Gender Essentialism

Anything to do with gender and the status of women and men.

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Astro Cat
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Re: Gender Essentialism

Post by Astro Cat »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Oct 29, 2019 3:01 pm I notice that a lot of gender theory talks two different ways. So I'd like to know which of the following two positions is to be considered genuinely "Feminist".

1. There is something unique and special to being female, something that cannot be generated by males...(What would it be? A kind of cognition? A kind of perception? A kind of intuition? A natural propensity? A domestic possibility? A set of values? A perspective?...etc. It varies among Feminist writers) -- this is a kind of 3rd Wave claim.

2. There is nothing unique to being female: any current differences that appear to exist between men and women are socially constructed, not essential. This is a kind of 2nd Wave, Billie Jean King kind of position.

One thing we can see for sure: these claims are absolutely exclusive of one another. If there is even one thing that corresponds to #1, then #2 is obviously not true. If #2 is true, then there is no way that even one item can be true under #1.

And this is but the start of the question. There is a stage 2 when we have sorted out the right answer.

So we can all see it has to be #1 or #2. Which do you think it is, and why?
I'll preface this by saying I read "popular" feminist material (on social media, articles, this sort of thing), I rarely have the time to devote to academic and exhaustive dives into the actual literature.

My take on this though is that (1) is incidentally true most of the time (it doesn't have to be, so it may not actually rule out (2)). What I mean by this is that girls are usually treated differently than boys in early development and this is probably something that someone assigned male at birth would lack.

I want to be clear that I support trans women and trans women are women, and I don't think that this childhood difference makes them less so. It's just a difference that may exist. TERFs use this as ammunition against trans women because they ask something like "how could they possibly understand what it was like to grow up as a girl?" but I think this is needlessly divisive.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Gender Essentialism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Astro Cat wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 9:39 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Oct 29, 2019 3:01 pm I notice that a lot of gender theory talks two different ways. So I'd like to know which of the following two positions is to be considered genuinely "Feminist".

1. There is something unique and special to being female, something that cannot be generated by males...(What would it be? A kind of cognition? A kind of perception? A kind of intuition? A natural propensity? A domestic possibility? A set of values? A perspective?...etc. It varies among Feminist writers) -- this is a kind of 3rd Wave claim.

2. There is nothing unique to being female: any current differences that appear to exist between men and women are socially constructed, not essential. This is a kind of 2nd Wave, Billie Jean King kind of position.

One thing we can see for sure: these claims are absolutely exclusive of one another. If there is even one thing that corresponds to #1, then #2 is obviously not true. If #2 is true, then there is no way that even one item can be true under #1.

And this is but the start of the question. There is a stage 2 when we have sorted out the right answer.

So we can all see it has to be #1 or #2. Which do you think it is, and why?
I'll preface this by saying I read "popular" feminist material (on social media, articles, this sort of thing), I rarely have the time to devote to academic and exhaustive dives into the actual literature.

My take on this though is that (1) is incidentally true most of the time (it doesn't have to be, so it may not actually rule out (2)). What I mean by this is that girls are usually treated differently than boys in early development and this is probably something that someone assigned male at birth would lack.
No, I don't think that's true. I mean, logically, it's impossible that there would be both "something" AND "nothing" essential about being a woman. That doesn't even make sense.

But what we could say is that while a considerable part of being a woman happens at birth (which genetically, we can see beyond any possibility of reasonable doubt), some socialization afterward contributes somewhat to the eventual whole experience of "being a woman." A reasonable estimate might be 80% biology, 20% socialization. But whatever the proportions, either there is something unique to being a woman, or there is nothing. There's no middle possibility between something and nothing. If there is even a tiny thing unique to being a woman, then that's, by defintion, a "something."
I want to be clear that I support trans women and trans women are women,
I don't see why you'd do that, except for the desire to be seen as "accepting" by others, at the cost of betraying both women and mentally-ill men. But you can do that, I guess.

The women's sports issues highlights the anti-Feminist nature of the Transist ideology. Trans "women" don't want your sympathy: they want to replace you, to BE you...that's quite a different goal.
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henry quirk
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Re: it bears repeating...

Post by henry quirk »

henry quirk wrote: Sun Mar 22, 2020 6:31 pm Joe can pretend to be a woman, may actually believe he's a woman, but Joe is a man.

Betty can pretend to be a man, may actually believe she's a man, but Betty is a woman.

No amount of surgery or hormone therapy can change a man into a woman, or a woman into man.

No consensus will change a man into a woman, or a woman into man.
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Astro Cat
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Re: Gender Essentialism

Post by Astro Cat »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 4:37 pm No, I don't think that's true. I mean, logically, it's impossible that there would be both "something" AND "nothing" essential about being a woman. That doesn't even make sense.

But what we could say is that while a considerable part of being a woman happens at birth (which genetically, we can see beyond any possibility of reasonable doubt), some socialization afterward contributes somewhat to the eventual whole experience of "being a woman." A reasonable estimate might be 80% biology, 20% socialization. But whatever the proportions, either there is something unique to being a woman, or there is nothing. There's no middle possibility between something and nothing. If there is even a tiny thing unique to being a woman, then that's, by defintion, a "something."
Then perhaps I'm saying that growing up being socialized stereotypically as a girl isn't essential to being a woman, but is a common difference between trans women and people assigned female at birth. It is possible* for a woman assigned female at birth not to have a stereotypical girls' upbringing.

(* -- Possible in theory. In practicality this would be nigh impossible because even if a girl's parents don't fulfill stereotypes of how girls are raised, many in the society around her -- at school, perhaps at church, in daycares, with babysitters, at restaurants, any interaction with anyone else in society -- will still cause this "gendered upbringing" effect).

So on the social side, it's theoretically possible for a woman assigned female at birth not to have this culturally gendered youth. I think of cultural influences as external, so it's not a quality of being a woman but rather of happening to be assigned female at birth in a society that has gendered customs towards children.

What about the physical side? Well, I'm a physicist, not a biologist; but a quick google search suggests that it takes until age 12 until testosterone diverges with no overlap between interquartile ranges. Nobody, including trans people and allies, denies the reality that puberty strikes different sexes in different ways and that sexes have different genitals and other secondary sexual characteristics; but what I would be most interested in if we're asking about what it means to be a woman is whether hormones would cause any kind of behavioral or cognitive differences.

I've looked into cognitive differences before (having battled misogyny my whole life), and I know there's not much to speak of there: what is there is likely explainable as a socialization effect, and is otherwise negligible in studies that work to mitigate cultural biases and the like. So I don't think we can say that there's anything cognitive about being a woman.

That leaves me with the question about hormonal effects on behavior: but if that is an essential difference, then I would guess that hormonal therapy that a lot of trans people go through would account for that difference.

So, I guess this puts me closer to the (2) camp after all?

I think missing the cultural gendered experience of growing up as a girl is notable, but I don't think it's important. The only reason I would even take note of it is if a trans woman or an ally for whatever reason failed to check their privilege because they lack those experiences. This is one reason why Caitlyn Jenner is not a woman that I like: she lacks those experiences and is utterly privileged about their absence. I do not think most trans women are like that though.
Immanuel Can wrote: I don't see why you'd do that, except for the desire to be seen as "accepting" by others, at the cost of betraying both women and mentally-ill men. But you can do that, I guess.

The women's sports issues highlights the anti-Feminist nature of the Transist ideology. Trans "women" don't want your sympathy: they want to replace you, to BE you...that's quite a different goal.
I am not betraying women and I think that calling anyone's genuine concern or empathy "virtue signaling" is an old canard, and I hope that is beneath you. You type eloquently, you seem like you might be an intelligent poster. Let's work together with good intentions and trust in each others' good intentions.

Also, I like your name.
Nick_A
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Re: What is a Woman?

Post by Nick_A »

It seems like a simple question and politics is doing its level best to corrupt it, butit is far more complex then normally given credit for.

For example, the clownfish along with other sources of life can change its sex:

https://www.thetech.org/ask-a-geneticis ... ome%20male.
For clownfish like Nemo, it is particularly complicated. All clownfish are born males. A clownfish group consists of a dominant male and female and 0-4 juvenile males. So where did the female come from in the group? When the female dies, the dominant male changes sex to become the dominant female and one of the juveniles becomes the dominant male.

Do these ways of making males and females have anything in common? Yes. In all cases, whether you are male or female is determined by a certain set of genes being turned on.

In people, the presence of the Y chromosome determines this. The Y chromosome has a gene called SRY that signals the body to become male. In other words, the SRY gene must be on to make a male. In fact, if SRY is present in someone with two X chromosomes, they appear male and if someone is XY but has a mutated SRY gene, they look female.

The same is true for species without sex chromosomes. For example, in turtles it may be that high temperature shuts off the turtle SRY gene so you get females. In the case of clownfish, the absence of a female results in a male changing to a female. We don’t know exactly how this works, but it’s possible that the female clownfish produces some sort of chemical signal that keeps males from becoming female.

In terms of what’s going on biologically in the clownfish, apparently the dominant male has functioning testes and some latent cells that can become ovaries under the right conditions. Once the female dies, the testes in the dominant male degenerate and ovaries form from the latent ovarian cells
.

What is this SRY gene?

https://medlineplus.gov/download/genetics/gene/sry.pdf
The SRY gene provides instructions for making a protein called the sex-determining
region Y protein. This protein is involved in male-typical sex development, which usually
follows a certain pattern based on an individual's chromosomes. People usually have 46
chromosomes in each cell. Two of the 46 chromosomes, known as X and Y, are called
sex chromosomes because they help determine whether a person will develop male or
female sex characteristics. Girls and women typically have two X chromosomes (46,XX
karyotype), while boys and men typically have one X chromosome and one Y
chromosome (46,XY karyotype).

The SRY gene is found on the Y chromosome. The sex-determining region Y protein
produced from this gene acts as a transcription factor, which means it attaches (binds)
to specific regions of DNA and helps control the activity of particular genes. This protein
starts processes that cause a fetus to develop male gonads (testes) and prevent the
development of female reproductive structures (uterus and fallopian tubes).

Surely this cannot happen with human beings some say. Human sexuality may be determined by forces science is yet to understand

From the Gospel of Thomas:

http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gthlamb.html
(114) Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life."
Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."
What is a woman? What is a female and how does it relate to males. Is it by chance or does mother nature determine genders which can change and are determined by her needs?[/quote]
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Gender Essentialism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Astro Cat wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 2:20 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 4:37 pm No, I don't think that's true. I mean, logically, it's impossible that there would be both "something" AND "nothing" essential about being a woman. That doesn't even make sense.

But what we could say is that while a considerable part of being a woman happens at birth (which genetically, we can see beyond any possibility of reasonable doubt), some socialization afterward contributes somewhat to the eventual whole experience of "being a woman." A reasonable estimate might be 80% biology, 20% socialization. But whatever the proportions, either there is something unique to being a woman, or there is nothing. There's no middle possibility between something and nothing. If there is even a tiny thing unique to being a woman, then that's, by defintion, a "something."
Then perhaps I'm saying that growing up being socialized stereotypically as a girl isn't essential to being a woman, but is a common difference between trans women and people assigned female at birth. It is possible* for a woman assigned female at birth not to have a stereotypical girls' upbringing.
Of course. And there's nothing wrong with that, if that's the case....so long as she's not deluded into thinking she's a man, of course.

That's the Billy Jean King theory of womanhood...that the only thing that makes a woman a woman is being raised as a woman. Essentially, there are no differences between a woman and a man, that 2nd Wave Feminist view holds.

However, the 3rd Wave Feminists don't like that. And with good reason: it would mean that there is nothing at all essentially good to "being a woman." In fact, it would mean that all women were nothing more than rather weak and small men. It would also mean that there could be a thing called "human rights," but no such thing as "women's rights," since "women" would no longer refer to any specific or special thing.

So Feminism itself, in those two forms, raises the question. And the question cannot be avoided: is there anything essential, special, unique and valuable to being a woman, or not?

Which are you, AC? Are you a believe in the 2nd Wave narrative, of the 3rd Wave Feminist narrative? Do you think a "woman" is a real, distinct, special, essential thing, or not?
What about the physical side? Well, I'm a physicist, not a biologist;

You don't need to be.

What you know, and nobody even doubts, is that there are XX chromosomes and XY chromosomes. And long after you're dead, and every feature of your body has been dissolved by the worms, an archaologist will be able to tell at least one thing about you when she digs you up...that you were a woman. That's how deeply that feature is buried in your very makeup. It's not superficial at all.

But the question remains: is it an important thing? Does your being a woman make you essentially special in any way at all?
...what I would be most interested in if we're asking about what it means to be a woman is whether hormones would cause any kind of behavioral or cognitive differences.
That's a good question. I think we all suspect the answer. Even brain physiology is different between men and women, so it's very hard to make any case that the cognitions are exactly the same. And anecdotally and in terms of psychological experiments, we can see that there is overlap between men and women, but considerable differences in larger-scale patterns.

Men (as a group) are higher than women in aggression. More of them are violent, and more end up in jail. That doesn't mean no women can ever be like that: just way less. Women are higher in both agreeabiity and sociability. Even female babies recognize faces earlier than male babies do, and female children learn language faster. But all of this is on averages. So exceptions do not tell us the rule is wrong. Rather, it just tells us there are overlappers; and that there are definitely female and male tendencies so powerful that they are reflected universally and reliably in large demographic studies.
I've looked into cognitive differences before (having battled misogyny my whole life),

If there is no such essential thing as a "woman," then neither is there any such thing as misogyny. All there is, is general human aggression, perhaps; but women can no longer claim that misogyny is some special kind of prejudice, or ask for rights based on it.
So I don't think we can say that there's anything cognitive about being a woman.
As I pointed out earlier, all the large-scale demographic studies show the opposite: and that's even regardless of cultural variables.
The only reason I would even take note of it is if a trans woman or an ally

Well, there's something deeply incoherent about trans ideology. I'll explain it carefully. It parallels the problem with women's essentialism.

1. If "woman" is not essentially anything, then no person needs to be a "woman."
2. If "woman" is something essentially special, then only people who have that special essence can be "women."

Here's what trans-ideology asks us to believe: that a man does not have to be a man, essentially. "Man" is not an essence, and "woman" is not an essence.

But at the same time, they ask us to believe that a man HAS to BECOME a "woman" -- the very thing they just assured us was nothing. :shock: And they tell us that if Bruce doesn't get to be Caitlin, we will have done him-her an injustice. :shock: We are told that being Bruce would make Bruce inauthentic (that's their word, usually). We would be "oppressing" Bruce, by calling him-her Bruce, and not Caitlin. But that's impossible, since being Caitlin or Bruce is "essentially" nothing! They just told us so! :shock:

So what trans-ideology is campainging for makes no sense at all, even if we accept the terms upon which trans-ideology insists. Trans ideologies relies both on essentialism AND on anti-essentialism at the same time! In other words, it defeats itself.
I am not betraying women
Well, there's nobody to betray, if "women" are not essentially anything. So I guess you don't have to worry about it, then. You couldn't betray them anyway.
and I think that calling anyone's genuine concern or empathy "virtue signaling" is an old canard,
I didn't, you'll note...but since you raise that term, we should unpack it, so you can see why I didn't.

"Virtue signalling" refers to the habit of preening oneself as a politically-conformist or an "open-minded person" in front of others, regardless of what one's preening costs others. Essentially, a "virtue signaller" cares more for being personally seen as "loving" or "empathetic" than for actually saving anybody from harm or pain. In fact, most "virtue signallers" are quite prepared to perpetuate the suffering of others, if only they can sustain their own appearances and gain the approval of a certain kind of ideologically-possessed type.

For example, somebody who "virtue signals" for trans-women has no concern for all the female competitors who lose races, scholarships, records, respect, and opportunities for which Feminists strove so hard. They don't care about young women assaulted or raped in trans-bathrooms. They don't care about the mental suffering of people who have body-dysmorphic disorder. And they don't even want to hear from the many "de-transitioners" who have come forward to tell their horror stories of being betrayed by the political pressure of their peers and "open minded" supporters. All such virtue signallers actually care about is ending up on "the right side" of the trans issue. They don't give a fig for who gets victimized in the process...in this case, other women and mentally ill men.

However, I did not apply that term to you. I would tend to see you as a genuinely empathetic person, if one who may not yet have seen the dark side of the supporting of "trans-women." But that side is very dark indeed...both for women, and for the mentally ill. I don't suspect you of wanting to trade on their pain to make yourself appear "good."
You type eloquently, you seem like you might be an intelligent poster. Let's work together with good intentions and trust in each others' good intentions.
I feell likewise, and am operating under the assumption that you are a good-hearted person who is wanting to think through these issues together. I have no evil suspicion or insulting intention regarding you. I trust that's clear.
Also, I like your name.
Thank you. Most people do not actually know what it means...and that includes almost all the Kantians here, ironically.

It's actually an allusion to a Biblical passage (Isaiah 7 and Matthew 1:23), and only a pun on Kant. Regarding Kant himself, I have no particular interest. That fact would surely astonish the Kantians. :wink:
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Astro Cat
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Re: Gender Essentialism

Post by Astro Cat »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 3:08 am
Astro Cat wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 2:20 am Then perhaps I'm saying that growing up being socialized stereotypically as a girl isn't essential to being a woman, but is a common difference between trans women and people assigned female at birth. It is possible* for a woman assigned female at birth not to have a stereotypical girls' upbringing.
Of course. And there's nothing wrong with that, if that's the case....so long as she's not deluded into thinking she's a man, of course.

That's the Billy Jean King theory of womanhood...that the only thing that makes a woman a woman is being raised as a woman. Essentially, there are no differences between a woman and a man, that 2nd Wave Feminist view holds.
I can say then that I definitely don't agree with Billy Jean King on this. For instance, there was one incredibly sad and unethical instance where, following a problem with circumcision, a phenotypically male person was raised as a girl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer). As it turns out, his gender (like most peoples') aligned with his phenotype and he began to live as a man, but eventually committed suicide.

From what I gather this case is difficult to parse because of the insane things like "childhood sexual roleplay" the researchers were doing. However, the fact of the matter is that by 14, as soon as David learned about the circumstances of his birth, he immediately began to live as a young man.

I don't think it would be fair to say that David was a woman because he was raised as a girl. So I must disagree with Billy Jean King.
Immanuel Can wrote:However, the 3rd Wave Feminists don't like that. And with good reason: it would mean that there is nothing at all essentially good to "being a woman." In fact, it would mean that all women were nothing more than rather weak and small men. It would also mean that there could be a thing called "human rights," but no such thing as "women's rights," since "women" would no longer refer to any specific or special thing.
Excuse me, I prefer "vertically and massively challenged," thank you! (I'm totally kidding ^_^)

So, I will try to make some sense out of my response to this. I think that being a woman or being a man (gender, not sex) is mostly about fulfilling stereotypes and wanting society to treat is in certain (positive -- obviously we frown at the associated negatives) ways.

I have a big closet full of allll kinds of stuff. I signal how I want society to respond to me when I decide what I'm wearing. If I want to turn heads, I know what to wear. If I want to accentuate feminine clothes stereotypes, I know what to wear. If I don't want much attention or for people to make fewer assumptions about how I want to be treated, I'll wear something neutral or a baggy sweater. The presence of makeup and style of makeup are obviously also factors. I know what I'm doing when I do all of these things.

I get treated differently based on how I'm presenting, and I think this is essentially what it means to "be a woman." Now, despite being a lesbian, I'm not masculine (I highlight femininity way more often than neutral and never specifically masculine) and am not even really attracted to masculine women. I've never wanted to be treated as though I were masculine. But I imagine that is what it must be like to be trans: to go out and expect society to treat you in a masculine way (for a trans man).

I don't know how to elucidate how very well, but this seems to me like it gets around some of your questions without abandoning that "woman" has any meaning. "Women's rights" and "misogyny" would still be meaningful terms referring to the bad parts about presenting feminine to society and being treated as such. Some of it is also muddy because there's a difference between sex and gender; and some women's rights deal with the sex more so than the gender (e.g. abortion and bodily autonomy).
Immanuel Can wrote:So Feminism itself, in those two forms, raises the question. And the question cannot be avoided: is there anything essential, special, unique and valuable to being a woman, or not?

Which are you, AC? Are you a believe in the 2nd Wave narrative, of the 3rd Wave Feminist narrative? Do you think a "woman" is a real, distinct, special, essential thing, or not?
I think there are real biological and physical facts about having a female phenotype, but I think in terms of gender, being a woman is just an expectation we have of society and society has of us. I don't think this leads to a situation where we have to abandon concepts/terms like womens' rights or misogyny. For instance, a trans woman that passes could very well suffer from effects of misogyny.

We could argue that some trans men have uteruses, such that "womens' rights" as a term excludes them maybe. But my response to that would just be "maybe it does, maybe there's some more inclusive term for it," I don't know. I know in some trans-friendly communities people do use terms like "penis-havers" and "uterus-havers" to try to be more inclusive when talking about issues surrounding particular genitals or sexual characteristics. Some people scoff at inclusive language as absurd, but I find it to be good-intentioned.
Immanuel Can wrote: What you know, and nobody even doubts, is that there are XX chromosomes and XY chromosomes. And long after you're dead, and every feature of your body has been dissolved by the worms, an archaologist will be able to tell at least one thing about you when she digs you up...that you were a woman. That's how deeply that feature is buried in your very makeup. It's not superficial at all.

But the question remains: is it an important thing? Does your being a woman make you essentially special in any way at all?
Yes, I understand that I'd be able to be identified as a phenotypic woman, but I don't think trans people or trans allies deny this. I don't think most people deny the realities of phenotype and biology (though even these can be complicated with intersex people), that isn't what trans people mean by gender though. I think being trans is more about liking gender and wanting to interact with society with gendered expectations. I think this is precisely why there are nonbinary people that don't like gender and don't want these gendered expectations.

I think most cis people are simply either happy with or unbothered by most gendered expectations. We might complain if someone takes gendering too far, such as with misogyny. Or the reverse: despite being comfortable with my femininity, I loathe being treated like a delicate, defenseless little flower. At the same time, I'm not going to scorn someone for helping me change a tire or something. I think our gendered expectations are usually a duplicitous balance. But for the most part we are happy or unbothered by the subtle gendered societal expectations (in both directions: from us, and towards us).
Immanuel Can wrote: That's a good question. I think we all suspect the answer. Even brain physiology is different between men and women, so it's very hard to make any case that the cognitions are exactly the same. And anecdotally and in terms of psychological experiments, we can see that there is overlap between men and women, but considerable differences in larger-scale patterns.

Men (as a group) are higher than women in aggression. More of them are violent, and more end up in jail. That doesn't mean no women can ever be like that: just way less. Women are higher in both agreeabiity and sociability. Even female babies recognize faces earlier than male babies do, and female children learn language faster. But all of this is on averages. So exceptions do not tell us the rule is wrong. Rather, it just tells us there are overlappers; and that there are definitely female and male tendencies so powerful that they are reflected universally and reliably in large demographic studies.
Well, it's been a while since I've looked into the cognition stuff, and I mostly focused on differences in cognitive function in terms of mathematics, logic, STEM field function (as this is where I've always encountered the most blatant misogyny). What I recall though is that the differences were so negligible as to be dismissible, with most authors offering social informing as a good explanation for what little variance there was.

I know that women have more white connective tissue while men have more gray "thinking" tissue, but which again, doesn't seem to contribute to any cognition differences practically. I am unsure what causes the physical brain differences (whether it's social informing, hormones, or if there is something on sex-specific chromosomes responsible).

I'm perfectly fine with there existing trends and curves (as one can't dispute a fact if they're earnest), but I think it's important to recognize that there is enough overlap to treat people on an individual basis rather than on the basis of their sex or gender.

Snipping some stuff I've already commented on above.
Immanuel Can wrote: Well, there's something deeply incoherent about trans ideology. I'll explain it carefully. It parallels the problem with women's essentialism.

1. If "woman" is not essentially anything, then no person needs to be a "woman."
2. If "woman" is something essentially special, then only people who have that special essence can be "women."

Here's what trans-ideology asks us to believe: that a man does not have to be a man, essentially. "Man" is not an essence, and "woman" is not an essence.

But at the same time, they ask us to believe that a man HAS to BECOME a "woman" -- the very thing they just assured us was nothing. :shock: And they tell us that if Bruce doesn't get to be Caitlin, we will have done him-her an injustice. :shock: We are told that being Bruce would make Bruce inauthentic (that's their word, usually). We would be "oppressing" Bruce, by calling him-her Bruce, and not Caitlin. But that's impossible, since being Caitlin or Bruce is "essentially" nothing! They just told us so! :shock:
I think, again, that trans people don't reject that there is a phenotypical reality (this is why some trans people take hormonal therapy, surgery, dress to present as a particular gender, etc.); and I'm loathe to put words into anyone else's mouth, but I think it's about the social expectations aspect that I mentioned somewhere above. Gender seems to me to be about how we want to behave and how we want to be treated according to social norms related to gender.
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote:and I think that calling anyone's genuine concern or empathy "virtue signaling" is an old canard,
I didn't, you'll note...but since you raise that term, we should unpack it, so you can see why I didn't.

"Virtue signalling" refers to the habit of preening oneself as a politically-conformist or an "open-minded person" in front of others, regardless of what one's preening costs others. Essentially, a "virtue signaller" cares more for being personally seen as "loving" or "empathetic" than for actually saving anybody from harm or pain. In fact, most "virtue signallers" are quite prepared to perpetuate the suffering of others, if only they can sustain their own appearances and gain the approval of a certain kind of ideologically-possessed type.

For example, somebody who "virtue signals" for trans-women has no concern for all the female competitors who lose races, scholarships, records, respect, and opportunities for which Feminists strove so hard. They don't care about young women assaulted or raped in trans-bathrooms. They don't care about the mental suffering of people who have body-dysmorphic disorder. And they don't even want to hear from the many "de-transitioners" who have come forward to tell their horror stories of being betrayed by the political pressure of their peers and "open minded" supporters. All such virtue signallers actually care about is ending up on "the right side" of the trans issue. They don't give a fig for who gets victimized in the process...in this case, other women and mentally ill men.

However, I did not apply that term to you. I would tend to see you as a genuinely empathetic person, if one who may not yet have seen the dark side of the supporting of "trans-women." But that side is very dark indeed...both for women, and for the mentally ill. I don't suspect you of wanting to trade on their pain to make yourself appear "good."
Ok, fair enough ^_^
Immanuel Can wrote: I feell likewise, and am operating under the assumption that you are a good-hearted person who is wanting to think through these issues together. I have no evil suspicion or insulting intention regarding you. I trust that's clear.
It is, and thank you. I promise the same.
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote:Also, I like your name.
Thank you. Most people do not actually know what it means...and that includes almost all the Kantians here, ironically.

It's actually an allusion to a Biblical passage (Isaiah 7 and Matthew 1:23), and only a pun on Kant. Regarding Kant himself, I have no particular interest. That fact would surely astonish the Kantians. :wink:
I LOL'd.

One of my other favorite names I've seen online was someone that went by "Occam's Chainsaw." I just loved that one for some reason. In retrospect "Astro Cat" is pretty boring.
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Re: Gender Essentialism

Post by Astro Cat »

@Immanuel Can
I feel like I missed commenting on the ways you suggested trans support could hurt women and people with body dyspmorphia (and de-transitioners, etc.)

As I was typing my reply, I got signed out (am working simultaneously, so I was coming back and forth), so I lost everything and had to retype. That really took the wind out of my sails. I didn't mean to ignore this part, but I think the other stuff is important to hash out or at least understand each other on first.
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Re: Gender Essentialism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Astro Cat wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 4:29 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 3:08 am
Astro Cat wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 2:20 am Then perhaps I'm saying that growing up being socialized stereotypically as a girl isn't essential to being a woman, but is a common difference between trans women and people assigned female at birth. It is possible* for a woman assigned female at birth not to have a stereotypical girls' upbringing.
Of course. And there's nothing wrong with that, if that's the case....so long as she's not deluded into thinking she's a man, of course.

That's the Billy Jean King theory of womanhood...that the only thing that makes a woman a woman is being raised as a woman. Essentially, there are no differences between a woman and a man, that 2nd Wave Feminist view holds.
I can say then that I definitely don't agree with Billy Jean King on this. For instance, there was one incredibly sad and unethical instance where, following a problem with circumcision, a phenotypically male person was raised as a girl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer). As it turns out, his gender (like most peoples') aligned with his phenotype and he began to live as a man, but eventually committed suicide.
Yes, I know of this case. It was awful.

But at the time, Reimer was used by trans-advocates and gender theorists to argue that gender was a construct. And we were all told that Reimer was doing just fine, happy as a woman. Of course, all of that was a bald lie. But it certainly reminds us to be skeptical of gender theorists. John Money was nothing but a con man, and the wickedest sort.

I'm reminded of this, though, when I see how the de-transitioners are shut down, vilified and silenced by the trans lobby. They do not want these people to speak, even though they have been through horrendous abuse and want to speak up about it. For the same reason, the trans lobby vilifies Feminists as "TERFs" if they dare to suggest that being a woman is something especially unique, or to question the claim that a man can become a woman. Two of the great heroes of early Feminism, Germaine Greer and Camille Paglia, have been pilloried in particular by the trans lobby for standing up for women's rights. And, of course, there's all the recent cases of female competitors in sports being silenced as men took away from them their medals, their scholarships, their records, and were too afraid to say how unfair it all was.
I must disagree with Billy Jean King.
So must I. And I think any thoughtful person will.

The "no-difference" theory of 2nd Wave Feminism simply proved utterly deficient in scientific fact. So the 3rd Wave was onto something after all.
Immanuel Can wrote:However, the 3rd Wave Feminists don't like that. And with good reason: it would mean that there is nothing at all essentially good to "being a woman." In fact, it would mean that all women were nothing more than rather weak and small men. It would also mean that there could be a thing called "human rights," but no such thing as "women's rights," since "women" would no longer refer to any specific or special thing.
Excuse me, I prefer "vertically and massively challenged," thank you! (I'm totally kidding ^_^)
:D
So, I will try to make some sense out of my response to this. I think that being a woman or being a man (gender, not sex) is mostly about fulfilling stereotypes and wanting society to treat is in certain (positive -- obviously we frown at the associated negatives) ways.
Well, gender is actually a non-word, in reference to people. It's a grammar term, and refers to conjugations of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and that sort of thing. "Sex" is the right word...and there are only two. That's just basic mammalian biology. Everybody should know that.
I have a big closet full of allll kinds of stuff. I signal how I want society to respond to me when I decide what I'm wearing. If I want to turn heads, I know what to wear. If I want to accentuate feminine clothes stereotypes, I know what to wear. If I don't want much attention or for people to make fewer assumptions about how I want to be treated, I'll wear something neutral or a baggy sweater. The presence of makeup and style of makeup are obviously also factors. I know what I'm doing when I do all of these things.
No problem.
I get treated differently based on how I'm presenting, and I think this is essentially what it means to "be a woman." Now, despite being a lesbian, I'm not masculine (I highlight femininity way more often than neutral and never specifically masculine) and am not even really attracted to masculine women. I've never wanted to be treated as though I were masculine. But I imagine that is what it must be like to be trans: to go out and expect society to treat you in a masculine way (for a trans man).
Well, lesbians have a particular issue with transism. This has been pointed out ably by the highly gay-sympathetic author, Dr. Deborah Soh. A woman who likes women is a lesbian, we're told. But according to the trans lobby, a woman who likes women is really a man. Soh thinks that trans-ism is a kind of aspiring genocide conducted against lesbians...that rather than encouraging young girls to consider themselves as women, it launches them out in confusion to try to become a man.

And there's something to this. For trans-ism among females is a very recent phenomenon. Until recently, almost all the body-dysmorphic individuals were males wanting to be female. Now, there are four times as many females transing to male as there are males transing to female. And the demographic swing is very, very recent, and statistically far too huge to be reflective of anything normal. They all have theories, but for young women, social contagion appears to be the biggest cause.
I don't know how to elucidate how very well, but this seems to me like it gets around some of your questions without abandoning that "woman" has any meaning. "Women's rights" and "misogyny" would still be meaningful terms referring to the bad parts about presenting feminine to society and being treated as such. Some of it is also muddy because there's a difference between sex and gender; and some women's rights deal with the sex more so than the gender (e.g. abortion and bodily autonomy).
I think it's even more problematic than that. One thing for sure: you can't even speak of "misogyny" or "women's rights" unless "woman" is a definite, essentializable thing. There's no such thing as a "crime against a nothing." So a "woman" has to be something, or you lose all right of pleading for any particular consideration.
Immanuel Can wrote:So Feminism itself, in those two forms, raises the question. And the question cannot be avoided: is there anything essential, special, unique and valuable to being a woman, or not?

Which are you, AC? Are you a believe in the 2nd Wave narrative, of the 3rd Wave Feminist narrative? Do you think a "woman" is a real, distinct, special, essential thing, or not?
I think there are real biological and physical facts about having a female phenotype, but I think in terms of gender, being a woman is just an expectation we have of society and society has of us. I don't think this leads to a situation where we have to abandon concepts/terms like womens' rights or misogyny. For instance, a trans woman that passes could very well suffer from effects of misogyny.
I think we have to bury the "gender" idea. It has no scientific basis at all.

Like I was saying earlier, however they behave, no mammal has, as a matter of pure fact, more than two established sexes, and reproduction is invariably sexual in mammals. We are mammals.
Some people scoff at inclusive language as absurd, but I find it to be good-intentioned.
It's not so much "inclusive" as it is "confusive." :wink: And I'm not at all impressed by protestations of "good intentions": the roads paved with that often lead to bad places.
I think most cis people..
That's another non-word. There's no such thing as "cis." That's artificial, political, manipulated language, not authentic language.
Or the reverse: despite being comfortable with my femininity, I loathe being treated like a delicate, defenseless little flower. At the same time, I'm not going to scorn someone for helping me change a tire or something.

Well, why? Ask yourself that. Why would you allow somebody else to change your tire? If there's no difference, why not change it yourself?

In every case wherein I have had or been in any car that has had a flat tire...and there have been several...I've been out, kneeling by the side of the road, jacking up the car...once in the winter, in the middle of a sleet storm, on a 12 lane superhighway, with trucks and cars whizzing by at highway speed.

I would never consider not helping. What's different between you and me?
Immanuel Can wrote: That's a good question. I think we all suspect the answer. Even brain physiology is different between men and women, so it's very hard to make any case that the cognitions are exactly the same. And anecdotally and in terms of psychological experiments, we can see that there is overlap between men and women, but considerable differences in larger-scale patterns.

Men (as a group) are higher than women in aggression. More of them are violent, and more end up in jail. That doesn't mean no women can ever be like that: just way less. Women are higher in both agreeabiity and sociability. Even female babies recognize faces earlier than male babies do, and female children learn language faster. But all of this is on averages. So exceptions do not tell us the rule is wrong. Rather, it just tells us there are overlappers; and that there are definitely female and male tendencies so powerful that they are reflected universally and reliably in large demographic studies.
Well, it's been a while since I've looked into the cognition stuff, and I mostly focused on differences in cognitive function in terms of mathematics, logic, STEM field function (as this is where I've always encountered the most blatant misogyny).
It's not all misogyny, of course.

The studies on this have been as exhaustive and decisive as any sociological studies can be. If you maximize choice, women will gravitate to the caring professions, and men to things like STEM. And remarkably, when you give the widest choice, the gap grows even greater. For example, almost 100% of bricklayers, lumberjacks, construction workers, deep sea fishers, and so on, are men. And women are overwhelmingly represented in teaching, nursing, child care, sociology, and so on. And it's almost always by choice now. In fact, in many "traditionally male" professions, the quickest way right now to get a job is to be female -- because they're so desperate to get some quota filled, they'll take you for sure. They can't get enough females to enter those professions, in order to satisfy the politcal pressure of "diversity hiring."

So something's too simple in the "misogyny" explanation. Statistically, that's not what's keeping women out of maths or engineering and into sociology, anthropology and education.
Immanuel Can wrote: Well, there's something deeply incoherent about trans ideology. I'll explain it carefully. It parallels the problem with women's essentialism.

1. If "woman" is not essentially anything, then no person needs to be a "woman."
2. If "woman" is something essentially special, then only people who have that special essence can be "women."

Here's what trans-ideology asks us to believe: that a man does not have to be a man, essentially. "Man" is not an essence, and "woman" is not an essence.

But at the same time, they ask us to believe that a man HAS to BECOME a "woman" -- the very thing they just assured us was nothing. :shock: And they tell us that if Bruce doesn't get to be Caitlin, we will have done him-her an injustice. :shock: We are told that being Bruce would make Bruce inauthentic (that's their word, usually). We would be "oppressing" Bruce, by calling him-her Bruce, and not Caitlin. But that's impossible, since being Caitlin or Bruce is "essentially" nothing! They just told us so! :shock:
I think, again, that trans people don't reject that there is a phenotypical reality (this is why some trans people take hormonal therapy, surgery, dress to present as a particular gender, etc.); and I'm loathe to put words into anyone else's mouth, but I think it's about the social expectations aspect that I mentioned somewhere above. Gender seems to me to be about how we want to behave and how we want to be treated according to social norms related to gender.
It's simpler than that. For any statement to be true, it must, at the very minimum, not immediately contradict itself. If it does, we can be 100% sure, right away, and without even going into particulars, it's simply not true. It's self defeated.

That's true of trans-ideology. It's so instantly and radically self-contradictory we can have no doubt it's false. It cannot even be articulated in any way that makes logical sense. It's not even possibly true.
One of my other favorite names I've seen online was someone that went by "Occam's Chainsaw." I just loved that one for some reason. In retrospect "Astro Cat" is pretty boring.
What made you choose that name?
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Re: Gender Essentialism

Post by Astro Cat »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 5:23 am
Astro Cat wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 4:29 am I can say then that I definitely don't agree with Billy Jean King on this. For instance, there was one incredibly sad and unethical instance where, following a problem with circumcision, a phenotypically male person was raised as a girl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer). As it turns out, his gender (like most peoples') aligned with his phenotype and he began to live as a man, but eventually committed suicide.
Yes, I know of this case. It was awful.

But at the time, Reimer was used by trans-advocates and gender theorists to argue that gender was a construct. And we were all told that Reimer was doing just fine, happy as a woman. Of course, all of that was a bald lie. But it certainly reminds us to be skeptical of gender theorists. John Money was nothing but a con man, and the wickedest sort.

I'm reminded of this, though, when I see how the de-transitioners are shut down, vilified and silenced by the trans lobby. They do not want these people to speak, even though they have been through horrendous abuse and want to speak up about it. For the same reason, the trans lobby vilifies Feminists as "TERFs" if they dare to suggest that being a woman is something especially unique, or to question the claim that a man can become a woman. Two of the great heroes of early Feminism, Germaine Greer and Camille Paglia, have been pilloried in particular by the trans lobby for standing up for women's rights. And, of course, there's all the recent cases of female competitors in sports being silenced as men took away from them their medals, their scholarships, their records, and were too afraid to say how unfair it all was.
I am not versed in Germaine Greer or Camille Paglia to make any commentary here. I don't defend everything "the trans lobby" does and I don't have a well-formed opinion about transwomen in sports yet. I understand these issues are complicated. I don't think transwomen are invalid, though.
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote:So, I will try to make some sense out of my response to this. I think that being a woman or being a man (gender, not sex) is mostly about fulfilling stereotypes and wanting society to treat is in certain (positive -- obviously we frown at the associated negatives) ways.
Well, gender is actually a non-word, in reference to people. It's a grammar term, and refers to conjugations of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and that sort of thing. "Sex" is the right word...and there are only two. That's just basic mammalian biology. Everybody should know that.
I disagree. The description I gave in my post about gender being about social expectations is a useful way to use the term, and seems to be how many people do use the term. If I go to google and type "gender" I get the first definition as "either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female."

Now, I'm not saying "ha, it's in the dictionary, so it must be right," because I know that dictionary definitions are rarely philosophically vigorous (and this one I pasted is itself somewhat muddled). But my point is that if people use a term to communicate something that makes that term real as long as it's communicating something. I think that it is, I know what people mean when they say "gender, not sex."
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote:I get treated differently based on how I'm presenting, and I think this is essentially what it means to "be a woman." Now, despite being a lesbian, I'm not masculine (I highlight femininity way more often than neutral and never specifically masculine) and am not even really attracted to masculine women. I've never wanted to be treated as though I were masculine. But I imagine that is what it must be like to be trans: to go out and expect society to treat you in a masculine way (for a trans man).
Well, lesbians have a particular issue with transism. This has been pointed out ably by the highly gay-sympathetic author, Dr. Deborah Soh. A woman who likes women is a lesbian, we're told. But according to the trans lobby, a woman who likes women is really a man. Soh thinks that trans-ism is a kind of aspiring genocide conducted against lesbians...that rather than encouraging young girls to consider themselves as women, it launches them out in confusion to try to become a man.
Emphasis added by me. This part isn't true. I have several trans friends, I'm involved in a lot of social groups friendly to trans people, etc., and it's my understanding that trans people don't say that women that like women must be men, or that men that like men must be women. I don't think anybody thinks that. In fact, it's common (for instance) for a trans man that's in a relationship with a woman to consider it a heterosexual relationship, or (for instance) for a trans woman that's in a relationship with a woman to consider it a homosexual relationship.
Immanuel Can wrote: And there's something to this. For trans-ism among females is a very recent phenomenon. Until recently, almost all the body-dysmorphic individuals were males wanting to be female. Now, there are four times as many females transing to male as there are males transing to female. And the demographic swing is very, very recent, and statistically far too huge to be reflective of anything normal. They all have theories, but for young women, social contagion appears to be the biggest cause.
Yes, I'm aware that trans men are on the rise in young people. I don't know what the cause could be. I know exactly one person struggling with their gender identity under the age of 15 and I know their factors are quite complicated and deal with abuse, dealing with misogyny, etc., to the point that they don't want to identify as a girl anymore. That is just a single anecdote though (someone I know's daughter, it is a difficult thing for both of them that they are working with. I don't want to speak on too personal of a level about someone I know though).
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote:I don't know how to elucidate how very well, but this seems to me like it gets around some of your questions without abandoning that "woman" has any meaning. "Women's rights" and "misogyny" would still be meaningful terms referring to the bad parts about presenting feminine to society and being treated as such. Some of it is also muddy because there's a difference between sex and gender; and some women's rights deal with the sex more so than the gender (e.g. abortion and bodily autonomy).
I think it's even more problematic than that. One thing for sure: you can't even speak of "misogyny" or "women's rights" unless "woman" is a definite, essentializable thing. There's no such thing as a "crime against a nothing." So a "woman" has to be something, or you lose all right of pleading for any particular consideration.
But "woman" as a gender, being an identification that one wants to behave as and be treated as, isn't a "nothing." For instance, is there anything "essential" about being Amish other than possessing certain beliefs? An Amish person dresses in a certain way and goes out expecting to behave a certain way and expecting to be treated a certain way: they expect to behave Amish, and to be treated Amish-ly (they might balk if you offer them to play your Nintendo Switch).

We could ask, "is there anything essential about being Amish?" Being Amish in this sense isn't anything biological, it's entirely about what sorts of beliefs a person has (so this is not a perfect analogy), but we can at least say that an Amish person expects to behave Amish-ly in society and expects society to treat them Amish-ly. If someone sees an Amish person and behaves badly towards them because of how they're dressed and because of their expectations, that's the Amish equivalent of misogyny.

A woman, the gender, expects to behave womanly and to be treated womanly. The essential thing about being a woman is believing that they should behave womanly and be treated in a womanly way. What it means to behave womanly and be treated womanly is really fuzzy, but so are a lot of concepts that we deal with every day. I don't think this is unnavigable. Misogyny is just when someone thinks that treating someone in a womanly way includes negative things.
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote:I think most cis people..
That's another non-word. There's no such thing as "cis." That's artificial, political, manipulated language, not authentic language.
I disagree, it's a useful term. If I say that I'm a cis woman, a medical professional knows more about my internal bits. It's just a simple term to demarcate those whose phenotypes match their gender.
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote:Or the reverse: despite being comfortable with my femininity, I loathe being treated like a delicate, defenseless little flower. At the same time, I'm not going to scorn someone for helping me change a tire or something.

Well, why? Ask yourself that. Why would you allow somebody else to change your tire? If there's no difference, why not change it yourself?

In every case wherein I have had or been in any car that has had a flat tire...and there have been several...I've been out, kneeling by the side of the road, jacking up the car...once in the winter, in the middle of a sleet storm, on a 12 lane superhighway, with trucks and cars whizzing by at highway speed.

I would never consider not helping. What's different between you and me?
I will still change my tire. I was qualifying my statement that I loathe being treated like a helpless, delicate flower. It's not easy to define what I mean by that: but I know it when I see it. I was clarifying that if I was offered help changing a tire, I wouldn't scorn the person offering the help. (I suppose that depends on the manner in which they offer, though).

I don't weigh a whole lot. I've jumped on the damn tire iron without loosening a nut before LOL. Sometimes I might need the help. But I was just trying to clarify that loathing being babied didn't mean I'd lash out at someone for offering reasonable help. Someone's gotta open the damn jars, ya know. (Lesbian problems 101)
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote: Well, it's been a while since I've looked into the cognition stuff, and I mostly focused on differences in cognitive function in terms of mathematics, logic, STEM field function (as this is where I've always encountered the most blatant misogyny).
It's not all misogyny, of course.

The studies on this have been as exhaustive and decisive as any sociological studies can be. If you maximize choice, women will gravitate to the caring professions, and men to things like STEM. And remarkably, when you give the widest choice, the gap grows even greater. For example, almost 100% of bricklayers, lumberjacks, construction workers, deep sea fishers, and so on, are men. And women are overwhelmingly represented in teaching, nursing, child care, sociology, and so on. And it's almost always by choice now. In fact, in many "traditionally male" professions, the quickest way right now to get a job is to be female -- because they're so desperate to get some quota filled, they'll take you for sure. They can't get enough females to enter those professions, in order to satisfy the politcal pressure of "diversity hiring."

So something's too simple in the "misogyny" explanation. Statistically, that's not what's keeping women out of maths or engineering and into sociology, anthropology and education.
Yet that has nothing to do with men or women's actual capabilities: social and systemic factors are just that, they don't tell us something essential. When I can, I work with a program called Reach for the Stars which has subprograms for women in STEM. Lots of women are interested in STEM, they just don't stay there, for a multitude of factors (and yes, misogyny is one of them).

For instance, how do you think I've felt when I've been told something similar to what you just said above: "the quickest way... is to be female -- because they're so desperate to get some quota filled, they'll take you for sure?" I often feel like I have to work twice as hard to be taken half as seriously. Women get invited to speak at conferences less, get names placed lower in publication lists, so on and so forth. The thing about institutional misogyny is that nobody involved even has to be an outright explicit jerk of a misogynist, that's what makes it insidious. I'm a tough girl, but I've felt this. It's heightened my imposter syndrome (normal, for a grad student) to the nth degree. And that's just one reason women trickle out of STEM fields, and I don't entirely blame them sometimes.

Don't conflate societal pressures and factors with the notion that women only want to be nurturers. It's so much more complex than that.
Immanuel Can wrote: What made you choose that name?
Well you see, I'm into astro, and I love cats :P (My name isn't Catherine as some people have guessed, though I suppose maybe that would have at least been better!)
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Re: Gender Essentialism

Post by Astro Cat »

I am weirdly in pretty much the same kind of discussion over at another forum now.

I think we need trans folks to sign up so they can give first person perspectives on some of this!
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Re: Gender Essentialism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Astro Cat wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:03 am I don't think transwomen are invalid, though.
I think they are. They're mentally ill, if they're innocent. And if they're not innocent, then they're manipulative.
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote:So, I will try to make some sense out of my response to this. I think that being a woman or being a man (gender, not sex) is mostly about fulfilling stereotypes and wanting society to treat is in certain (positive -- obviously we frown at the associated negatives) ways.
Well, gender is actually a non-word, in reference to people. It's a grammar term, and refers to conjugations of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and that sort of thing. "Sex" is the right word...and there are only two. That's just basic mammalian biology. Everybody should know that.
I disagree. The description I gave in my post about gender being about social expectations is a useful way to use the term, and seems to be how many people do use the term.
Gender ideologues, maybe. And yes, they have been somewhat successful in polluting people's thinking, espectially through miseducation. But I call them "the woking dead," because for them, thinking has ended. :wink: More worrying, manipulative neo-Marxist ideologues have also promoted it for their own purposes. And the latter are now dominating the academy, at least in Humanities subjects.

But it's an inventive, manipulative distinction. There actually are only two sexes. And we would all know that, if we are speaking of dogs, cats, chickens or dolphins. There is zero doubt there.

Why we would not realize that basic biological fact in relation to human beings, then, is a mystery...unless it's to justify a certain kind of choice or behaviour, by making human beings the lone exception to biological reality.
Now, I'm not saying "ha, it's in the dictionary, so it must be right," because I know that dictionary definitions are rarely philosophically vigorous (and this one I pasted is itself somewhat muddled).

That's an important realization you've added there. A lot of people actually think that any dictionary is some sort of semi-divine authority. But you're right: they're often somewhat foggy, because dictionaries -- unless highly specialized and refined for a purpose, like medical dictonaries -- are generalizing sources, not precise ones. And even medical dictionaries get revised regularly.
But my point is that if people use a term to communicate something that makes that term real as long as it's communicating something. I think that it is, I know what people mean when they say "gender, not sex."
I would put it more simply: there's a difference between behaviour (or inclination) and identity. A man who wants to be a woman is an (essential) man, who is trying (imaginatively) to adopt female sexual roles and postures. But that doesn't make him a woman. It doesn't change his identity. Identity is not a construct or social choice: it's a natural fact.

And interestingly, even the Left recognizes this. They tell me I cannot simply declare my identity to be Chinese. They tell me I cannot make myself into a salmon by lying down and flopping. But somehow, they tell me I can make myself into a woman by just wanting to be one?

I'm not that naive. And believe me, nobody wants to see me be a woman. Some folks are just a whole lot better staying the way God made them. :wink:
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote:I get treated differently based on how I'm presenting, and I think this is essentially what it means to "be a woman." Now, despite being a lesbian, I'm not masculine (I highlight femininity way more often than neutral and never specifically masculine) and am not even really attracted to masculine women. I've never wanted to be treated as though I were masculine. But I imagine that is what it must be like to be trans: to go out and expect society to treat you in a masculine way (for a trans man).
Well, lesbians have a particular issue with transism. This has been pointed out ably by the highly gay-sympathetic author, Dr. Deborah Soh. A woman who likes women is a lesbian, we're told. But according to the trans lobby, a woman who likes women is really a man. Soh thinks that trans-ism is a kind of aspiring genocide conducted against lesbians...that rather than encouraging young girls to consider themselves as women, it launches them out in confusion to try to become a man.
Emphasis added by me. This part isn't true. I have several trans friends, I'm involved in a lot of social groups friendly to trans people, etc., and it's my understanding that trans people don't say that women that like women must be men, or that men that like men must be women.
Actually, they often do, and with increasing frequency.

There's a common pattern in transing. All the research reflects this pattern. Overwhelmingly, today, a young woman (often around the age of puberty) expresses dissatisfaction with her feelings about body or sex. Or maybe she's on the spectrum somewhat,and undiagnosed yet, and this is causing her identity confusion. She shares her confusion on social media platforms, where transers inform her that she might "be a man." She is intrigued, because this is often the first affirmation she's had. The lobby immediately begins to push her toward additional steps; and by the time she's in her late teens, she's taking hormones, calling herself by male names, or even going for "top surgery"...or worse. These measure render her infertile, incompatible with her developmental age, and scarred for life. But children who are not interfered with in this way are statistically about 95% likely to self-correct by the end of the teen years, and be happy as women.

But as Soh points out, what if all that's happened is that she's experienced normal body-dissatisfaction at puberty (nearly a universal experience for all girls)? Or what if she's a lesbian in her sexual tastes, and has been told she ought to mutilate herself into "being" a man? Then she's not a "lesbian" anymore, is she? She's now trying to BE a man. And that's quite a different thing.

Soh's very pro-lesbian, and pro-gay generally. She sees herself as defending that identity against a hostile narrative that is intent on damaging young women who are more naturally lesbian. Now, whether you take her seriously or not, it's got to make you wonder...is it not happening sometimes that young women are being channelled into "becoming" men, when really they're not?

And why does the trans lobby suppress the detransitioners? They hate them. Why? Is no the de-transitioning experience just as "valid" as the transitioning one? Again, you have to wonder...

Matt Walsh has a new film out, called "What Is a Woman?" I've seen segments, and it looks really good, especially for one thing: it shows beyond any possibility of doubt how thoroughly dishonest gender theorists are today.
Immanuel Can wrote: And there's something to this. For trans-ism among females is a very recent phenomenon. Until recently, almost all the body-dysmorphic individuals were males wanting to be female. Now, there are four times as many females transing to male as there are males transing to female. And the demographic swing is very, very recent, and statistically far too huge to be reflective of anything normal. They all have theories, but for young women, social contagion appears to be the biggest cause.
Yes, I'm aware that trans men are on the rise in young people.

They're not nearly so much on the rise as young women are...not by four times.
I don't know what the cause could be. I know exactly one person struggling with their gender identity under the age of 15 and I know their factors are quite complicated and deal with abuse, dealing with misogyny, etc., to the point that they don't want to identify as a girl anymore. That is just a single anecdote though (someone I know's daughter, it is a difficult thing for both of them that they are working with. I don't want to speak on too personal of a level about someone I know though).
Oh, that's really bad. I'm sorry for her. The parents always end up being the big losers in this situation.

If they don't "support" their daughter, then she resents them and alienates herself from them, because her transition "friends" drive her to it. But if they "support" her, then what happens when, like the majority, she comes to realize she's never been a man, or she's a lesbian, and she's been manipulated into bodily self-harm of the most extreme sort? She's disfigured and scarred permanently, permanently infertile, subject to horrendous effects like cancers of the cervix and early onset osteoporosis, and has a shortened lifespan. Worst of all, often nobody "wants" her anymore. And she turns on her parents then, and asks, "Why didn't you protect me? I was a kid!"

The parents often lose, whatever they do.
Immanuel Can wrote: I think it's even more problematic than that. One thing for sure: you can't even speak of "misogyny" or "women's rights" unless "woman" is a definite, essentializable thing. There's no such thing as a "crime against a nothing." So a "woman" has to be something, or you lose all right of pleading for any particular consideration.
But "woman" as a gender, being an identification that one wants to behave as and be treated as, isn't a "nothing." For instance, is there anything "essential" about being Amish other than possessing certain beliefs? An Amish person dresses in a certain way and goes out expecting to behave a certain way and expecting to be treated a certain way: they expect to behave Amish, and to be treated Amish-ly (they might balk if you offer them to play your Nintendo Switch).
"Amish" is genetic, of course, generally German, often within a specific gene pool. And it's cultural, linguistic and religious, as well. And without some combination of those factors, there's no sense in which one can be called "Amish"; so yes, "Amish" is an essentializable quality. It's just essentializable by more than one criterion.

But "woman" is a nothing if it can be changed at will. That's pretty much the whole definition of a "nothing" -- something that can be changed by mere whim, because it has no anchor in reality at all. Nothing is essential to it.
A woman, the gender, expects to behave womanly and to be treated womanly.
No, I would say that's not right.

I might "expect" to be treated as Chinese or black, but I won't be. Look at Rachel Dolezal's case, for example. Rather, the problem will be my "expectation," not other people's behaviour. They'll be behaving quite rightly. I'll be the one who's deluded.
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.
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote:I think most cis people..
That's another non-word. There's no such thing as "cis." That's artificial, political, manipulated language, not authentic language.
I disagree, it's a useful term.
Then we disagree. I think it's prejudicial and artificial.
I don't weigh a whole lot. I've jumped on the damn tire iron without loosening a nut before LOL. Sometimes I might need the help. But I was just trying to clarify that loathing being babied didn't mean I'd lash out at someone for offering reasonable help. Someone's gotta open the damn jars, ya know. (Lesbian problems 101)
:D
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote: Well, it's been a while since I've looked into the cognition stuff, and I mostly focused on differences in cognitive function in terms of mathematics, logic, STEM field function (as this is where I've always encountered the most blatant misogyny).
It's not all misogyny, of course.

The studies on this have been as exhaustive and decisive as any sociological studies can be. If you maximize choice, women will gravitate to the caring professions, and men to things like STEM. And remarkably, when you give the widest choice, the gap grows even greater. For example, almost 100% of bricklayers, lumberjacks, construction workers, deep sea fishers, and so on, are men. And women are overwhelmingly represented in teaching, nursing, child care, sociology, and so on. And it's almost always by choice now. In fact, in many "traditionally male" professions, the quickest way right now to get a job is to be female -- because they're so desperate to get some quota filled, they'll take you for sure. They can't get enough females to enter those professions, in order to satisfy the politcal pressure of "diversity hiring."

So something's too simple in the "misogyny" explanation. Statistically, that's not what's keeping women out of maths or engineering and into sociology, anthropology and education.
Yet that has nothing to do with men or women's actual capabilities
I'm not so sure.

How is it that all the athletic records for humans, (as an undifferentiated group), are male? Why is the fastest female runner in history (Flo Jo), far slower than the top high school boys? Is that misogyny?

And what if women do prefer the caring professions? Should we force them to become bricklayers and lumberjacks, just so we can have our ideology of sameness? Should men be forced to become nurses and social workers? Or should we let men and women gravitate to areas of interest that match both their biologies and their natural dispositions?

Sweden is an interesting case. It's one of the most egalitarian, open, equal-choice societies on earth. Yet what the Swedes have found is that when you give men and women free choice, differences maximize. They don't disappear. They maximize. Left free, men and women gravitate to different choices.

And why not? Why shouldn't they?
For instance, how do you think I've felt when I've been told something similar to what you just said above: "the quickest way... is to be female -- because they're so desperate to get some quota filled, they'll take you for sure?" I often feel like I have to work twice as hard to be taken half as seriously.
Yes, that's a serious downside of affirmative action programs: they encourage people to suspect a woman or minority has only been hired "for diversity," not for competence. And the truth is that that is sometimes done. So it's not an unreasonable suspicion. It's just that it's brutally unfair to those who have been hired for being good. :shock: It steals the respect they are rightfully due.
Women get invited to speak at conferences less, get names placed lower in publication lists, so on and so forth.

Not in the fields in which I work...there, men are the minority. And if you're a white male, you can forget about tenure, or easy publication, or leading committees, or whatever. You're automatically called an "oppressor" for your sex and the colour of your skin. You're damned before you begin.

Not that I care. I'm tough enough and confident enough to brush off the bigots. They don't worry me.
Don't conflate societal pressures and factors with the notion that women only want to be nurturers. It's so much more complex than that.
I never do. But the fact remains that women are, as a group, way better nurturers than men are; and good men are better protectors than women are. I think these effects come from both biology and socialization, and that any account that only includes one is incomplete, at best.

Good thoughts.
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Re: Gender Essentialism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Astro Cat wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:36 am I am weirdly in pretty much the same kind of discussion over at another forum now.

I think we need trans folks to sign up so they can give first person perspectives on some of this!
We should include a de-transitioner, too.
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Re: Gender Essentialism

Post by Astro Cat »

Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 2:16 pm Gender ideologues, maybe. And yes, they have been somewhat successful in polluting people's thinking, espectially through miseducation. But I call them "the woking dead," because for them, thinking has ended. :wink: More worrying, manipulative neo-Marxist ideologues have also promoted it for their own purposes. And the latter are now dominating the academy, at least in Humanities subjects.

But it's an inventive, manipulative distinction. There actually are only two sexes. And we would all know that, if we are speaking of dogs, cats, chickens or dolphins. There is zero doubt there.

Why we would not realize that basic biological fact in relation to human beings, then, is a mystery...unless it's to justify a certain kind of choice or behaviour, by making human beings the lone exception to biological reality.
Well, but nobody is confused about there mainly being two phenotypical realities, male sex and female sex (I say "mainly" because of intersex people, not highly relevant here). Trans people know they still have a sexual phenotype. The reason other animals don't have cultural genders is easy: they do not have highly complex and abstracted cultures.
Immanuel Can wrote: I would put it more simply: there's a difference between behaviour (or inclination) and identity. A man who wants to be a woman is an (essential) man, who is trying (imaginatively) to adopt female sexual roles and postures. But that doesn't make him a woman. It doesn't change his identity. Identity is not a construct or social choice: it's a natural fact.

And interestingly, even the Left recognizes this. They tell me I cannot simply declare my identity to be Chinese. They tell me I cannot make myself into a salmon by lying down and flopping. But somehow, they tell me I can make myself into a woman by just wanting to be one?

I'm not that naive. And believe me, nobody wants to see me be a woman. Some folks are just a whole lot better staying the way God made them. :wink:
But identity is often a social construct, you're just artificially limiting the context of the word to an essential biological identity.

If I color my hair something fun (and I am sure you are unsurprised, this being something of a meme for progressive women), people treat me a little bit differently sometimes. "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'm also riddled with tattoos, also essentially being part of a subculture. Do you think I or anyone else ever have the illusion that the biological fact is that my hair is a dark, dusty brown? (Also, a pain in the ass sometimes? UGH)

I identify as a scientist, I chose that. That has nothing to do with my biology. All kinds of identities are invented and chosen.

To have a sex is to have a phenotypic, biological identity. To have a gender is to have a cultural, chosen identity. Trans people aren't under the illusion that they change the former. When they use the word "woman" (as a trans woman), they're using it in a gendered context, not a sex context. They know the difference.

Gender is chosen for everyone. Most people just choose the gender that matches their phenotype. So most men (sex context) are also men (gender context), etc. Non-binary people don't like the social expectations of gender so they don't choose a gender (but, again, they are still aware that they have a phenotypic sex).

Ethnicity is not chosen, it's more akin to the phenotypical sex identity: it can't be changed, and isn't chosen.
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote: Emphasis added by me. This part isn't true. I have several trans friends, I'm involved in a lot of social groups friendly to trans people, etc., and it's my understanding that trans people don't say that women that like women must be men, or that men that like men must be women.
Actually, they often do, and with increasing frequency.

There's a common pattern in transing. All the research reflects this pattern. Overwhelmingly, today, a young woman (often around the age of puberty) expresses dissatisfaction with her feelings about body or sex. Or maybe she's on the spectrum somewhat,and undiagnosed yet, and this is causing her identity confusion. She shares her confusion on social media platforms, where transers inform her that she might "be a man." She is intrigued, because this is often the first affirmation she's had. The lobby immediately begins to push her toward additional steps; and by the time she's in her late teens, she's taking hormones, calling herself by male names, or even going for "top surgery"...or worse. These measure render her infertile, incompatible with her developmental age, and scarred for life. But children who are not interfered with in this way are statistically about 95% likely to self-correct by the end of the teen years, and be happy as women.
I haven't seen trans people trying to assert that women liking women means one of them is a man. What you're describing sounds like someone asking someone else, "are you sure you're not trans?" Now that seems highly dependent on the individual conversations to be able to even comment on that. I'm just stating that trans people don't think homosexual are necessarily trans or ought to be trans as a general thing.

I'm not even doubting this story that you've laid down. Trans issues involving young kids is a complex issue, one I have some direct familiarity with. I don't want to talk too much about that situation though even posting anonymously. Let us say that I'm aware that some kids get pushed into things and that this is wrong, but it doesn't make all trans people culpable for that and it doesn't mean all trans people push young people like this. It doesn't mean all trans people that accept questions from young people are going to be pushy either. This issue is complex.
Immanuel Can wrote:But as Soh points out, what if all that's happened is that she's experienced normal body-dissatisfaction at puberty (nearly a universal experience for all girls)? Or what if she's a lesbian in her sexual tastes, and has been told she ought to mutilate herself into "being" a man? Then she's not a "lesbian" anymore, is she? She's now trying to BE a man. And that's quite a different thing.

Soh's very pro-lesbian, and pro-gay generally. She sees herself as defending that identity against a hostile narrative that is intent on damaging young women who are more naturally lesbian. Now, whether you take her seriously or not, it's got to make you wonder...is it not happening sometimes that young women are being channelled into "becoming" men, when really they're not?
Yeah, I think it could be happening. But I don't think this is a reason to cancel trans people. It's a reason for conversation and understanding from involved parties. It's a reason for knowledgeable and professional mental health to be a good priority.
Immanuel Can wrote:And why does the trans lobby suppress the detransitioners? They hate them. Why? Is no the de-transitioning experience just as "valid" as the transitioning one? Again, you have to wonder...

Matt Walsh has a new film out, called "What Is a Woman?" I've seen segments, and it looks really good, especially for one thing: it shows beyond any possibility of doubt how thoroughly dishonest gender theorists are today.
I guess I've just never seen any trans people talk negatively about detransitioners. I have seen detransitioners being talked about neutrally in conversations about trans, and I have seen them be talked about as a cautionary tale about going too far with transitioning before one is absolutely sure they want to transition. I haven't seen censorship or hate about it. This is one of those things where I'm sure there are people out there doing this, because there are unreasonable people in any group. It doesn't strike me as being a defining characteristic of trans communities though.

As for Matt Walsh, that just seems like propaganda that's about as cringeworthy as some of these cringeworthy pro-trans people you're describing are. There's cringe in either direction, sometimes.
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote: But "woman" as a gender, being an identification that one wants to behave as and be treated as, isn't a "nothing." For instance, is there anything "essential" about being Amish other than possessing certain beliefs? An Amish person dresses in a certain way and goes out expecting to behave a certain way and expecting to be treated a certain way: they expect to behave Amish, and to be treated Amish-ly (they might balk if you offer them to play your Nintendo Switch).
"Amish" is genetic, of course, generally German, often within a specific gene pool. And it's cultural, linguistic and religious, as well. And without some combination of those factors, there's no sense in which one can be called "Amish"; so yes, "Amish" is an essentializable quality. It's just essentializable by more than one criterion.

But "woman" is a nothing if it can be changed at will. That's pretty much the whole definition of a "nothing" -- something that can be changed by mere whim, because it has no anchor in reality at all. Nothing is essential to it.
I don't think all Amish communities are ethnicities, but I don't really know for sure. But it doesn't matter, just imagine a thought experiment where they aren't an ethnicity and it still makes my point. Or just choose literally any other identity that people do choose to be identified by, and could ostensibly do so on a "whim."

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.

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. A trans person is merely asking to be called by their preferred pronouns, have their preferred name used, and to be treated in generally the way we would treat a cis person of their gender.
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.

If someone is simply overly competitive, that isn't toxic masculinity, it's just toxic. (Well, unless for some reason the person internalizes it as defining their masculinity, then I suppose it would be).

In any case, if someone were to make some kind of presumption that all male behavior is toxic because it is masculine, then yes, that would be misandry.
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote: I disagree, [cis is] a useful term.
Then we disagree. I think it's prejudicial and artificial.
I'm fine leaving it at disagreeing, though I will use it since I find it useful and descriptive; but what do you mean by it's "prejudicial?" (All terms are artificial, so I'm unsure about that one)

One doesn't even have to agree with trans issues to agree that their gender matches their sex, this is what it is to be cis. I'm cis. Cis describes what you are. What about this is prejudicial?
Immanuel Can wrote:
Astro Cat wrote: Yet that has nothing to do with men or women's actual capabilities
I'm not so sure.

How is it that all the athletic records for humans, (as an undifferentiated group), are male? Why is the fastest female runner in history (Flo Jo), far slower than the top high school boys? Is that misogyny?
No. There's no doubt that humans are sexually dimorphic in their bodies. There is plenty of doubt that we're sexually dimorphic in our cognitive capacities and proclivities.
Immanuel Can wrote: And what if women do prefer the caring professions? Should we force them to become bricklayers and lumberjacks, just so we can have our ideology of sameness? Should men be forced to become nurses and social workers? Or should we let men and women gravitate to areas of interest that match both their biologies and their natural dispositions?

Sweden is an interesting case. It's one of the most egalitarian, open, equal-choice societies on earth. Yet what the Swedes have found is that when you give men and women free choice, differences maximize. They don't disappear. They maximize. Left free, men and women gravitate to different choices.

And why not? Why shouldn't they?
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. As I said, many women do start out interested in STEM, they trickle out for a lot of reasons, it's been called the "leaky pipeline phenomenon." 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.

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.
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Re: Gender Essentialism

Post by Immanuel Can »

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." :shock:

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.
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