
You seem smart, and educated...if what Walsh is doing is propaganda, I'm certain you'll detect it immediately. But I would say it's not. Walsh is certainly on the side of essentialism, but he doesn't pontificate, doesn't overcontrol, and spends almost the entire film letting his opponents speak. I'm sure you'll be able to sort it out for yourself.
And it's healthy to know the other side. I, myself, always read my best opposition...you know, people like Nietzsche, Hume, and Marx...and I even sometimes dip into the lightweights like Dawkins or Harris, though they're frustrating because they're too easy. They're always lobbing softballs and thinking they're hardballs. However, I read what they say, and give it due consideration. I do that so I don't just understand my own view, but understand where my opponents' views stand and fall. It seems to me to be part of a thorough commitment to my own beliefs to know the oppostion, too.
So maybe give Walsh a spin. See what you think. If he's playing the propagandist, I'm sure you'll soon weed him out.
The idea is that "woman" and "man" have two contexts. One is an essential biological and phenotypical identity which nobody is denying. The contention is that there is another context which is social and constructed.
The trans-problem is this, though: what do we do when these...contexts...are not just unharmonious but are even diametrically opposed to one another? One of them's got to be wrong. And we need to figure out which one.
But biology can actually never be changed. It can be superficially altered, but not transformed. Attributions, however, can change, and do all the time. So are we best to work with the biological essentials of a person, or to work against them? And are we wise to regard attributions as primary, when we know darn well they're highly maleable and transient?
I may not be Catholic, but I'm being courteous and going along with somebody's social/constructed identity if I call a priest "Father Jones" or something, using his chosen title.
That's interesting. I wouldn't. I would refuse because he's not my "father" and I'm not his "son." I would be ashamed to deceive him...and myself...as to our status, especially in so important a matter as our relationship to God.
Likewise, I would not use false pronouns. I would probably opt for the pronoun that seems apparently right, unless the person gave me reasons to think I was using the wrong pronoun.
And I wouldn't do it to be offensive, but because truth is more important than politeness, and because my language belongs to me, not to my interlocutor. My language is the tool I have for making sense of my world, and for asserting the beliefs I have. Nobody has a right to mandate to me what language I must use, anymore then they have a right to mandate to me what I believe. I have to address the world in the terms I believe to be true; and every time I fail to do so, I betray myself, the truth, and God.
Compared to that, political correctness has no place.
Immanuel Can wrote:Astro Cat wrote:Misogyny is just when someone thinks that treating someone in a womanly way includes negative things.
Then is misandry (misogyny's counterpart) when somebody "includes negative things" in their account of masculinity? Are people who speak of "toxic masculinity" bigots? That would seem to follow.
I wasn't trying to give a really good, rigorous definition of misogyny, but I will respond to this anyway.
Toxic masculinity is any toxic behavior that someone internalizes as part of their (masculine) gender identity (you could swap the right words here to arrive to a toxic femininity, too). The difference between simply being toxic and toxic masculinity is that the perpetrator internalizes the toxic behavior as defining being manly: "Real men don't cry," "I can't let myself lose to a girl," "I need to put that girl in her place, it's the masculine thing to do," etc.
Other than, "put the girl in her place," I don't detect anything toxic in that list. Men actually don't like to cry, because they tend to cry only when they are absolutely desolate, defeated or humilated; they don't tend to cry cathartically, as women seem to do. Men avoid crying because men strive to be competent and not to collapse. For them, it's very healthy; and any group of men knows that a crying man is a man defeated.
And there are lots of "masculine things to do." I like very much being a man, and doing them. And men achieve a great sense of power and dignity from doing these things. Men like a challenge. So again, there's nothing inherently "toxic" in that. It would take something much more specific to be "toxic."
I can see that a lot of the "toxic masculinity" talk is really inauthentic. Much of it stems from a simple (maybe even honest) failure of women to understand
how very different men actually are, and why they do what they do. I think women often look at men, and say to themselves, "If I were to do that, it would be because of X, and it would mean that I was toxic." And then they assume that men are acting that way out of the feminine motive. But often, men have motive Y, which is in no way like motive X, and is not at all toxic. Still, they get labeled for being "toxic."
A similar thing happens when men attribute their own motives to women. They think women are horribly gold-digging, for example, when sometimes women are simply trying to sort out a reasonable provider with whom to create a little person. Or they think women are vain for accepting approaches from more than one man while giving assurances to none, and fail to realize that her relative physical vulnerability means she actually needs to choose carefully within a pool of available mates, or she will become horribly exploitable.
I think we've lost the ability, as men and women in Western society, to understand each other because we've dropped all essentialism, and asked the opposite sex to become the same as us. That's not a reasonable expectation, I would suggest, as well as being wildly unfair. And what I would opt for is a better understanding and appreciation of difference...again, more attention to data and to the "given," and less to ideology and wishful thinking.
what do you mean by it's "prejudicial?"
Just that to put the word "toxic" with "masculinity" and not with "feminity" means that whatever is essentialized as "feminine" is automatically "non-toxic," just as normal male values are damned as "toxic" by the same usage. I think the term fogs our thinking. We should separate between healthy male behaviour (which is still not feminine) and unhealthy male behavior (which is not authentically manly, actually), rather than associating the "masculine" in an insufficiently-clear way with "toxicity."
I know the world of men well. And I can tell you that the most vicious, underhanded and despicable males are often what are called "gammas." These are the weak males who spend all their time hating and envying the strong ones, and currying favour with women in hopes of scoring. They are truly despicable examples of men...but they lack most of the traits that get labeled "toxicly masculine." It's from that pool, not from the alphas, that you're going to get your school shooters and rapists. It's the resentful, petty, weak men that do those sorts of things, because exploding in violence is their desperate attempt to reclaim some actual masculine pride they've never merited.
Watch out for gammas. You'll see tons of them at women's marches and take-back-the-night events, and such. You've got to ask yourself, "If they're men, what are they doing here?" And you can be sure that what you think they are there for (like, allyship, maybe) is not what they're there for.
Cis describes what you are.
No, I'm a man. I'm fine with that identifier.
"Cis" describes nothing I recognize. It's a made-up word, one of very, very recent provenance. I didn't ask for it, and I don't receive it. My language is my language.
Women obviously do prefer caring professions, and nobody is saying to force anybody into a profession they don't want. But there is a difference between culture pushing people into doing things and people gravitating towards things without cultural guide rails.
"Cultural guide rails"?
Well any "cultural guide rails" would be cases of essentialism, wouldn't they? And I'm fine with that, if we get the "rails" right. Children do need help in sorting our the world. But I don't think we need to be pushing people in directions they fundamentally don't want, even if it suits our ideological agenda. I don't think we have right to use people that way. So I don't want to force my son to the gun range, or my daughter to the hair salon; but neither do I want to force my son to the hair salon and my daughter to the gun range. What I would want to do is let them choose what will result in them being reasonably culturally and sexually adjusted, within the large spectrum of the options they can have. But I wouldnt fail to help them to see the guidelines inherent in their genetics and bodies, because those are some of the best, most reliable and most impartial guideliness available.
I'm saying don't confuse that women and men freely gravitate towards what culture says they should with there actually being some natural proclivity: you're essentially confusing nurture with nature by doing so.
I get that, and fair enough. At the same time, I would suggest the opposite is also true. We must not confuse that which is not "nurture" but is "nature" with something we can mess with without creating horrible consequences. The latter error is, if anything, far worse than the former; because with the former, the child ends up at least somewhat culturally adjusted, but with the latter, the child is maladjusted both to culture and to body. So we must be very careful in dismissing the essential as if it were merely optional, even more than we have to guard against the reification of the optional as the essential.
The answer is to let people do what they want, but to try to remove systemic barriers in their way so they can truly do what they want.
In general, yes. However, the problem case is always children. For as you say, children need guidelines, and don't thrive without them.
For them, "Do as you please" can be terrifyingly empty. It can mean, "I'm an adult, but I know nothing, so I can't help you at all -- you're on your own, kid." No child does well with that kind of parental neglect. So we still have to be careful to provide children with the guidance they long for, need and cannot do without, or we're betraying them. They aren't adults; they're naive and they're changing constantly, every year, so they don't always know what they want -- yet. Whatever we do, we don't want to abandon them to their confusions.
A good talk. I'm enjoying the exchange. It's a breath of fresh air to talk to somebody so reasonable, albeit on a different side. It makes for interesting exchange and progressive forming of ideas. Much appreciated.