Gender Roles

[Emily Lake]

I think, rather, that "eye" -- like "woman" or "male" -- is a proximal concept (and also a cluster concept).

Is the electric eye of phone an "eye"? Seeing as it was assembled, which parts of the assembly must be just-so before it becomes an "eye"? Were I to begin assembling cells together, what kinds of cells would I need to use before it is an "eye"? How many? What structure would they have to have? What behavior wouldn't have to exhibit before it is an "eye"? Does an open pore with a nerve at the bottom suffice (a pinhole camera eye)? Does the nerve have to be specialized to detect photons or is heat enough? Does it need more than one of these? Does it need to be powered by DNA or would an RNA biology suffice? Is the pinhole camera using a silicon sensor an "eye"? Does the sensor need to be connected to anything for it to be an "eye" or can it be signaling out towards nothing capable of interpretation and still be an "eye"? Is the set of magnetic coils arranged to observe the resonant waves in a space to construct location data in said space an "eye"?

Yup. Common usage: "the camera's eye", although Google seems to think it's recently been in decline. I've also seen telescopes referred to as "the big eye". It disagrees with you on phone's eye, though--zero hits. And I've seen simple light level detectors referred to as electronic eyes.

Is there something in the water that has caused all of you to completely forget how figurative language works?

 

[Emily Lake]

I think I was a bit more vituperative to some of the other folks in this thread, lately, and I would like to apologize to Emily Lake in particular. My behavior was not appropriate.

Thank you, Poli. I appreciate this.

 

[Emily Lake]

I brought it up because you were claiming I support discrimination. I support equality of opportunity. Society used to be unequal, now it's unequal in the other direction.

Equality of opportunity for males to have access to naked or vulnerable females without their consent?

 

[Emily Lake]

If they're using the Bible's list? Like hell I'm going to accept that. Biology has advanced, and we must advance with it.

I am unaware of which bible verse defines sexes based on the type of reproductive system the individual has evolved within their anisogamous species. I'm also unaware of which bible verse specifies that what distinguishes a man from a woman is which of those reproductive systems they have, and that their role within a family structure, career choice, and favorite eyeshadow color are completely irrelevant to that.

At this point, I'd very much like you to support your assertion by pointing out exactly which "bible list" I am using, and provide quotes from me that back up your claim.

 

[Politesse]

If they're using the Bible's list? Like hell I'm going to accept that. Biology has advanced, and we must advance with it.

I am unaware of which bible verse defines sexes based on the type of reproductive system the individual has evolved within their anisogamous species. I'm also unaware of which bible verse specifies that what distinguishes a man from a woman is which of those reproductive systems they have, and that their role within a family structure, career choice, and favorite eyeshadow color are completely irrelevant to that.

At this point, I'd very much like you to support your assertion by pointing out exactly which "bible list" I am using, and provide quotes from me that back up your claim.

What you are defending without really thinking is the philosophical notion that male and female identities are fundamentally separate and non-overlapping. You seize on scientific findings that you feel support that worldview, and ignore or dismiss as unimportant those that find ambiguity and variation within both sex and gender categorizations. Your favorite word seems to be "anisogamous", which is funny to me in the non-humorous way, because it was precisely the same studies in the early 20th century that both discovered the true nature of human gametes and their function in reproduction, but immediately called into question the absolute essential qualities that had heretofore defined social views on the sexes and sex expression, to the point of ultimately upending the Freudian view of sexual anatomy as social destiny altogether. Your gametes and their health are a very good predictor of what role you will be able to play in reproduction without medical intervention, but they don't define some rigid set of gender chararacteristics. They certainly don't justify sex discrimination on the part of a government, or the criminalization of previously non-criminal acts. That's a social choice, and we can make different social choices, if the ones we've made in the past are no longer satisfying to a public that has become better informed about their bodies and their social potential.

 

[Emily Lake]

If they're using the Bible's list? Like hell I'm going to accept that. Biology has advanced, and we must advance with it.

I am unaware of which bible verse defines sexes based on the type of reproductive system the individual has evolved within their anisogamous species. I'm also unaware of which bible verse specifies that what distinguishes a man from a woman is which of those reproductive systems they have, and that their role within a family structure, career choice, and favorite eyeshadow color are completely irrelevant to that.

At this point, I'd very much like you to support your assertion by pointing out exactly which "bible list" I am using, and provide quotes from me that back up your claim.

What you are defending without really thinking is the philosophical notion that male and female identities are fundamentally separate and non-overlapping.

False - this has nothing at all to do with *identities*. What I am defending is the scientifically observed reality that male and female sexes are separate and non-overlapping in mammals.

You seize on scientific findings that you feel support that worldview, and ignore or dismiss as unimportant those that find ambiguity and variation within both sex and gender categorizations. Your favorite word seems to be "anisogamous", which is funny to me in the non-humorous way, because it was precisely the same studies in the early 20th century that both discovered the true nature of human gametes and their function in reproduction, but immediately called into question the absolute essential qualities that had heretofore defined social views on the sexes and sex expression, to the point of ultimately upending the Freudian view of sexual anatomy as social destiny altogether.

At no point whatsoever have I even remotely suggested that sex defines social destiny. It doesn't, and such a notion is regressive nonsense as well as unscientific.

Your gametes and their health are a very good predictor of what role you will be able to play in reproduction without medical intervention,

They are an excellent predictor of what reproductive role an individual can play... but let's be clear that no amount of medical intervention can result in a female being able to inseminate another female, nor a male being able to gestate a fetus. The medical intervention is only relevant to this discussion to the extent of either enabling or disabling one's sexed reproductive system to function. It cannot change a person's sex.

but they don't define some rigid set of gender chararacteristics.

Sex has nothing at all to do with "gender" characteristics. At the very outer edge, you have some behavioral tendencies that are sex-linked, but none of them are supreme dictates that govern how a person must behave or what sort of social roles they must perform. **But let's come back to this in a moment.

They certainly don't justify sex discrimination on the part of a government, or the criminalization of previously non-criminal acts.

I agree with your sentence as written, but I strongly suspect that you intend this to mean something different from what I am reading.

That's a social choice, and we can make different social choices, if the ones we've made in the past are no longer satisfying to a public that has become better informed about their bodies and their social potential.

You're conflating social behavior with sex characteristics... presumably so that you can argue that some males should be entitled to access female-specific spaces without the consent of those females, and thus have government backed rights to override female sexual boundaries?

** Let's come back to the notion of gender characteristics. Do you hold with Jarhyn's belief that we have gendered brains that can somehow be born with a social construct that differs from one's sexed body? The idea that we have sexed bodies, but we also have sexed brains, and that brains can be of a different sex than the body... and this is how we get gender identity? Because it seems to me that this notion is the one that attempts to create a rigid set of gender characteristics.

 

[Politesse]

Sex has nothing at all to do with "gender" characteristics.

Then basing social policy on sex is inappropriate, even if it were possible, and inherently sexist. Using a changing room or applying for a passport or playing soccer are social behaviors, not biological functions. Gender, not sex.

none of them are supreme dictates that govern how a person must behave or what sort of social roles they must perform.

This I agree with 100%, which is why what you're trying to do, in policing how other people socially identify is completely inappropriate and antisocial.

 

[Politesse]

Let's come back to the notion of gender characteristics. Do you hold with Jarhyn's belief that we have gendered brains that can somehow be born with a social construct that differs from one's sexed body? The idea that we have sexed bodies, but we also have sexed brains, and that brains can be of a different sex than the body... and this is how we get gender identity? Because it seems to me that this notion is the one that attempts to create a rigid set of gender characteristics.

Frankly, no. At least, not in quite the way Jarhyn puts it. But I also don't think that's relevant to a question of gender roles, what should be expected, or what should be "allowed". No question of civil rights should be contingent on "proving" that you were biologically compelled to act as you do from birth, that is an entirely unreasonable standard. You have an institutional right not to be harassed on the basis of your sex. It does not matter one whit whether some jackass is discriminating against you due to their guess as to your current sex, their guess aas to your birth sex, or their position on some academic question of when and how social identities form.

I note that your position on the issue would not change one whit if you became convinced that Jarhyn were correct. Neither would mine. What's one got to do with the other? Your objections to freedom of gender expression and accessibility to sex therapies are fundamentally social and political, not contingent on future scientific discoveries. Given that you're already demanding that your government ignore 60 years of research in sex and gender studies, what's one more year?

 

[Politesse]

Feminism is defined in many ways, We all know this. But all forms of ferminism should at a minimum be focused on expanding women's rights, not constricting them. Telling a woman that she is a criminal because she refused to use a bathroom or changing room with a iconographic dress on the door is not expanding women's rights. To champion a "feminism" that restricts a person's right to identify her own gender, restricts her movement in society, forbids her from certain places of employment, residence, and recreation is to undercut the entire feminist project.

 

[Jarhyn]

Frankly, no. At least, not in quite the way Jarhyn puts it. But I also don't think that's relevant to a question of gender roles, what should be expected, or what should be "allowed". No question of civil rights should be contingent on "proving" that you were biologically compelled to act as you do from birth, that is an entirely unreasonable standard. You have an institutional right not to be harassed on the basis of your sex. It does not matter one whit whether some jackass is discriminating against you due to their guess as to your current sex, their guess aas to your birth sex, or their position on some academic question of when and how social identities form.

I note that your position on the issue would not change one whit if you became convinced that Jarhyn were correct. Neither would mine. What's one got to do with the other? Your objections to freedom of gender expression and accessibility to sex therapies are fundamentally social and political, not contingent on future scientific discoveries. Given that you're already demanding that your government ignore 60 years of research in sex and gender studies, what's one more year?

I will note that my position is specifically that there is A reality to the fact that SOME people will be happier on different hormones.

This does not constitute a requirement that they do so and should not ever be considered as such.

People are allowed to be unhappy. People should be allowed to look and do and act for whatever reason they please, as long as it harms nobody else.

My contention there is that this too is a form of sex differentiation according phenotypical expression.

I was, for a very long time, frustrated in my own access to the power to control my own hormones within the normal human range by assumptions about essentialism and gatekeeping based on, at the time scientific opinions that sex was binary rather than a clustering of several distinct modal systems with between 2 and many modes each, many of which have a variety of causes.

It would be rather idiotic and even hypocritical if I were to say that people should be on one hormone or another simply because of how they act and what they like. The thing that makes something a disorder, at least in terms of needing medical intervention, is the experience of the person who has whatever condition... And pretty much everything about a person goes to their "condition".

Ultimately, I think humans ought have leeway to explore any of the physical conditions that we accept of humans in general, whether that condition is to have estrogen, testosterone, both, or neither.

I don't accept discrimination on the basis of "sex"

 

[Politesse]

Ultimately, I think humans ought have leeway to explore any of the physical conditions that we accept of humans in general, whether that condition is to have estrogen, testosterone, both, or neither.

I don't accept discrimination on the basis of "sex"

I would never even suspect you of such. Of course modern hormone therapies should be available, to whoever needs them.

 

[Jarhyn]

Ultimately, I think humans ought have leeway to explore any of the physical conditions that we accept of humans in general, whether that condition is to have estrogen, testosterone, both, or neither.

I don't accept discrimination on the basis of "sex"

I would never even suspect you of such. Of course modern hormone therapies should be available, to whoever needs them.

I figured. I just wanted to be perfectly clear in my post that I didn't fall into such traps of essentialism that say "pink brain OUGHT pink chemical", so much as "pink brain OUGHT have access to pink chemical (and blue chemical, and whatever other chemical)."

I do happen to think that whichever brain will probably end up selecting whatever chemical it tends to pair well with, and that we should go through a fairly long process to determine seriousness of the decision to add a chemical that shifts from some known baseline, but that's more just about how responsible decisions tend to be made in general.

 

[Bomb#20]

This is the Social Science forum, there is no need to quote you.

Are you arguing evidence isn't required here because social sciences aren't real sciences?

 

[Bomb#20]

View attachment 46617

Did somebody here say college professors all agree and indoctrinate students with a unified message?

 

[Politesse]

Referring to the entirety of the Modern and post-Modern era social sciences as an ideologically driven religion does imply that same general level of intentional ignorance, yes. If you don't want to be mistaken for a Creationist, don't copy their rhetoric.

 

[Bomb#20]

The difference here is that black women are women. Transwomen are male. You're arguing that males are like black women, and that males are disadvantaged because women don't want to relinquish our boundaries and let males into our sex-specific spaces and services.

And what are you going to do when the transmen show up in the women's room?

The popular notion that providing single-sex spaces for women means we must also provide single-sex places for men is a case of valuing symbolic fairness above real fairness, much like trying to stand up for freedom by prohibiting burning American flags.

 

[Bomb#20]

Referring to the entirety of the Modern and post-Modern era social sciences as an ideologically driven religion does imply that same general level of intentional ignorance, yes. If you don't want to be mistaken for a Creationist, don't copy their rhetoric.

Quote me.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I brought it up because you were claiming I support discrimination. I support equality of opportunity. Society used to be unequal, now it's unequal in the other direction.

Equality of opportunity for males to have access to naked or vulnerable females without their consent?

You still haven't provided any indication that it actually happens.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The difference here is that black women are women. Transwomen are male. You're arguing that males are like black women, and that males are disadvantaged because women don't want to relinquish our boundaries and let males into our sex-specific spaces and services.

And what are you going to do when the transmen show up in the women's room?

The popular notion that providing single-sex spaces for women means we must also provide single-sex places for men is a case of valuing symbolic fairness above real fairness, much like trying to stand up for freedom by prohibiting burning American flags.

Either people use the bathroom corresponding to their birth anatomy or they use the bathroom corresponding to their current presentation. It makes no sense to treat them differently.

 

[Bomb#20]

I brought it up because you were claiming I support discrimination. I support equality of opportunity. Society used to be unequal, now it's unequal in the other direction.

Equality of opportunity for males to have access to naked or vulnerable females without their consent?

You still haven't provided any indication that it actually happens.

Nurses suing their employer for allowing trans women to use their changing rooms

A group of NHS employees in Darlington say they are made to feel unsafe by a male staff member who identifies as a woman and after raising concerns their manager was called in by HR and told they needed to be "re-educated". A transgender charity says people need to be more accepting.

news.sky.com

More details are here. Sorry it's a Daily Fail article, but when nobody else is willing to actually quote the nurses' specific allegations, what are you going to do?

Transgender colleague stared as we undressed, hospital nurses claim

When a group of female NHS nurses complained to hospital bosses about the 'intimidating' behaviour of a trans colleague in their shared changing room, they at least expected a sympathetic hearing

www.dailymail.co.uk

... Another nurse said she was ‘close to tears’ during one incident. She said: ‘I was rummaging in my bag trying to find my lanyard and keys for the locker when a man’s voice behind me said, “Are you not getting changed yet?” ’

The woman – who was sexually abused as a child, has post-traumatic stress disorder and struggles to be alone around men – added: ‘He stood there, two metres from me, with a scrub top on and with tight black boxer shorts with holes in them and asked [again] whether I was getting changed yet... I felt glued to my seat, I could not move. My hands started to sweat. I was petrified and felt sick and began hyperventilating.’ ...