It's obvious that it's possible for a human to have a non-human body map since being human isn't defined in terms of having a human body map and a human could develop an abnormal body map for any number of reasons that don't interfere with the species.
This argument is utter nonsense backed up by mere supposition. If a human "could" develop an abnormal body map like you describe, then back it up with sources. I remind you that this is the same body map issues that causes phantom limb pain even in people born without the relevant limb. It's not some kind of abstract idea without scientific grounding.
And "being a God" and "being a woman" have the common trait that one can identify as having this property while lacking it. Beyond that, I already explained that counterexamples don't have to be analogous in every way, or even more than one way.
Ah, so a person can indeed identify as a god while simultaneously being a god?
But those two links give definitions of "genetically female", which is not the same as "female".
What is suspiciously absent That's right, any mention of chromosomes.
Nice try, but fail.
Being that you were around in the thread when those arguments were thrown around originally, it strikes me as a little bit odd that I'm expected to have perfect memory and yet you're apparently allowed to forget specific arguments were ever made. Either way, as above, it seems my memory isn't quite as bad as you imply.
It doesn't matter if clinical lycanthropy and transgenderism are different in respect to physical possibilities, because your argument, at least for a while, was if a person identifies as female, they are female. By inserting clinical lycanthropy into your "identifies as X therefore is X" reasoning, we can clearly see that this is not the case and that your reasoning is poor.
By trying to jam a square peg into a round hole, it seems. The whole "identify as X, therefore is X" argument is the vastly simplified version, where even from the start the central argument has been more nuanced. It's not my fault nuance is so often lost out of others' zeal to reduce everything to be as simplistic as possible even when such reductionism does no good at all.
It is of course not okay in either case. Which is why I never did it. You used "You're not educated on this subject" as an excuse to avoid explanations that might lead to stating facts you don't like, which was not only patronizing but dishonest. But nobody has used "How is transsexuality like lycanthropy?" to try to avoid anything. On the contrary, we were prompting you to explain yourself further. (Which you now avoid by dismissing it as "ridicule". :rolleyes:) There is no connection between your action and mine. Hence: non sequitur.
And, right or wrong, closeted transsexuals do self-identify as their physiological sex.
This is a bit of a dangerous oversimplification, but for the sake of this post (as distinct from this thread), I'll roll with it for the sake of argument and amend that this is speaking strictly of closeted trans people who identify as cisgender members of their assigned gender (not all closeted trans people do this).
That said, someone's identity might be wrong, but that doesn't mean it's to be tossed aside and disrespected. In the trans community, you regularly see people questioning themselves and asking for their assigned/currently-identified gender to be respected until and unless they say otherwise. Such a closeted trans woman might be wrong about being male, but what you aren't going to see is people telling her such in contradiction to her current identity, even if it does wind up being true that she is, in fact, female.
Your problem is that you're trying to use the term "identity" to refer to these neurological facts as well as to conscious self-identification.
The neurological facts tend to be what I call "encephalic sex" while the conscious self-identification tends to be what I call "gender identity."
Also, I don't see much difference between saying there are different kinds of identities that don't all share the same characteristics, and saying that there are different kinds of forces that don't all share the same characteristics. This is why I use adjectival forms like "gender identity," in the same way people differentiate between, say, "gravitational force" and "frictional force."
*I'm going to start appending "self-" to "identity" so as not to confuse it with the mathematical/logical concept of identity.
Is there any danger of someone actually mixing those up?
That said, someone's identity might be wrong, but that doesn't mean it's to be tossed aside and disrespected. In the trans community, you regularly see people questioning themselves and asking for their assigned/currently-identified gender to be respected until and unless they say otherwise. Such a closeted trans woman might be wrong about being male, but what you aren't going to see is people telling her such in contradiction to her current identity, even if it does wind up being true that she is, in fact, female.
By your own arguments and definitions this statement is completely and 100% incorrect. If anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman (and similarly anyone who identifies as a man is a man) then it is logically impossible for someones identity to be wrong.
Without having read the rest of the 67 pages of this thread, isn't it sad that the thing you are fighting over is admission to a contest that objectifies women? Don't you think it would be more noble if this transgenedered person was trying to do something noble and good like get entry to a college, instead they are trying to sell themselves into an objectification contest.
Personally I think it is fine that they said no, the contest is already sexist and biased at it's core because it a pageant to judge someone based on gender. Since they are judging that gender based on the rules they defined, I see no reason they could not summary dismiss anyone who did not fit the entry criteria they set. Maybe the problem is beauty pageants?
It would be like if I had an ice cream contest, where everyone was supposed to come in and be judge on the ice cream they created in a specified fashion and someone brought sherbert. I would say that is not ice cream, it cannot be entered into the contest. They could not then say, well it started as sherbert but I then put some cream and sugar on top of it so now its ice cream.
I mean at the end of the day I fully support this persons choice to try to be more like what they feel through transgender treatment, but I believe there are some things you simply cannot change. I will never be black, no matter how much I would want to be nor what surgery's I get. I can get surgery to darken my skin or go tanning or what have you, but I will always be what I am. The genes I pass on to my children will be that of a white person, the genes I come from will be white, and no amount of money or wishing will change that.
I also think that at the best the law is fuzzy here. Let's stop acting like we know what the law says in this regard, because the law clearly was not created to account for this surgery as it is a fairly recent thing to be able to do.
Also isn't saying this person is a woman and should be able to compete in this pageant because they had the surgery's and hormone treatments very elitist? What about all the men out there who feel exactly the same as this person but simply cannot afford the treatments. Is discriminating by money more ok than gender?
By trying to jam a square peg into a round hole, it seems. The whole "identify as X, therefore is X" argument is the vastly simplified version, where even from the start the central argument has been more nuanced. It's not my fault nuance is so often lost out of others' zeal to reduce everything to be as simplistic as possible even when such reductionism does no good at all.
Oh really?
Quote from Teia Rabishu »
You know what, I'm a trans woman. Here's what I have to say about this subject: I was never really male.
I presented as male. I had a male gender role assigned to me at birth, and for some reason this assignation is supposed to hold sway over anything I actually have to say about myself. I had certain traits and continue to have certain other traits more commonly associated with masculinity and arbitrarily assigned as sexually male (because the scientific definition tries to lump everyone into one of two categories with no overlap or possibility of others), but that doesn't change the underlying reality of the situation. You can't make someone into a gender that they aren't—the case of David Reimer proves that point rather well. That leaves the sexually dimorphic "masculine" traits, which seem to be the major sticking point. To that all I really have to say is that drawing strict and uncrossable lines based upon arbitrary physical traits is always going to leave some people on the wrong side. Putting too much stock in there is necessarily going to cause friction with those left-out-in-the-cold people. Far better is to go with how one identifies, how their brain is structured.
Looks like that's exactly what you're arguing. When it was pointed out that your brain isn't even structured as a female, you use identity (as BS pointed out) in a different way and just state that you'll ignore what you don't like:
Quote from Teia Rabishu »
I'd agree. The difference between us is in what we get out of our readings of the source material. For instance, take the "there's no implication of a third sex" line. I look at it, and look at the data about having a brain that's masculinized in some respects and feminized in others, then in my case I use identity to decide on which side of the line the ball lies, so to speak.
I especially loved this gem here Teia:
Quote from Teia Rabishu »
No, not in the slightest. Trans women don't "become" female except in terms of adjusting our gender presentations to match female norms. We take estrogen shots because, in a nutshell, it corrects the hormonal imbalance inherent in our bodies, and we get surgery the same as anyone seeking to correct a birth defect would. It's the implicit "trans women are really men whose 'womanhood' is mere artifice" part that really trips up what you're trying to say—and the taking of your personal opinion to be worth more than science or even what trans people simply have to say about our own identities strikes me as more than a little bit over-entitled, barging in and declaring oneself an expert on a subject despite little to no real knowledge of it.
You just argue that since you identify as X, therefore are X - you get surgery to remove a birth defect and take estrogen shots because it corrects a hormonal imbalance.
I've come to conclude that there isn't any reasoning with you. I think you're an arrogant, fallacious, lying, unreasonable, hypocrite, who just ignores facts you don't like in favor of ones you do. That's fine, but I'm just going to ignore you from now on because I don't think that anything you say in this thread is worth listening to.
By trying to jam a square peg into a round hole, it seems. The whole "identify as X, therefore is X" argument is the vastly simplified version, where even from the start the central argument has been more nuanced. It's not my fault nuance is so often lost out of others' zeal to reduce everything to be as simplistic as possible even when such reductionism does no good at all.
You keep saying this, we keep having you explain further, and you fail to deliver anything that can escape basic levels of scrutiny. Stop wasting my time.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
You keep saying this, we keep having you explain further, and you fail to deliver anything that can escape basic levels of scrutiny. Stop wasting my time.
Why do I get it then? I'm not trans. i'm not LGBT. But most of what Teia makes perfect sense to me. It doesn't seem that complicated.
Teia's science arguments aren't all valid, but the science is not disprove her primary thesis either.
Just historically follow the evolution of what has changed over the last several decades in Western culture when it comes to perception of gender/sex roles, for LGB, and for T.
Once you realize the changes that have occurred already, and realize that the world didn't end, you can easily extrapolate to where enlightened thinking would take you in terms of not trying to pigeonhole people. Legal gender-blindness naturally leads to an examination of gender role variations across cultures, which is vast.
I don't recognize the 'critical' need to defend the binary, when the nature of biology itself isn't binary.
It's not (1) male set, (2) female set, and (3) everybody who doesn't fit into (1) or (2). You might argue there's 20 or 30 classes. Or 1000.
Does a black pygmy tribe male with sickle cell really have more genetic resemblance to a rare asian male with cystic fibrosis, than his pygmy tribe female cousin with sickle cell?
-
Gender is at its heart, a taxonomy, and far from the most important one defining classes of human beings. It originally divided breeder and non-breeder, but it's not the "word of God", and it's not the scientific/biologic dividing line that defines the most important binary division of humans. Its no more or less significant than srY(+) vs srY(-), neither of which is sufficient to define breeder/nonbreeder status either. 46XY is not sufficient to define sperm maker/breeder, 46XX is not sufficient to define sperm maker/breeder.
Male/female is just something we learn as little kids: "boys have penises, girls have vaginas". But then we also segregate based on those classes, and define all sorts of stereotypes to those classes (boys love girls, girls love boys)... etc.
-
I come from the world of disability, and have encountered that arbitrary social classification of "disability" and "non-disability" which makes sense in terms of accommodation so that we can all have a seat at the table, but doesn't make sense in terms of prejudice and patronizing perception of the disabled as being recipients of pity.
I view us all as abled and disabled (with certain classes of disability requiring reasonable accommodation from a practical standpoint making the world better...e.g. wheelchair access).
From an identification standpoint, view trans issues, GID, klinefelter, complete androgen insensitivity, as no more "special" disabilities than another person here not being as quick as I am at math or science.
Somebody with Klinefelter may need an accommodation to increase probability, let's say reproduce sexually (IVF with ICSI), but I say that *I* as non-Klinefelter, am "normal", and somebody with Klinefelter is "abnormal".
Same with GID. Psych establishment calls it a disorder, just as they called gay a mental illness once... Yes, there is a problem, and it's a big problem, to be born with gender dysphoria... but I would not use that to say that *I* am "normal" and somebody with gender dysphoria is "abnormal". They have some problems due to their situation of birth, and there is a remedy (in the form of major surgical intervention), and maybe some different societal attitude would help a lot as well, an attitude adjustment that I am certainly willing to make.
"male", "female", "abnormal" does not seem to be a taxonomy worth saving to me.
This is a bit of a dangerous oversimplification, but for the sake of this post (as distinct from this thread), I'll roll with it for the sake of argument and amend that this is speaking strictly of closeted trans people who identify as cisgender members of their assigned gender (not all closeted trans people do this).
That said, someone's identity might be wrong, but that doesn't mean it's to be tossed aside and disrespected. In the trans community, you regularly see people questioning themselves and asking for their assigned/currently-identified gender to be respected until and unless they say otherwise. Such a closeted trans woman might be wrong about being male, but what you aren't going to see is people telling her such in contradiction to her current identity, even if it does wind up being true that she is, in fact, female.
Okay, first of all, since there are insensitive jerks in every community, I'm pretty sure that if he hangs around for long enough someone will tell him that, or perhaps contradict his current self-identity in some less direct way. And second, I'm not an insensitive jerk (well, not right now anyway), and I'm not suggesting that anyone's identity be tossed aside and disrespected, so I'm not sure what this paragraph is supposed to show.
The neurological facts tend to be what I call "encephalic sex" while the conscious self-identification tends to be what I call "gender identity."
And that's a perfectly good terminological distinction, but if you made it consistently there is no way you could call gender sex identity a "truly all-encompassing trait" for females and also maintain that you were female before you identified as such.
Is there any danger of someone actually mixing those up?
Not so much directly. But since mathematical identity is a firm and final statement about what something is, while self-identity emphatically is not, it seems like a good idea to avoid any unnecessary transfer of connotation that could be brought about by the equivocation.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Why do I get it then? I'm not trans. i'm not LGBT. But most of what Teia makes perfect sense to me. It doesn't seem that complicated.
Teia's science arguments aren't all valid, but the science is not disprove her primary thesis either.
Just historically follow the evolution of what has changed over the last several decades in Western culture when it comes to perception of gender/sex roles, for LGB, and for T.
Once you realize the changes that have occurred already, and realize that the world didn't end, you can easily extrapolate to where enlightened thinking would take you in terms of not trying to pigeonhole people. Legal gender-blindness naturally leads to an examination of gender role variations across cultures, which is vast.
I don't recognize the 'critical' need to defend the binary, when the nature of biology itself isn't binary.
It's not (1) male set, (2) female set, and (3) everybody who doesn't fit into (1) or (2). You might argue there's 20 or 30 classes. Or 1000.
Does a black pygmy tribe male with sickle cell really have more genetic resemblance to a rare asian male with cystic fibrosis, than his pygmy tribe female cousin with sickle cell?
-
Gender is at its heart, a taxonomy, and far from the most important one defining classes of human beings. It originally divided breeder and non-breeder, but it's not the "word of God", and it's not the scientific/biologic dividing line that defines the most important binary division of humans. Its no more or less significant than srY(+) vs srY(-), neither of which is sufficient to define breeder/nonbreeder status either. 46XY is not sufficient to define sperm maker/breeder, 46XX is not sufficient to define sperm maker/breeder.
Male/female is just something we learn as little kids: "boys have penises, girls have vaginas". But then we also segregate based on those classes, and define all sorts of stereotypes to those classes (boys love girls, girls love boys)... etc.
-
I come from the world of disability, and have encountered that arbitrary social classification of "disability" and "non-disability" which makes sense in terms of accommodation so that we can all have a seat at the table, but doesn't make sense in terms of prejudice and patronizing perception of the disabled as being recipients of pity.
I view us all as abled and disabled (with certain classes of disability requiring reasonable accommodation from a practical standpoint making the world better...e.g. wheelchair access).
From an identification standpoint, view trans issues, GID, klinefelter, complete androgen insensitivity, as no more "special" disabilities than another person here not being as quick as I am at math or science.
Somebody with Klinefelter may need an accommodation to increase probability, let's say reproduce sexually (IVF with ICSI), but I say that *I* as non-Klinefelter, am "normal", and somebody with Klinefelter is "abnormal".
Same with GID. Psych establishment calls it a disorder, just as they called gay a mental illness once... Yes, there is a problem, and it's a big problem, to be born with gender dysphoria... but I would not use that to say that *I* am "normal" and somebody with gender dysphoria is "abnormal". They have some problems due to their situation of birth, and there is a remedy (in the form of major surgical intervention), and maybe some different societal attitude would help a lot as well, an attitude adjustment that I am certainly willing to make.
"male", "female", "abnormal" does not seem to be a taxonomy worth saving to me.
Just wanted to say thank you for this post. I whole heartedly agree with the assessment.
By your own arguments and definitions this statement is completely and 100% incorrect. If anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman (and similarly anyone who identifies as a man is a man) then it is logically impossible for someones identity to be wrong.
Not quite. Reread what I said more carefully. I said that such a closeted person might ask for their assigned/currently-identified gender (including pronouns, etc) to be respected until further notice, and still be wrong about being male (sex, which doesn't affect a whole lot, and if I'd meant gender here I'd have said "wrong about being a man").
Without having read the rest of the 67 pages of this thread, isn't it sad that the thing you are fighting over is admission to a contest that objectifies women? Don't you think it would be more noble if this transgenedered person was trying to do something noble and good like get entry to a college, instead they are trying to sell themselves into an objectification contest.
Objectification is a problem, but it's not really Jenna's fault. Regardless, the principle is that since trans women are women, we should be regarded as such in all circumstances, including things like beauty pageants. Just because the issue centres itself around something you don't find "noble" doesn't reduce the significance of the civil rights issue involved. To say otherwise would be to say that Rosa Parks just wanting to sit at the front of the bus was ignoble compared to the other kinds of stands that could have been made at the time.
It would be like if I had an ice cream contest, where everyone was supposed to come in and be judge on the ice cream they created in a specified fashion and someone brought sherbert. I would say that is not ice cream, it cannot be entered into the contest. They could not then say, well it started as sherbert but I then put some cream and sugar on top of it so now its ice cream.
It'd be more like if someone brought a flavour of ice cream you don't like and you tried to disqualify it because of that.
I mean at the end of the day I fully support this persons choice to try to be more like what they feel through transgender treatment, but I believe there are some things you simply cannot change. I will never be black, no matter how much I would want to be nor what surgery's I get. I can get surgery to darken my skin or go tanning or what have you, but I will always be what I am. The genes I pass on to my children will be that of a white person, the genes I come from will be white, and no amount of money or wishing will change that.
Genetically and neurologically speaking, though, trans women don't start off male and then become female. Even early on in pregnancy, our brain structures are hardcoded, so we're literally born trans. No one can change that, just like a cis person can never be made trans.
Also isn't saying this person is a woman and should be able to compete in this pageant because they had the surgery's and hormone treatments very elitist? What about all the men out there who feel exactly the same as this person but simply cannot afford the treatments. Is discriminating by money more ok than gender?
You actually hit a decent point, albeit in a rather cissexist way. Yes, restricting "female" categorization to those who have the money and resources to get HRT and SRS is rather classist. However, what I've been arguing in this thread regarding gender identity and encephalic sex doesn't run into this problem because my arguments aren't based on things requiring hormones or surgery.
When it was pointed out that your brain isn't even structured as a female
Well, it's not really structured as male, either.
Also what I said was, "Far better is to go with how one identifies, how their brain is structured." That's two separate things, just phrased without conjunction for effect.
You just argue that since you identify as X, therefore are X - you get surgery to remove a birth defect and take estrogen shots because it corrects a hormonal imbalance.
You forgot, "...the taking of your personal opinion to be worth more than science..."
Why do I get it then? I'm not trans. i'm not LGBT. But most of what Teia makes perfect sense to me. It doesn't seem that complicated.
It's really not. The hard part is in getting past the simplistic views of sex and gender (them being the same thing, them being immutable, them being based on simple external/chromosomal characteristics, etc) that get ingrained into people from pretty much the moment they're born. What I'm arguing is pretty simple once you get used to the conceptual framework—one of the major problems in this thread comes from people attempting to refute this conceptual framework out of hand.
I don't recognize the 'critical' need to defend the binary, when the nature of biology itself isn't binary.
Interpretations of biology are, though. People are hardwired to like simple, black-and-white dichotomies, and most people being XX or XY plays into that. It's easy to defend that simplified binary to the exclusion of people who don't fit into it. This is why you see this:
It's not (1) male set, (2) female set, and (3) everybody who doesn't fit into (1) or (2). You might argue there's 20 or 30 classes. Or 1000.
Furthermore, being cis is not the null hypothesis. Here's something you might find interesting. It's basically a huge thing about how treating cissexuality as the null hypothesis isn't scientific at all, and the problems that arise with treating cis as "normal."
Yes, I can remember what I wrote a week ago. This doesn't tell me anything.
It tells you that you read the worst into something when what I really said was far more reasonable (nothing I said in the post you objected to has anything to do with intelligence unless you think this is a subject an intelligent person should be able to pick up extremely quickly).
I'm not sure what this paragraph is supposed to show.
It's supposed to show that even when someone's identity would be considered "wrong" by science, proper form is still to respect their identity until they say otherwise.
And that's a perfectly good terminological distinction, but if you made it consistently there is no way you could call gender sex identity a "truly all-encompassing trait" for females and also maintain that you were female before you identified as such.
How so? Despite a nominal identity as a boy, a closeted trans woman still has a female encephalic sex. The overall result is kind of what you'd get in an inverse David Reimer situation. Which is actually an interesting parallel here. Would you say that David Reimer was ever female, despite having a female gender role assigned to him and presumably identifying as female for the first part of his life? Or would you say that he was a very unfortunate boy throughout?
Furthermore, being cis is not the null hypothesis. Here's something you might find interesting. It's basically a huge thing about how treating cissexuality as the null hypothesis isn't scientific at all, and the problems that arise with treating cis as "normal."
There is basically zero relevance of this to what dcartist said, which was about the taxonomy of male and female. (But for the record: Reed is a a trans issues blogger, not a scientist, so what she writes is more likely to be appealing to trans people than it is to be accurate to scientific practice. And saying this is not the same as proposing the null hypothesis that whatever she says about science is false. Get the picture?)
It's supposed to show that even when someone's identity would be considered "wrong" by science, proper form is still to respect their identity until they say otherwise.
But though this proper form has not always been observed, nobody has actually made any claims to the contrary recently, least of all me.
How so? Despite a nominal identity as a boy, a closeted trans woman still has a female encephalic sex.
But you didn't say that encephalic sex was a "truly all-encompassing trait". You said that gender identity was a "truly all-encompassing trait". You have just acknowledged that encephalic sex and gender identity are not the same thing, and that gender identity is conscious belief. Closeted trans women consciously believe they are male, and not female. Therefore, their gender identity is male, and not female. Therefore, if they are in fact female, there exist females who do not have female gender identity. Therefore, female gender identity is not a trait shared by all females.
I am having a difficult time putting this logic any plainer.
Would you say that David Reimer was ever female, despite having a female gender role assigned to him and presumably identifying as female for the first part of his life? Or would you say that he was a very unfortunate boy throughout?
Again you're shifting from sex to gender, and furthermore from "male"/"female" to "boy"/"girl" (the juvenile counterparts to "man"/"woman"). So I wouldn't know which question to answer. But even if I did, the answer would depend on my definitions of whichever of those terms are relevant, and so is not going to be very useful for clarifying your position.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
There is basically zero relevance of this to what dcartist said, which was about the taxonomy of male and female.
I said it was interesting, nothing more. Not everything I post has to be for the sake of making some kind of weighty, large-scale argument, and that link in particular falls more into offering a different perspective than the ones being thrown around in this thread, mainly for the sake of thought and potential discussion (if only because this thread feels like a 1000+ post Ouroboros sometimes, so something different is, in my view, always welcome), nothing more.
But you didn't say that encephalic sex was a "truly all-encompassing trait". You said that gender identity was a "truly all-encompassing trait". You have just acknowledged that encephalic sex and gender identity are not the same thing, and that gender identity is conscious belief. Closeted trans women consciously believe they are male, and not female. Therefore, their gender identity is male, and not female. Therefore, if they are in fact female, there exist females who do not have female gender identity. Therefore, female gender identity is not a trait shared by all females.
Okay, first off, I've already said several times that not all closeted trans women identify as cis male. That's highly relevant if it's your intention to make statements about trans women on the whole. Some assert a female identity from the moment they're capable of expressing the concept in words. Some instead (perhaps through lack of context to understand that a female identity is valid for them, or a multitude of other reasons) identify outside the gender binary, basically as transgender if not transsexual. Others insist on performing masculinity in non-cisnormative ways while still asserting some level of masculine identity. And, of course, some (try to) identify as cis male. There's no one single, true trans narrative, and thus trans women experience themselves and express their identities in all kinds of ways. If you want to concern yourself with only the subset that declares themselves to be cis male while in the closet, then that's your prerogative, so long as you accept that the full reality of the subject is much more complex than "closeted trans women consciously believe they are male." That much is a simplification, the same kind I get told off on making.
Anyway, to speak about closeted trans women who assert a cis male identity, it all falls back to that David Reimer question I asked you. Despite that Reimer was assigned a female gender role and so forth, I wouldn't say he was ever actually female. He was just a very unfortunate male forced to live as a girl. Presumably, he believed himself to be female for at least some period of time, so in that case we'd have someone with a male encephalic sex and a stated female gender identity (yes, I'm using "male/female" as adjectives for both, but that's due more to limitations of the English language than anything else). The two not agreeing with each other, he experienced significant distress, due in no small part to the fact that his stated gender identity would have been based on extrinsic rather than instrinsic factors, i.e. people telling him he's a girl rather than being allowed to weigh the options and determine for himself which he was—and it wasn't just a case of him having a male internal body map, but also masculine intrinsic inclinations (just as hardcoded as the body map) pushing him towards a masculine gender role despite all effort to the contrary.
Also, after quite some digging, I came up with what I assume to be the offending quote: "The common trait shared between all males is a male identity, and the common trait shared between all females is female identity." Note that I simply said identity, not gender identity.
I believe I was using the term "sexual identity" (as distinct from "gender identity") at the time, which is where the confusion would have arisen from, i.e. using the word "identity" as distinct from an individual component which may or may not be aligned with said whole (something which you've also expressed disagreement with, I acknowledge, but refer to what I said of forces several posts back—perhaps I should start saying "net identity" to refer to some kind of overall identity, or something). Regardless, consider also that quite a bit of the problem with ambiguity stems from needing contrived workarounds to address the somewhat impressive level of resistance I've seen on this forum to the sheer concept of identity. I definitely see no reason to declare "you've lost" over something like an imperfectly-worded sentence.
Edit: Also occurs to me that this illustrates the linguistic problem I mentioned of how "male/female identity" is inherently ambiguous due to there only being so many gendered/sexed words in the English language. There may be workarounds for that too (usually in trans discourse the meaning is derived from context), but at this point I'm not sure how well that could be explored.
I believe I was using the term "sexual identity" (as distinct from "gender identity") at the time, which is where the confusion would have arisen from, i.e. using the word "identity" as distinct from an individual component which may or may not be aligned with said whole (something which you've also expressed disagreement with, I acknowledge, but refer to what I said of forces several posts back—perhaps I should start saying "net identity" to refer to some kind of overall identity, or something). Regardless, consider also that quite a bit of the problem with ambiguity stems from needing contrived workarounds to address the somewhat impressive level of resistance I've seen on this forum to the sheer concept of identity. I definitely see no reason to declare "you've lost" over something like an imperfectly-worded sentence.
Edit: Also occurs to me that this illustrates the linguistic problem I mentioned of how "male/female identity" is inherently ambiguous due to there only being so many gendered/sexed words in the English language. There may be workarounds for that too (usually in trans discourse the meaning is derived from context), but at this point I'm not sure how well that could be explored.
So basically, you're trying to use something like Gardener's Theory of Multiple Intelligence and apply that to identity? That being identity is a "hydra like" construct with multiple heads going into various directions and to cleft one is to see another rise in it's place?
It seems that one side is arguing "it's a hydra in totality" and the other is saying "focus on the multi-headed nature of the beast." Monist without being "monist" and considering a duality within the multiple hydra heads that represent various facets of identity.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Well, like I said to BS, you kind of run into the issue where "identity" means one thing, and "<adjective> identity" means something related/contributory but conceptually distinct. Which is why something that's true of gender identity doesn't have to be true about other aspects of identity, in the same way that in physics, what's true of one type of force (e.g. electromagnatic) doesn't have to be true of a completely different type (e.g. friction). They share common elements, but aren't wholly identical, despite being called the same thing (e.g. force). This part, I think, tripped up and frustrated BS, along with the fact that discussing one type of identity (e.g. gender identity and its various hardcoded traits) is nearly impossible without also referring to other types of identity (e.g. encephalic sex/sex identity/whatever and its various hardcoded traits). That and, I think, an insistence on "no simplifications" that wound up with himself making simplifications (in his case, about how closeted trans women identify) turned things messy because, when you get right down to it, this subject is more complicated than it's given credit for and can't simply be picked up and mastered immediately.
Looking at Gardner's theory, it seems like it's conceptually similar, although I'm obviously not familiar enough with it to go into great detail about it. The criticisms of it on Wikipedia seem similar to the kinds of criticisms I'm getting in this thread regarding identity. The major thing I'm finding is that the page doesn't really say that Gardner's theory incorporates an overall "intelligence" or if it's just a bunch of categories with no singular whole (my reading suggested the latter). This is why I used the physics forces comparison: You can talk about the net force acting on an object, and also about the forces acting upon it. That nomenclature might be confusing to someone who isn't experienced with physics, but that kind of confusion doesn't serve as an argument unto itself. I wouldn't really call it "monist," but I can see the argument for labeling it as such.
Aside from all of this debate, you do know it is incredibly rude and debasing to refer to transgendered women by male pronouns, yes? It doesn't matter how self-righteous you are about sex, it's just plain rude and it doesn't harm you to refer to them with the female pronouns.
This is your opinion. Your definition of what is rude is going to differ from others. The fact that you want to enforce your definition on someone else is rude IMO, yet you still do it. Not complaining i'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of your statements.
Infraction for violating thread rule.
@ the actually topic. Beauty pageants and bodybuilding contests are about the "ideal" of beauty. If someone does't fit that ideal of beauty i have no problem with them not being allowed into the private contest. Be it because of Skin color or Transgender.
"I have no idea what it's like not to be a straight white male, and the experiences of others are irrelevant." -Conservative Motto
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
This argument is utter nonsense backed up by mere supposition. If a human "could" develop an abnormal body map like you describe, then back it up with sources. I remind you that this is the same body map issues that causes phantom limb pain even in people born without the relevant limb. It's not some kind of abstract idea without scientific grounding.
Ah, so a person can indeed identify as a god while simultaneously being a god?
This guy cites dictionary.com's definition for "female."
And does it again
And a third time.
Being that you were around in the thread when those arguments were thrown around originally, it strikes me as a little bit odd that I'm expected to have perfect memory and yet you're apparently allowed to forget specific arguments were ever made. Either way, as above, it seems my memory isn't quite as bad as you imply.
By trying to jam a square peg into a round hole, it seems. The whole "identify as X, therefore is X" argument is the vastly simplified version, where even from the start the central argument has been more nuanced. It's not my fault nuance is so often lost out of others' zeal to reduce everything to be as simplistic as possible even when such reductionism does no good at all.
I'm quite curious as to just where I said that.
Here you took me saying that others aren't very experienced with this subject as "disparaging... other posters' intelligence."
This is a bit of a dangerous oversimplification, but for the sake of this post (as distinct from this thread), I'll roll with it for the sake of argument and amend that this is speaking strictly of closeted trans people who identify as cisgender members of their assigned gender (not all closeted trans people do this).
That said, someone's identity might be wrong, but that doesn't mean it's to be tossed aside and disrespected. In the trans community, you regularly see people questioning themselves and asking for their assigned/currently-identified gender to be respected until and unless they say otherwise. Such a closeted trans woman might be wrong about being male, but what you aren't going to see is people telling her such in contradiction to her current identity, even if it does wind up being true that she is, in fact, female.
The neurological facts tend to be what I call "encephalic sex" while the conscious self-identification tends to be what I call "gender identity."
Also, I don't see much difference between saying there are different kinds of identities that don't all share the same characteristics, and saying that there are different kinds of forces that don't all share the same characteristics. This is why I use adjectival forms like "gender identity," in the same way people differentiate between, say, "gravitational force" and "frictional force."
Is there any danger of someone actually mixing those up?
By your own arguments and definitions this statement is completely and 100% incorrect. If anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman (and similarly anyone who identifies as a man is a man) then it is logically impossible for someones identity to be wrong.
Personally I think it is fine that they said no, the contest is already sexist and biased at it's core because it a pageant to judge someone based on gender. Since they are judging that gender based on the rules they defined, I see no reason they could not summary dismiss anyone who did not fit the entry criteria they set. Maybe the problem is beauty pageants?
It would be like if I had an ice cream contest, where everyone was supposed to come in and be judge on the ice cream they created in a specified fashion and someone brought sherbert. I would say that is not ice cream, it cannot be entered into the contest. They could not then say, well it started as sherbert but I then put some cream and sugar on top of it so now its ice cream.
I mean at the end of the day I fully support this persons choice to try to be more like what they feel through transgender treatment, but I believe there are some things you simply cannot change. I will never be black, no matter how much I would want to be nor what surgery's I get. I can get surgery to darken my skin or go tanning or what have you, but I will always be what I am. The genes I pass on to my children will be that of a white person, the genes I come from will be white, and no amount of money or wishing will change that.
I also think that at the best the law is fuzzy here. Let's stop acting like we know what the law says in this regard, because the law clearly was not created to account for this surgery as it is a fairly recent thing to be able to do.
Also isn't saying this person is a woman and should be able to compete in this pageant because they had the surgery's and hormone treatments very elitist? What about all the men out there who feel exactly the same as this person but simply cannot afford the treatments. Is discriminating by money more ok than gender?
Http://www.fantasticneighborhood.com/
Comedy gaming podcast. Listening to it makes you cool.
Oh really?
Looks like that's exactly what you're arguing. When it was pointed out that your brain isn't even structured as a female, you use identity (as BS pointed out) in a different way and just state that you'll ignore what you don't like:
I especially loved this gem here Teia:
You just argue that since you identify as X, therefore are X - you get surgery to remove a birth defect and take estrogen shots because it corrects a hormonal imbalance.
I've come to conclude that there isn't any reasoning with you. I think you're an arrogant, fallacious, lying, unreasonable, hypocrite, who just ignores facts you don't like in favor of ones you do. That's fine, but I'm just going to ignore you from now on because I don't think that anything you say in this thread is worth listening to.
Flame warning.
You keep saying this, we keep having you explain further, and you fail to deliver anything that can escape basic levels of scrutiny. Stop wasting my time.
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
Teia's science arguments aren't all valid, but the science is not disprove her primary thesis either.
Just historically follow the evolution of what has changed over the last several decades in Western culture when it comes to perception of gender/sex roles, for LGB, and for T.
Once you realize the changes that have occurred already, and realize that the world didn't end, you can easily extrapolate to where enlightened thinking would take you in terms of not trying to pigeonhole people. Legal gender-blindness naturally leads to an examination of gender role variations across cultures, which is vast.
I don't recognize the 'critical' need to defend the binary, when the nature of biology itself isn't binary.
It's not (1) male set, (2) female set, and (3) everybody who doesn't fit into (1) or (2). You might argue there's 20 or 30 classes. Or 1000.
Does a black pygmy tribe male with sickle cell really have more genetic resemblance to a rare asian male with cystic fibrosis, than his pygmy tribe female cousin with sickle cell?
-
Gender is at its heart, a taxonomy, and far from the most important one defining classes of human beings. It originally divided breeder and non-breeder, but it's not the "word of God", and it's not the scientific/biologic dividing line that defines the most important binary division of humans. Its no more or less significant than srY(+) vs srY(-), neither of which is sufficient to define breeder/nonbreeder status either. 46XY is not sufficient to define sperm maker/breeder, 46XX is not sufficient to define sperm maker/breeder.
Male/female is just something we learn as little kids: "boys have penises, girls have vaginas". But then we also segregate based on those classes, and define all sorts of stereotypes to those classes (boys love girls, girls love boys)... etc.
-
I come from the world of disability, and have encountered that arbitrary social classification of "disability" and "non-disability" which makes sense in terms of accommodation so that we can all have a seat at the table, but doesn't make sense in terms of prejudice and patronizing perception of the disabled as being recipients of pity.
I view us all as abled and disabled (with certain classes of disability requiring reasonable accommodation from a practical standpoint making the world better...e.g. wheelchair access).
From an identification standpoint, view trans issues, GID, klinefelter, complete androgen insensitivity, as no more "special" disabilities than another person here not being as quick as I am at math or science.
Somebody with Klinefelter may need an accommodation to increase probability, let's say reproduce sexually (IVF with ICSI), but I say that *I* as non-Klinefelter, am "normal", and somebody with Klinefelter is "abnormal".
Same with GID. Psych establishment calls it a disorder, just as they called gay a mental illness once... Yes, there is a problem, and it's a big problem, to be born with gender dysphoria... but I would not use that to say that *I* am "normal" and somebody with gender dysphoria is "abnormal". They have some problems due to their situation of birth, and there is a remedy (in the form of major surgical intervention), and maybe some different societal attitude would help a lot as well, an attitude adjustment that I am certainly willing to make.
"male", "female", "abnormal" does not seem to be a taxonomy worth saving to me.
Yes, I can remember what I wrote a week ago. This doesn't tell me anything.
I thought we were talking about sex.
Okay, first of all, since there are insensitive jerks in every community, I'm pretty sure that if he hangs around for long enough someone will tell him that, or perhaps contradict his current self-identity in some less direct way. And second, I'm not an insensitive jerk (well, not right now anyway), and I'm not suggesting that anyone's identity be tossed aside and disrespected, so I'm not sure what this paragraph is supposed to show.
And that's a perfectly good terminological distinction, but if you made it consistently there is no way you could call
gendersex identity a "truly all-encompassing trait" for females and also maintain that you were female before you identified as such.Not so much directly. But since mathematical identity is a firm and final statement about what something is, while self-identity emphatically is not, it seems like a good idea to avoid any unnecessary transfer of connotation that could be brought about by the equivocation.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Just wanted to say thank you for this post. I whole heartedly agree with the assessment.
Spam infraction.
Not quite. Reread what I said more carefully. I said that such a closeted person might ask for their assigned/currently-identified gender (including pronouns, etc) to be respected until further notice, and still be wrong about being male (sex, which doesn't affect a whole lot, and if I'd meant gender here I'd have said "wrong about being a man").
Objectification is a problem, but it's not really Jenna's fault. Regardless, the principle is that since trans women are women, we should be regarded as such in all circumstances, including things like beauty pageants. Just because the issue centres itself around something you don't find "noble" doesn't reduce the significance of the civil rights issue involved. To say otherwise would be to say that Rosa Parks just wanting to sit at the front of the bus was ignoble compared to the other kinds of stands that could have been made at the time.
It'd be more like if someone brought a flavour of ice cream you don't like and you tried to disqualify it because of that.
Genetically and neurologically speaking, though, trans women don't start off male and then become female. Even early on in pregnancy, our brain structures are hardcoded, so we're literally born trans. No one can change that, just like a cis person can never be made trans.
You actually hit a decent point, albeit in a rather cissexist way. Yes, restricting "female" categorization to those who have the money and resources to get HRT and SRS is rather classist. However, what I've been arguing in this thread regarding gender identity and encephalic sex doesn't run into this problem because my arguments aren't based on things requiring hormones or surgery.
Well, it's not really structured as male, either.
Also what I said was, "Far better is to go with how one identifies, how their brain is structured." That's two separate things, just phrased without conjunction for effect.
You forgot, "...the taking of your personal opinion to be worth more than science..."
It's really not. The hard part is in getting past the simplistic views of sex and gender (them being the same thing, them being immutable, them being based on simple external/chromosomal characteristics, etc) that get ingrained into people from pretty much the moment they're born. What I'm arguing is pretty simple once you get used to the conceptual framework—one of the major problems in this thread comes from people attempting to refute this conceptual framework out of hand.
Interpretations of biology are, though. People are hardwired to like simple, black-and-white dichotomies, and most people being XX or XY plays into that. It's easy to defend that simplified binary to the exclusion of people who don't fit into it. This is why you see this:
Furthermore, being cis is not the null hypothesis. Here's something you might find interesting. It's basically a huge thing about how treating cissexuality as the null hypothesis isn't scientific at all, and the problems that arise with treating cis as "normal."
It tells you that you read the worst into something when what I really said was far more reasonable (nothing I said in the post you objected to has anything to do with intelligence unless you think this is a subject an intelligent person should be able to pick up extremely quickly).
It's supposed to show that even when someone's identity would be considered "wrong" by science, proper form is still to respect their identity until they say otherwise.
How so? Despite a nominal identity as a boy, a closeted trans woman still has a female encephalic sex. The overall result is kind of what you'd get in an inverse David Reimer situation. Which is actually an interesting parallel here. Would you say that David Reimer was ever female, despite having a female gender role assigned to him and presumably identifying as female for the first part of his life? Or would you say that he was a very unfortunate boy throughout?
There is basically zero relevance of this to what dcartist said, which was about the taxonomy of male and female. (But for the record: Reed is a a trans issues blogger, not a scientist, so what she writes is more likely to be appealing to trans people than it is to be accurate to scientific practice. And saying this is not the same as proposing the null hypothesis that whatever she says about science is false. Get the picture?)
But though this proper form has not always been observed, nobody has actually made any claims to the contrary recently, least of all me.
But you didn't say that encephalic sex was a "truly all-encompassing trait". You said that gender identity was a "truly all-encompassing trait". You have just acknowledged that encephalic sex and gender identity are not the same thing, and that gender identity is conscious belief. Closeted trans women consciously believe they are male, and not female. Therefore, their gender identity is male, and not female. Therefore, if they are in fact female, there exist females who do not have female gender identity. Therefore, female gender identity is not a trait shared by all females.
I am having a difficult time putting this logic any plainer.
Again you're shifting from sex to gender, and furthermore from "male"/"female" to "boy"/"girl" (the juvenile counterparts to "man"/"woman"). So I wouldn't know which question to answer. But even if I did, the answer would depend on my definitions of whichever of those terms are relevant, and so is not going to be very useful for clarifying your position.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I said it was interesting, nothing more. Not everything I post has to be for the sake of making some kind of weighty, large-scale argument, and that link in particular falls more into offering a different perspective than the ones being thrown around in this thread, mainly for the sake of thought and potential discussion (if only because this thread feels like a 1000+ post Ouroboros sometimes, so something different is, in my view, always welcome), nothing more.
Okay, first off, I've already said several times that not all closeted trans women identify as cis male. That's highly relevant if it's your intention to make statements about trans women on the whole. Some assert a female identity from the moment they're capable of expressing the concept in words. Some instead (perhaps through lack of context to understand that a female identity is valid for them, or a multitude of other reasons) identify outside the gender binary, basically as transgender if not transsexual. Others insist on performing masculinity in non-cisnormative ways while still asserting some level of masculine identity. And, of course, some (try to) identify as cis male. There's no one single, true trans narrative, and thus trans women experience themselves and express their identities in all kinds of ways. If you want to concern yourself with only the subset that declares themselves to be cis male while in the closet, then that's your prerogative, so long as you accept that the full reality of the subject is much more complex than "closeted trans women consciously believe they are male." That much is a simplification, the same kind I get told off on making.
Anyway, to speak about closeted trans women who assert a cis male identity, it all falls back to that David Reimer question I asked you. Despite that Reimer was assigned a female gender role and so forth, I wouldn't say he was ever actually female. He was just a very unfortunate male forced to live as a girl. Presumably, he believed himself to be female for at least some period of time, so in that case we'd have someone with a male encephalic sex and a stated female gender identity (yes, I'm using "male/female" as adjectives for both, but that's due more to limitations of the English language than anything else). The two not agreeing with each other, he experienced significant distress, due in no small part to the fact that his stated gender identity would have been based on extrinsic rather than instrinsic factors, i.e. people telling him he's a girl rather than being allowed to weigh the options and determine for himself which he was—and it wasn't just a case of him having a male internal body map, but also masculine intrinsic inclinations (just as hardcoded as the body map) pushing him towards a masculine gender role despite all effort to the contrary.
Also, after quite some digging, I came up with what I assume to be the offending quote: "The common trait shared between all males is a male identity, and the common trait shared between all females is female identity." Note that I simply said identity, not gender identity.
We're done. You've lost. If you don't understand why, that's your problem. Just go away.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Edit: Also occurs to me that this illustrates the linguistic problem I mentioned of how "male/female identity" is inherently ambiguous due to there only being so many gendered/sexed words in the English language. There may be workarounds for that too (usually in trans discourse the meaning is derived from context), but at this point I'm not sure how well that could be explored.
So basically, you're trying to use something like Gardener's Theory of Multiple Intelligence and apply that to identity? That being identity is a "hydra like" construct with multiple heads going into various directions and to cleft one is to see another rise in it's place?
It seems that one side is arguing "it's a hydra in totality" and the other is saying "focus on the multi-headed nature of the beast." Monist without being "monist" and considering a duality within the multiple hydra heads that represent various facets of identity.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Looking at Gardner's theory, it seems like it's conceptually similar, although I'm obviously not familiar enough with it to go into great detail about it. The criticisms of it on Wikipedia seem similar to the kinds of criticisms I'm getting in this thread regarding identity. The major thing I'm finding is that the page doesn't really say that Gardner's theory incorporates an overall "intelligence" or if it's just a bunch of categories with no singular whole (my reading suggested the latter). This is why I used the physics forces comparison: You can talk about the net force acting on an object, and also about the forces acting upon it. That nomenclature might be confusing to someone who isn't experienced with physics, but that kind of confusion doesn't serve as an argument unto itself. I wouldn't really call it "monist," but I can see the argument for labeling it as such.
This is your opinion. Your definition of what is rude is going to differ from others. The fact that you want to enforce your definition on someone else is rude IMO, yet you still do it. Not complaining i'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of your statements.
Infraction for violating thread rule.
@ the actually topic. Beauty pageants and bodybuilding contests are about the "ideal" of beauty. If someone does't fit that ideal of beauty i have no problem with them not being allowed into the private contest. Be it because of Skin color or Transgender.
Flame infraction. - Blinking Spirit
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.