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[Bomb#20]

The same is true of trans-identified people. They do not and cannot change sex.

That is correct. Which is why the language has shifted to refer to "Trans-identified people" more correctly as transgendered rather than transexual as was once common when we knew less fashions in ideology were different.

FIFY.

I guess if you're not familiar with the sciences, changes of common terminology must seem quite faddish? They do happen often, but that is because knowledge is constantly expanding. We generally adopt new conventions of categorization when our awareness of the world increases, and more precise language is needed to avoid error or confusion.

Yes, yes, we already all know you're adept at proof-by-condescension. Mary Baker Eddy and L. Ron Hubbard claimed their views were scientific too. The circumstance that knowledge is constantly expanding and conventions of categorization sometimes change to become more precise in actual sciences does not qualify as a reason to think that's what was going on when the word "transsexual" fell out of favor. There was no falsifiable theory making testable predictions that failed the test due to someone being categorized as "transsexual" instead of "transgendered". The change in label had nothing to do with science and appears to have had quite a bit to do with the relative social ranking of people in trans circles who used to be called "Pre-Op", "Post-Op" and "Non-Op".

 

[Politesse]

Mary Baker Eddy and L. Ron Hubbard claimed their views were scientific too.

Yes, but their views were in opposition to the scientific consensus (and observed reality) rather than affirming it. You're challenging conclusions the sciences came to more than a century ago and offering no real evidence.

 

[Emily Lake]

You may not have a role in making decisions about the best treatment for people with gender dysphoria - I'm with you there. Where I think you and I may differ, however, is that I do not consent to MYSELF being part of their treatment plan.

Not only will you look at an obviously male person and call him 'she', you will like it, and you will believe he is a she.

The same people who wish to bring about this fascist state of affairs also talk about the importance of consent. You could not make it up.

It's orwellian cognitive dissonance in actions. It's a dynamic I've noted with many teen and early twenty friends, especially women and girls, when it comes to sex education (off topic for this, but the same dynamic as discussed). They're hit with conflicting ideas. On the one hand, they're told over and over about the importance of consent, how nobody should ever be forced or feel pressured to do things they don't want to. But they're also told over and over that things like anal sex for girls, chocking, being slapped or hit, spit upon, and similar kinks are "perfectly normal and healthy". The message that comes through is that sure... they're allowed to say no because consent... but if they actually say no it means there's something wrong with them.

I've talked to MANY young women about this. And yeah, the message they end up struggling with is "Sure, you don't have to take it up the butt if you don't want to... but all normal and healthy girls like it up the butt, so if you don't want to maybe you should consider whether or not you're okay"

That's one of the problems with "normalization" of outlier behaviors. The more the outlier is focused on as "normal"... the more it ends up casting the vast majority of people as "aberrant and not normal". It's philosophical and semantics, yes... but this is one of those situations where philosophy and language really does matter. Rather than casting outliers as "normal", we should be holding up outliers as acceptable and not shameful. Those are inherently different approaches.

 

[Emily Lake]

Sex is defined by the type of gamete that an individual's reproductive anatomy is organized around, even if that gamete does not actually get produced.

Ah, but then you fall down. You just added unfalsifiability to your definition, eliminating the scientific status of your claim. Why did you do that?

Because disingenuous arguers will inevitably make the childish claim that using gametes as a reference means that menopausal women are no longer female.

According to that definition, they aren't.

One essential element of any definition that you want to claim as "scientific" is observer independence - given the same situation, all observers who follow the explicit instructions that the definition provides will categorise a given subject into the exact same categories.

If a definition doesn't achieve this, and leaves the final categorisation up to the opinions of the observers, it's not a scientific definition; The only way to rescue it as "science", is to change the definition to eliminate any and all grey areas; Or to allow a "none of the above" category for entities that don't fit one of your defined groups, and/or allow subjects to be assigned to multiple groups whose definitions they all fit.

Calling observers whose opinions differ from yours "disingenuous" or "dummies" is not a viable way to rescue a poorly designed definition.

If you define "woman" in such a way as to exclude people you clearly don't want to be excluded from that category, then the problem is that your definition is shit, not that the people who point out its obvious failings are disingenuous dummies.

My definition of woman absolutely does NOT exclude menopausal or prepubertal females.

And your argument re: falsifiability is in error. You want me to include some sort of state-dependent element, which is neither rational nor necessary.

Consider that a table can be defined a piece of furniture with a flat top and one or more legs, providing a level surface on which objects may be placed, and that can be used for such purposes as eating, writing, working, or playing games.

The definition is based on the formation of the object "table" as well as its general usage. But... note also, that a table which used to be used for dining, and no longer is being used at all does not CEASE to be a table. It is still a table. Indeed, the current state of use of that table does not in any fashion alter its existence as a table. It doesn't turn a table into a not-table. Additionally, a table could be used for a purpose other than those commonly associated with tables, and that does not transform it into something else. In a pinch, we could use a table as a seating area... but it doesn't stop being a table. Similarly, other objects which are not tables can be put to use for similar purposes as tables, without actually being transformed into a table. I can use my footstool to hold a plate while I sit on the floor and eat - it has not magically turned into a table. It's still a footstool.

We might figuratively refer to the table that kids are sitting on as a "bench", and we might figuratively refer to my footstool as a "table"... but that does not alter their literal existence at all. Everyone still knows that the kids are sitting on the table, and I'm eating off of a footstool. Because we know what those things are, and even with consideration for alternative usage and figurative language... things are what they are.

A male is not a female. A woman is not a man. We know what those things are - that's how babies get made. You came out of your mother, you did not come out of your father - even if your mother figuratively transitioned in her adage, you know damned good and well that you were never gestated and birthed by your father.

Semantic and philosophcial games do not change the nature of reality.

A person with a female-typical uterus, fallopian tubes, vagina, etc. is considered by evolutionary biologists to be female, even if they don't have ovaries, even if their karyotype ends up being XY.

...and if that person also has a male-typical penis and testes, then they are simultaneously considered by those same evolutionary biologists to be male, assuming that those biologists are being consistent and not unscientific.

A single human being cannot have both a female-typical uterus, fallopian tubes, and vagina AND ALSO have a male-typical penis and testes.

A single human being can lack every single one of those things; Or can have some elements from each list.

One such case is described by the paper in Toni's post.

It's not possible. Those anatomies develop from the differentiation of the SAME TISSUES. For a person to have both male-typical and female-typical organs AT THE SAME TIME, they would have needed to have TWO FULL SETS OF TISSUE AS A FETUS.

Your claim is like saying a person can have both two completely brown eyes and two completely blue eyes at the exact same time - they'd have to have FOUR eyes to pull that off.

No, my claim is more like saying people can have two different eye colours. Which they can, regardless of the opinions of people who write passport descriptions in which only one option can be selected for "eye colour".

Your definition doesn't exclude people with ovaries and a penis; Or with testes and fallopian tubes (for example), from being placed into both categories or neither.

It's really difficult to write a definition of sex that sorts all humans into two categories, without any individual falling into both, or into neither. As far as I am aware, nobody in history has yet succeeded in doing this. You had a crack, apparently in the false belief that it would be easy; You failed miserably, and rather than try to improve on your first attempt, or to start over with a new approach, you declared a victory that wasn't yours, and backed this up with insults against anyone who had the temerity to point out your failures.

That's not how science works (although it's sadly common behaviour amongst individuals who wish to be thought scientists). Scientists are supposed to point out failures in each other's work, and to respond to being shown to have failed, by producing a more robust product, that can survive the test(s) that destroyed their previous efforts.

If you can come up with an observer independent definition that divides "men" from "women" with no overlap and no remainder of un-categorisable humans, a Nobel Prize may await you.

Until you do, it's childish and pointless to declare that one must exist, and that anyone who doesn't concur is a disingenuous dummy.

Tell you what: You bring me an individual with patchwork anatomy and we can evaluate them on a case-by-case basis. Hell, we can even let them decide for themselves if they want to be categorized as male or female.

But all of those extraordinarily rare medical conditions have zero bearing on either the definition of male and female, nor on the development of law and policy that addresses the sexes as separate from one another.

 

[Emily Lake]

So you are still ignoring studies which have identified structures in the brain that more closely resemble the sex the trans person is claiming than the sex they were assigned at birth?

1) produce said studies
2) have they controlled for brain plasticity?
3) have they controlled for sexual orientation?
4) have they controlled for exogenous hormones?

I am aware of exactly ONE study, presented by KIS, that demonstrates a statistically meaningful similarity between transwomen and females, with a statistically meaningful dissimilarity between transwomen and males. And it was on an extremely well-defined group of people - androphilic males who identified as women. And the findings were specific to the part of the brain responsible for perception of one's own body and place in space, in which the studied population perceived their bodies in a way that was more similar to how females perceive their bodies, and more dissimilar to how males perceive their bodies. IIRC, it was the same portion of the brain that is activated in disorders associated with body dismorphias like anorexia, where the subject genuinely perceives their body to be fatter than it actually is.

Note, however, that this specificity does not hold true for any other study I have seen.

 

[Emily Lake]

What about them? Gay men have some brain structures that more closely resemble those of straight women than they do other men. Gay men are not women.

Very specifically - the part of the brain responsible for sexual targeting is wired as it would be for a heterosexual female: the sexual targeting element of the brain identifies "male" as a target.

 

[Emily Lake]

"Getting fucked makes you female because fucked is what a female is"?

That sounds like a denial of the existence of men who like being 'receivers'.

Also seems pretty blatantly misogynistic, but hey, who cares about that, right?

 

[Emily Lake]

As some of the long term members here know, whenever I see out-of-context quotes made into memes, my bullshit detector immediately starts pinging. It's rare to find one that accurately conveys what the speaker was saying. I am not surprised that a meme portrays a Feminist or Trans activist as saying something shocking or ridiculous, I am surprised that so many people take it at face value.

If you're interested in reading what the people in those memes were saying, here are some links:

I HAVE read the disturbingly misogynistic crap that those motherfuckers have said. Maybe you should actually try reading their actual fucking books instead of just finding something to support your bias of them being somehow just fine?

Jacob Tobia wants to be desired

Sure, Everyone wants to be desired. But that's not what Tobia wants - Tobia wants to be objectified. He's quite clear about that. He wants to be stripped of his core humanity and complexity, and to be viewed as nothing more than an object for sex.

And Tobia, like many other people, has a complete and utter misunderstanding of the feminist objection to objectification. No feminist objects to being sexually desired. What we do have problems with is being viewed in a way that ascribes women value based on how desirable they are, and which places all other aspects of that women as subsidiary to their sexual desirability. It is the constant and implacable painting of women as existing primarily for the sexual titillation and gratification of men... and if we aren't sexy enough to be desired, then we're considered worthless and sexless. We object to the characterization of women in their entirety as daughters of Eve - vessels created to meet the needs of men, without needs or wants of their own. THAT is what the objection to objectification is about.

Grace Lavery finds being treated like a woman empowering as a transperson while also being committed to the struggle to eliminate sexism.

YEah, Lavery says that... but Lavery repeatedly carries on in their books and their social media about their fetish to be humiliated and treated like shit because to LAvery - that is the very essence of being a woman, that is how women *should* be treated. And apparently, you also think that's how women *should* be treated, since you characterize Lavery's sexual humiliation fetish as "being treated like a woman".

And if you want to know what Andrea Long Chu was talking about in her book, Females, here's a good place to start.

Yeah, we can start by tossing Chu off the edge of the planet. Every single thing that person writes about "womanhood" is an affront to women. It is utter and complete misogyny that Chu gets off on and finds sexually titillating.

EDIT: The amount of regressive claptrap required in trans ideologies is nothing short of amazing, really. Do you know what a lesbian is? A non-man who is attracted to non-men. You could not make it up.

Apparently someone did.

FFS, you have examples on this very board of people claiming that being exclusively same-SEX attracted is bigoted and is a "genital fetish".

 

[Emily Lake]

It's weird how they want us to believe that biology is everything, and should always take precedence over social concerns and civil rights. Unless it's neuroscience, in which case biology is suddenly "just chemistry" and should be ignored.

Nah, don't mischaracterize this.

Psychosis is also neurobiological. Delusions can be mechanical, process, or chemically induced. None of those are good reasons for anyone to accept the psychosis as reality, or to change our understanding of the non-delusional world in order to accommodate someone else's delusion.

FFS, my epilepsy has very well known neurological basis... bot somehow I still can't convince cop cars to stop having flashing lights, nor can I convince my employer to make the fire alarms be quieter.

 

[Emily Lake]

Man, your strawman accusation has some balls to it! Accusing someone of a strawman while immediately committed a strawman fallacy of your own. I did not for a moment talk about "discomfort about their bodies". You are taking what transgender people are saying about themselves and simplifying it to what you want it to be. Reducing it to merely "discomfort". The transgender equivalent to telling a gay person they are just 'going through a phase'.

I will counter with the plethora of activists and organizations pushing self-identification with no diagnosis and no treatment as the only acceptable way to avoid being labeled a transphobe. Specifically, I suggest you go do some research and figure out whether the modern trans movement things that gender dysphoria is a necessary component of being transgender.

 

[Emily Lake]

What makes a person think they are a male or a female?

For most functional humans - it is actual observation of actual reality.

 

[Emily Lake]

And yet Oleg, there are women who commit exponentially more crimes than, say, Politesse.

It's almost as if you cannot actually determine anything about a person by looking at those you arbitrarily lump them in with.

When will you learn that stereotypes do not inform on individuals?

Maybe you should look at the numbers, hmm?

Let's go ahead and get out of the way NOT ALL MEN ARE SEX OFFENDERS OR VIOLENT AGGRESSORS

Read that a few times first, and really, really take it in.

Then think about some stats. 95% of the victims of sexual assaults are female. 99% of the perpetrators are male. 1 in 6 females has been the victim of attempted or completed rape. 99% of females over the age of 12 have been sexually assaulted or harassed. Victims of pedophilia are close to 50% split by sex... but the perpetrators of pedophilia are about 90% male. AS the age of the victim drops, that percentage skews further and further to the male side, with the vast majority of female offenders targeting males who are in the early stages of pubescence and later.

So yes, there do exist some females who commit far more crimes than Poli specifically. But there are far far far far more males who commit crimes than there are females who commit crimes.

 

[Emily Lake]

And yet Oleg, there are women who commit exponentially more crimes than, say, Politesse.

It's almost as if you cannot actually determine anything about a person by looking at those you arbitrarily lump them in with.

When will you learn that stereotypes do not inform on individuals?

The new left's abhorrence of Nature continues to amaze.

Sex discrimination: how do we tell the difference between male and female faces? - PubMed

People are remarkably accurate (approaching ceiling) at deciding whether faces are male or female, even when cues from hair style, makeup, and facial hair are minimised. Experiments designed to explore the perceptual basis of our ability to categorise the sex of faces are reported. Subjects were...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

People are remarkably accurate (approaching ceiling) at deciding whether faces are male or female, even when cues from hairstyle, makeup, and facial hair are minimised.

Humans are very strongly wired to identify sex in other adult humans.

The most obvious reason for this is, well, obvious. As a sexually reproductive species, we need to be able to identify which other members of our species we are capable of reproducing with. At a species level, efforts spent attracting a potential mate with whom we are unable to reproduce is wasted effort. And yes, I recognize that from a species perspective that means that homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end - it is. Evolution doesn't care.

Other sexually reproductive species all have means to easily identify members of the same or of the opposite sex. Some are visual, some are olfactory or pheromonal. Humans are very strongly visual, as we're also fairly highly dimorphic.

The second reason, bound to piss off some of the men on this site, is that half the human species has been treated like prey by the other half for a very, very long time. Prey, as a general rule, is extremely good (approaching ceiling) at being able to quickly and accurately identify predators. This should also be a pretty obvious reason: Predators only have to accurately identify prey some of the time, just often enough to not die of starvation. Prey has to be right every single time.

Human females are better at visually identifying the sex of another person than males are. Within them, the false identifications differ in nature. Females are less likely to falsely perceive a male as being female, with the error largely lying in falsely perceiving a female as being male. Males have about the same error rate regardless of the sex of the subject they're evaluating.

 

[Emily Lake]

It implies identity can be fluid with people with brain related illness or injury.

But your biological sex isn't.

You mean the dangling bits again. You are obsessed with dangling bits. I get it. Dangling bits can be tantalizing, but when talking about personal IDENTITY, that involves the brain. Dangling bits provides a generalized idea as to gender identity (and sexual identity too!). But just because it works most of the time, doesn't mean it is a proof positive litmus test.

Personal identify has fuck all to do with public policy.

 

[Emily Lake]

Is it delusion or dishonesty that motivates you to continue to assert that people are saying thoughts in one’s head determines your sex?

How about confusion and frustration that thoughts in one's head keeps getting brought up as some kind of counter to the observed reality of sex?

 

[Emily Lake]

Again, you are talking about wishing, I'm talking about being. You continue to ignore that.

In what way are you talking about being? What do you even mean by that?

 

[Emily Lake]

Your neurobiology likely determines your sexual orientation.

Your neurobiology affects your perceptions of who you are. Including your identity as male.

Given your premise, neurobiology also affects the perceptions of an anorexic.

So... what's your point then? Does the anorexic's neurological perception of themselves as fat support them being treated by other people as if they're fat, being supported in their low calorie diet?

Is there a point where you might recognize that a person's neurological perception of themselves as different from observable reality is irrelevant to anyone other than themselves and perhaps their psychiatrist?

 

[Emily Lake]

Man, you can lead a horse to water...

But you can't turn it into a goat.

 

[Emily Lake]

An appeal to magic? You say it, therefore it is?

We fellow forum posters have no reason to believe that you are male in any sense; all we know is that you identify as such on this forum.

This is 100% postmodernist philosophical hogwash. And you know it. So stop.

 

[Emily Lake]

FYI, that would be identifying as a male.

Disingenous word games. I do not "identify" as 5'2" in height. That is what all of the calibrated measuring tapes in existence agree is my height. My personal feelings and thoughts about the matter are completely irrelevant to the objective observation of my height.

I don't identify as 5'2". I AM 5'2".