Femininity is presented differently by different cultures
This is a a kind of naturalism / universalism that is problematic for the "cultural fabrication" account of gender identity.
Why not say that each culture is doing its own thing? Why do we need to group those things into the "femininity" category?
I doubt that you can answer that question without making an appeal to biology or nature.
A culture may express femininity differently from the next, but all cultures have a value for "feminine" and "masculine," which I would argue supports the idea of some innate behavior of some sort.
However, it seems like you are really searching hard for answers that science and sociology don't even have tacked down yet. There are semantic and philosophical arguments supporting transgenderism, and there are actually biological and scientific studies that support the phenomenon, so yes, it may boil down to appeals to biology.
Because I assure you, I never would have voluntarily chosen to be trans. Not where I grew up, and not with the family I have.
Do you think that J is arguing that there is no such thing as transgenderism?
Because your middle part seems to indicate that, but I don't want to read too much into what you wrote.
No, I just think he's looking to quantify something that may or may not be quantifiable, and he's doing so as an internet armchair philosopher (as we all are), when people who actually get paid to do that kind of thing for a living are still having trouble with those questions.
Also, he seems to overthinking the concept of inclusivity; starting from a point of, "being a woman doesn't have to mean you have a vagina," he's seemingly extrapolating that, "if everyone can be a woman, is anybody really a woman?" To which I respond, "that's not really an important question in a practical sense."
That is a fair interpretation, based on my post history. Here is what I take myself to be doing:
Once upon a time, a distinction was made between humans who have a penis, and humans who have a vagina. The penised people were called "male", and the vaginad people were called "female". After mucking about for some time, it was said that sets of traits went along with having a penis, or having a vagina. The traits that went along with having a penis were called "masculine", belonging to men, and the traits that went along with having a vagina were called "feminine", belonging to women.
Some time passed. Then it was said that persons with feminine traits, the traits that belong to women, did not necessarily have vaginas. That there was a difference between "is a woman" and "has a vagina". A similar statement was made for the traits belonging to men, and the relation of those traits to having a penis.
In reply to this, some persons said, "Hold on. The thing that started this mess was the distinction between humans who have a penis, and humans who have a vagina. If 'has a penis' and 'has a vagina' is not a definitive characteristic of these categories that resulted from the observation that some people have a penis and some people have a vagina, then the categories should go away."
After hearing this, those persons were set on fire. And the other people continued to use the categories despite the categories being divorced from the observation that caused them to come about in the first place.
So, it's not "if everyone can be a woman, is anybody really a woman?". Rather, we made these categories up to account for a thing that is not a thing anymore. The original reason for having these categories went away. The categories should go away, too.
The categories might eventually go away! We don't know. We have a lot of details to learn while we digest the new possibilities we're allowing ourselves. The erasure of the structures which have existed since prehistory are not happening during our lifetimes.
The categories might eventually go away! We don't know. We have a lot of details to learn while we digest the new possibilities we're allowing ourselves. The erasure of the structures which have existed since prehistory are not happening during our lifetimes.
I just wish we could alleviate the suffering people experience as a result of this bullshit some dead people made up.
The fact that little people with penises are told "You should not like playing with dolls" is awful. Likewise for little people with vaginas who want to play hockey.
The categories might eventually go away! We don't know. We have a lot of details to learn while we digest the new possibilities we're allowing ourselves. The erasure of the structures which have existed since prehistory are not happening during our lifetimes.
I just wish we could alleviate the suffering people experience as a result of this bullshit some dead people made up.
The fact that little people with penises are told "You should not like playing with dolls" is awful. Likewise for little people with vaginas who want to play hockey.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with trans people; the bottom line is even with no social or categorical distinction, most of us would still need to transition because the body is still an issue.
I'm not sure if the culture surrounding would be more or less of a shitshow to transgender people without the gender role baggage, honestly.
The categories might eventually go away! We don't know. We have a lot of details to learn while we digest the new possibilities we're allowing ourselves. The erasure of the structures which have existed since prehistory are not happening during our lifetimes.
I just wish we could alleviate the suffering people experience as a result of this bullshit some dead people made up.
The fact that little people with penises are told "You should not like playing with dolls" is awful. Likewise for little people with vaginas who want to play hockey.
We can!
It just won't be large-scale while you are still alive.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Femininity is presented differently by different cultures
This is a a kind of naturalism / universalism that is problematic for the "cultural fabrication" account of gender identity.
Why not say that each culture is doing its own thing? Why do we need to group those things into the "femininity" category?
I doubt that you can answer that question without making an appeal to biology or nature.
A culture may express femininity differently from the next, but all cultures have a value for "feminine" and "masculine," which I would argue supports the idea of some innate behavior of some sort.
However, it seems like you are really searching hard for answers that science and sociology don't even have tacked down yet. There are semantic and philosophical arguments supporting transgenderism, and there are actually biological and scientific studies that support the phenomenon, so yes, it may boil down to appeals to biology.
Because I assure you, I never would have voluntarily chosen to be trans. Not where I grew up, and not with the family I have.
Do you think that J is arguing that there is no such thing as transgenderism?
Because your middle part seems to indicate that, but I don't want to read too much into what you wrote.
No, I just think he's looking to quantify something that may or may not be quantifiable, and he's doing so as an internet armchair philosopher (as we all are), when people who actually get paid to do that kind of thing for a living are still having trouble with those questions.
Also, he seems to overthinking the concept of inclusivity; starting from a point of, "being a woman doesn't have to mean you have a vagina," he's seemingly extrapolating that, "if everyone can be a woman, is anybody really a woman?" To which I respond, "that's not really an important question in a practical sense."
That is a fair interpretation, based on my post history. Here is what I take myself to be doing:
Once upon a time, a distinction was made between humans who have a penis, and humans who have a vagina. The penised people were called "male", and the vaginad people were called "female". After mucking about for some time, it was said that sets of traits went along with having a penis, or having a vagina. The traits that went along with having a penis were called "masculine", belonging to men, and the traits that went along with having a vagina were called "feminine", belonging to women.
Some time passed. Then it was said that persons with feminine traits, the traits that belong to women, did not necessarily have vaginas. That there was a difference between "is a woman" and "has a vagina". A similar statement was made for the traits belonging to men, and the relation of those traits to having a penis.
In reply to this, some persons said, "Hold on. The thing that started this mess was the distinction between humans who have a penis, and humans who have a vagina. If 'has a penis' and 'has a vagina' is not a definitive characteristic of these categories that resulted from the observation that some people have a penis and some people have a vagina, then the categories should go away."
After hearing this, those persons were set on fire. And the other people continued to use the categories despite the categories being divorced from the observation that caused them to come about in the first place.
So, it's not "if everyone can be a woman, is anybody really a woman?". Rather, we made these categories up to account for a thing that is not a thing anymore. The original reason for having these categories went away. The categories should go away, too.
Have I or have I not misconstrued your project as an interrogation of exactly the issues of which Atomika speaks - that the actual nature of gender is not concretely known - and as a matter course that some of the popularly stated and apparently commonly held conceptions of gender are mutually exclusive with other properties ascribed or otherwise logically inconsistent?
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
The categories might eventually go away! We don't know. We have a lot of details to learn while we digest the new possibilities we're allowing ourselves. The erasure of the structures which have existed since prehistory are not happening during our lifetimes.
I just wish we could alleviate the suffering people experience as a result of this bullshit some dead people made up.
The fact that little people with penises are told "You should not like playing with dolls" is awful. Likewise for little people with vaginas who want to play hockey.
Aren't they just gender roles though?
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Femininity is presented differently by different cultures
This is a a kind of naturalism / universalism that is problematic for the "cultural fabrication" account of gender identity.
Why not say that each culture is doing its own thing? Why do we need to group those things into the "femininity" category?
I doubt that you can answer that question without making an appeal to biology or nature.
A culture may express femininity differently from the next, but all cultures have a value for "feminine" and "masculine," which I would argue supports the idea of some innate behavior of some sort.
However, it seems like you are really searching hard for answers that science and sociology don't even have tacked down yet. There are semantic and philosophical arguments supporting transgenderism, and there are actually biological and scientific studies that support the phenomenon, so yes, it may boil down to appeals to biology.
Because I assure you, I never would have voluntarily chosen to be trans. Not where I grew up, and not with the family I have.
Do you think that J is arguing that there is no such thing as transgenderism?
Because your middle part seems to indicate that, but I don't want to read too much into what you wrote.
No, I just think he's looking to quantify something that may or may not be quantifiable, and he's doing so as an internet armchair philosopher (as we all are), when people who actually get paid to do that kind of thing for a living are still having trouble with those questions.
Also, he seems to overthinking the concept of inclusivity; starting from a point of, "being a woman doesn't have to mean you have a vagina," he's seemingly extrapolating that, "if everyone can be a woman, is anybody really a woman?" To which I respond, "that's not really an important question in a practical sense."
That is a fair interpretation, based on my post history. Here is what I take myself to be doing:
Once upon a time, a distinction was made between humans who have a penis, and humans who have a vagina. The penised people were called "male", and the vaginad people were called "female". After mucking about for some time, it was said that sets of traits went along with having a penis, or having a vagina. The traits that went along with having a penis were called "masculine", belonging to men, and the traits that went along with having a vagina were called "feminine", belonging to women.
Some time passed. Then it was said that persons with feminine traits, the traits that belong to women, did not necessarily have vaginas. That there was a difference between "is a woman" and "has a vagina". A similar statement was made for the traits belonging to men, and the relation of those traits to having a penis.
In reply to this, some persons said, "Hold on. The thing that started this mess was the distinction between humans who have a penis, and humans who have a vagina. If 'has a penis' and 'has a vagina' is not a definitive characteristic of these categories that resulted from the observation that some people have a penis and some people have a vagina, then the categories should go away."
After hearing this, those persons were set on fire. And the other people continued to use the categories despite the categories being divorced from the observation that caused them to come about in the first place.
So, it's not "if everyone can be a woman, is anybody really a woman?". Rather, we made these categories up to account for a thing that is not a thing anymore. The original reason for having these categories went away. The categories should go away, too.
This kind of absolutism is silly. While there are women without vaginas and men without penises, most people with vaginas identify as women and most people with penises identify as men, which makes those categories still useful when dealing with people on a daily basis. ("Oh, you exhibit physical and social indicators of masculinity. You probably would prefer to be directed to the men's room.")
Until many, many more people step well outside the general correlation between masculine/feminine traits and identifying as male/female (respectively), we should do away with neither gender nor sex as concepts.
Anyone want talk about the reinforcing effect that not being able to talk or think about another person xer gender probably has on the concepts of gender roles?
I must admit I am also thoroughly confused by this whole thing.
If male and female are a simple question of the sort of gametes you produce (the actual way in which biologists tell male from female across the tree of life) and the rest is just a question of gender roles. Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
I mean, I understand it's probably a spectrum and a matter of statistics, but, to set a simple example, what if (apart from deviations from the norm that should not be stigmatized) little boys and girls tend to like to play with different things?
Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
The only difference required for this is what fiddly bits one's brain is wired to hook up to, which isn't really the sort of thing people mean when they're talking about differences in the genders.
Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
The only difference required for this is what fiddly bits one's brain is wired to hook up to, which isn't really the sort of thing people mean when they're talking about differences in the genders.
Could be. It also could not. Biology is rarely that modular, and males and females in other species are known to have specific behavioral patterns. There is no particular reason why this can't be true in humans and the way your brain hooks up to your bits and how it gets there (genes, hormones) could affect any other number of things.
But I guess in the specific case where the only differences between male and female brain is the bits they expect to see when they look down then it would be possible to have no gender differences AND transexuals at the same time.
I must admit I am also thoroughly confused by this whole thing.
If male and female are a simple question of the sort of gametes you produce (the actual way in which biologists tell male from female across the tree of life) and the rest is just a question of gender roles. Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
I mean, I understand it's probably a spectrum and a matter of statistics, but, to set a simple example, what if (apart from deviations from the norm that should not be stigmatized) little boys and girls tend to like to play with different things?
Little boys and girls rarely pick their own toys, and will constantly attempt to seek the approval of those around them. So it I'd an awful example.
There's lots of kids who's parents make conscious efforts to adjust for this. They tend to like playing with what they are given till they get to school.
There is a totally valid counter point that lots of trans and coercively sexed intersexed children are drawn to unexpected forms of play.
So...?
Edit: also lots of bog standard cis kids just generally do that last bit as well.
Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
The only difference required for this is what fiddly bits one's brain is wired to hook up to, which isn't really the sort of thing people mean when they're talking about differences in the genders.
Could be. It also could not. Biology is rarely that modular, and males and females in other species are known to have specific behavioral patterns. There is no particular reason why this can't be true in humans and the way your brain hooks up to your bits and how it gets there (genes, hormones) could affect any other number of things.
It is possible there are greater differences between male and female, but I have yet to see data that suggests that there are.
I must admit I am also thoroughly confused by this whole thing.
If male and female are a simple question of the sort of gametes you produce (the actual way in which biologists tell male from female across the tree of life) and the rest is just a question of gender roles. Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
I mean, I understand it's probably a spectrum and a matter of statistics, but, to set a simple example, what if (apart from deviations from the norm that should not be stigmatized) little boys and girls tend to like to play with different things?
Little boys and girls rarely pick their own toys, and will constantly attempt to seek the approval of those around them. So it I'd an awful example.
There's lots of kids who's parents make conscious efforts to adjust for this. They tend to like playing with what they are given till they get to school.
There is a totally valid counter point that lots of trans and coercively sexed intersexed children are drawn to unexpected forms of play.
So...?
Edit: also lots of bog standard cis kids just generally do that last bit as well.
So nothing, it was a simple example, I was just musing about whether a complete lack of mental/behavioral differences between males and females was compatible with the existence of transexuality. Turns out there is a specific scenario where it is.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
If male and female are a simple question of the sort of gametes you produce (the actual way in which biologists tell male from female across the tree of life) and the rest is just a question of gender roles. Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
I remember @ Shivahn once describing it as instead of a checklist of traits to mark, gender is more of an electron cloud, where you know certain values likely exist within a space, but you can't define the individual points, only the concept as a whole. I liked that description.
If you're looking for "Female Trait 073" in the cloud but don't find that specific marker, that doesn't negate the entire field.
If male and female are a simple question of the sort of gametes you produce (the actual way in which biologists tell male from female across the tree of life) and the rest is just a question of gender roles. Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
I remember @Shivahn once describing it as instead of a checklist of traits to mark, gender is more of an electron cloud, where you know certain values likely exist within a space, but you can't define the individual points, only the concept as a whole. I liked that description.
If you're looking for "Female Trait 073" in the cloud but don't find that specific marker, that doesn't negate the entire field.
Sure, especially because those markers seem to vary a lot depending on cultural norms. But surely if there exists such thing as a "female cloud" you will have certain traits that appear with more probability than others. We know that "wearing a skirt" is not a marker because jeans are awesome for everybody and kilts are a thing (and because we have only had skirts for a very short part of our existence), we know that "feeling I should be wired to a vagina" is definitely one. The question remains whether there are more markers that remain more or less constant across the gender spectrum. But then we run into the old wall of separating the innate from the cultural. I would be interested in knowing your take on this.
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
If male and female are a simple question of the sort of gametes you produce (the actual way in which biologists tell male from female across the tree of life) and the rest is just a question of gender roles. Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
I remember @Shivahn once describing it as instead of a checklist of traits to mark, gender is more of an electron cloud, where you know certain values likely exist within a space, but you can't define the individual points, only the concept as a whole. I liked that description.
If you're looking for "Female Trait 073" in the cloud but don't find that specific marker, that doesn't negate the entire field.
I don't think _J_ feels comfortable with quantum mechanics, either.
If male and female are a simple question of the sort of gametes you produce (the actual way in which biologists tell male from female across the tree of life) and the rest is just a question of gender roles. Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
I remember @ Shivahn once describing it as instead of a checklist of traits to mark, gender is more of an electron cloud, where you know certain values likely exist within a space, but you can't define the individual points, only the concept as a whole. I liked that description.
If you're looking for "Female Trait 073" in the cloud but don't find that specific marker, that doesn't negate the entire field.
Sure, especially because those markers seem to vary a lot depending on cultural norms. But surely if there exists such thing as a "female cloud" you will have certain traits that appear with more probability than others. We know that "wearing a skirt" is not a marker because jeans are awesome for everybody and kilts are a thing (and because we have only had skirts for a very short part of our existence), we know that "feeling I should be wired to a vagina" is definitely one. The question remains whether there are more markers that remain more or less constant across the gender spectrum. But then we run into the old wall of separating the innate from the cultural. I would be interested in knowing your take on this.
I feel that the innate parts of gender dysmorphia are the notions of bodily wrongness, while the outward expression of gender identity is codified by culture. It's two different things, though not entirely two separate things. Most people who identify with binary gender ideals will adhere to their culturally-expected expressions (sometimes to extremes, especially in the case of trans folks for reasons that are probably obvious), because part of assuaging gender incongruity is reflected external validation and personal affirmation.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
If male and female are a simple question of the sort of gametes you produce (the actual way in which biologists tell male from female across the tree of life) and the rest is just a question of gender roles. Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
I remember @Shivahn once describing it as instead of a checklist of traits to mark, gender is more of an electron cloud, where you know certain values likely exist within a space, but you can't define the individual points, only the concept as a whole. I liked that description.
If you're looking for "Female Trait 073" in the cloud but don't find that specific marker, that doesn't negate the entire field.
I don't think _J_ feels comfortable with quantum mechanics, either.
That funny, but it's also not wrong to think of gender in such terms. Just about all forms of scientific examination fall prey to quantum-level paradoxes at some point, so having gender definitions follow suit doesn't seem intuitively wrong.
If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
Oft-repeated by whom?
Tabula rasa has not been part of the standard model in the social sciences for decades.
There might be some older holdouts in the humanities or some Tumblr kids who believe in it, but it is effectively a fringe belief.
The more sophisticated and mainstream version of that claim is that there are observable neurological gender differences, but we don't really have a comprehensive etiology for how genes, epigenetics, and environment interact to cause them.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
Oft-repeated by whom?
Tabula rasa has not been part of the standard model in the social sciences for decades.
There might be some older holdouts in the humanities or some Tumblr kids who believe in it, but it is effectively a fringe belief.
The more sophisticated and mainstream version of that claim is that there are observable neurological gender differences, but we don't really have a comprehensive etiology for how genes, epigenetics, and environment interact to cause them.
Do we have anyone researching this in the different requisite fields in order to create a comprehensive etiology? Is such a thing even possible?
It seems like the sort of thing that would be very useful to have when dealing with these sorts of issues.
If male and female are a simple question of the sort of gametes you produce (the actual way in which biologists tell male from female across the tree of life) and the rest is just a question of gender roles. Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
I remember @Shivahn once describing it as instead of a checklist of traits to mark, gender is more of an electron cloud, where you know certain values likely exist within a space, but you can't define the individual points, only the concept as a whole. I liked that description.
If you're looking for "Female Trait 073" in the cloud but don't find that specific marker, that doesn't negate the entire field.
What provides the knowledge of those values? I mean, what compels the certainty in a trans person that they're not fulfilling an identity they feel strongly attached to? Why is it 'I must be this identity' rather than 'I could be this identity'?
The categories might eventually go away! We don't know. We have a lot of details to learn while we digest the new possibilities we're allowing ourselves. The erasure of the structures which have existed since prehistory are not happening during our lifetimes.
I just wish we could alleviate the suffering people experience as a result of this bullshit some dead people made up.
The fact that little people with penises are told "You should not like playing with dolls" is awful. Likewise for little people with vaginas who want to play hockey.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with trans people; the bottom line is even with no social or categorical distinction, most of us would still need to transition because the body is still an issue.
I'm not sure if the culture surrounding would be more or less of a shitshow to transgender people without the gender role baggage, honestly.
That is something about which I wonder. Would the body still be an issue if all the social categories were removed? If so, what would be the issue? Absent all the social interpretations, the bodily plumbing reduces down to
If you have a penis, then you can piss standing up without making much of a mess.
If you have a vagina, then you need to piss sitting or squatting, to avoid making a mess.
Everything else is socially constructed interpretations of use/purpose posited onto particular anatomical features.
What issue does anatomy present, if we stop interpreting sex / gender as naturalistic?
As a cis male, I am completely open to the possibility that I am wrong, and welcome criticism.
The categories might eventually go away! We don't know. We have a lot of details to learn while we digest the new possibilities we're allowing ourselves. The erasure of the structures which have existed since prehistory are not happening during our lifetimes.
I just wish we could alleviate the suffering people experience as a result of this bullshit some dead people made up.
The fact that little people with penises are told "You should not like playing with dolls" is awful. Likewise for little people with vaginas who want to play hockey.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with trans people; the bottom line is even with no social or categorical distinction, most of us would still need to transition because the body is still an issue.
I'm not sure if the culture surrounding would be more or less of a shitshow to transgender people without the gender role baggage, honestly.
That is something about which I wonder. Would the body still be an issue if all the social categories were removed? If so, what would be the issue? Absent all the social interpretations, the bodily plumbing reduces down to
If you have a penis, then you can piss standing up without making much of a mess.
If you have a vagina, then you need to piss sitting or squatting, to avoid making a mess.
Everything else is socially constructed interpretations of use/purpose posited onto particular anatomical features.
What issue does anatomy present, if we stop interpreting sex / gender as naturalistic?
As a cis male, I am completely open to the possibility that I am wrong, and welcome criticism.
Some trans people report proprioceptive disturbance: a feeling that their physical body does not match their mental 'body map'.
The implication here is that there is a body map, that we are either born with, or develops early in life. This would be corroborated by other proprioceptive disorders: phantom limb syndrome, body integrity identity disorder.
Other trans people don't report similar problems, or report them to less of a degree. I would caution against mentally filing them into a lesser (rather than merely different) category of trans.
It is entirely possible that gender identity and mental body map are separate but interrelated, that they emerge separately but in interaction with each other, and that there are different subtypes of trans on those two axes. Nobody knows for sure yet.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
It's worth keeping in mind that people have different levels of attachment to gender, and that our perception of attachment is filtered through our experiences with that attachment being challenged and the potential consequences. This makes it really hard to rely on personal experiences when thinking about this topic.
If male and female are a simple question of the sort of gametes you produce (the actual way in which biologists tell male from female across the tree of life) and the rest is just a question of gender roles. Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
I remember @Shivahn once describing it as instead of a checklist of traits to mark, gender is more of an electron cloud, where you know certain values likely exist within a space, but you can't define the individual points, only the concept as a whole. I liked that description.
If you're looking for "Female Trait 073" in the cloud but don't find that specific marker, that doesn't negate the entire field.
What provides the knowledge of those values? I mean, what compels the certainty in a trans person that they're not fulfilling an identity they feel strongly attached to? Why is it 'I must be this identity' rather than 'I could be this identity'?
Nobody knows.
How do I know that I'm a man? I've never questioned it. I simply know. From where does that emerge?
Note that this is different from what being a man implies. Gender identity and gender roles are different things, which is a big wrinkle when discussing concepts like gender as a social construct.
Every human society on Earth has male and female identities, including cultures that make room for nonbinary genders. And those who do make room for nonbinary gender still mostly put their genders on a spectrum in male and female terms. You might have read, for instance, that the Bugis of Indonesia have five genders, which is true. But their five genders aren't male, female, orange, dragon, and hammer. They are male, female, calabai (which is similar but not exactly comparable to transwoman), calalai (mostly analogous to transman), and bissu (which is a synthesis, more or less a middle gender).
They still construct their genders mostly in male-female terms.
But despite the universality of the male-female spectrum, gender roles are all over the metaphorical map. Whether a man wears a skirt, wears his hair long, dons eye-shadow, acts as the sexual aggressor, or is expected to weep in public, differs a great deal from one culture to the next.
This leads me, personally, to the conclusion that even if we were to somehow flatten gender roles to complete and total equality, there would still be some instinctive impetus to identify ourselves by gender. But I don't want anybody to mistake this personal belief with a mainstream scientific conclusion.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
The categories might eventually go away! We don't know. We have a lot of details to learn while we digest the new possibilities we're allowing ourselves. The erasure of the structures which have existed since prehistory are not happening during our lifetimes.
I just wish we could alleviate the suffering people experience as a result of this bullshit some dead people made up.
The fact that little people with penises are told "You should not like playing with dolls" is awful. Likewise for little people with vaginas who want to play hockey.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with trans people; the bottom line is even with no social or categorical distinction, most of us would still need to transition because the body is still an issue.
I'm not sure if the culture surrounding would be more or less of a shitshow to transgender people without the gender role baggage, honestly.
That is something about which I wonder. Would the body still be an issue if all the social categories were removed? If so, what would be the issue? Absent all the social interpretations, the bodily plumbing reduces down to
If you have a penis, then you can piss standing up without making much of a mess.
If you have a vagina, then you need to piss sitting or squatting, to avoid making a mess.
Everything else is socially constructed interpretations of use/purpose posited onto particular anatomical features.
What issue does anatomy present, if we stop interpreting sex / gender as naturalistic?
As a cis male, I am completely open to the possibility that I am wrong, and welcome criticism.
The bodily plumbing boils down to a hell of a lot more than that. You are so wrong here I don't even know where to start.
Femininity is presented differently by different cultures
This is a a kind of naturalism / universalism that is problematic for the "cultural fabrication" account of gender identity.
Why not say that each culture is doing its own thing? Why do we need to group those things into the "femininity" category?
I doubt that you can answer that question without making an appeal to biology or nature.
A culture may express femininity differently from the next, but all cultures have a value for "feminine" and "masculine," which I would argue supports the idea of some innate behavior of some sort.
However, it seems like you are really searching hard for answers that science and sociology don't even have tacked down yet. There are semantic and philosophical arguments supporting transgenderism, and there are actually biological and scientific studies that support the phenomenon, so yes, it may boil down to appeals to biology.
Because I assure you, I never would have voluntarily chosen to be trans. Not where I grew up, and not with the family I have.
Do you think that J is arguing that there is no such thing as transgenderism?
Because your middle part seems to indicate that, but I don't want to read too much into what you wrote.
No, I just think he's looking to quantify something that may or may not be quantifiable, and he's doing so as an internet armchair philosopher (as we all are), when people who actually get paid to do that kind of thing for a living are still having trouble with those questions.
Also, he seems to overthinking the concept of inclusivity; starting from a point of, "being a woman doesn't have to mean you have a vagina," he's seemingly extrapolating that, "if everyone can be a woman, is anybody really a woman?" To which I respond, "that's not really an important question in a practical sense."
That is a fair interpretation, based on my post history. Here is what I take myself to be doing:
Once upon a time, a distinction was made between humans who have a penis, and humans who have a vagina. The penised people were called "male", and the vaginad people were called "female". After mucking about for some time, it was said that sets of traits went along with having a penis, or having a vagina. The traits that went along with having a penis were called "masculine", belonging to men, and the traits that went along with having a vagina were called "feminine", belonging to women.
Some time passed. Then it was said that persons with feminine traits, the traits that belong to women, did not necessarily have vaginas. That there was a difference between "is a woman" and "has a vagina". A similar statement was made for the traits belonging to men, and the relation of those traits to having a penis.
In reply to this, some persons said, "Hold on. The thing that started this mess was the distinction between humans who have a penis, and humans who have a vagina. If 'has a penis' and 'has a vagina' is not a definitive characteristic of these categories that resulted from the observation that some people have a penis and some people have a vagina, then the categories should go away."
After hearing this, those persons were set on fire. And the other people continued to use the categories despite the categories being divorced from the observation that caused them to come about in the first place.
So, it's not "if everyone can be a woman, is anybody really a woman?". Rather, we made these categories up to account for a thing that is not a thing anymore. The original reason for having these categories went away. The categories should go away, too.
Have I or have I not misconstrued your project as an interrogation of exactly the issues of which Atomika speaks - that the actual nature of gender is not concretely known - and as a matter course that some of the popularly stated and apparently commonly held conceptions of gender are mutually exclusive with other properties ascribed or otherwise logically inconsistent?
I think yes. The nature of gender is not concretely known. Many accounts of gender are inconsistent. The modification I wanted to make was on the characterization of my questions as "if everyone can be a woman, is anybody really a woman?" The question is more, "What is it to be really a woman?" given the inconsistencies and ambiguity of the "woman" and "man" categories.
The categories might eventually go away! We don't know. We have a lot of details to learn while we digest the new possibilities we're allowing ourselves. The erasure of the structures which have existed since prehistory are not happening during our lifetimes.
I just wish we could alleviate the suffering people experience as a result of this bullshit some dead people made up.
The fact that little people with penises are told "You should not like playing with dolls" is awful. Likewise for little people with vaginas who want to play hockey.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with trans people; the bottom line is even with no social or categorical distinction, most of us would still need to transition because the body is still an issue.
I'm not sure if the culture surrounding would be more or less of a shitshow to transgender people without the gender role baggage, honestly.
That is something about which I wonder. Would the body still be an issue if all the social categories were removed? If so, what would be the issue? Absent all the social interpretations, the bodily plumbing reduces down to
If you have a penis, then you can piss standing up without making much of a mess.
If you have a vagina, then you need to piss sitting or squatting, to avoid making a mess.
Everything else is socially constructed interpretations of use/purpose posited onto particular anatomical features.
What issue does anatomy present, if we stop interpreting sex / gender as naturalistic?
As a cis male, I am completely open to the possibility that I am wrong, and welcome criticism.
The bodily plumbing boils down to a hell of a lot more than that. You are so wrong here I don't even know where to start.
You could start with saying what the plumbing boils down to.
If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
Oft-repeated by whom?
Tabula rasa has not been part of the standard model in the social sciences for decades.
There might be some older holdouts in the humanities or some Tumblr kids who believe in it, but it is effectively a fringe belief.
The more sophisticated and mainstream version of that claim is that there are observable neurological gender differences, but we don't really have a comprehensive etiology for how genes, epigenetics, and environment interact to cause them.
Do we have anyone researching this in the different requisite fields in order to create a comprehensive etiology? Is such a thing even possible?
It seems like the sort of thing that would be very useful to have when dealing with these sorts of issues.
While this is just one case in question, there is the tragic story of David Reimer. I figure probably rather important here while on the topic of gender identity and "Tabula Rasa": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
Long story short: Reimer was born with a male body at birth and his penis was destroyed during a botched circumcision to compensate for phimosis. A now rather infamous psychologist, John Money, believed that gender identity was a learned trait and so under his encouragement, David underwent SRS and was raised as a girl.
Except for the problem: David displayed a male gender identity as he grew older. On top of which, Money also did some pretty fucked up "how is this not incest and child abuse" experiments with David and his brother as they were growing up in the name of his research, forcing David into the so-called "Female" role.
Eventually, after hormones and gender role training failed to induce any sense of a female gender identity in him, David's parents told him the truth about his birth and around 14 he began transitioning back to a male presentation that matched his identity.
Unfortunately, he committed suicide about 10-years-back, after a series of further tragedies in adulthood involving his brother, his marriage and employment (and, not to mention, I would imagine his childhood traumas with Money's experiments).
The categories might eventually go away! We don't know. We have a lot of details to learn while we digest the new possibilities we're allowing ourselves. The erasure of the structures which have existed since prehistory are not happening during our lifetimes.
I just wish we could alleviate the suffering people experience as a result of this bullshit some dead people made up.
The fact that little people with penises are told "You should not like playing with dolls" is awful. Likewise for little people with vaginas who want to play hockey.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with trans people; the bottom line is even with no social or categorical distinction, most of us would still need to transition because the body is still an issue.
I'm not sure if the culture surrounding would be more or less of a shitshow to transgender people without the gender role baggage, honestly.
That is something about which I wonder. Would the body still be an issue if all the social categories were removed? If so, what would be the issue? Absent all the social interpretations, the bodily plumbing reduces down to
If you have a penis, then you can piss standing up without making much of a mess.
If you have a vagina, then you need to piss sitting or squatting, to avoid making a mess.
Everything else is socially constructed interpretations of use/purpose posited onto particular anatomical features.
What issue does anatomy present, if we stop interpreting sex / gender as naturalistic?
As a cis male, I am completely open to the possibility that I am wrong, and welcome criticism.
The bodily plumbing boils down to a hell of a lot more than that. You are so wrong here I don't even know where to start.
You could start with saying what the plumbing boils down to.
Human genital tissue after birth is actually still pretty damn malleable. While I can't find the source at the moment, I have heard of related tissues, after SRS, transitioning to vaginal tissues. Been a few months since I read about it so the details are fuzzy beyond that
Posts
That is a fair interpretation, based on my post history. Here is what I take myself to be doing:
Once upon a time, a distinction was made between humans who have a penis, and humans who have a vagina. The penised people were called "male", and the vaginad people were called "female". After mucking about for some time, it was said that sets of traits went along with having a penis, or having a vagina. The traits that went along with having a penis were called "masculine", belonging to men, and the traits that went along with having a vagina were called "feminine", belonging to women.
Some time passed. Then it was said that persons with feminine traits, the traits that belong to women, did not necessarily have vaginas. That there was a difference between "is a woman" and "has a vagina". A similar statement was made for the traits belonging to men, and the relation of those traits to having a penis.
In reply to this, some persons said, "Hold on. The thing that started this mess was the distinction between humans who have a penis, and humans who have a vagina. If 'has a penis' and 'has a vagina' is not a definitive characteristic of these categories that resulted from the observation that some people have a penis and some people have a vagina, then the categories should go away."
After hearing this, those persons were set on fire. And the other people continued to use the categories despite the categories being divorced from the observation that caused them to come about in the first place.
So, it's not "if everyone can be a woman, is anybody really a woman?". Rather, we made these categories up to account for a thing that is not a thing anymore. The original reason for having these categories went away. The categories should go away, too.
I just wish we could alleviate the suffering people experience as a result of this bullshit some dead people made up.
The fact that little people with penises are told "You should not like playing with dolls" is awful. Likewise for little people with vaginas who want to play hockey.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with trans people; the bottom line is even with no social or categorical distinction, most of us would still need to transition because the body is still an issue.
I'm not sure if the culture surrounding would be more or less of a shitshow to transgender people without the gender role baggage, honestly.
We can!
It just won't be large-scale while you are still alive.
Have I or have I not misconstrued your project as an interrogation of exactly the issues of which Atomika speaks - that the actual nature of gender is not concretely known - and as a matter course that some of the popularly stated and apparently commonly held conceptions of gender are mutually exclusive with other properties ascribed or otherwise logically inconsistent?
Aren't they just gender roles though?
This kind of absolutism is silly. While there are women without vaginas and men without penises, most people with vaginas identify as women and most people with penises identify as men, which makes those categories still useful when dealing with people on a daily basis. ("Oh, you exhibit physical and social indicators of masculinity. You probably would prefer to be directed to the men's room.")
Until many, many more people step well outside the general correlation between masculine/feminine traits and identifying as male/female (respectively), we should do away with neither gender nor sex as concepts.
So.
You know.
As a rape victim, fuck the Vagina Monologues.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
If male and female are a simple question of the sort of gametes you produce (the actual way in which biologists tell male from female across the tree of life) and the rest is just a question of gender roles. Should gender roles be abolished, would transexual people still feel the need to transition? The most likely answer seems to be "yes". If this is true, then the oft-repeated claim that men and women have no innate mental or behavioral differences can't be also true.
I mean, I understand it's probably a spectrum and a matter of statistics, but, to set a simple example, what if (apart from deviations from the norm that should not be stigmatized) little boys and girls tend to like to play with different things?
Could be. It also could not. Biology is rarely that modular, and males and females in other species are known to have specific behavioral patterns. There is no particular reason why this can't be true in humans and the way your brain hooks up to your bits and how it gets there (genes, hormones) could affect any other number of things.
But I guess in the specific case where the only differences between male and female brain is the bits they expect to see when they look down then it would be possible to have no gender differences AND transexuals at the same time.
Little boys and girls rarely pick their own toys, and will constantly attempt to seek the approval of those around them. So it I'd an awful example.
There's lots of kids who's parents make conscious efforts to adjust for this. They tend to like playing with what they are given till they get to school.
There is a totally valid counter point that lots of trans and coercively sexed intersexed children are drawn to unexpected forms of play.
So...?
Edit: also lots of bog standard cis kids just generally do that last bit as well.
So nothing, it was a simple example, I was just musing about whether a complete lack of mental/behavioral differences between males and females was compatible with the existence of transexuality. Turns out there is a specific scenario where it is.
I remember @ Shivahn once describing it as instead of a checklist of traits to mark, gender is more of an electron cloud, where you know certain values likely exist within a space, but you can't define the individual points, only the concept as a whole. I liked that description.
If you're looking for "Female Trait 073" in the cloud but don't find that specific marker, that doesn't negate the entire field.
Sure, especially because those markers seem to vary a lot depending on cultural norms. But surely if there exists such thing as a "female cloud" you will have certain traits that appear with more probability than others. We know that "wearing a skirt" is not a marker because jeans are awesome for everybody and kilts are a thing (and because we have only had skirts for a very short part of our existence), we know that "feeling I should be wired to a vagina" is definitely one. The question remains whether there are more markers that remain more or less constant across the gender spectrum. But then we run into the old wall of separating the innate from the cultural. I would be interested in knowing your take on this.
I don't think _J_ feels comfortable with quantum mechanics, either.
I feel that the innate parts of gender dysmorphia are the notions of bodily wrongness, while the outward expression of gender identity is codified by culture. It's two different things, though not entirely two separate things. Most people who identify with binary gender ideals will adhere to their culturally-expected expressions (sometimes to extremes, especially in the case of trans folks for reasons that are probably obvious), because part of assuaging gender incongruity is reflected external validation and personal affirmation.
That funny, but it's also not wrong to think of gender in such terms. Just about all forms of scientific examination fall prey to quantum-level paradoxes at some point, so having gender definitions follow suit doesn't seem intuitively wrong.
Oft-repeated by whom?
Tabula rasa has not been part of the standard model in the social sciences for decades.
There might be some older holdouts in the humanities or some Tumblr kids who believe in it, but it is effectively a fringe belief.
The more sophisticated and mainstream version of that claim is that there are observable neurological gender differences, but we don't really have a comprehensive etiology for how genes, epigenetics, and environment interact to cause them.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
According to Wikipedia, the victim was aged up three years, and then the line removed, but it's still a positive monologue about a teen getting raped.
So, I remain pretty firm in my saying fuck this play.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
Do we have anyone researching this in the different requisite fields in order to create a comprehensive etiology? Is such a thing even possible?
It seems like the sort of thing that would be very useful to have when dealing with these sorts of issues.
Sexual and gender development is an umbrella under which an immense amount of research is being done across multiple disciplines every single day.
But it is very, very complex, and there are difficult philosophical issues that further complicate things, as folks here have noticed.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
What provides the knowledge of those values? I mean, what compels the certainty in a trans person that they're not fulfilling an identity they feel strongly attached to? Why is it 'I must be this identity' rather than 'I could be this identity'?
That is something about which I wonder. Would the body still be an issue if all the social categories were removed? If so, what would be the issue? Absent all the social interpretations, the bodily plumbing reduces down to
Everything else is socially constructed interpretations of use/purpose posited onto particular anatomical features.
What issue does anatomy present, if we stop interpreting sex / gender as naturalistic?
As a cis male, I am completely open to the possibility that I am wrong, and welcome criticism.
Some trans people report proprioceptive disturbance: a feeling that their physical body does not match their mental 'body map'.
The implication here is that there is a body map, that we are either born with, or develops early in life. This would be corroborated by other proprioceptive disorders: phantom limb syndrome, body integrity identity disorder.
Other trans people don't report similar problems, or report them to less of a degree. I would caution against mentally filing them into a lesser (rather than merely different) category of trans.
It is entirely possible that gender identity and mental body map are separate but interrelated, that they emerge separately but in interaction with each other, and that there are different subtypes of trans on those two axes. Nobody knows for sure yet.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Nobody knows.
How do I know that I'm a man? I've never questioned it. I simply know. From where does that emerge?
Note that this is different from what being a man implies. Gender identity and gender roles are different things, which is a big wrinkle when discussing concepts like gender as a social construct.
Every human society on Earth has male and female identities, including cultures that make room for nonbinary genders. And those who do make room for nonbinary gender still mostly put their genders on a spectrum in male and female terms. You might have read, for instance, that the Bugis of Indonesia have five genders, which is true. But their five genders aren't male, female, orange, dragon, and hammer. They are male, female, calabai (which is similar but not exactly comparable to transwoman), calalai (mostly analogous to transman), and bissu (which is a synthesis, more or less a middle gender).
They still construct their genders mostly in male-female terms.
But despite the universality of the male-female spectrum, gender roles are all over the metaphorical map. Whether a man wears a skirt, wears his hair long, dons eye-shadow, acts as the sexual aggressor, or is expected to weep in public, differs a great deal from one culture to the next.
This leads me, personally, to the conclusion that even if we were to somehow flatten gender roles to complete and total equality, there would still be some instinctive impetus to identify ourselves by gender. But I don't want anybody to mistake this personal belief with a mainstream scientific conclusion.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The bodily plumbing boils down to a hell of a lot more than that. You are so wrong here I don't even know where to start.
I think yes. The nature of gender is not concretely known. Many accounts of gender are inconsistent. The modification I wanted to make was on the characterization of my questions as "if everyone can be a woman, is anybody really a woman?" The question is more, "What is it to be really a woman?" given the inconsistencies and ambiguity of the "woman" and "man" categories.
You could start with saying what the plumbing boils down to.
While this is just one case in question, there is the tragic story of David Reimer. I figure probably rather important here while on the topic of gender identity and "Tabula Rasa": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
Long story short: Reimer was born with a male body at birth and his penis was destroyed during a botched circumcision to compensate for phimosis. A now rather infamous psychologist, John Money, believed that gender identity was a learned trait and so under his encouragement, David underwent SRS and was raised as a girl.
Except for the problem: David displayed a male gender identity as he grew older. On top of which, Money also did some pretty fucked up "how is this not incest and child abuse" experiments with David and his brother as they were growing up in the name of his research, forcing David into the so-called "Female" role.
Eventually, after hormones and gender role training failed to induce any sense of a female gender identity in him, David's parents told him the truth about his birth and around 14 he began transitioning back to a male presentation that matched his identity.
Unfortunately, he committed suicide about 10-years-back, after a series of further tragedies in adulthood involving his brother, his marriage and employment (and, not to mention, I would imagine his childhood traumas with Money's experiments).
Human genital tissue after birth is actually still pretty damn malleable. While I can't find the source at the moment, I have heard of related tissues, after SRS, transitioning to vaginal tissues. Been a few months since I read about it so the details are fuzzy beyond that
And your avatar is cool as hel
This is definitely true. When my father transitioned she said her biggest issues were with her body type rather than her sex organs.