well spoken.
The current wave of 'feminism' isn't about women, it is about erasing identity.
 

"A "pregnant person" is a woman, whatever the Washington Post says"

Not if they choose not to identify as such, self-evidently. You cover the concept of someone identifying as a woman but not being biologically capable of pregnancy but seem to have omitted the possibility that a person can be capable of being pregnant but not identify as a woman. It's a typical confusion of biology, language and culture. There are correlations but they are not the same.

Also, "pregnant people" is a perfectly serviceable phrase in English and always has been. English is a very malleable language. Just because it hasn't, until now, been in common use doesn't invalidate it and it doesn't even necessarily carry the implications you're assigning to it.
 

Do you imply that any genderless language is an attempt to erase "woman" and "man"?

It seems to me that you're blinding following (and falling into) the trap of thinking that this issue is of any relevance. The number of people involved is insignificant, the social consequences are irrelevant, but it still cover pages and pages of ink of what amounts, more or less, to useless bullshit which will make no difference whatsoever.

All the attention brought to the issue is good, but there's a current trend of thinking that "language defines the world and society" instead of the opposite.... when they discover that after changing all the words racism and sexism are around just the same, maybe we'll be able to actually start solving the problem.
 

Not if they choose not to identify as such, self-evidently.

That is not self-evident at all. Where does it say that you can self-identify as whatever you want? Why would you be allowed to self-identify as a "man" or "woman", but not be allowed to self-identify as "black" or as "American" or as "senior citizen"? A lot of the things that we are are identified by other people, not ourselves.
 

I don't have much to add to this topic except to point out that language is fluid and constantly changing.

All in all I think the amount of people who describe gender in the way you're talking about is so small that it's insignificant. Just because the media pushes something doesn't mean it's reality.

US media and far left, usually white non hispanic liberals, loved pushing the term Latinx some years ago. But the term didn't catch on for a variety of reasons and now has been mostly abandoned outside very far left circles.
 

I'm going to assume that this is an April 1st parody of a viewpoint and that Tobold actually supports trans rights.
 

I do support the right of people to live as they want, have the sexuality they want, and modify their body as they want. I draw the line at pretending you can “self-identify” to the degree that you become a “real woman”. You can become a trans woman, yes, but not a real one. I’m with the feminists on this one.
 

It continues to seem that gender identity as a social construct and biological sex are almost impossible not to conflate.

@Tobold the vast majority of people in the US at least are in line with this idea, and have trouble understanding the differentiator between social gender and biological sex. Conversely, the vast majority of advocates for gender fluidity and change spend an inordinate amount of time pretending like there is no distinction or arguing as if the two can be conflated.

It's all a mess, and neither side is doing a service to actual trans people with real issues to address.
 

This is a joke, right?
 

@Gustavo: Like most culture wars subjects I am trying to discuss from a centrist point of view, the two extreme ends usually arguing about it are dead serious and never laugh. Which, given the historical importance of transgender people in comedy, is especially sad.

Unfortunately there are people to the political right of me who claim that transgender people are stalking children in bathrooms, and there are people to the political left of me who claim that saying "there is a difference between a trans woman and a real woman" is equivalent to violence against transgender people. I usually know that I am on point when both sides are complaining about my centrist position.
 

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
 

Someone is attacking with spam (previous comment)? I know it happens on WordPress sites, but I have not seen it here before.

Those who say the issue is irrelevant and you should not talk about it contradict themselves, for if they believed it they would not post. That at least is clear.

I am with those who find it hard to believe that the individuals referred to are the ones responsible for the debate. Doubtless those who identify as men and nonetheless find themselves pregnant can admit that they are "adult female humans" (the usual dictionary definition of women) at least for this purpose of this event. Still less do we - or I would guess they - need obscene neologisms such as "chestfeeding".

Perhaps the main problem is that the internet has erased the distinction between local and global, and it is impossible to distinguish between legal and social fictions we would all willingly support, and challenges to our ontology.
 

There is a weird hierarchy in identity politics, where some minorities count for more than others, blacks outrank asians, trans people outrank women. And there is a very fixed concept of the enemy, who *always* has to be white, heterosexual, male, as if conflict between minorities wasn't possible.

Woke people write about why cultural appropriation is harmful, and deny that exactly the same arguments can be used to argue against gender appropriation.
 

I do support the right of people to live as they want, have the sexuality they want, and modify their body as they want. I draw the line at pretending you can “self-identify” to the degree that you become a “real woman”. You can become a trans woman, yes, but not a real one. I’m with the feminists on this one.

How disappointing to see you double down on the TERF side of the issue.

What's the cut-off for you, then (if you'll forgive the unfortunate pun)? Karyotype? The active reproductive function? Secondary sexual characteristics? A physician's choice of letter on the clipboard based on a glance at the neonate's crotch? The intensity of the three main waves of androgen exposure in utero, shortly after birth, and at puberty? Current blood testosterone? Sex differences in the brain? Lifelong lived experience as a given gender? A particular cluster of personality traits and social expectations developed as a result of the preceding? All? Some?

And, for consistency's sake, why do you support people's right to have the sexuality they want? Do you have some method of determining someone is gay beyond their self-identification?

Much better, in my view, to Occam's razor all this and adopt a general strategy of letting people figure out their own gender identity and rolling with whatever they decide it is. The occasional, vanishingly rare, scam or confusion is preferable to medical policing of a fundamental aspect of a person's sense of self.

As to milky-chesty stuff, spike you or me with enough prolactin and we'll nurse a baby, too. Only goes to show that the mind-sense should always take precedence over the biological machinery.
 

I would be completely okay with the most progressive cut-off point possible that is based on any biological measure. Because you are trying something here that is not valid: Conflating a medical problem that affects a tiny minority of trans people who actually have been born with a body that is not 100% male or female with the issue of self-identification vs. legal identity.

If you create laws that treat one group of people differently than another group of people, you can’t allow people to self-identify. Because it would be impossible to determine who is genuinly convinced of his identity, and who is faking it to get access to the advantages the other group enjoys. Thus, for example, the scandal about the academic who self-identified as black because of a universities affirmative action on tenure.

If you allow gender self-identification, why wouldn’t you allow racial self-identification, or age self-identification? “Yes, officer, my ID card says that I am not of legal drinking age, but I self-identify as being 21!”.
 

Because you are trying something here that is not valid: Conflating a medical problem that affects a tiny minority of trans people who actually have been born with a body that is not 100% male or female with the issue of self-identification vs. legal identity.

Of course it's valid. Examining edge cases such as Kleinfelter syndrome or intersex genitalia is worthwhile, because it renders biological criteria negotiable. If we can make allowances for a very small number of individuals on the basis of chromosomal or hormonal anomaly, there is no good reason to deny the same allowances to a slightly larger number on the basis of self-identification. I don't see a reason why an XXY man can call himself a man and an XX man cannot, if they both choose to perform socially as men.

And while only a tiny minority of people are intersex, even in endosex people, most of the biological markers of sex determination are on a spectrum. A man can be only faintly androgen-washed, have low muscle mass, exhibit cerebral features more frequently associated with females, post scores associated with female respondents on a battery of psychological tests, even be raised as a woman by his parents - and yet, he'll have a passport back to manhood dangling between his thighs. That's stupidly reductionist.

What you're doing, in turn, is confusing the referent for what it refers to. In practice, when you interact with someone, you look at their body and hear them speak, and you make a determination. You don't actually karyotype them, or check the contents of their trousers. You assume their gender - we all do - on the basis of this cursory 'biological' examination. But you don't really care about their biology. You care about their biology being a reliable proxy for some socially-determined set of personality traits and behaviour.

I'd rather have them tell me which set they're committing to, outright. It's simpler and more respectful of the fellow human. And I'm not too worried about legal problems with this. Laws should be crafted to serve people, not the other way around. There will always be some level of fraud, but e.g. single straight men don't gay-marry for the tax breaks and despite what some conservatives like to claim, expanding the definition of marriage didn't destroy its meaning. So it shall be with gender.
 

But isn’t this even more true for race? You say that the <0.1% of intersex cases makes the biological gender of the 99.9% negotiable. But in 100% of the population the genetical markers for race are mixed. Why do you allow self-identification *only* for gender?
 

I already said I accept self-id for sexuality, too - and I notice you provided no alternative on that one. (Unless we patent an actual gaydar there is no way to know, although that doesn't stop e.g. US asylum processors from trying.) And even in your joke example of the kid being caught drinking underage, there's a lesson: the law, like most laws, is largely social and not truly rooted in biology. After all, in Italy, legal drinking age is 16 with no major social impact. So let's not pretend we actually care about biology as anything other than a proxy for arbitrary social norms.

That's also true with regard to the proposed racial reparations in the US. There, it's not 'biology vs self-id' but 'history vs self-id'. Biology, in the sense of appearance, is again a proxy - a highly imperfect proxy - for having ancestry on a certain side of that history. The reparations (which I'm not sure I support, but that's another discussion, and neither of us is even American) are intended to redress compounding disadvantages suffered over the course of multiple generations by the American Black community. It's not clear that, say, a recent Nigerian immigrant - black, but not Black - would be anything but a false positive in this scheme.

So, reparations are not exactly a winning argument for biological essentialism. And I don't think race and gender are perfectly alike, because of the historical dependence of race - someone born and raised in a rural Japanese town might have no inner experience of race at all, but every human being experiences gender and sexuality in some way, even by way of rejection. And yet, I still allow (gotta love that word) people to self-id race. I allow it every time I work with a government database or cite a study where 'race was self-reported by study participants'. For some purposes, of course, we use genetic ancestry, but that is not the same thing.

The impostor problem mostly takes care of itself. Yes, you had that one Mitteleuropa-haplotype scholar decide she was Black (genuinely, to all appearances; she threw her life into Black activism and everything, which seems a high price to pay for whatever affirmative action is on offer) but why hasn't this happened en masse? If being Black in the US is some kind of ez-mode of academia, surely she couldn't have been the only one to figure out the scam? Apart from the occasional fibbing on college admission forms, why isn't this a much wider problem?

We both know the answer to that. Being Black in America sucks, actually, despite the whining from white people whose power in relative terms may be decreasing slightly but in absolute terms remains massively greater. The trade-off of deciding to be Black usually isn't worth it.
 

I don’t think accepting self-identification for sexuality is any sort of concession. Even moderate Republicans are at that level.

I accept self-identification of gender *as long as* it is between your birth gender and an option I’d just call “other”. I accept biological males not feeling very male. However, that never makes them completely female, they always remain distinguishable. Which is exactly why we use the term trans woman, because it is something different from a woman. And the feminists fighting against gender appropriation have my fullest understanding.

Ideally we wouldn’t have identity politics at all. It is because they had to fight for “women’s rights” that feminists now don’t want to share these rights with people who suspiciously look like the male enemy they fought against. If you achieved for example a quota in board rooms or parliaments for women, you don’y want that quota being taken up by “non-male identifying people with penises”.
 

There are a lot people who are more articulate, have more knowledge, and more educated. From your article I sensed that you are happy in you male privilege bubble and don't feel the need to seek out anything that clashes with your confirmation bias so here goes:

Sex and gender is different. When people are talking about their identity, most often they are talking about their gender. Sex is assigned to you at birth, based on scientific data like your physiological characteristics like genitalia and chromosome composition.

Also, there are new studies that say that defining people as XX or XY is problematic. Even now there are chromosome karyotypes and intersex.

Here are some links if you want to read more.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/232363
https://www.nature.com/articles/533160a
https://www.nature.com/articles/518288a
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/stop-using-phony-science-to-justify-transphobia/

 

@kirtil: You did not engage with a single argument of mine. Sorry, if you are new to here, but this isn’t one of your echo chambers. You can’t just insult me as being not articulate, knowledgable, and uneducated, put up some canned links and think you won an argument. You’re only showing that it is you who has the confirmation bias and aren’t willing to really engage with arguments that would question your beliefs.

I would totally agree with your point that sex and gender are different. My point is that a person whose sex is male and gender is female is different from a person whose sex and gender are both female. And that the claims of the former to be the same as the latter, and requesting equal rights of access to areas that society has reserved for the latter, is both injust and insulting to the latter. It is *because* sex and gender are different that society is justified in making distinctions on the base of sex, which can be determined, and not on the base of gender, which can’t.
 

> If you achieved for example a quota in board rooms or parliaments for women, you don’y want that quota being taken up by “non-male identifying people with penises”.

Is there a substantial number of such cases, where people are abusing their ability to claim their gender identity? As compared to for example, the number of victims of transphobia?
 

@Jogy: Why? Is there some sort of competition ongoing? My minority is more persecuted than your minority?

Do you think that the people committing transphobic violence are feminist women that are protesting against gender appropriation? Or would you not consider it somewhat more likely that the people who commit transphobic violence aren’t even aware of what the feminists are saying, and would happily slap around said feminists as well if given the opportunity?
 

@Tobold
I apologize. No insult was intended; just a miswrite(sp?)

That sentence should have been:
There are a lot people who are more articulate, have more knowledge, and more educated THAN ME.

It was never my intention to insult you or to make an argument. I was thinking more in lines of a conversation if anything. I just thought you were maybe uninformed of the newer studies, hence the links.
 

Accepting self-identification of sexuality is not a political concession on your part, but it seems to be an ontological concession. Earlier today, you were generalising along the lines that laws based on self-identification alone are inadmissible. But the state of being bi or gay is purely self-identified, and yet we can make laws on its basis.

However, that never makes them completely female, they always remain distinguishable. Which is exactly why we use the term trans woman, because it is something different from a woman.

Well, no. If you want semantic exactitude, we use the term 'trans woman' to differentiate from 'cis woman', a woman who happened to be assigned female at birth. Both subsets of women are women.

This doesn't settle the argument in my favour - you, and conservatives, and TERFs (and may I say, it's beyond disappointing to have to lump you in with this company) are free to contend that we should only make policy on the basis of that sex assignment (right or wrong) at birth - but it is what 'trans' signifies.

If you achieved for example a quota in board rooms or parliaments for women, you don’y want that quota being taken up by “non-male identifying people with penises”.

And as I said before, hanging the question entirely on the presence or absence of the penis is the most stupidly reductionist argument of all. A penis does not think, or vote. The woman's mind does, whether or not she was born with a penis or some other male sex marker. And that mind is free to tell us who she is.
 

I do not believe that a trans woman and a cis woman think in the same way. Their life experience will have been radically different, and their outlook on important future options in life, like having children and a family will likewise be necessarily different.

Furthermore the conflict between the feminists and the trans women is not dependent on how the trans woman thinks of herself. It is dependent on how the rest of the world thinks of her.

Take another example of self-identification. You would think that your religious beliefs are purely about what is in your mind. However, if you were not baptized as a catholic, you can’t simply self-identify as one. In order to become an actual catholic, you would have to be accepted by the religious catholic community, and there is a process for that acceptance.

What feminists want is the right for them to decide who is part of their community, and who is not. You cannot just self-identify yourself into any community. You might not consider the external sexual markers as important, but the community will see them as a proof of that person being different enough to not belong.
 

I don't know that wanting to give birth to children, specifically, is a prerequisite for being a woman. It would surprise me if very many feminists - whether trans-exclusionary or inclusionary - deemed it to be one.

But yes, we can agree that society has to recognise the principle of gender self-determination sufficiently broadly in order for this debate to subside. This has been the case for every advance in civil rights - there was, of course, a time when it was seen as self-evident that black people and women are almost-persons-but-not-quite and homosexuality is a socially harmful illness. On the basis of that trend, I'm cautiously optimistic.

In an important philosophical sense, though, blacks, women, and gay people did not become persons with full rights once the laws changed to accommodate them. They always were such - society's opinion, and consequently its laws, merely caught up to an existing truth. So it is, I think, with trans people.
 

> @Jogy: Why? Is there some sort of competition ongoing? My minority is more persecuted than your minority?

I am just trying to figure out whether things like "man self-identifies as a woman to take place of a women's quota somewhere" are real issues, or just an overblown scare tactic used by conservatives.



> Take another example of self-identification. You would think that your religious beliefs are purely about what is in your mind.

It seems to me that quite a few people, especially in US, self-identify as being religious, in order to get vaccine exemptions for them and their kids.




 

Okay, let's talk about "real issues", being defined as people actually fighting about something specific. The problem is that whenever you list actual cases, somebody will say "oh, that are just individual cases, we need to discuss the overall general issue", and when you discuss the overall general issue somebody says "oh, that aren't real issues".

Feminists in Scotland are fighting a law of trans recognition which in its new version would be based on simple self-identification because “Some groups have voiced concerns that the proposals could erode women’s sex-based rights and access to women-only spaces and services, including hospital wards and refuges.” (Quote from The Times).

A series of protests and counter-protests broke out in Los Angeles when mothers visiting the Wi Spa with their daughters reported a nude individual with a penis in their locker rooms. The individual claimed being just a harassed trans person, but was charged with indecent exposure after it was revealed that he was a registered sex offender.

The International Olympic Committee IOC decided that self-identification wasn't sufficient for a trans woman to participate in women sports, but that the trans athlete needed to be below a certain Testosterone level.

The real issues are often about people you actually don't want to protect, individual fraudsters. Esteban says that the few cases of intersex people render biology negotiable. I say that the few cases of fraudsters render the blind acceptance of self-identification negotiable. And that is all I want: Find compromises that are not based in blind acceptance of self-identification. Like the Testosterone level requirement in sport. Or locker rooms having three sections instead of two to provide "penis-free" spaces for cis women and girls. Because giving access to "women-only spaces and services" for everybody based on just self-identification is a recipe for abuse.
 

Esteban says that the few cases of intersex people render biology negotiable. I say that the few cases of fraudsters render the blind acceptance of self-identification negotiable.

I won't get in the way of Jogy's answer, since I've already hogged the mike in this comment section for too long, but I will point out that this is not a symmetry we usually accept in Western jurisprudence. For example, we rightly defend Muslims from assaults on their civil liberties whenever an extremist claiming Islam commits an act of terror. We oppose racial profiling. We uphold citizens' rights against unreasonable search and seizure even though doing away with that would cut down on fraud. We abhor collective punishment. We say things like 'innocent until proven guilty' and 'it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer'. Expansion of rights because of the needs of a few and curtailment of rights because a few might use them for fraud are emphatically not alike.
 

But in Western jurisprudence it is also established that to claim some right, you need some form of proof beyond self-identification that shows that you are eligible. Like the necessity to show proof of age in my drinking age example, or the necessity to show a passport to enter into a country. You can’t just self-identify as American and cross the border, at least not legally. Is the IOC transphobic in demanding a proof of Testosterone level, or is that just basic fairness towards cis female athletes?

The number of fraudsters is only small because the incentive for fraud is small. The more rights you give to identity groups, the more likely it becomes that somebody will want to fake that identity. The day that every white person will have to pay $1,000 to a black person as slavery reparations, and you allow people to self-identify as white or black, you’ll have a very interesting racial demographic afterwards. :)
 

you need some form of proof beyond self-identification that shows that you are eligible. Like the necessity to show proof of age in my drinking age example, or the necessity to show a passport to enter into a country.

That's fair. An annotation of legal gender on a government-issued ID, such as a driver's licence, should suffice for those purposes. The annotation, of course, would be obtained by nothing more than making a statutory declaration of self-identification before an appropriate official. That's how it works in some European countries already. Even dear old Catholic Spain is slowly inching toward a bill to that effect.
 

"This is not your echo chamber" nah I guess it's yours, huh. Nobody needs to insult you as being uneducated when you're proving it's true every time you make a new argument.
 

I would disagree that Tobold has enforced an echo chamber here. He's been gracious in letting me express a contrary view.

Then again, I'm a cis man. I can go on like this forever, with bloodless politesse that doesn't ruffle anyone's feathers overmuch. I would absolutely understand it if a trans person took less well to their actual identity being on trial and consequently brought some real emotion to bear.
 

@Deepsleeper: Please refer to my terms of service linked on the front page. Particularly the section that says: You also have the right to disagree with what I say, or with whatever other commenters say. You do not have the right to voice this disagreement in the form of personal attacks or by using foul language. In the interest of keeping the level of the discussion at a high standard, I do reserve the right to delete comments that are insulting or full of profanity.

In your case, your comment A) called me a dumbass and called any centrism laughable while B) not even explaining what you disagreed with or why you disagreed with it. To this point you have not made a comment which would even make it obvious whether you are a right-wing extremist who thinks that centrism is socialist, or a left-wing extremist who thinks that centrism is fascist. I would absolutely love to hear your opinion on why centrism isn't a valid position, as long as you manage to express it without using insults. Is that so hard?
 

I am certain somebody smarter than me will at some point already have made this observation, but it just occurred to me that this debate bears an interesting resemblance to arguments in linguistics between prescriptivists and descriptivists. A prescriptivist might say: "The word 'woman' must refer to some observable biological trait (such as karyotype, gonadal sex or similar), otherwise there can be no meaning to the term," while a descriptivist might respond: "But that is not reflective of the practical use of the term, and a word can have an inherently understood meaning even if no commonly accepted formal definition exists."
 

> A series of protests and counter-protests broke out in Los Angeles when mothers visiting the Wi Spa with their daughters reported a nude individual with a penis in their locker rooms. The individual claimed being just a harassed trans person, but was charged with indecent exposure after it was revealed that he was a registered sex offender.

Yes, that is a good example of a single isolated incident, blown out of proportion.

Before considering implementing any big policy changes based on this, we can ask some questions - like which is more stressful? Seeing a penis in a women's bathroom, or seeing your classmate brains being blown out by an insane boy whose parents bought him a gun for a Christmas present?

USA has way more serious problems than the one about who uses which bathroom.
Majority of school shootings were performed by kids who took their parents guns to school, so maybe we should implement this separation - schools for kids whose parents own a gun, and schools for kids whose parents don't own a gun.

 

@negentropic I am certain somebody smarter than me will at some point already have made this observation, but it just occurred to me that this debate bears an interesting resemblance to arguments in linguistics between prescriptivists and descriptivists.

It does. The Ship of Theseus connection is inescapable, too.
 

@jogy The USA has a boatload of massive issues. But that does not mean we should ignore this one. This is a blogpost discussion, not congress picking which issue to tackle.

Personally I think the debate would be massively helped by adding 2 new terms so it is easy to make a distinction between sociological construct of what men and women are (and all that entails regarding oppression etc) and the pure physical scientific definition. There are valid reasons for partners to be aware of the scientific side (can you bear/father me children).

Regarding the penis in the bathroom, I think that should be fine. And yes, it was a pervert in this case, but you should not regulate with the default stated as 'bad intentions'
 

The Ship of Theseus does not help your case, so long as there is connection to the concept of a ship. And what is descriptivism, if you cannot describe? You cannot commandeer reality.
 

@Jogy: Jogy, which is more stressful, seeing a gun accident or seeing a nuclear bomb dropped on a city? So, in your opinion, shouldn't we not drop all gun control while we are discussing nuclear disarmament?

In other words, what you did there was a typical case of whataboutism. "Oh, look, shiny controversial issue over there, let's quickly forget the fact that I was running out of actual arguments on the issue we were discussing currently!". Just like your aforementioned trick of first dismissing any general argument as not something that really happened, and anything that really happened as just an isolated incident, those are all just smoke and mirror rhetoric tricks. Funnily enough the progressives were quite happy to drag the Wi Spa case all over national media when they still thought that this was an example of a "Karen harassing a trans person". When it turned out that the person was a registered sex offender, this suddenly became an "isolated incident". You could call Kyle Rittenhouse an isolated incident, but I still think that one case poses enough questions to merit a debate on vigilantism. Every incident is isolated, but hearing of one case on national media doesn't mean there aren't a lot of other incidents you never heard about.

I can totally imagine a society where no "woman-only spaces and services" exist, where men and women share locker rooms and have no problems seeing each other naked forms. In fact, in some cultures that is already so. But between prudery and actual problems of sexual harassment, a lot of societies have decided to create woman-only spaces. The USA has decided on a penal code in which a man showing his penis to a minor will get branded a sex-offender and live under restrictions for the rest of his life. You either need to do away with all that legislation, or you need to consider the question whether the sex offender wiggling his penis in front of minors should be able to get access to woman-only spaces and to avoid punishment for indecent exposure by simply pretending to be a self-identified trans woman.
 

> The USA has decided on a penal code in which a man showing his penis to a minor will get branded a sex-offender and live under restrictions for the rest of his life.

Is this only if the minor's gender is female? Is it ok for men to wave their penises in men's bathrooms in front of little boys?

I think that bathrooms and lockers should provide enough privacy so you don't have to see other people's genitalia, regardless of your and their gender.
 

That would also be a reasonable solution. However, this is not the law of the land right now in most countries. There are a lot of communal showers and locker rooms around, which are only separated by gender.
 

@Gerry Quinn
> And what is descriptivism, if you cannot describe? You cannot commandeer reality.
Why would we not be able to describe? We absolutely can describe how the words "man" and "woman" are generally used, and in particular how people intuitively use these terms when they actually encounter trans people.
Also, I would argue that it is the prescriptivist position that attempts to "commandeer reality," considering that it is the one that holds to an arbitrary definition regardless of actual usage.

@Tobold
Could we maybe come off the changing room issue for a moment? Because for one thing it usually does not lead anywhere productive and for another I find it far more fascinating that you actually got to "But what if penis in women's changing room?" from a story that explicitly did not involve any trans women.
The original issue that you used as your jumping-off point was about some pregnant trans men identifying as men regardless of their pregnancy, and some people writing for the WP treating this as valid. To which you assert that, no, if a person is pregnant, you get to decide that they are a woman. So I feel compelled to ask: why do you get to decide that? And to head off the expected response, I am not claiming that a hypothetical pregnant trans man is not biologically female. Hell, even the hypothetical pregnant trans man is not claiming he is not biologically female, he is just claiming that he is a) a man and b) not a woman. What makes your position more valid that his?
 

why do you get to decide that?

@negentropic: That is pretty much the opposite of what I am saying. *I* don't get to decide whether somebody is a man or a woman. And the person doesn't get to decide whether he/she is a man or a woman either. Because there *must* be a legal definition of whether that person is a man or a woman, with a possible exception for "other". Queue much of the discussion in this thread why if you have rules that make a difference between men and women, you *must* have a legal definition of what that is, and who qualifies.

I find it far more fascinating that you actually got to "But what if penis in women's changing room?" from a story that explicitly did not involve any trans women.

Why do you get to decide that? The registered sex offender in question did *claim* to be a trans woman. If you admit that his self-identification as a trans woman is probably fraudulent and not valid, then we completely agree that self-identification isn't sufficient.
 

>That is pretty much the opposite of what I am saying. *I* don't get to decide whether somebody is a man or a woman. And the person doesn't get to decide whether he/she is a man or a woman either. Because there *must* be a legal definition of whether that person is a man or a woman, with a possible exception for "other".
And yet your original statement was "[a] 'pregnant person' is a woman, whatever the Washington Post says," rather than "a 'pregnant person' is a woman if and only if they legally qualify as a woman in the current legal framework." I hope you do see how this seems inconsistent with your claim of not deciding anything.

To clarify my other point: The initial topic of your post was, as far as I can tell, "Washington Post uses language in reference to a group that includes trans men in a way that conservatives, gender-critical feminists, and Tobold disagree with," which, since it only refers to pregnant people, clearly did not involve trans women, unless there were some very interesting advances in medicine I have not heard about. And yet within a few comments you are talking again about how sex offenders will surely use the claim of being trans women as a shield. That is what I found surprising, since the latter appears to me to have no bearing on the former.
 

Queue much of the discussion in this thread why if you have rules that make a difference between men and women, you *must* have a legal definition of what that is, and who qualifies.

But if the legal definition itself is based on self-identification, then we're right back to where we started. The law isn't an oracle, it's a mirror.

A person, as a general rule, is the best authority on their sense of self. It's somewhat totalitarian to insist otherwise.
 

@negentropic You make it sound as if pregnant men would be something that happens frequently. Trans men are already much rarer than trans women (any explanation for that?). And in most cases legally changing your gender involves hormone therapies that make pregnancy less likely.

Why do we need to change our language for a very small number of cases? If 99.9999% of all pregnant people are women, wouldn’t it be more correct, and more respectful towards women, to refer to them as women? Aren’t you hurting a large number of people by taking their gender away in order to benefit a theoretical concept?
 

A person, as a general rule, is the best authority on their sense of self. It's somewhat totalitarian to insist otherwise.

@Esteban: Then why do you accept your age, and nationality that is printed in your passport? Why would you allow a person authority on their sense of self *only* regarding their gender? I know a lot of people who feel older or younger than they are, or feel a strong affinity for the culture of another country.
 

Then why do you accept your age, and nationality that is printed in your passport?

I don't think nationality is as innate as gender, so it's a bit of a silly example, but it's absolutely possible to be a national (passport and everything) of a country other than the country of one's birth. Or have a dual-citizenship, as I do. As a metaphor for choice of identity, it doesn't serve the essentialist argument at all.

And, of course, there is a process for emancipating minors. Even age isn't treated in a legally absolute way.

Why would you allow a person authority on their sense of self *only* regarding their gender?

I don't. I thought I'd made that clear earlier. But it's also true that not every property of a person qualifies as part of their sense of self. The further you range afield in search of personal attributes to use as counter-examples, the closer you get to attack-helicopter territory. Which isn't a good place to be.
 

@Esteban: You are constantly switching the argument. Dual citizenship and the process of emancipating minors are legal processes. I totally accept that a person can change their citizenship, emancipation status, and gender, by following the correct legal procedure. A trans woman that had a legal change of gender is a woman. In many countries that requires far more than self-identification, and often legal gender change is only possible post-op.

I don’t accept that a simple self-identification is sufficient, it is at best the starting point for the legal procedure.
 

negentropic: "Why would we not be able to describe? We absolutely can describe how the words "man" and "woman" are generally used."

So if you were compiling an English dictionary, what would be your definition for woman?

The best I can think of to create a version that would include self-identified trans women would be to add a secondary definition to the current standard; thus:

"Woman (n):
(1) adult female human
(2) non-female who wishes to be thought of and treated as (1)"

But that leaves the primary definition as it is now, and indeed I do not see how a coherent definition could be made that does not depend on that remaining the case. The very concept of gender derives at core from biological reality.
 

>You make it sound as if pregnant men would be something that happens frequently.
Do I now? How exactly?

>Why do we need to change our language for a very small number of cases? If 99.9999% of all pregnant people are women, wouldn’t it be more correct, and more respectful towards women, to refer to them as women?
Um, literally no, even if 99.9999% of the group are women and only 0.0001% are men, the word "people" is accurate to 100% of the group, while the word "women" is accurate to 99.9999%. But then I don't consider it inherently disrespectful to call women people.

>Aren’t you hurting a large number of people by taking their gender away in order to benefit a theoretical concept?
Telling a woman that she is a person is "taking her gender away," is it now? I suppose if you wanted to assume a heavy patriarchal tint to the language you could make that argument, but patriarchal and pro-trans don't really mix all that well. Are you suggesting that using the word "people" implies that the group is predominantly male? Because that would not have been my reading of it. But for sake of argument, would you prefer "pregnant women and men," or is that somehow worse?

>Then why do you accept your age, and nationality that is printed in your passport? [...] I know a lot of people who feel older or younger than they are, or feel a strong affinity for the culture of another country.
This is a bit of a type mismatch, in my opinion. Age is a fact about a person, people do not argue with it because there is sufficient objectivity to the term; it is not primarily a social construct. In contrast, consider generation, which is ostensibly tied to age, but has various social connotations and implications tacked on. I have absolutely seen people referring to themselves as Boomers or Millennials despite not being born during the appropriate time period, simply because of opinions or socioeconomic interests they share with the respective generation, or rather with the social archetype of that generation. These people are not denying their age, they are not ignorant of the idea of time, they are not trying to rob these words of all meaning, they are simply treating these words as labels for social groups, membership in which is correlated with but not innately tied to age.
 

>So if you were compiling an English dictionary, what would be your definition for woman?
I wouldn't. Self-contained definitions are at best a road sign, at worst a purely prescriptive tool. You asking for a definition to encompass the descriptive reality of a term kind of ignores the point. Not to mention that in the context of a metaphysics argument such definitions are either inherently too vague to be useful, or breakable. So I am not playing that game. Don't make me get the plucked chicken.

But, to maybe illustrate my point a bit better: When I in my daily life encounter people, even people I have never met before, my brain usually very quickly labels them as "woman" or "man." (Or "child", "dog", "robot", "person wearing fursuit", "figment of my imagination", et cetera, but let's stick to those two for now.) Now, amazingly my brain somehow does this without me A) asking for a gender confirmation certificate, B) requiring direct inspection of their naked genitals or C) sending a small tissue sample to a lab and waiting for chromosomal analysis. And the fact that my brain does this instead of labeling them "gender unconfirmed" until I do A, B or C tells me that whatever internal metric my brain uses to sort people into the groups labeled "man" and "woman" does not depend on those things. And this seems to be the case not only for me, but for most people. (If it works differently for you, please tell me how you experience it. I am always curious to see the world from another person's point of view, even if it is disorienting.) Furthermore, I know multiple people whom my brain sorted into a category that would be contradicted by the results of B or C. And, even knowing this, still my brain insists on the label it applies. At that point, turning around and trying to tie the definitions of these words to B or C would seem entirely absurd to me.
 

So for you, a person's gender is not what they say it is, nor even a somewhat objective quality, but what you think it is? That does not seem very progressive at all!

We are talking about what words are understood by the public to mean. Dictionary definitions may not be all of that, but they are a good part of it. Refusing to define words is not a good look, when the point at issue is what those words mean.
 

Do you not think that it is possible to so much gender-neutralize and hedge the words “man” and “woman” that they become completely meaningless? I am still thinking of the feminists here, who spent the last 50+ years to fight for women’s rights, and now you tell them that sorry, they need to fight for person’s rights from now on. Isn’t it natural for them to want to exclude trans women, who have no skin in Roe vs. Wade? Unless you are willing to abandon all identity politics, you can’t just eliminate an identity with a political history.

You say that you can label a person as man or woman. So what about the feminist who sees a trans woman and labels him a “man”? Why would she not have the same right to labeling as you have?
 

You know, half an hour after making that last post I thought to myself: "Hang on, if someone wanted to actively misconstrue my argument they could now accuse me of claiming to be able to decide a person's gender." And then I thought: "Oh, don't worry, it's going to be fine, you are discussing this topic with reasonable people." Shows what I know...

So... My argument was NOT that I am the Grand Objective Arbiter Whomst Decides the Genders of All the People. I am entirely capable to be wrong about someone's gender, (and neglected to point this out because I thought that this would be bloody obvious enough that it did not need to be explicitly pointed out,) but that doesn't affect my argument. Because my argument was that my experience of gender in other people is not in any way affected by dictionary definitions or karyotypes and the like. Almost as if gender is a social construct, funnily enough.

>So what about the feminist who sees a trans woman and labels [her] a “man”?
Yeah, those people can actually be fun to watch, because they often manifest some serious cognitive dissonance, having to expend conscious effort to misgender people in direct opposition to the labels their own subconscious brains want to assign to them.

(There is probably some interesting point to be made about trans people who absolutely do not pass yet, and whether politeness would suggest the use of their preferred mode of address anyway. But that seems kind of irrelevant when we are apparently still not on the same page of whether trans people in general are allowed to exist as trans.)

>Refusing to define words is not a good look, when the point at issue is what those words mean.
Quite the opposite, in these cases it is outright reckless to just belt out a definition and call it done. ("Yeah, let's just take this highly complex social concept with a high degree of plasticity and break it down to a five word phrase. That's easy, right?") Because once you provide a definition, there will always be those who think that this definition actually answers the question of meaning. And then there's always the people who will attempt to break and/or weaponize any strict definition. Plucked chickens all around!
For this reason, in a lot of contexts, including, yes, legal, it is often not only unnecessary but undesirable to provide a strict definition for concepts that are so wide or vague or contextual or culturally specific or socially charged that they defy such definition. Stewart's "I know it when I see it" comes to mind.
 

@Esteban: You are constantly switching the argument

Am I? If so, not deliberately or in bad faith. We're traversing a number of areas with a bearing on ontology, mostly following your lead: biology, language, and law.

I would be quite happy not to talk about the law at all, because the law is merely a trailing reflection of the philosophical debate. A trans person in a jurisdiction that requires medical proof of two years of hormone therapy to accord a GIC is exactly the same as a trans person in a jurisdiction that requires nothing more than self-id before a clerk - or in one that does not allow legal gender confirmation at all. So the law cannot reliably inform us about who or what they are.

But you brought up the question of legal fraud, and a need for a 'legal definition', which (if a legislature or a court so decides) may very well itself be nothing more than official self-identification. So the insistence on a legal definition is just kicking the can down the road, as important as that prize is in practice.

Biology can tell us a lot about a person's physical (and psychological) makeup, but it cannot tell us either which elements of that makeup to to identify with biological sex (we choose that, and we choose which ones to ignore if some are missing) or whether and how to use any or all of that information as a referent - a proxy - for the gender constructs of 'man' and 'woman'. Which are what we're really trying to get at.

That leaves language. As I said earlier, my definition of a woman is 'someone who tells me she's a woman', i.e. someone who declares for a particular inner sense, aesthetic longing, and social performance that corresponds to a feminine role in society. Which itself - the feminine role - is negotiated anew every day, and changes subtly all the time. My definition is elegant because it is rooted in personal autonomy, and does not require constant updating as social mores change. Recursion here is a feature, not a bug.

Frankly, I don't see how the fight for abortion rights or free birth control, say, is diminished by the acceptance of the fact that some men can get pregnant. If anything, it enlarges the lobby for those rights, because more kinds of people might want to get contraceptives or abortions.

P.S. @negentropic Don't make me get the plucked chicken. Aces.
 

>Do you not think that it is possible to so much gender-neutralize and hedge the words “man” and “woman” that they become completely meaningless?
Um... no? You are making it sound like the word "people" is some subversive neologism created with the intent to supplant the use of "men" and "women," when it has been in use for ages. Referring to a group including both women and men as "people" does nothing to the meaning of these words. Especially since nobody objects to the use of "women" for a group of women, or "men" for a group of men.

>I am still thinking of the feminists here, who spent the last 50+ years to fight for women’s rights, and now you tell them that sorry, they need to fight for person’s rights from now on.
Why would they need to fight for "person's rights" from now on? If they are fighting for the rights of women, they are still fighting for "women's rights." (It feels wrong having to type that out.) The existence of trans people does not affect this. The acceptance of trans people does not affect this. What point are you trying to make?

>Isn’t it natural for them to want to exclude trans women, who have no skin in Roe vs. Wade?
I am genuinely flabbergasted by this argument. Leaving aside that the trans liberation movement has a pretty decent history of intersectional loyalty, is your argument really that because trans women cannot get pregnant, they would be neutral or even opposed to female reproductive rights? That you don't see how a slogan like "my body, my choice" is something that trans women could rally behind? And because they do not get pregnant they, what, also want to get paid less than an equally qualified man in the same field? Really? I actually hope I am misunderstanding you here.

>Unless you are willing to abandon all identity politics, you can’t just eliminate an identity with a political history.
And there we go again with these claims of elimination or erasure. How are women as a group being eliminated? Even if tomorrow we somehow forcibly unite all the various kinds of feminism, and then magically decree that this monolithic feminism must include trans women, how does that result in a world where the term "woman" is now entirely without meaning?
 

If they are fighting for the rights of women, they are still fighting for "women's rights." (It feels wrong having to type that out.) The existence of trans people does not affect this. The acceptance of trans people does not affect this. What point are you trying to make?

Of course that is affected by trans people! Feminists fights for cis women's rights. They don't fight for trans woman's rights, because that is a completely different set of rights.

Furthermore feminists fight for cis women to have rights that people who are not cis women shouldn't have, like access to cis women spaces and services. Some rights, e.g. "women's reproductive rights", became downright weird if you think of the alternative. Do you think there should be "men's reproductive rights" or "trans women reproductive rights"?
 

@Esteban: "That leaves language. As I said earlier, my definition of a woman is 'someone who tells me she's a woman', i.e. someone who declares for a particular inner sense, aesthetic longing, and social performance that corresponds to a feminine role in society. Which itself - the feminine role - is negotiated anew every day, and changes subtly all the time. My definition is elegant because it is rooted in personal autonomy, and does not require constant updating as social mores change. Recursion here is a feature, not a bug."

That is not recursion, it is circularity. You are trying to avoid any considerations of the foundations of the 'ever changing feminine role', because you don't like where they inevitably lead.

But without those considerations, you might just as well be saying "my definition of a schnork is someone who tells me schney are a schnork".


 

That is not recursion, it is circularity. You are trying to avoid any considerations of the foundations of the 'ever changing feminine role', because you don't like where they inevitably lead.

I'm happy to consider aspects of the feminine role till the cows come home. I simply refuse to participate in a project of nailing a definition of 'woman' to some median of that role, for the purpose of excluding not just trans women but atypical cis women. Third-stringer rationalist fumbling isn't going to fly with me, Gerry.

But without those considerations, you might just as well be saying "my definition of a schnork is someone who tells me schney are a schnork".

If schnorkness were a known social construct we all have to grapple with, to say nothing of an inherent element of a person's sense of self, then certainly. Schnork on, my lovely schnorks. But as far as I can tell, it isn't.
 

>[Feminists] don't fight for trans women's rights, because that is a completely different set of rights.
"Completely" different? Now, "different" I would grant. But so what? White women's rights are different from black women's rights, straight women's rights are different from gay women's rights, and apparently none of those groups need to be excluded. Because it is about the overlap, the problems that are shared, and, radiating outwards from there, the problems that do not necessarily affect every given individual, but that are still relevant to the group. Sterile women can be in favor of reproductive rights. Well-earning women can be against the pay gap. White women can oppose police violence aimed at black women. Straight women can support the right of gay women to marry.

For all that you keep circling back to reproductive rights, (in part, I suspect, because it seems the easiest to tie directly to biology,) that is not the end-all of feminism. A huge chunk of it deals with gender inequality, and how our society treats women. And here we are talking about "women" as a social construct. The pay gap does not care about gonads. Perpetrators of sexual violence will not be deterred by a Y chromosome. Trans women are either already shouldering those burdens, or actively working towards being afflicted by them. Trying to exclude them from an equality movement, when these shared problems make them your natural allies, seems both deeply petty and pointlessly counterproductive.

>Furthermore [some] feminists fight for cis women to have rights that people who are not cis women shouldn't have, like access to cis women spaces and services.
FTFY

>Some rights, e.g. "women's reproductive rights", became downright weird if you think of the alternative. Do you think there should be "men's reproductive rights" or "trans women reproductive rights"?
I invite you to think about the fact that reproductive rights are not purely about abortions. Abortion may be the hottest topic in that field lately, but reproductive rights also include e.g. ready access to contraceptives. And, yes, I am absolutely in favor of men having ready access to condoms and other forms of contraception, which I guess one could term "men's reproductive rights," if one wanted to be weird about it.
 

So you don’t think the feminist movement should have the right to say who *they* consider part of their group, and who *they* want to fight for? I’m seeing photos of groups of women in Scotland protesting against giving access for trans people to women-only spaces. You argue there is no biology, only social construct, but the social construct here isn’t accepting either.

Why does a trans person have the right to be offended when “misgendered”, but women don’t have the right to be offended by the gender appropriation?
 

It is not 'third-stringer rationalist fumbling' to point out when someone is avoiding rational argument for blatantly obvious reasons. (And when it's pretty clear that they would not address race, say, in any similar fashion.)

If schnorkness were real, we would be able to say what it is, instead of reciting a meaningless circular mantra. Real things have meaning, however much some may want to avoid or erase it.
 

It is not 'third-stringer rationalist fumbling' to point out when someone is avoiding rational argument for blatantly obvious reasons.

Assuming the conclusion of the argument ('gender is rooted in biology') and accusing me of merely trying not to admit the 'obvious' certainly counts as avoiding the argument. But picking an unsuitable reference class, then complaining that I don't accept the form of your argument - now that is a hallmark of half-baked rationalism. Practically stinks of it. What's next, we're going to wheel out mottes and baileys?

If schnorkness were real, we would be able to say what it is, instead of reciting a meaningless circular mantra. Real things have meaning, however much some may want to avoid or erase it.

What is love?
 

>So you don’t think the feminist movement should have the right to say who *they* consider part of their group, and who *they* want to fight for?
Could you please stop pretending that feminism is a monolith. Some feminists don't think feminism should include trans women. Some feminists think that feminism should include trans women. Some feminists think that feminism will by necessity affect trans women, and therefore in practice include them even if you try your hardest to exclude them. This is still very much an ongoing debate, and you behaving like it is settled because some gender-criticals have declared they are not open to further arguments is at best just plain wrong and at worst deeply disingenuous.

>I’m seeing photos of groups of women in Scotland protesting against giving access for trans people to women-only spaces.
And we're back in the changing rooms. It is still strange to me how you always gravitate to that subject. "The Washington Post using trans-inclusive language in reference to trans men is bad and wrong, because some women don't want trans women in their changing rooms." How is that not a non sequitur to you?
On a side note, I have seen plenty of pictures of people protesting about my home country taking in refugees. That doesn't automatically mean that I consider their position valid.

>You argue there is no biology, only social construct [...]
I did at no point argue there being no biology. But if you have to strawman me in order to even construct your argument, I will just take that as you conceding the point. Which is just as well, since you seem reluctant to ever actually do that. Instead, you just seem to ignore most of what I wrote, even when it includes direct questions to you.

@Gerry Quinn
>Real things have meaning, however much some may want to avoid or erase it.
Having meaning and being definable is not the same thing. To illustrate, please provide either a strict, exhaustive, self-contained and non-controversial definition of "art," or a cogent argument why "art" is not real.
 

If a man claims to be a table, polite society can humor him. But that doesn’t actually make him a table. Everybody will still see him as “man pretending to be a table”, not as an actual table. Nobody will consider to accept him to the point of actually decorating his house with that “table”.

You say that tables don’t actually exist, they are just a social construct. But then you also declare that among the many different social constructs of what a table is, only *yours* is valid. And that the social construct of the furniture shop who wants to have actual tables on display and not men pretending to be tables is not valid.

I don’t know how to discuss with people like you, who believe that their extreme views are the ultimate truth, and that the social constructs of the majority and their concerns aren’t valid. But I do know that people like you are dangerous, because populists will exploit you. In 2024 the USA will either re-elect Trump or a trumpist like De Santis. And that will be made possible because you made it so easy for them to paint the Democrats as dangerous ideologues. You are the strongest weapon in their arsenal, because you couldn’t stop at a reasonable compromise of trans rights or racial equality, but had to pursue these issues beyond the average person’s breaking point.
 

>If a man claims to be a table, polite society can humor him. But that doesn’t actually make him a table.
First off, you seem to be laboring under the assumption that I consider self-declaration to dictate gender. If you had read what I wrote above, you would know that I do not. So, I agree, just claiming to be a table does not make a man a table. But if that man then has a board fitted to his back and spends a lot of time standing on all fours such that the board is a level surface to rest things upon, I would be open to consider him a table.

>Everybody will still see him as “man pretending to be a table”, not as an actual table.
I would probably come to see him as a human table. Some people might share this view. Others might see him as "pretending to be a table," with their argument being a that a table is a thing made of wood. There might be in-betweeners, who will concede that the man is somewhat tablish, but still less of a table than a wooden table. Some might then go on mischaracterizing the man as "pretending to be made of wood," and start discussions how the furniture people just don't understand wood and how they are merely stating materiological truth when they are calling them out for not being tables. A lot of fruitless discussion would be had online.

>Nobody will consider to accept him to the point of actually decorating his house with that “table”.
This made me chuckle a bit, since human furniture is already a kink practiced by parts of the BDSM community. So it is literally wrong, not just in the analogy, but actual reality.
But I will accept that, particularly in the beginning when human furniture is less understood by the general public, and with the media providing a steady stream of "Are human furniture merely pretending to want to be furniture in order to rob YOUR HOME? Find out at eleven," there would likely be a lot of apprehension. Pro-furniture groups would busily battle such claims, while also trying to dispel preexisting harmful stereotypes established by popular books and movies. The eventual acceptance or nonacceptance of human furniture by the wider public would be uncertain.

>You say that tables don’t actually exist, they are just a social construct.
I say that in my opinion what makes a table a table is not being made of wood, but their function as furniture, which is bestowed on them not by their material makeup, but by how people interact with them. Someone who does not look below the surface to see the man holding up the tabletop might not even notice that they just placed that decorative bowl on a human table. To say nothing of the fact that metal tables are generally accepted as tables, despite not being made of wood.

>But then you also declare that among the many different social constructs of what a table is, only *yours* is valid.
Here is where the analogy kind of runs out of use, since we are already talking about abstracts. First off, I do not have a social construct, because, surprisingly, I am not a society, I am a person. And I also do not claim that my understanding of a given social construct is perfect and inviolate. Again, I did not think it necessary to provide a disclaimer at the beginning of every post stating that I might be wrong about some things and that my opinion does not constitute objective fact, because I assumed that would be obvious. Erring, being human, all that jazz.
That is why I tried to not only state my understanding of the social dynamics and my opinion on what would be the kind and right thing to do, but also my reasoning of how I have come to that understanding and that opinion. Not because I consider them the only valid ones, but because I would like them to be examined by others who do not share them, and perhaps in return be given an insight into their position and the reasoning behind it.
 

>I don’t know how to discuss with people like you, who believe that their extreme views are the ultimate truth, and that the social constructs of the majority and their concerns aren’t valid.
Well, you might be better off if you didn't presuppose that everything that people who disagree with you say is an attempt to assert ultimate truth. And you might perhaps also reevaluate your implicit assumption that your view is always entirely reflective of the majority view.
But the word I most want to focus in on here is "discuss," because your behavior in this exchange has not been one that I would associate with discussion. As stated before, I have on multiple occasions included questions and other invitations for you to delve deeper into your reasoning on this issue, to perhaps allow me and other readers to better understand how you arrived at your position. You have mostly neglected to do so, and instead either responded only to a narrow portion of my argument which you considered weak enough to attack, or, failing to find one, just strawmanned me instead. That is the sort of thing I would expect in a debate, not a discussion. Which is disappointing to me, since I detest debate and love discussion.

>But I do know that people like you are dangerous, because populists will exploit you.
Is wanting to discuss things instead of accepting your position as authoritative what makes me dangerous? If so, what is your preferred alternative here? Strict orthodoxy? Because heterodoxy without discussion is kinda pointless. Also, how does this reflect on past liberation movements? Should the gays also just have shut up and not fought for gay rights, because populism? Should the suffragettes kept their heads down and not rocked the boat? Did we just get extremely lucky there?

>In 2024 the USA will either re-elect Trump or a trumpist like De Santis. And that will be made possible because you made it so easy for them to paint the Democrats as dangerous ideologues.
Yes, because obviously if trans people stopped asking for such ridiculous things like adequate healthcare, the Right would have absolutely nothing else to put into their attack ads. The Left's support of trans liberation is literally the only thing they talk about. Also, the best way to fight populism is to give in to populism. That's very good, sweetie. That's very valid.

>[Y]ou couldn’t stop at a reasonable compromise of trans rights or racial equality, but had to pursue these issues beyond the average person’s breaking point.
I'm sorry, are you suggesting that trans liberation or racial equality were already achieved? When did that happen?
 

And I also do not claim that my understanding of a given social construct is perfect and inviolate.

Then you and me agree and are totally fine. I can live with an agreement that maybe there is no absolute truth whether a trans woman is a real woman, and that different people have different opinions on that.

Where I believe the danger lies is that if David Chapelle or J.K. Rowlings say that they believe that a trans woman is not a real woman, there is a violent mob with torches and pitchforks out there trying to lynch them. If we agree that there is no absolute truth here, that they are not "wrong", but just thinking differently than you, then how would the attacks on them be justified?
 

And what makes you think I condone these attacks? I have on multiple occasions expressed my distaste and exasperation about Twitter hate mobs in the comment section on this very blog. I would thank you to not lay other people's actions on my doorstep, the same way I am not asking you to justify similar online harassment of trans individuals, or e.g. Lily Cade's calls for the lynching of trans women. In fact, I would suggest that it would be better not to equate the "arguments" brought forth by a hate mob with genuine good faith criticism. Differentiating between the two may sometimes be difficult, especially while the individual is still trending, but that is no reason to propagate the bad faith arguments into the discussion here.
But these controversies are never just about someone saying that trans women are not real women. Let's take Dave Chapelle as an example here, because it is the much kinder case of the two. While the controversy on Twitter predictably devolved into abstract cries to "cancel Chapelle," that does not completely devalue the original criticism, which, to my best understanding, could be summarized as follows: Should Netflix on their platform provide access to a comedy special in which trans women are directly compared to blackface actors? Is that something that Netflix needs to put out into the world? Which is, to my mind, a decent enough question.
(As an aside, from what I have seen I don't even think that Chapelle particularly dislikes trans people, but that he has had a few unpleasant run-ins with some more militant members of the group and drawn some unfortunate generalizations from there. I would love for him to have frank discussion with a rather more empathetic and reasonable trans person, and would not be surprised if that actually changed his mind in some ways.)

>I can live with an agreement that maybe there is no absolute truth whether a trans woman is a real woman, and that different people have different opinions on that.
The idea of absolute truth in reference to social constructs is on of those areas of metaphysics where it is possible to have absolutely delightful and engaging discussion that, ultimately, do not go anywhere and are not expected to. Actually, just the idea of absolute truth is often enough to spurn such a discussion.
And I can definitely see how you could live with an agreement to disagree, I probably could as well, but that is because we have no skin in that game. Actual trans people are perhaps less willing to just leave the issue of their gender up in the air, because they have to rely on certain legislation to allow them to, well, live as themselves. And that legislation may very well hinge on providing, if not a solution, then at least a widespread agreement on this very metaphysical, potentially unanswerable question.
That is perhaps why I get a bit passionate about this subject, because an individual's right to live as themselves is important to me. That does not mean I automatically discount all opposed viewpoints, but I would still very much like to discuss how the potential hurt to groups such as gender-critical feminists holds up to the threat of trans people being denied their identity. That is not an easy discussion, and not one that will find a satisfying conclusion in this comment section, but still an important one to be had.

In the comments of some other post I suggested that it might be worthwhile for you to try and experience the viewpoint of actual trans people, by reading their literature or watching a few of their video essays. I don't know if you have, but if you haven't I would like to extend that invitation once again by showing you this video. It's 24 minutes on the topic of social constructs, which has come up often enough now that I would consider it relevant to the discussion on it's own, but it also touches upon the interactions between social constructs and transgenderism. I hope you find the time to give it a watch.
 

Should Netflix on their platform provide access to a comedy special in which trans women are directly compared to blackface actors?

Not *all* trans women. Only those who insist that they are "real women". Why should Netflix not be part to a discussion whether gender appropriation isn't felt as an offence by real women as much as cultural appropriation is felt as offending cultural groups?

And yes, I am aware that not *all* women feel offended by that. But I am pretty certain that there are also a huge number of native Americans who couldn't care less whether you disguise yourself as cowboys and indians for Halloween.
 

And while we are watching videos, I would recommend this very balanced report on Scotland's proposed gender identification law changes with arguments from both sides. I have the impression that some of the reporting on that got very much distorted by the time it reached the USA.
 

>Not *all* trans women. Only those who insist that they are "real women".
I didn't recall that distinction being made, so I just checked. It was all trans women, or at least all trans women that perform womanhood.
>Why should Netflix not be part to a discussion whether gender appropriation isn't felt as an offence by real women as much as cultural appropriation is felt as offending cultural groups?
Well, the comparison to blackface actors which were a) a culturally dominant group performing a culturally suppressed group, b) performed without identifying with that group, and c) performed primarily to portrait negative and prejudiced stereotypes of that group, kinda makes this not so much an argument in a discussion as just a straight up insult.
The comparison to cultural appropriation is interesting, because in the same way that not all cultural appropriation is harmful cultural appropriation, we would have to ask that even if transgenderism is a form of "gender appropriation," is it harmful, and if so, how?

The Scotland Tonight video is quite interesting. It is always fascinating to hear from a detransitioner, even though it is sad to see them treated so poorly by their own. The hypervigilance that the continual backlash against trans liberation has created within the community is understandable, but still tragic.
The suggestion that medical gatekeeping is good or necessary still rubs me the wrong way. I can understand the argument, but still, making a decision of personal identity contingent on a medical diagnosis just feels viscerally wrong somehow. It puts me in mind of a world in which you would need to procure a certified diagnosis of same sex attraction disorder before being allowed to marry a same sex partner.
 

I found the argument that somebody shouldn’t get the right to make irreversible changes to his body before getting the right to have a beer quite compelling.

Loved the metaphysical video on social constructs. It *did* mention that if you tell a gay person that being gay is just a social construct you get a “whoa, but what about my gay rights” reaction. Replace gay with woman, and you see the same reaction. Ultimately we live in a system of laws, rights, and rules.

I would agree that the blackface comparison was exaggerated, probably for comic effect. But the accusations of cultural appropriation have also been directed against people wearing Halloween costumes just for fun, and even against white teenagers who thought it cool to wear dreadlocks. And one could argue that your condition A) still applies to a biological male, being a culturally dominant group “performing” as a woman, a culturally suppressed group. When people are offended, the perception of the offended party is often more relevant than the motivation of the offending party. That teenager just wanted a haircut that made his parents mad, he didn’t intend any cultural appropriation.

While not all “woman issues” are related to biology, quite a lot are. I understand the anger of some women about trans women claiming to be the same, because “they didn’t go through what I had to go through when I had a child”. One of these women is actually quoted in the video you linked, the mother who refused to see her childbirth as a social construct.
 

The dictionary defines words such as love, art, woman and table (and generally race, though I see dictionary.com has at some point had a panic attack and removed it.) The definitions may not be perfect, and often there is more than one definition. But in general nobody is afraid of the definitions, which is to say attempts to describe the shared understandings of a word that define a language, and explore its foundations and evolution.

But in the case of the word 'woman', we see a refusal to address these foundations. Those who say the word must be made more 'inclusive' cannot bring themselves to say just what it is to include. Because this intended 'inclusion' is intended to involve erasure of the foundational meaning. Otherwise, it could simply be accomplished by adding one or more new definitions.
 

@Tobold

In light of all that has been discussed in this thread, why has anyone not challenged the method of determining gender at birth? With the technology at our disposal, why is it not standard practice now to obtain chromosome/genetic markers to verify a physicians visual determination of sex/gender at birth? Personally, I grew up with two people who were visually mis-identified at the time of their birth, and the subsequent hell they went through as a result could have been prevented(or lessened) if the medical establishment wasn't so antiquated in their ways.
 

@NoGuff While that certainly would be helpful for the individuals in question, the opposition to that would come from the trans community, because they object to gender being tied to biological markers. There are a lot of trans people where biologically their sex is unambiguous, and the gender dysphoria is purely psychological.
 

the opposition to that would come from the trans community, because they object to gender being tied to biological markers.

So why would they object to methods that would go a long way in preventing misidentification in the first place? If we're talking about biology versus psychology, isn't the etymology of the words "man" or "woman" rooted in distinct facts as rendered with biology? And AFAIK, gender dysphoria affects both men and women, so the psychological angle of using social attitudes or "flavor of the decade" tropes seem disingenuous as a method of demanding a new definition of "man" or "woman".