A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

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Flannel Jesus
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by Flannel Jesus »

Iwannaplato wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 9:53 am
But the moment you identify with one sex, period, and need to change your body to fit that sex, there's a problem for physicalists.

How could a body not be, in total, the perfect expression of their self?

How could they possibly know that they need to have a vagina and be penetrated in this vagina, rather than have a penis and pentrate a vagina. (yes, sex is more complicated and trans to men people may engage in many other things. But they know that these genitals are not theirs, because their brains are male???? That only points to even more intimacy between the brain and body than your model holds. Somehow this brain knows what kind of genitals it needs to express itself and feel itself in the world?
I really just don't have any of the intuitions here that you do. I don't see any of these as problems for physicalism, rather than just problems in general, or not problems at all.

I have a funny little unique physical experience. I haven't met anyone else who has this experience. I feel like I have a phantom toe. I feel like I have the muscles and the pieces of my brain that should be able to control a thumb on my foot. Maybe it's a latent piece of my brain left over from my more chimpanzee like ancestors.

Maybe trans peoples brains, who feel like they are in the wrong body, have feelings like this. Maybe they have a phantom vagina, phantom breasts. I don't know, just spit balling.

In any case, I don't think trans ness in itself necessitates any strong position about minds being physical or dualist or whatever. I think that's all just speculation at best, wild speculation at best.
Skepdick
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by Skepdick »

Flannel Jesus wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 9:59 am
Iwannaplato wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 9:53 am
But the moment you identify with one sex, period, and need to change your body to fit that sex, there's a problem for physicalists.

How could a body not be, in total, the perfect expression of their self?

How could they possibly know that they need to have a vagina and be penetrated in this vagina, rather than have a penis and pentrate a vagina. (yes, sex is more complicated and trans to men people may engage in many other things. But they know that these genitals are not theirs, because their brains are male???? That only points to even more intimacy between the brain and body than your model holds. Somehow this brain knows what kind of genitals it needs to express itself and feel itself in the world?
I really just don't have any of the intuitions here that you do. I don't see any of these as problems for physicalism, rather than just problems in general, or not problems at all.

I have a funny little unique physical experience. I haven't met anyone else who has this experience. I feel like I have a phantom toe. I feel like I have the muscles and the pieces of my brain that should be able to control a thumb on my foot. Maybe it's a latent piece of my brain left over from my more chimpanzee like ancestors.

Maybe trans peoples brains, who feel like they are in the wrong body, have feelings like this. Maybe they have a phantom vagina, phantom breasts. I don't know, just spit balling.

In any case, I don't think trans ness in itself necessitates any strong position about minds being physical or dualist or whatever. I think that's all just speculation at best, wild speculation at best.
Do you ever get the feeling that the sort of thinking you are engaging in is not producing any ideas?
idea noun a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action.
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

For those who don't know, 'TERF' means 'any woman who tries to say something I don't like' i.e. Trample ER Freedom.

This is just mob hysteria. Every violent misogynist is jumping on the bandwagon. They are going to 'insanity' themselves out of existence.


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Iwannaplato
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by Iwannaplato »

Flannel Jesus wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 8:05 am
And just to be clear: I am not arguing that the existence of transpeople demonstrates dualism.
I am saying that if you take the transpeople seriously, the ones who want hormone interventions and surgery,
and you are a monist, I think there's a problem. IOW a monist, and I think we have one in this thread, can think that they are confused, hallucinating.
There are transpeople who do not change their bodies. Some dress as the target gender (most probably), some do not. Here gender is a social contruct. There isn't a problem with a woman with a penis, nor a man with ovaries and a vagina. Monism can hold here.
But once you have someone who views gender as binary and physical - they need to change sex, not just gender, because their bodies are not right for them
and you think they are correct, I don't think a monism holds as an explanation.
Flannel Jesus
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by Flannel Jesus »

I still don't understand why. I don't understand why you think there's some fundamental difference between "I have a female soul" and "I have a female brain" in explanatory power. I've read what you said, and every thing you say about the brain view, you could say about the soul view.

If there's a non physical processes attaching non physical souls to physical bodies, why would this non physical processes make a mistake? We have good examples for the source of physical "mistakes" in physical brains. We have no such thing for souls.
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by Flannel Jesus »

Iwannaplato wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 12:02 pm
Over the last few years I've looked into the question of the cause of trans-ness a few times. At one point, the "female brain" position seemed pretty strong. Then, later, that position seemed to be weakened by the evidence - I think there was some evidence that, instead of trans women having female brains, they had their own brain phenotype.

"Female brain" is probably an oversimplification, or a partial truth at best. However, I think thoughts along this line are the right direction, even if my particular framing is too simplified, even if the truth is a little more muddy. (And in retrospect, I have hedged a lot of my thoughts appropriately by saying female-ish brains rather than just pure female - where I have said "female brain", that was out of laziness instead of saying something more nuanced)

This article is from 2022 and there are a lot like it:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/
These findings add support to the notion that the underlying brain anatomy in transgender people is shifted away from their biological sex towards their gender identity.
I think it's fascinating that Wikipedia says this-
One study published in the International Journal of Transgender Health found that in 20% of identical twin pairs, if one twin was trans, the other was as well, compared to only 2.6% of non-identical twins where this was the case; researchers attribute this to their shared genetics.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_ ... 0phenotype.

It's interesting that there's a higher correlation for identical twins, but that it's not 100%. They definitely suggests that the full picture is probably more tricky than any one individual thing being "the cause" of trans-ness.
Iwannaplato
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by Iwannaplato »

and this post also earlier brought up some of these issues.
viewtopic.php?p=631944#p631944
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Immanuel Can
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by Immanuel Can »

Flannel Jesus wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 9:36 am To the people who think gender is entirely a social construct, the existence of trans people raises some interesting philosophical contradictions.

You see, if gender in fact is biological, then being trans imo can actually make sense and be meaningful. Gender, biologically, would be a fact about sometimes neurology, presumably. And one could imagine that it's possible that a person born with a penis could have, in some sense, a female-ish neurology. And that could give you context for why people with penises want to live as women, be recognized as women, and have surgeries and hormone therapies to make their bodies more female, to match their neurology.

On the other hand, if gender is entirely a social construct, then a lot of that stuff above doesn't really make sense. If gender is a social construct, then there's no meaningful difference between "I was born with a penis and want to live as a woman" Vs "I'm a man but I like wearing dresses and doing and behaving in ways that are seen as traditionally feminine". Those two statements become almost indistinguishable. And someone in that boat doesn't need a sex change, or to be recognized as a woman, what they really would need, hypothetically, is to live in a society where men are allowed to have feminine preferences and behaviours.

And yet if you talk to trans people, even trans people who insist that gender really is just a social construct, and you offer up that theoretical world where men are simply allowed, with no social penalty, to have entirely feminine behaviours and preferences, you'll find that that's not sufficient for them. A lot of them say they would still want to take hormones, say they might still seek sex change surgeries.

And that to me indicates that the "gender" of people who are "trans-gender" runs deeper than something that is just merely a social construct.

I'm not of course saying that every aspect of gender isn't a social construct, that every aspect of gender is biological. There are certainly parts of gender expression which are entirely cultural. But there does, I think, seem to be something deeper than the social and cultural aspects of gender that people who are trans-gender illuminate.
What you're pointing to is actually a deep incoherence in the ideology of "transing" itself. It's also one to which nobody, so far, as anything approaching a rational refutation.

There are many ways to put the contradiction. One would be, "How can one need something that is a construct not a biological reality, and how can one reconstruct something that is a biological reality rather than a construct?"

Or more simply, we could ask the question, "How profound is the transition in transing?" Is it a change of mere nomenclature, unfortified with any physical possibility, or is it a complete change of physical identity? But if it's only the former, then it can't be a "need"; it can only be a whim, imaginative fetish or delusion. But if it's the latter, then how can one propose to change the actual physical identity of what one is?

And what do we make of detransitioners? The trans lobby would love us to remain utterly oblivious to their very existence and deaf to their pleas of having been abused by the "reconstructers." How can the trans lobby campaign for us not to pathologize or "erase" their own alleged "identity," when they are absolutely adamant we ought to do exactly the same to the many repentant detransitioners? How can transition advocates campaign vociferously for their own acceptance, while they insist detransitioners should be allowed no voice whatsoever in the controversy?

The truth is none of it makes any rational sense at all, if we take it on the terms transitioners offer us. It can never make any sense unless we realize that "transitioning" is simply a symptom of something like body dysmorphic disorder, pubescent overreaction, or sexual fetishes, depending on the case in hand. Then it all adds up logically again.
Flannel Jesus
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by Flannel Jesus »

Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 2:28 pm
What you're pointing to is actually a deep incoherence in the ideology of "transing" itself. It's also one to which nobody, so far, as anything approaching a rational refutation.

There are many ways to put the contradiction. One would be, "How can one need something that is a construct not a biological reality, and how can one reconstruct something that is a biological reality rather than a construct?"

Or more simply, we could ask the question, "How profound is the transition in transing?" Is it a change of mere nomenclature, unfortified with any physical possibility, or is it a complete change of physical identity? But if it's only the former, then it can't be a "need"; it can only be a whim, imaginative fetish or delusion. But if it's the latter, then how can one propose to change the actual physical identity of what one is?

And what do we make of detransitioners? The trans lobby would love us to remain utterly oblivious to their very existence and deaf to their pleas of having been abused by the "reconstructers." How can the trans lobby campaign for us not to pathologize or "erase" their own alleged "identity," when they are absolutely adamant we ought to do exactly the same to the many repentant detransitioners? How can transition advocates campaign vociferously for their own acceptance, while they insist detransitioners should be allowed no voice whatsoever in the controversy?

The truth is none of it makes any rational sense at all, if we take it on the terms transitioners offer us. It can never make any sense unless we realize that "transitioning" is simply a symptom of something like body dysmorphic disorder, pubescent overreaction, or sexual fetishes, depending on the case in hand. Then it all adds up logically again.
I recognize some of the same problems you do, but for me it's not a "none of it can possibly make sense" problem, it's more a "you can't think this AND this" problem.

I can see a world where being trans is a real thing - indeed, I think we are in that world - I just can't see a world where being trans is a real thing, but gender is entirely a social construct.

It's inherently plausible to me that a person can be born with a penis and a female-like brain, though. But to accept the concept of a female-like brain, you can't say gender is entirely a social construct.
Skepdick
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by Skepdick »

Flannel Jesus wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 2:32 pm I just can't see a world where being trans is a real thing, but gender is entirely a social construct.
Why not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construct ... f_science)
According to constructivists, the world is independent of human minds, but knowledge of the world is always a human and social construction.
Given Eearth's population of 8 billion humans you could categorize everyone into one category: humans
Or two categories: penises and vaginas
Or three categories: under 1.6 meters tall, under 1.9 meters tall, under 3.5 meters tall.
Or 8 billion categories: one for each human

By the very nature of HOW categorization works you are ignoring differences between people in order to fit them into fewer categories than there are people to be categorized.

But how can that be if every existent is unique and no two existents are "the same"? That's why you need a theory of types.
type noun 1. a category of people or things having common characteristics.
"Make" and "female" aren't things. They are types of things.

Social constructivism is the part where society determines the number of admissible types in the ontology.
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

:lol:
Skepdick wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 3:01 pm
Flannel Jesus wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 2:32 pm I just can't see a world where being trans is a real thing, but gender is entirely a social construct.
Why not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construct ... f_science)
According to constructivists, the world is independent of human minds, but knowledge of the world is always a human and social construction.
Given Eearth's population of 8 billion humans you could categorize everyone into one category: humans
Or two categories: penises and vaginas
Or three categories: under 1.6 meters tall, under 1.9 meters tall, under 3.5 meters tall.
Or 8 billion categories: one for each human

By the very nature of HOW categorization works you are ignoring differences between people in order to fit them into fewer categories than there are people to be categorized.

But how can that be if every existent is unique and no two existents are "the same"? That's why you need a theory of types.
type noun 1. a category of people or things having common characteristics.
"Make" and "female" aren't things. They are types of things.

Social constructivism is the part where society determines the number of admissible types in the ontology.
I don't think I've ever seen an intelligent post from you, or even one that remotely makes any logical sense. The 'best' you can come up with is a Wikipedia link? :lol: How embarrssed you will be in another few years that you allowed yourself to get caught up in a 'Salem-style' mob hysteria. It might feel good at the time, but the 'down' will be hard to stomach.
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by Skepdick »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 7:01 pm I don't think I've ever seen an intelligent post from you, or even one that remotely makes any logical sense. The 'best' you can come up with is a Wikipedia link? :lol: How embarrssed you will be in another few years that you allowed yourself to get caught up in a 'Salem-style' mob hysteria. It might feel good at the time, but the 'down' will be hard to stomach.
The irony, of you being unable to make logical sense of a logical post.

There must be a problem with your logic, no?
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

The irony of someone mentioning 'irony' when they don't understand what irony is :lol:
Skepdick
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by Skepdick »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 7:25 pm The irony of someone mentioning 'irony' when they don't understand what irony is :lol:
Then stop mentioning it ;)
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Re: A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

And one of those 'men with a woman's brain' used a 70 year old 'woman with a woman's brain' as a punching bag and fractured her skull. 'Men with women's brains' are calling for their supporters to kill and throw acid on 'women with women's brains' who are only standing up for the rights of 'women with women's brains'. These are the 'men with women's brains' that 'women with women's brains' are trying to prevent from having access to 'women with women's brains' spaces.
Makes you wonder which part of a 'woman's brain' is responsible for all this murderous misogynistic rage...
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