Can We Discuss Sex & Gender / Transgender People?

[SigmatheZeta]

I see that this thread has led to good discussion. However, we are now 13 pages in and nobody has defined what "man" and "woman" mean. How can you guys have a discussion about 2 words that you don't know the meaning of? Everyone talks about "men" and "women" as if they know what they are, yet no definition has been provided yet.

Here's a good article about it:

Why self-identification shouldn’t be the only thing that defines our gender

Some feminists are causing controversy for challenging views about what it means to be a woman.

theconversation.com

"The logical conclusion of shifting our definitions of gender from objective characteristics to inherently subjective and personal ones is that the categories of “man” and “woman” effectively become meaningless. This is not a satisfactory outcome, especially for those who strongly feel that they identify as one particular gender.

Meanwhile, I wonder why you are so desperate to define “man” and “woman” and that it must have some “meaning.”

From my perspective as a cis-het woman, most of the time that people have tried to do that, it was to keep me from being able to participate fully in society.

It was to define me as a woman so that they could force me to wear a skirt. Or it was so that they could keep me from having my own credit card. Or it was so that They could deny me a promotion, or an interview. Or it was so that they could keep me from taking certain classes in high school, or certain sports in college. Or it was so that They could harm me or insult me.

So from my perspective, I feel that we are better off if we don’t have an easy, off-hand way to determine “man” or “woman,” and I’m curious why you think it is so all-fired important to preserve your status and insist everyone agree to it?

Why does it actually matter if you have objective characterisitics that you can use?

I am a transgender woman, and to be perfectly honest, I detest skirts from the depths of soul. In fact, a part of what caused me to hesitate until I was 38 to start transitioning was that I had heard that therapists demanded something called a year-long "real life experience" to even start someone on hormone replacement therapy, but when I finally started calling therapists earlier this year, they all said, "We would never engage in that kind of gatekeeping" as if they were deeply offended. So I said, "You mean I don't really have to wear a dumb skirt?" and one of them said, "HEY, I LOVE MY SKIRTS! But no, not if you don't want to." And I said, "Okay, when can I come in?" It was that fast.

The social psychologist Nick Haslam has criticized entitavity as a particularly toxic means of stereotyping. It's the all-or-nothing kind of stereotyping. For instance, "You are not an AUTHENTIC woman unless you wear a skirt and high heels!" That is an example of entitavity, and it is really profoundly dangerous. Here is the study on it:

(PDF) Essentialist Beliefs about Social Categories

PDF | This study examines beliefs about the ontological status of social categories, asking whether their members are understood to share fixed,... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

Weirdly, though, it's okay, sometimes even helpful, to say that some things are generally more likely to be true about a social category. For example, Finnish educators have discovered that girls tend to approach learning mathematics and engineering-related skills in a different way from how boys do, and after observing their natural behavior, they developed a new system for mathematics education that works just as well for girls as it does for boys. Finland currently has one of the world's lowest wage-gaps, between men and women.

It's really the all-or-nothing thinking that is harmful, and what I mean by all-or-nothing thinking is trying to argue that someone really doesn't even belong in a social category if they don't meet a narrow set of criteria. Nick Haslam's study proved that it leads to a dangerous form of dehumanization.

I usually don't hero worship scientists, but Haslam is an exception. His work has been the kind that just might change the world.

Anyway, I suspect that @Generation55 is just looking for an entitative idea of what constitutes a "woman," and while I am not sure he realizes how harmful this is, something about it activates my danger sense.

 

[laughing dog]

Apparently some people have a real problem distinguishing between gender and sex. Since they do not have x-ray vision to see genitalia to help them feel safe, they resort to continually asking questions of those with whom they disagree, not in order to learn or to educate, but to simply affirm their small-mindedness.

 

[Jarhyn]

So, there's this question I keep asking myself insofar as why people feel such a need to label others.

People label themselves. In some ways, labelling oneself is consent to be treated as someone treats those who adhere to such a label, insofar as that treatment is not more confrontational than is allowed of anyone towards anyone else.

Why do people feel the need to label me a "man"? Why should Emily or Tom or Sigma or my Neighbor nor any person feel the need to label me any given thing (other than perhaps a "queer wizard" which is exactly what I label myself) beyond what directly references relevant realities? Some I would count to label me, and earning all loss of respect that likely entails. Some I would trust to not.

The fact is, I have less in common with the imaginary average "man" than that imaginary average "man" has with the imaginary average "woman". I was born an "outsider" in many ways.

Sigma has brought up learning differences with regards to teaching and STEM. There are other classes of learners too, and I dare say neglect happens there, too.

I think that really, we should have a menu of learning styles on tap in educational settings. On this menu should be not only the two strategies that Sigma mentioned but also strategies for atypical learners, even when that atypical nature means in some ways teaching more advanced topics, and raising a student higher than average.

I see that this thread has led to good discussion. However, we are now 13 pages in and nobody has defined what "man" and "woman" mean. How can you guys have a discussion about 2 words that you don't know the meaning of? Everyone talks about "men" and "women" as if they know what they are, yet no definition has been provided yet.

Here's a good article about it:

Why self-identification shouldn’t be the only thing that defines our gender

Some feminists are causing controversy for challenging views about what it means to be a woman.

theconversation.com

"The logical conclusion of shifting our definitions of gender from objective characteristics to inherently subjective and personal ones is that the categories of “man” and “woman” effectively become meaningless. This is not a satisfactory outcome, especially for those who strongly feel that they identify as one particular gender.

Meanwhile, I wonder why you are so desperate to define “man” and “woman” and that it must have some “meaning.”

From my perspective as a cis-het woman, most of the time that people have tried to do that, it was to keep me from being able to participate fully in society.

It was to define me as a woman so that they could force me to wear a skirt. Or it was so that they could keep me from having my own credit card. Or it was so that They could deny me a promotion, or an interview. Or it was so that they could keep me from taking certain classes in high school, or certain sports in college. Or it was so that They could harm me or insult me.

So from my perspective, I feel that we are better off if we don’t have an easy, off-hand way to determine “man” or “woman,” and I’m curious why you think it is so all-fired important to preserve your status and insist everyone agree to it?

Why does it actually matter if you have objective characterisitics that you can use?

I am a transgender woman, and to be perfectly honest, I detest skirts from the depths of soul. In fact, a part of what caused me to hesitate until I was 38 to start transitioning was that I had heard that therapists demanded something called a year-long "real life experience" to even start someone on hormone replacement therapy, but when I finally started calling therapists earlier this year, they all said, "We would never engage in that kind of gatekeeping" as if they were deeply offended. So I said, "You mean I don't really have to wear a dumb skirt?" and one of them said, "HEY, I LOVE MY SKIRTS! But no, not if you don't want to." And I said, "Okay, when can I come in?" It was that fast.

The social psychologist Nick Haslam has criticized entitavity as a particularly toxic means of stereotyping. It's the all-or-nothing kind of stereotyping. For instance, "You are not an AUTHENTIC woman unless you wear a skirt and high heels!" That is an example of entitavity, and it is really profoundly dangerous. Here is the study on it:

(PDF) Essentialist Beliefs about Social Categories

PDF | This study examines beliefs about the ontological status of social categories, asking whether their members are understood to share fixed,... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

Weirdly, though, it's okay, sometimes even helpful, to say that some things are generally more likely to be true about a social category. For example, Finnish educators have discovered that girls tend to approach learning mathematics and engineering-related skills in a different way from how boys do, and after observing their natural behavior, they developed a new system for mathematics education that works just as well for girls as it does for boys. Finland currently has one of the world's lowest wage-gaps, between men and women.

It's really the all-or-nothing thinking that is harmful, and what I mean by all-or-nothing thinking is trying to argue that someone really doesn't even belong in a social category if they don't meet a narrow set of criteria. Nick Haslam's study proved that it leads to a dangerous form of dehumanization.

I usually don't hero worship scientists, but Haslam is an exception. His work has been the kind that just might change the world.

Anyway, I suspect that @Generation55 is just looking for an entitative idea of what constitutes a "woman," and while I am not sure he realizes how harmful this is, something about it activates my danger sense.

In a lot of ways these days I process "man" the way I do "furry". It's a lot more useful, too.

There are no hard and fast rules around what a "furry" may be. You are a furry for declaring yourself one, but generally this implies some things about your interests to those you divulge it of.

As a furry there are many ways you can conduct yourself, infinite, but most tend towards a constrained spectrum of behaviors as the case may be. The declaration usually doesn't get you much further than through the door. There is no cultural encouragement in general to reject people as furry per se.

Even so, there are a great many furries banned from attending furry events in all manner of location for all manner of reason. Sometimes this is people as you say playing to stereotypes of destructive form, some of the time those stereotypes are created from the acceptance of toxic rhythms of behavior in the culture that stand to be corrected.

The alternative is as you say, though I use a different term from a different discipline: "No True Scotsman".

 

[Bomb#20]

Remember the article I posted a few pages back about the girl who was kicked out of her college class and faces disciplinary action for saying, "women have vaginas" because this excluded trans women with penises? This is because there is no definition provided by anyone to define "man" and "woman" anymore.

Why do you believe that? How would providing a definition have prevented that situation? Ms. Keogh was investigated and threatened with expulsion not because people don't have comprehensible criteria for "woman" but because there's a narrow but powerful subculture that has only contempt for freedom of speech and that lusts after the power to punish blasphemy against its own ideology, and because there's a broader powerful subculture of officialdom that has submitted to bullying by the first subculture, because it's so cowardly it won't tell that first subculture to get stuffed for fear of being accused of blasphemy in turn. Do you think the last time our culture went through this, it would have avoided immolating its liberal principles on the altar of conformism if only someone had provided it with a precise definition of "communism"? Do you think the people prosecuting dissent and ruining careers gave a rat's ass whether those they went after really were technically communists?

 

[SigmatheZeta]

So, there's this question I keep asking myself insofar as why people feel such a need to label others.

People label themselves. In some ways, labelling oneself is consent to be treated as someone treats those who adhere to such a label, insofar as that treatment is not more confrontational than is allowed of anyone towards anyone else.

Why do people feel the need to label me a "man"? Why should Emily or Tom or Sigma or my Neighbor nor any person feel the need to label me any given thing (other than perhaps a "queer wizard" which is exactly what I label myself) beyond what directly references relevant realities? Some I would count to label me, and earning all loss of respect that likely entails. Some I would trust to not.

The fact is, I have less in common with the imaginary average "man" than that imaginary average "man" has with the imaginary average "woman". I was born an "outsider" in many ways.

Sigma has brought up learning differences with regards to teaching and STEM. There are other classes of learners too, and I dare say neglect happens there, too.

I think that really, we should have a menu of learning styles on tap in educational settings. On this menu should be not only the two strategies that Sigma mentioned but also strategies for atypical learners, even when that atypical nature means in some ways teaching more advanced topics, and raising a student higher than average.

I see that this thread has led to good discussion. However, we are now 13 pages in and nobody has defined what "man" and "woman" mean. How can you guys have a discussion about 2 words that you don't know the meaning of? Everyone talks about "men" and "women" as if they know what they are, yet no definition has been provided yet.

Here's a good article about it:

Why self-identification shouldn’t be the only thing that defines our gender

Some feminists are causing controversy for challenging views about what it means to be a woman.

theconversation.com

"The logical conclusion of shifting our definitions of gender from objective characteristics to inherently subjective and personal ones is that the categories of “man” and “woman” effectively become meaningless. This is not a satisfactory outcome, especially for those who strongly feel that they identify as one particular gender.

Meanwhile, I wonder why you are so desperate to define “man” and “woman” and that it must have some “meaning.”

From my perspective as a cis-het woman, most of the time that people have tried to do that, it was to keep me from being able to participate fully in society.

It was to define me as a woman so that they could force me to wear a skirt. Or it was so that they could keep me from having my own credit card. Or it was so that They could deny me a promotion, or an interview. Or it was so that they could keep me from taking certain classes in high school, or certain sports in college. Or it was so that They could harm me or insult me.

So from my perspective, I feel that we are better off if we don’t have an easy, off-hand way to determine “man” or “woman,” and I’m curious why you think it is so all-fired important to preserve your status and insist everyone agree to it?

Why does it actually matter if you have objective characterisitics that you can use?

I am a transgender woman, and to be perfectly honest, I detest skirts from the depths of soul. In fact, a part of what caused me to hesitate until I was 38 to start transitioning was that I had heard that therapists demanded something called a year-long "real life experience" to even start someone on hormone replacement therapy, but when I finally started calling therapists earlier this year, they all said, "We would never engage in that kind of gatekeeping" as if they were deeply offended. So I said, "You mean I don't really have to wear a dumb skirt?" and one of them said, "HEY, I LOVE MY SKIRTS! But no, not if you don't want to." And I said, "Okay, when can I come in?" It was that fast.

The social psychologist Nick Haslam has criticized entitavity as a particularly toxic means of stereotyping. It's the all-or-nothing kind of stereotyping. For instance, "You are not an AUTHENTIC woman unless you wear a skirt and high heels!" That is an example of entitavity, and it is really profoundly dangerous. Here is the study on it:

(PDF) Essentialist Beliefs about Social Categories

PDF | This study examines beliefs about the ontological status of social categories, asking whether their members are understood to share fixed,... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

Weirdly, though, it's okay, sometimes even helpful, to say that some things are generally more likely to be true about a social category. For example, Finnish educators have discovered that girls tend to approach learning mathematics and engineering-related skills in a different way from how boys do, and after observing their natural behavior, they developed a new system for mathematics education that works just as well for girls as it does for boys. Finland currently has one of the world's lowest wage-gaps, between men and women.

It's really the all-or-nothing thinking that is harmful, and what I mean by all-or-nothing thinking is trying to argue that someone really doesn't even belong in a social category if they don't meet a narrow set of criteria. Nick Haslam's study proved that it leads to a dangerous form of dehumanization.

I usually don't hero worship scientists, but Haslam is an exception. His work has been the kind that just might change the world.

Anyway, I suspect that @Generation55 is just looking for an entitative idea of what constitutes a "woman," and while I am not sure he realizes how harmful this is, something about it activates my danger sense.

In a lot of ways these days I process "man" the way I do "furry". It's a lot more useful, too.

There are no hard and fast rules around what a "furry" may be. You are a furry for declaring yourself one, but generally this implies some things about your interests to those you divulge it of.

As a furry there are many ways you can conduct yourself, infinite, but most tend towards a constrained spectrum of behaviors as the case may be. The declaration usually doesn't get you much further than through the door. There is no cultural encouragement in general to reject people as furry per se.

Even so, there are a great many furries banned from attending furry events in all manner of location for all manner of reason. Sometimes this is people as you say playing to stereotypes of destructive form, some of the time those stereotypes are created from the acceptance of toxic rhythms of behavior in the culture that stand to be corrected.

The alternative is as you say, though I use a different term from a different discipline: "No True Scotsman".

Furry? No, scaly!

The "No true Scotsman" fallacy is a perfect explanation of how etitavity works. It is assumed that the category is defined by the steretype rather than the stereotype being merely correlated, for any of thousands of reasons, with the category. It is highly destructive and leads to people treating each other as less than human.

 

[Jarhyn]

So, there's this question I keep asking myself insofar as why people feel such a need to label others.

People label themselves. In some ways, labelling oneself is consent to be treated as someone treats those who adhere to such a label, insofar as that treatment is not more confrontational than is allowed of anyone towards anyone else.

Why do people feel the need to label me a "man"? Why should Emily or Tom or Sigma or my Neighbor nor any person feel the need to label me any given thing (other than perhaps a "queer wizard" which is exactly what I label myself) beyond what directly references relevant realities? Some I would count to label me, and earning all loss of respect that likely entails. Some I would trust to not.

The fact is, I have less in common with the imaginary average "man" than that imaginary average "man" has with the imaginary average "woman". I was born an "outsider" in many ways.

Sigma has brought up learning differences with regards to teaching and STEM. There are other classes of learners too, and I dare say neglect happens there, too.

I think that really, we should have a menu of learning styles on tap in educational settings. On this menu should be not only the two strategies that Sigma mentioned but also strategies for atypical learners, even when that atypical nature means in some ways teaching more advanced topics, and raising a student higher than average.

I see that this thread has led to good discussion. However, we are now 13 pages in and nobody has defined what "man" and "woman" mean. How can you guys have a discussion about 2 words that you don't know the meaning of? Everyone talks about "men" and "women" as if they know what they are, yet no definition has been provided yet.

Here's a good article about it:

Why self-identification shouldn’t be the only thing that defines our gender

Some feminists are causing controversy for challenging views about what it means to be a woman.

theconversation.com

"The logical conclusion of shifting our definitions of gender from objective characteristics to inherently subjective and personal ones is that the categories of “man” and “woman” effectively become meaningless. This is not a satisfactory outcome, especially for those who strongly feel that they identify as one particular gender.

Meanwhile, I wonder why you are so desperate to define “man” and “woman” and that it must have some “meaning.”

From my perspective as a cis-het woman, most of the time that people have tried to do that, it was to keep me from being able to participate fully in society.

It was to define me as a woman so that they could force me to wear a skirt. Or it was so that they could keep me from having my own credit card. Or it was so that They could deny me a promotion, or an interview. Or it was so that they could keep me from taking certain classes in high school, or certain sports in college. Or it was so that They could harm me or insult me.

So from my perspective, I feel that we are better off if we don’t have an easy, off-hand way to determine “man” or “woman,” and I’m curious why you think it is so all-fired important to preserve your status and insist everyone agree to it?

Why does it actually matter if you have objective characterisitics that you can use?

I am a transgender woman, and to be perfectly honest, I detest skirts from the depths of soul. In fact, a part of what caused me to hesitate until I was 38 to start transitioning was that I had heard that therapists demanded something called a year-long "real life experience" to even start someone on hormone replacement therapy, but when I finally started calling therapists earlier this year, they all said, "We would never engage in that kind of gatekeeping" as if they were deeply offended. So I said, "You mean I don't really have to wear a dumb skirt?" and one of them said, "HEY, I LOVE MY SKIRTS! But no, not if you don't want to." And I said, "Okay, when can I come in?" It was that fast.

The social psychologist Nick Haslam has criticized entitavity as a particularly toxic means of stereotyping. It's the all-or-nothing kind of stereotyping. For instance, "You are not an AUTHENTIC woman unless you wear a skirt and high heels!" That is an example of entitavity, and it is really profoundly dangerous. Here is the study on it:

(PDF) Essentialist Beliefs about Social Categories

PDF | This study examines beliefs about the ontological status of social categories, asking whether their members are understood to share fixed,... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

Weirdly, though, it's okay, sometimes even helpful, to say that some things are generally more likely to be true about a social category. For example, Finnish educators have discovered that girls tend to approach learning mathematics and engineering-related skills in a different way from how boys do, and after observing their natural behavior, they developed a new system for mathematics education that works just as well for girls as it does for boys. Finland currently has one of the world's lowest wage-gaps, between men and women.

It's really the all-or-nothing thinking that is harmful, and what I mean by all-or-nothing thinking is trying to argue that someone really doesn't even belong in a social category if they don't meet a narrow set of criteria. Nick Haslam's study proved that it leads to a dangerous form of dehumanization.

I usually don't hero worship scientists, but Haslam is an exception. His work has been the kind that just might change the world.

Anyway, I suspect that @Generation55 is just looking for an entitative idea of what constitutes a "woman," and while I am not sure he realizes how harmful this is, something about it activates my danger sense.

In a lot of ways these days I process "man" the way I do "furry". It's a lot more useful, too.

There are no hard and fast rules around what a "furry" may be. You are a furry for declaring yourself one, but generally this implies some things about your interests to those you divulge it of.

As a furry there are many ways you can conduct yourself, infinite, but most tend towards a constrained spectrum of behaviors as the case may be. The declaration usually doesn't get you much further than through the door. There is no cultural encouragement in general to reject people as furry per se.

Even so, there are a great many furries banned from attending furry events in all manner of location for all manner of reason. Sometimes this is people as you say playing to stereotypes of destructive form, some of the time those stereotypes are created from the acceptance of toxic rhythms of behavior in the culture that stand to be corrected.

The alternative is as you say, though I use a different term from a different discipline: "No True Scotsman".

Furry? No, scaly!

The "No true Scotsman" fallacy is a perfect explanation of how etitavity works. It is assumed that the category is defined by the steretype rather than the stereotype being merely correlated, for any of thousands of reasons, with the category. It is highly destructive and leads to people treating each other as less than human.

And this is what such cultures of "officialdom" do, never mind that some people put their hands on their head and scream that the sky is falling when they can't use gender as a cudgel.

I say fuck em and let them die on that hill of idiocy and prejudice.

 

[KeepTalking]

I see that this thread has led to good discussion. However, we are now 13 pages in and nobody has defined what "man" and "woman" mean. How can you guys have a discussion about 2 words that you don't know the meaning of? Everyone talks about "men" and "women" as if they know what they are, yet no definition has been provided yet.

Quite to the contrary, several definitions have been provided. Many words have multiple definitions, thumb through a dictionary some time, you will find several. This is generally not a barrier to understanding what people mean when they use those words. Context will often be your guide.

Here's a good article about it:

Why self-identification shouldn’t be the only thing that defines our gender

Some feminists are causing controversy for challenging views about what it means to be a woman.

theconversation.com

"The logical conclusion of shifting our definitions of gender from objective characteristics to inherently subjective and personal ones is that the categories of “man” and “woman” effectively become meaningless. This is not a satisfactory outcome, especially for those who strongly feel that they identify as one particular gender. It is natural and understandable to feel empathy and concern for those who feel pain and distress at their socially recognised gender, and who wish to transition to live in the opposite role. But shifting our definition of what it means to be a woman so that it no longer has any grounding in the material or social reality of what it means to be a woman helps no one."

Asking the question, "What's the difference between men and women?" might be a better way for you to look at it as well. It is basically impossible to answer this question to include trans men and trans women.

No, it is not impossible to do so. To whit: Men display masculine character traits, and women display feminine character traits. There, I have just answered the question in a way that includes trans men and trans women.

Remember the article I posted a few pages back about the girl who was kicked out of her college class and faces disciplinary action for saying, "women have vaginas" because this excluded trans women with penises? This is because there is no definition provided by anyone to define "man" and "woman" anymore.

No, I don't, and this is a long thread, perhaps you can link to it again. I did find a story about a woman in Scotland facing an investigation from her University for saying something similar, but from what I am seeing she has not been kicked out of any class, and she only fears that she may face disciplinary action possibly including expulsion. Since this seems to be at odds with what you are stating, I hope you can clarify the incident to which you refer.

I will admit that if there was an Onion article from about 15 years ago or so with the headline, "No one knows what a man or woman is anymore" it wold've gotten tons of laughs by you guys. But, now it's becoming a serious problem. We just need a definition, but I am afraid it can not be done.

No, you would not "admit" that, you would "submit" it. Only those who would have been here 15 years ago and actually laughed at such an article could "admit" that. I make no such admission, though I cannot speak for anyone else who was here 15 years ago.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Apparently some people have a real problem distinguishing between gender and sex. Since they do not have x-ray vision to see genitalia to help them feel safe, they resort to continually asking questions of those with whom they disagree, not in order to learn or to educate, but to simply affirm their small-mindedness.

But labels are important! Like Shakespeare says, "You call a rose something else... it ain't gonna smell like it does now."

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Asking the question, "What's the difference between men and women?" might be a better way for you to look at it as well. It is basically impossible to answer this question to include trans men and trans women.

This seems quite contrary to reality because Trans-men and Trans-women couldn't actually exist if there wasn't an answer to "What's the difference between men and women?" The trouble becomes, some people want the answer to that question to have easily identifiable traits, when the truth is much harder to explain physiologically and behaviorally. It is a bit like quantum tunneling. The people wanting to be uber-labelers will say it isn't possible, despite the observations showing very definitively that it does. Just because we can't understand wholly doesn't negate it's reality.

We know there are trans-genders. So this desire to define them out of existence is stupid. Just because a question is hard to answer, doesn't mean it doesn't have an answer that satisfies the constraints.

 

[Jarhyn]

I see that this thread has led to good discussion. However, we are now 13 pages in and nobody has defined what "man" and "woman" mean. How can you guys have a discussion about 2 words that you don't know the meaning of? Everyone talks about "men" and "women" as if they know what they are, yet no definition has been provided yet.

Quite to the contrary, several definitions have been provided. Many words have multiple definitions, thumb through a dictionary some time, you will find several. This is generally not a barrier to understanding what people mean when they use those words. Context will often be your guide.

Here's a good article about it:

Why self-identification shouldn’t be the only thing that defines our gender

Some feminists are causing controversy for challenging views about what it means to be a woman.

theconversation.com

"The logical conclusion of shifting our definitions of gender from objective characteristics to inherently subjective and personal ones is that the categories of “man” and “woman” effectively become meaningless. This is not a satisfactory outcome, especially for those who strongly feel that they identify as one particular gender. It is natural and understandable to feel empathy and concern for those who feel pain and distress at their socially recognised gender, and who wish to transition to live in the opposite role. But shifting our definition of what it means to be a woman so that it no longer has any grounding in the material or social reality of what it means to be a woman helps no one."

Asking the question, "What's the difference between men and women?" might be a better way for you to look at it as well. It is basically impossible to answer this question to include trans men and trans women.

No, it is not impossible to do so. To whit: Men display masculine character traits, and women display feminine character traits. There, I have just answered the question in a way that includes trans men and trans women.

Remember the article I posted a few pages back about the girl who was kicked out of her college class and faces disciplinary action for saying, "women have vaginas" because this excluded trans women with penises? This is because there is no definition provided by anyone to define "man" and "woman" anymore.

No, I don't, and this is a long thread, perhaps you can link to it again. I did find a story about a woman in Scotland facing an investigation from her University for saying something similar, but from what I am seeing she has not been kicked out of any class, and she only fears that she may face disciplinary action possibly including expulsion. Since this seems to be at odds with what you are stating, I hope you can clarify the incident to which you refer.

I will admit that if there was an Onion article from about 15 years ago or so with the headline, "No one knows what a man or woman is anymore" it wold've gotten tons of laughs by you guys. But, now it's becoming a serious problem. We just need a definition, but I am afraid it can not be done.

No, you would not "admit" that, you would "submit" it. Only those who would have been here 15 years ago and actually laughed at such an article could "admit" that. I make no such admission, though I cannot speak for anyone else who was here 15 years ago.

Not to mention that, at least 10 years ago when I popped up here like a bad mushroom, I didn't laugh nor post any such thing.

The same people here have been posting the same whinges, first about gays marrying, then about trans people preluding these arguments (in which I pointed out the sensible path forward a decade ago, was to separate leagues instead by hormone exposure, explicitly, rather than any bad proxy for that, 5-10 years ago, and that the proper pat forward with prisons was to reform to a more Nordic model.

Instead, we were all met with screeching, some posters going so far to insinuate that the only reason the Nordic model works for Nordic people being that they genocided all their violent criminals, and that it is invasive to actually test athletes for steroids regularly.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

Pardon me, "entitativity." Too many syllables, Nick. Too many syllables.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

Asking the question, "What's the difference between men and women?" might be a better way for you to look at it as well. It is basically impossible to answer this question to include trans men and trans women.

This seems quite contrary to reality because Trans-men and Trans-women couldn't actually exist if there wasn't an answer to "What's the difference between men and women?" The trouble becomes, some people want the answer to that question to have easily identifiable traits, when the truth is much harder to explain physiologically and behaviorally. It is a bit like quantum tunneling. The people wanting to be uber-labelers will say it isn't possible, despite the observations showing very definitively that it does. Just because we can't understand wholly doesn't negate it's reality.

We know there are trans-genders. So this desire to define them out of existence is stupid. Just because a question is hard to answer, doesn't mean it doesn't have an answer that satisfies the constraints.

I am exactly one thing, a trans-woman. "Woman" is fine for a shorthand. Being a beautiful mutant is kind of rad, by the way.

 

[Toni]

Apparently some people have a real problem distinguishing between gender and sex. Since they do not have x-ray vision to see genitalia to help them feel safe, they resort to continually asking questions of those with whom they disagree, not in order to learn or to educate, but to simply affirm their small-mindedness.

But labels are important! Like Shakespeare says, "You call a rose something else... it ain't gonna smell like it does now."

Or....the opposite.

 

[Jarhyn]

Apparently some people have a real problem distinguishing between gender and sex. Since they do not have x-ray vision to see genitalia to help them feel safe, they resort to continually asking questions of those with whom they disagree, not in order to learn or to educate, but to simply affirm their small-mindedness.

But labels are important! Like Shakespeare says, "You call a rose something else... it ain't gonna smell like it does now."

Or....the opposite.

Hey now, I wanted to kill that joke!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I will admit that if there was an Onion article from about 15 years ago or so with the headline, "No one knows what a man or woman is anymore" it wold've gotten tons of laughs by you guys. But, now it's becoming a serious problem. We just need a definition, but I am afraid it can not be done.

Many things have definitions that don't work at the edges. The terms were created without regard for those edges, or even awareness in some cases. Lets consider another: What is life?

Bacteria--certainly.

Viruses--this can be argued either way.

Prions--I have never seen them seriously considered life, yet they are an infectious agent.

Computer viruses--again, this can be argued either way.

And, what is a unique life?

At fertilization? It can split into two or more identical twins after that point. Two (or theoretically more, but I've never heard of a case) fertilized eggs can also combine to form a chimera.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

@Loren Pechtel I am not sure that humans count as life, either. Cats are the only true life-form. Humans are their robotic servants.

Beep beep boop beep.

 

[Jarhyn]

@Loren Pechtel I am not sure that humans count as life, either. Cats are the only true life-form. Humans are their robotic servants.

Beep beep boop beep.

Well, in some respects. We still get better life and health insurance policies.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

@Loren Pechtel I am not sure that humans count as life, either. Cats are the only true life-form. Humans are their robotic servants.

Beep beep boop beep.

Well, in some respects. We still get better life and health insurance policies.

Shhhhhhhhh. They'll hear you.

 

[Emily Lake]

@Emily Lake I do think that deconstruction is not necessarily the best route. Finland actually conquered inequality by acknowledging the inherent neurobiological advantages and disadvantages of both genders, and they tailored their mathematical education more toward the ways that girls (and presumably gay boys, too, considering their underlying neurological similarity) tend to approach problem-solving. They still have some of the world's most secure engineering firms, but they just have more proportionate representation of the genders. The problem was that the old methods of instruction were designed around the natural inclinations of boys. They were not bad methods of instruction, but it turned out that girls could do just as well as boys when the methods of instruction were based more on their own natural behavior.

Also, Nick Haslam's research on essentialism regarding social categories actually suggests that we are better off acknowledging our natural differences but also being reasonable in regard to variations and overlaps. He discovered that entitativity was a more serious problem.

Good reading:

(PDF) Essentialist Beliefs about Social Categories

PDF | This study examines beliefs about the ontological status of social categories, asking whether their members are understood to share fixed,... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

For instance, "Women are statistically more likely than men to be _________" is occasionally (but not always) helpful.

However, "Women must _________ or they are not really women and don't count" is actually harmful. This is assumed entativity. It harbors the assumption that ALL women must adhere to a certain set of characteristics, and if they don't, they are not really considered to count toward how people perceive women.

Same with trans-women. It would be harmful if people said that I only counted as a trans-woman if I wore a dress, wore ruby-red lipstick, and demanded to use the ladies' room, regardless of my local culture and social circumstances. I actually dress unisex, though, and I really just avoid locations that don't have all-gender bathrooms, simply because I don't like feeling self-conscious. I'm still a trans-woman, though. I actually count in the tally. We can be any kinds of people, and there are thousands of different kinds of people.

I think I need to be a teensy bit more explicit. Destroy gender, but acknowledge sex. And if that includes flexibility for different thinking styles, that's wonderful. Education should be adaptive.

We aren't blank slates. Society has a lot of impact, in terms of conditioning behavior... but at least some of our behavioral tendencies are innate. We're a sexually dimorphic species, and behaviors are part of that. We absolutely know that some behaviors are genetically influenced - terriers dig, hounds bay, they've been bred for those behavioral traits.

What I'm really after is tearing down the confining and limiting aspects of external gender roles. Be adaptive and flexible with respect to tendencies... but don't use them to reinforce limitations.

 

[Metaphor]

I think I need to be a teensy bit more explicit. Destroy gender, but acknowledge sex.

The trans activists and gender ideologists will never allow that. They want gender to supplant sex and get more prominence, not less. Instead of abolishing gender, they want an ever-increasing list of genders and their associated neopronouns to dominate discourse, to take over ordinary dialogue between humans.