While I agree that the no-thought-without-language nonsense is not behaviourist, I wouldn't equate it with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis either. S-W contends that language influences our understand of the world to such an extent that the understandings of the world are incommensurable.
OTOH the no thought without language thing is a separate issue. Donald Davidson, for example, contended that animals cannot think as they do not have lanuage - exactly what he thought animals did do is beyond me. Pomo's and acolytes of Derrida and so forth hold that language is the ultimate basis of reality or some nonsense, and I'm not convinced that they're capable of thought let alone academic rigour.
Okay, fair enough.
It's all bollocks anyway.
Indeed. Sorry, apparently I'm afflicted by OCD tendencies this afternoon.
Sexual orientation and gender identity are distinct. My friend's mom was born a woman, but now is undergoing hormone therapy with the eventual goal of undergoing gender reassignment surgery and becoming a man. She likes men, and people--especially her gay friends--constantly ask her why she is undergoing this costly and emotionally rocky process when she, as a woman, can attract men far more easily than she would be able to as a female-to-male transsexual. Her response is simply that she identifies as a gay man, not a woman, and wants to experience having sex with a man as a man. So it is very important not to conflate homosexuality with transsexuality, not even a little bit.
I wasn't trying trying to, I was just talking about what I thought to be the statistically most common outcomes of a sex reassignment.
As per Feral's point, I may or may not be right, and I don't really have the energy at the moment to dig through my school's database for the pertinent study I read five years ago for an undergrad, so I probably shouldn't even be talking about it. I think it was OT anyway.
I remember reading something in my marriage and family class about how rates of homosexuality skyrocketed in East Berlin after WWII. The theory was that the stress from the rape+pillage job the Russians pulled resulted in prenatal hormonal environments that helped foster homosexuality over heterosexuality.
Wouldn't that have more to do with the removal of a regime that shipped gay people off to concentration camps?
Well, the actual rate of homosexuality was far above the statistical norm, which was taken to be somewhere around 5% in the case of this study. It peaked at around 12% of the population born in a span of 5 years self-reporting as homosexual after the wall fell.
More critical theory for the benefit of your intellectual masturbation!
What does the [trans] in transgender mean? Presumably it comes from the latin meaning "across" or "through" or "beyond." Is it a transitional period? Is it "beyond" (the most dominant sense in Western discourse of "trans"), in a sense that the person is "beyond" the societal gender assignment?
Not really critical theory, more faulty etymology. The Latin meaning for 'homo' as in 'homosexuality' is presumably 'man', but the word can also be used to mean simply 'person'. Does this imply that the person who coined it was making some grand statement that gays are people too? 'Hetero' as in 'heterosexuality' from the Greek means 'different', so why isn't 'homosexuality' instead called 'idesexuality' or 'cisexuality' meaning 'same'? Answer: because there isn't any particular grand, unifying plan to how these names are assigned which would give deep meaning to the prefixes used. Also - because arguably 'homo' comes from the Greek version 'homos' which does mean 'same'. Trying to read too much into etymology is a fool's game (from 'fool' as in 'idiot', not 'fool' as in Tarot meaning a journey to find a greater truth).
Aside from the faulty premise, you're making two mistakes of translation; 1) the various & different meanings for words in Latin come largely from scholars having to reteroengineer the language from texts not intended to be dictionaries, and we probably miss a lot of subtleties - therefore ascribing 'beyond' and other meanings of 'trans' to the word is incorrect because, 2) 99% of the time, the accepted modern usage of the Latin word is what matters, not the odd off-the-wall meaning that Catullus wrote one time. That meaning for 'trans' is 'across' (as in transnational, transport, transient and so on) and any student of Latin or languages would tell you that the 'trans' in 'transgender' was intended to mean 'across' genders.
Not really critical theory, more faulty etymology. The Latin meaning for 'homo' as in 'homosexuality' is presumably 'man', but the word can also be used to mean simply 'person'. Does this imply that the person who coined it was making some grand statement that gays are people too? 'Hetero' as in 'heterosexuality' from the Greek means 'different', so why isn't 'homosexuality' instead called 'idesexuality' or 'cisexuality' meaning 'same'? Answer: because there isn't any particular grand, unifying plan to how these names are assigned which would give deep meaning to the prefixes used. Also - because arguably 'homo' comes from the Greek version 'homos' which does mean 'same'. Trying to read too much into etymology is a fool's game (from 'fool' as in 'idiot', not 'fool' as in Tarot meaning a journey to find a greater truth).
Actually, it's not arguable at all. The homo- prefix in "homosexual" is absolutely based on the Greek word meaning "same," an etymology that's pretty well-documented. And yes, there was a unifying scheme. These words did not evolve organically from common usage, they were artificially coined by a small network of erudites.
See, "homosexual" was originally used as a medical term by Victorian era doctors prior to the publication of Psychopathia Sexualis to refer to a sexual disorder and like many medical terms has mixed Greek and Latin roots. Interestingly enough, the term "heterosexual" arose at the same time also to refer to a disorder - in the late 1800s, to be labeled "heterosexual" meant that you had a pathologically intense attraction to the opposite sex. It did not come to mean "normal" until the early-mid 1900s.
Prior to the late 1800s, there was no concept of sexual-orientation-as-personal-identity. Obviously, people knew that they and their fellows had preferences for one gender or another. In some cultures, it was reviled much as we'd revile somebody today who has sex with children or animals, in others it was treated as no more unusual as we'd treat a man who has a preference for chubby girls or a woman who has a preference for older men. But the notion that such a preference was typically fixed, immutable, as central to one's identity as national heritage or biological sex, or made one a member of a given culture or community is very much a modern creation.
And the etymology of sexual terms is actually very enlightening because so many of them were deliberately generated by physicians, psychologists, and scholars in the late 1800s and early 1900s. So looking into what those people were thinking when they coined these terms can actually give us insight into how the cultural trappings of sexual behavior have evolved throughout history. I did just reject Poldy's implication that all thought is language, but likewise I reject the implication that etymology is a fool's game. Language does affect thought, though not deterministically, and it would be uncharacteristic of me not to argue for an infuriatingly nuanced middle ground.
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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 "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
[Language does affect thought, though not deterministically, and it would be uncharacteristic of me not to argue for an infuriatingly nuanced middle ground.
One of the great things about etymologies, as Heidegger shows, is that we can see how we have fully come to grasp a phenomenon. Your point about heterosexuality is a great one - that it was originally just thought to be pathologically disordered, but we now understand it as a major mode of sexuality. I think the same thing can be said for the trans in transgender. What presumably originally meant across in the sense that a person is crossing from one gender to another is no longer sufficient. Perhaps the trans means in the Kantian sense of "beyond," "transcendent": it is a notion that a person is there, beyond social category, and is making a statement on that.
It's me understanding "Transgender" is a wide-reaching term that covers several groups of people. Transsexuals are those who physically change (or want to change) their sex. They are covered under the term "Transgender" but then again so are cross-dressers, androgynies (non-gendered people), and generally people who mess with the gender binary.
Though I wouldn't be surprised if it was a conscious decision by the glbt community to promote the term "Transgender" over "Transsexual." The latter term may be interpreted by the ignorant as something that has to do with the act of sex, i.e. something like transvestism. But it's not, it's about the physical sex being changed to meet the gender identity of the mind.
Gender is cultural, and a person identifies with a gender and rather isn't born with one, yes? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
What saddens me is terms like "Intersexed" and "asexual" have not yet entered into the common lexicon. More than once I have been called mad because I was talking about people who were neither male nor female, physically. Or -heaven forbid- people who aren't really sexually attracted to anyone.
As for the entomology of "trans" in "transgender" it's pretty apparent if you think about it. A change or shift is taking place.
Also: notice how transgender and intersex are not recognized by the spell checker, but transsexual is... interesting.
None of those are "covered" under transgender. Please don't conflate that, because the misconception cheapens and makes difficult the lives of all people who identify as any of those lifestyles you described.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
edited April 2008
Yeah, cross-dressers are not necessarily transgendered. Most are not. The intersexed definitely are not transgendered. Asexuality is apparently a matter of sexual orientation, not gender identity, but I don't think Curly was trying to imply that the asexual are transgendered.
Edit: Also, I don't think you can ever say that either gender identity or sexual orientation is completely biological or completely socially constructed. It's fashionable right now for Foucauldian queer theorists to claim that everything is a social construct, but recent studies don't seem to bear that out; for instance, it seems that pre-natal environmental factors have a significant impact on sexual orientation. I suspect that transgenderism also has a biological component, but to my knowledge there isn't any real scientific research on that.
None of those are "covered" under transgender. Please don't conflate that, because the misconception cheapens and makes difficult the lives of all people who identify as any of those lifestyles you described.
While I have seen and heard "transgender" used as an umbrella term for those of a non-traditional gender, I do find it at the very least a bit odd and at most a gross oversimplification. Transsexuals and cross-dressers, for example, have very little in common. I do use "transgender" to mean a broad category of people frequently. I do so because it's a common use of the word. I don't necessarily agree with this common definition. Honestly I don't see the need for its use as an umbrella term.
I also recognize "transgender" as a more specific category itself, or even a new word for those whom used to be called or are called "transsexual."
And yes, I was NOT implying intersexed folks or asexual people were transgendered. Like someone said before, an transgender person could be intersexed but not necessarily vice versa.
It's not a common usage of the word. I've never seen it used this way and I've spoken as a transgender speaker at colleges (okay, two). Beyond that, I'm far more invested in the community than you are and I really need to stress that you need to stop what you are doing because even if it somehow is a 'common' usage in your area, it's fucking terrible and you need to stop what you are doing.
There is no wiggle room here. You don't do that. The ideas of transvestism, transsexuality, and transgenderism are all so disparate that by conflating them or using the inappropriate terms you make things more difficult on multiple levels for people. Don't get defensive about this and don't defend the practice. You're wrong, and you need to stop.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
I suspect that transgenderism also has a biological component, but to my knowledge there isn't any real scientific research on that.
This is pretty interesting. For transgenderism to have a biological component, it would necessitate that there would be a biological structure to gender, correct?
I suspect that transgenderism also has a biological component, but to my knowledge there isn't any real scientific research on that.
This is pretty interesting. For transgenderism to have a biological component, it would necessitate that there would be a biological structure to gender, correct?
It would necessitate that there is a 'switch' of identification based on self/other vis-a-vis sex. There wouldn't have to be any biological component of gender in anything more than the most nitty-gritty sense -- purely a set of cues or otherwise that dictate what the person in question identifies with, which would allow for the mutability across cultures.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
I suspect that transgenderism also has a biological component, but to my knowledge there isn't any real scientific research on that.
This is pretty interesting. For transgenderism to have a biological component, it would necessitate that there would be a biological structure to gender, correct?
It would necessitate that there is a 'switch' of identification based on self/other vis-a-vis sex.
Doesn't the acceptance of transexuality by its very nature demolish the feminist understanding of gender? i.e., that it's a social construct. If a male-mind is born in a female body, then that implies there is such a thing as a male-mind.
Transsexuality seems inextricably opposed to transgenderism, to me.
Well, I actually just thought of this now, so sorry if I'm a bit scatter-brained, but
it doesn't make sense that our bodies recognize the gender/sex divide in the same way we intellectually separate the two. Secondary sex characteristics should, in the absence of conscious wishing-against, dictate to us both a sex and a gender -- accordingly, there are two hypotheses I can see for how gender can be biologically-derived.
1) The aforementioned self/other recognition. In the normal person, they identify with the gender that is tied to their biological sex, which would be called 'self' and leads to them adopting the socioregional traits of that gender as well. In the abnormal case, either
1a) they identify with 'other' instead of 'self,' leading them to recognize that they are both incorrect in their physicality and that they feel the need to fit in with the social and cultural identity of the opposite gender, or
1b) they identify with 'self' still, but instead a simple male/female toggle is flipped in the direction opposite that the gonads and secondary sex characteristics develop into, which is on its own
2) a separate valid hypotheses, but I think it works better with the idea presented in the other hypotheses as a corollary -- that we identify as, at the very least, biologically with a certain selfhood and that when something in that chain-of-command botches up you get people who need to bridge the divide in order to reach justification of the ego.
EDIT: I think this might satisfy Aethelred too, if not just say so and I'll post again.
EDIT 2: The reason that it's important to recognize the fact the mind only wants to justify itself in relation to others is that, if this hypothesis bears out, you can avoid the issue Aethelred proposes.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
edited April 2008
So then there is a biological basis for the other. i.e., we are wired to recognize innately that there is an "other" and we have a biological notion of "self"?
Does this mean that the drive for societal structures exist prior to society?
So then there is a biological basis for the other. i.e., we are wired to recognize innately that there is an "other" and we have a biological notion of "self"?
Does this mean that the drive for societal structures exist prior to society?
Yes. If I understand what you mean correctly, that is completely noncontroversial.
I think in my model, the drive to conform along the lines of sex existed prior to 'society,' but that's an idea easily supported by division of labor in even the most primitive hunter-gatherer societies. I can't really think of what you mean by prior to society, since I don't think there was ever a point where humans were a solitary species? If my knowledge is the one off-kilter, just highlight that and I'll try to respond off the back foot.
And yes, I would say that there is a biological basis for self/other at the very least on the lines of sexual identification, and that the intellectual divide of gender/sex employed in modern thought would not exist re: that lower-level processing.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
I think in my model, the drive to conform along the lines of sex existed prior to 'society,' but that's an idea easily supported by division of labor in even the most primitive hunter-gatherer societies. I can't really think of what you mean by prior to society, since I don't think there was ever a point where humans were a solitary species? If my knowledge is the one off-kilter, just highlight that and I'll try to respond off the back foot.
Basically, "prior" means that in our cognitive constitution we exist in abstract social structures before we are even born and introduced to these structures proper. This is not to say that we are given a gender-specific name before we are born; rather, that our existence is socially structured before we are even part of society.
I think this introduces a problem for many theorists and feminists of the Rubin / Foucult / Butler crowd. Namely: that social constructions, while artificial, are not an inhibiting phenomena. The notion of the self, then, is not the Cartesian sense - I live in this body with specific sense organs and others tell me that I am a female and a woman, but that the notion of the self is more Heideggerian: my selfhood is based on my "being there" in certain structures.
Look at transgenderism: I myself have an identity which exists in a way in which my being a male is not concordant with my being a woman. My self is then not socially structure, but existentially structured as such.
Of course, this introduces a whole new can of worms that cause perhaps even more problems than before. But it seems any investigation here will do that, no matter the stance.
Honestly? At the very least, I'm happy to tussle with new worms rather than the same-old same-old. The idea that we are, indeed, socially-structured before we are born into society (you're right, this becomes implicit in the model) is fascinating.
I don't think it's a very complicated idea, now that I think of it, so I wonder why I haven't heard it tossed around before. Mayhaps there's some sort of Dune-level sandworm lurking in the can. :P
I think too many people think holistically about genes. Personally, I think the individual differences between people are mostly glossed over. Not only do genes, hormonal balance, culture and upbringing all help determine a person's concept of sex, they also can cancel each other out or amplify each other with varying success. I don't think we can even get close to an agreement on what constitutes the genetic, societal and hormonal effects on the sexual concept.
Evolution does not magically create order you can think about logically. It creates dispositions that can be hugely contradictory. Society has the same problems, culture can be very hypocritical. Since we are conscious beings we can even act against the 'grain' of fitness (another unapproachable concept), creating even more genetic and cultural disparity.
The nature/nurture moral debate is completely dead to me due to this. How someone came to be some way does not alter your moral obligations towards them. If someone can imagine a scenario where this is unworkable, please tell.
Well, regardless of your take on it, social structures are predicated around only having an obligation towards helping those who did not voluntarily take up their 'problems.' If your stance won out, the bottom would fall out of the social support network (insufficient as it is) for a number of disorders on varying levels of clinical dependence.
Doesn't the acceptance of transexuality by its very nature demolish the feminist understanding of gender? i.e., that it's a social construct. If a male-mind is born in a female body, then that implies there is such a thing as a male-mind.
No, no it doesn't. At all. If anything just the opposite. I identify myself as a man, "male" is part of my identity. This doesn't mean I have to act or think like society's idea of a man, I'm allowed to have feelings and if I want to I can take up knitting and I don't have to flip out on people like Brock Samson every time someone says or does something that bothers me, I don't have to be possessive or controlling, I don't have to think with my dick first and my brain second, in fact if I were married had my way I'd like be filling roles traditionally viewed as "wifely duties". Cook, clean, laundry, home-management + part-time job and of course performing oral sex on my partner dutifully. The last one is a joke. There is no "male-mind" or "female-mind", there are minds, and the consciousnesses that exist within them carry identity. If feminism claimed that there are no differences between men and women you'd be on to something, but it instead claims that the differences are neither sufficiently significant as to warrant withholding rights from anyone based on gender nor fundamental.
Actually, it's not arguable at all. The homo- prefix in "homosexual" is absolutely based on the Greek word meaning "same," an etymology that's pretty well-documented. And yes, there was a unifying scheme. These words did not evolve organically from common usage, they were artificially coined by a small network of erudites.
Ho really. Pray show us some of this well documentation? Wiki doesn't really count.
See, "homosexual" was originally used as a medical term by Victorian era doctors prior to the publication of Psychopathia Sexualis to refer to a sexual disorder and like many medical terms has mixed Greek and Latin roots. Interestingly enough, the term "heterosexual" arose at the same time also to refer to a disorder - in the late 1800s, to be labeled "heterosexual" meant that you had a pathologically intense attraction to the opposite sex. It did not come to mean "normal" until the early-mid 1900s.
Prior to the late 1800s, there was no concept of sexual-orientation-as-personal-identity. Obviously, people knew that they and their fellows had preferences for one gender or another. In some cultures, it was reviled much as we'd revile somebody today who has sex with children or animals, in others it was treated as no more unusual as we'd treat a man who has a preference for chubby girls or a woman who has a preference for older men. But the notion that such a preference was typically fixed, immutable, as central to one's identity as national heritage or biological sex, or made one a member of a given culture or community is very much a modern creation.
And the etymology of sexual terms is actually very enlightening because so many of them were deliberately generated by physicians, psychologists, and scholars in the late 1800s and early 1900s. So looking into what those people were thinking when they coined these terms can actually give us insight into how the cultural trappings of sexual behavior have evolved throughout history. I did just reject Poldy's implication that all thought is language, but likewise I reject the implication that etymology is a fool's game. Language does affect thought, though not deterministically, and it would be uncharacteristic of me not to argue for an infuriatingly nuanced middle ground.
I didn't say etymology was a fool's game - I said reading too much into etymology is a fool's game. Big difference. As to the derivation of 'homo', unless you can show me otherwise, I've heard at least as many arguments saying it was the Latin applied to 'man' as the Greek for 'same'. Given that there isn't an accepted author of the term, it's pretty much impossible to conclusively demonstrate. Which is the general problem of reading too much into the intent of language derivation; it's usually mostly organic, and rarely ever documented.
No, it's a homogenous mixture, just like homo sapiens doesn't mean 'same smarts', but 'smart man'.
This just in: same combination of letters has different meaning in different languages! More at 11.
Both meanings are perfectly plausible for homosexuality, which is why the controversy. It's quite an old debate which has been predictably hijacked at various points by rights activists (on both sides) so that the whole issue has become a bit politicised. Either way, as far as I'm aware we don't have Doctor N Amery putting down in writing his thoughts on coining the term: homosexuality : like Feral seemed to be implying by mentioning documentation.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
A quick glance at the OED reveals that the first recorded instance of the word "homosexual" was by Austrian sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing in 1886. He studied homosexuality in both men and women, so I can only presume that when he coined the term he intended to use the prefix "homo" to denote sameness, not masculinity. For more information, you can consult Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present, by Neil Miller.
Hachface: A quick glance at an etymology book reveals that the first recorded instance of a word usually comes long after it has been in common circulation, and is rarely by the person who coined it. At least, that was the case before we had 24 hour, fully recorded everything. Really, the first time a word is mentioned in any literature up until about 1950 is unlikely to be the origin of the word, unless the author was a poet or naming a species.
No, it's a homogenous mixture, just like homo sapiens doesn't mean 'same smarts', but 'smart man'.
This just in: same combination of letters has different meaning in different languages! More at 11.
And so we should opt for the one that opens the most room to be a pedantic asshole for no reason. Gotcha.
Is that your version of: I guess I was wrong? It needs some work.
Possibly we shouldn't opt for the one which claims a specific meaning when the evidence is ambiguous?
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
edited April 2008
You don't get clinical Latinate (or Latin-Greek hybrid) words like "homosexual" rising spontaneously from the vernacular, Not Sarastro. The earliest users and popularizers of the word came from the medical community. It was an intentionally constructed word, and the intention is pretty clearly "same-sex" not "man-sex," since from the earliest known instances of its usages we see it applied to both genders.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
edited April 2008
Especially because, I believe, lesbians were subject to much more prejudice than gay men, I believe.
Sidenote: interesting how you can have gay men and gay women but not a lesbian man. At least not in any usage I've heard.
Again, proofs or it didn't happen. Seriously, this is meant to be well documented, well, document me! Particularly re: earliest known instances being applied to both genders - Victorians weren't too happy about acknowledging homosexuality between men, let alone women. I honestly think you might be unconsciously rehashing propaganda here.
PS I'm trying to remember the Latin & Greek words for homosexuality, but failing & don't have the right books here. Seem to remember they are somewhat relevant. Anyway, this is all a bit off topic, so if you have sterling proofs to show, then make another thread, PM me or something.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
Doesn't the acceptance of transexuality by its very nature demolish the feminist understanding of gender? i.e., that it's a social construct. If a male-mind is born in a female body, then that implies there is such a thing as a male-mind.
No, no it doesn't. At all. If anything just the opposite. I identify myself as a man, "male" is part of my identity.
Transsexuals, however, take this a step further. They identify with the opposite gender and think that they cannot be that gender without being that sex as well. This is a complete repudiation of the transgenderists' aims. Transsexualism has the claim that one's mind can be so significantly female (say) that drastic action is required.
No, it's a homogenous mixture, just like homo sapiens doesn't mean 'same smarts', but 'smart man'.
This just in: same combination of letters has different meaning in different languages! More at 11.
And so we should opt for the one that opens the most room to be a pedantic asshole for no reason. Gotcha.
Is that your version of: I guess I was wrong?
No, it was exactly what it looked like. The etymology is only ambiguous to people who spend a great deal of time searching for some thread of ambiguity to use as an excuse to have a pedantic argument for the sake of having a pedantic argument. i.e; pedantic assholes.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
Again, proofs or it didn't happen. Seriously, this is meant to be well documented, well, document me! Particularly re: earliest known instances being applied to both genders - Victorians weren't too happy about acknowledging homosexuality between men, let alone women. I honestly think you might be unconsciously rehashing propaganda here.
Are... are you serious? Feral has already mentioned the document, Psychopathia Sexualis by Krafft-Ebing, written in 1886. The late 1800s saw a small explosion of mostly misguided sex research. It was of course kept in the sterile realm of the clinic and obsessed with neurosis and pathology, in true Victorian mode. If you really want I can probably find quotations online from Psychopathia Sexualis but I really think you're being a bit unreasonable about this.
Oh, look! In the OED itself it has the first instance of homosexuality being applied to both genders.
1892 C. G. CHADDOCK tr. Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis III. 255 He had been free from homo-sexual inclinations. Ibid. 256 The homo-sexual woman offers the same manifestations, mutatis mutandis.
No, it was exactly what it looked like. The etymology is only ambiguous to people who spend a great deal of time searching for some thread of ambiguity to use as an excuse to have a pedantic argument for the sake of having a pedantic argument. i.e; pedantic assholes.
Nice way of again avoiding: I was wrong.
As for the rest, blah blah blah ambiguity & pedancy, for example:
What does the [trans] in transgender mean? Presumably it comes from the latin meaning "across" or "through" or "beyond." Is it a transitional period? Is it "beyond" (the most dominant sense in Western discourse of "trans"), in a sense that the person is "beyond" the societal gender assignment?
...like that? Clearly I was totally offtopic and my point that reading too much into this stuff may not be intellectually sound is way off the mark. Clearly nobody thinks there is ambiguity there at all. Do you actually have a point, or are you just arguing for the sake of it as per usual?
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Indeed. Sorry, apparently I'm afflicted by OCD tendencies this afternoon.
I wasn't trying trying to, I was just talking about what I thought to be the statistically most common outcomes of a sex reassignment.
As per Feral's point, I may or may not be right, and I don't really have the energy at the moment to dig through my school's database for the pertinent study I read five years ago for an undergrad, so I probably shouldn't even be talking about it. I think it was OT anyway.
Well, the actual rate of homosexuality was far above the statistical norm, which was taken to be somewhere around 5% in the case of this study. It peaked at around 12% of the population born in a span of 5 years self-reporting as homosexual after the wall fell.
Not really critical theory, more faulty etymology. The Latin meaning for 'homo' as in 'homosexuality' is presumably 'man', but the word can also be used to mean simply 'person'. Does this imply that the person who coined it was making some grand statement that gays are people too? 'Hetero' as in 'heterosexuality' from the Greek means 'different', so why isn't 'homosexuality' instead called 'idesexuality' or 'cisexuality' meaning 'same'? Answer: because there isn't any particular grand, unifying plan to how these names are assigned which would give deep meaning to the prefixes used. Also - because arguably 'homo' comes from the Greek version 'homos' which does mean 'same'. Trying to read too much into etymology is a fool's game (from 'fool' as in 'idiot', not 'fool' as in Tarot meaning a journey to find a greater truth).
Aside from the faulty premise, you're making two mistakes of translation; 1) the various & different meanings for words in Latin come largely from scholars having to reteroengineer the language from texts not intended to be dictionaries, and we probably miss a lot of subtleties - therefore ascribing 'beyond' and other meanings of 'trans' to the word is incorrect because, 2) 99% of the time, the accepted modern usage of the Latin word is what matters, not the odd off-the-wall meaning that Catullus wrote one time. That meaning for 'trans' is 'across' (as in transnational, transport, transient and so on) and any student of Latin or languages would tell you that the 'trans' in 'transgender' was intended to mean 'across' genders.
Actually, it's not arguable at all. The homo- prefix in "homosexual" is absolutely based on the Greek word meaning "same," an etymology that's pretty well-documented. And yes, there was a unifying scheme. These words did not evolve organically from common usage, they were artificially coined by a small network of erudites.
See, "homosexual" was originally used as a medical term by Victorian era doctors prior to the publication of Psychopathia Sexualis to refer to a sexual disorder and like many medical terms has mixed Greek and Latin roots. Interestingly enough, the term "heterosexual" arose at the same time also to refer to a disorder - in the late 1800s, to be labeled "heterosexual" meant that you had a pathologically intense attraction to the opposite sex. It did not come to mean "normal" until the early-mid 1900s.
Prior to the late 1800s, there was no concept of sexual-orientation-as-personal-identity. Obviously, people knew that they and their fellows had preferences for one gender or another. In some cultures, it was reviled much as we'd revile somebody today who has sex with children or animals, in others it was treated as no more unusual as we'd treat a man who has a preference for chubby girls or a woman who has a preference for older men. But the notion that such a preference was typically fixed, immutable, as central to one's identity as national heritage or biological sex, or made one a member of a given culture or community is very much a modern creation.
And the etymology of sexual terms is actually very enlightening because so many of them were deliberately generated by physicians, psychologists, and scholars in the late 1800s and early 1900s. So looking into what those people were thinking when they coined these terms can actually give us insight into how the cultural trappings of sexual behavior have evolved throughout history. I did just reject Poldy's implication that all thought is language, but likewise I reject the implication that etymology is a fool's game. Language does affect thought, though not deterministically, and it would be uncharacteristic of me not to argue for an infuriatingly nuanced middle ground.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
One of the great things about etymologies, as Heidegger shows, is that we can see how we have fully come to grasp a phenomenon. Your point about heterosexuality is a great one - that it was originally just thought to be pathologically disordered, but we now understand it as a major mode of sexuality. I think the same thing can be said for the trans in transgender. What presumably originally meant across in the sense that a person is crossing from one gender to another is no longer sufficient. Perhaps the trans means in the Kantian sense of "beyond," "transcendent": it is a notion that a person is there, beyond social category, and is making a statement on that.
Though I wouldn't be surprised if it was a conscious decision by the glbt community to promote the term "Transgender" over "Transsexual." The latter term may be interpreted by the ignorant as something that has to do with the act of sex, i.e. something like transvestism. But it's not, it's about the physical sex being changed to meet the gender identity of the mind.
Gender is cultural, and a person identifies with a gender and rather isn't born with one, yes? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
What saddens me is terms like "Intersexed" and "asexual" have not yet entered into the common lexicon. More than once I have been called mad because I was talking about people who were neither male nor female, physically. Or -heaven forbid- people who aren't really sexually attracted to anyone.
As for the entomology of "trans" in "transgender" it's pretty apparent if you think about it. A change or shift is taking place.
Also: notice how transgender and intersex are not recognized by the spell checker, but transsexual is... interesting.
Edit: Also, I don't think you can ever say that either gender identity or sexual orientation is completely biological or completely socially constructed. It's fashionable right now for Foucauldian queer theorists to claim that everything is a social construct, but recent studies don't seem to bear that out; for instance, it seems that pre-natal environmental factors have a significant impact on sexual orientation. I suspect that transgenderism also has a biological component, but to my knowledge there isn't any real scientific research on that.
While I have seen and heard "transgender" used as an umbrella term for those of a non-traditional gender, I do find it at the very least a bit odd and at most a gross oversimplification. Transsexuals and cross-dressers, for example, have very little in common. I do use "transgender" to mean a broad category of people frequently. I do so because it's a common use of the word. I don't necessarily agree with this common definition. Honestly I don't see the need for its use as an umbrella term.
I also recognize "transgender" as a more specific category itself, or even a new word for those whom used to be called or are called "transsexual."
And yes, I was NOT implying intersexed folks or asexual people were transgendered. Like someone said before, an transgender person could be intersexed but not necessarily vice versa.
There is no wiggle room here. You don't do that. The ideas of transvestism, transsexuality, and transgenderism are all so disparate that by conflating them or using the inappropriate terms you make things more difficult on multiple levels for people. Don't get defensive about this and don't defend the practice. You're wrong, and you need to stop.
This is pretty interesting. For transgenderism to have a biological component, it would necessitate that there would be a biological structure to gender, correct?
Could you explain this a little more?
Transsexuality seems inextricably opposed to transgenderism, to me.
it doesn't make sense that our bodies recognize the gender/sex divide in the same way we intellectually separate the two. Secondary sex characteristics should, in the absence of conscious wishing-against, dictate to us both a sex and a gender -- accordingly, there are two hypotheses I can see for how gender can be biologically-derived.
1) The aforementioned self/other recognition. In the normal person, they identify with the gender that is tied to their biological sex, which would be called 'self' and leads to them adopting the socioregional traits of that gender as well. In the abnormal case, either
1a) they identify with 'other' instead of 'self,' leading them to recognize that they are both incorrect in their physicality and that they feel the need to fit in with the social and cultural identity of the opposite gender, or
1b) they identify with 'self' still, but instead a simple male/female toggle is flipped in the direction opposite that the gonads and secondary sex characteristics develop into, which is on its own
2) a separate valid hypotheses, but I think it works better with the idea presented in the other hypotheses as a corollary -- that we identify as, at the very least, biologically with a certain selfhood and that when something in that chain-of-command botches up you get people who need to bridge the divide in order to reach justification of the ego.
EDIT: I think this might satisfy Aethelred too, if not just say so and I'll post again.
EDIT 2: The reason that it's important to recognize the fact the mind only wants to justify itself in relation to others is that, if this hypothesis bears out, you can avoid the issue Aethelred proposes.
Does this mean that the drive for societal structures exist prior to society?
Yes. If I understand what you mean correctly, that is completely noncontroversial.
And yes, I would say that there is a biological basis for self/other at the very least on the lines of sexual identification, and that the intellectual divide of gender/sex employed in modern thought would not exist re: that lower-level processing.
Basically, "prior" means that in our cognitive constitution we exist in abstract social structures before we are even born and introduced to these structures proper. This is not to say that we are given a gender-specific name before we are born; rather, that our existence is socially structured before we are even part of society.
I think this introduces a problem for many theorists and feminists of the Rubin / Foucult / Butler crowd. Namely: that social constructions, while artificial, are not an inhibiting phenomena. The notion of the self, then, is not the Cartesian sense - I live in this body with specific sense organs and others tell me that I am a female and a woman, but that the notion of the self is more Heideggerian: my selfhood is based on my "being there" in certain structures.
Look at transgenderism: I myself have an identity which exists in a way in which my being a male is not concordant with my being a woman. My self is then not socially structure, but existentially structured as such.
Of course, this introduces a whole new can of worms that cause perhaps even more problems than before. But it seems any investigation here will do that, no matter the stance.
I don't think it's a very complicated idea, now that I think of it, so I wonder why I haven't heard it tossed around before. Mayhaps there's some sort of Dune-level sandworm lurking in the can. :P
Evolution does not magically create order you can think about logically. It creates dispositions that can be hugely contradictory. Society has the same problems, culture can be very hypocritical. Since we are conscious beings we can even act against the 'grain' of fitness (another unapproachable concept), creating even more genetic and cultural disparity.
The nature/nurture moral debate is completely dead to me due to this. How someone came to be some way does not alter your moral obligations towards them. If someone can imagine a scenario where this is unworkable, please tell.
No, no it doesn't. At all. If anything just the opposite. I identify myself as a man, "male" is part of my identity. This doesn't mean I have to act or think like society's idea of a man, I'm allowed to have feelings and if I want to I can take up knitting and I don't have to flip out on people like Brock Samson every time someone says or does something that bothers me, I don't have to be possessive or controlling, I don't have to think with my dick first and my brain second, in fact if I were married had my way I'd like be filling roles traditionally viewed as "wifely duties". Cook, clean, laundry, home-management + part-time job and of course performing oral sex on my partner dutifully. The last one is a joke. There is no "male-mind" or "female-mind", there are minds, and the consciousnesses that exist within them carry identity. If feminism claimed that there are no differences between men and women you'd be on to something, but it instead claims that the differences are neither sufficiently significant as to warrant withholding rights from anyone based on gender nor fundamental.
Ho really. Pray show us some of this well documentation? Wiki doesn't really count.
I didn't say etymology was a fool's game - I said reading too much into etymology is a fool's game. Big difference. As to the derivation of 'homo', unless you can show me otherwise, I've heard at least as many arguments saying it was the Latin applied to 'man' as the Greek for 'same'. Given that there isn't an accepted author of the term, it's pretty much impossible to conclusively demonstrate. Which is the general problem of reading too much into the intent of language derivation; it's usually mostly organic, and rarely ever documented.
Prove me wrong if you can.
This just in: same combination of letters has different meaning in different languages! More at 11.
Both meanings are perfectly plausible for homosexuality, which is why the controversy. It's quite an old debate which has been predictably hijacked at various points by rights activists (on both sides) so that the whole issue has become a bit politicised. Either way, as far as I'm aware we don't have Doctor N Amery putting down in writing his thoughts on coining the term: homosexuality : like Feral seemed to be implying by mentioning documentation.
A quick glance at the OED reveals that the first recorded instance of the word "homosexual" was by Austrian sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing in 1886. He studied homosexuality in both men and women, so I can only presume that when he coined the term he intended to use the prefix "homo" to denote sameness, not masculinity. For more information, you can consult Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present, by Neil Miller.
And so we should opt for the one that opens the most room to be a pedantic asshole for no reason. Gotcha.
Is that your version of: I guess I was wrong? It needs some work.
Possibly we shouldn't opt for the one which claims a specific meaning when the evidence is ambiguous?
Sidenote: interesting how you can have gay men and gay women but not a lesbian man. At least not in any usage I've heard.
You can look to Sappho for that.
PS I'm trying to remember the Latin & Greek words for homosexuality, but failing & don't have the right books here. Seem to remember they are somewhat relevant. Anyway, this is all a bit off topic, so if you have sterling proofs to show, then make another thread, PM me or something.
Greek sexuality was quite different from post-Christianity sexuality.
Let me tell you
"Spring Weekend: Lesbos" would have been Girls Gone Wild gold
edit* Oh, I get what you meant. Sorry.
Transsexuals, however, take this a step further. They identify with the opposite gender and think that they cannot be that gender without being that sex as well. This is a complete repudiation of the transgenderists' aims. Transsexualism has the claim that one's mind can be so significantly female (say) that drastic action is required.
No, it was exactly what it looked like. The etymology is only ambiguous to people who spend a great deal of time searching for some thread of ambiguity to use as an excuse to have a pedantic argument for the sake of having a pedantic argument. i.e; pedantic assholes.
Are... are you serious? Feral has already mentioned the document, Psychopathia Sexualis by Krafft-Ebing, written in 1886. The late 1800s saw a small explosion of mostly misguided sex research. It was of course kept in the sterile realm of the clinic and obsessed with neurosis and pathology, in true Victorian mode. If you really want I can probably find quotations online from Psychopathia Sexualis but I really think you're being a bit unreasonable about this.
Oh, look! In the OED itself it has the first instance of homosexuality being applied to both genders.
Nice way of again avoiding: I was wrong.
As for the rest, blah blah blah ambiguity & pedancy, for example:
...like that? Clearly I was totally offtopic and my point that reading too much into this stuff may not be intellectually sound is way off the mark. Clearly nobody thinks there is ambiguity there at all. Do you actually have a point, or are you just arguing for the sake of it as per usual?