FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
User ID: 1175
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1hr ago
Well, I find it annoying that you persistently refer to trans-women as 'trans-identified males'.
I thought rigorous disambiguation was a good thing?
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
8hr ago
Okay, well my impression is that the modal Spanish voter is not at all enthused about the prospect of naturalising millions of north African migrants. According to this report, a 2011 survey found that two-thirds of Spaniards think there are too many immigrants in the country (although this proportion had fallen to 47% by 2017). A 2017 poll found that only 20% of Spaniards think immigration has had a positive impact on the country. A poll from June of this year found that 63% of Spaniards had an unfavourable opinion of Pedro Sánchez.
So, in practical terms, your definition of a woman boils down to "anyone who says they are". All of this talk about "visceral feeling that they should have had concave genitals" was just smoke and mirrors designed to distract me from noticing that your definition of the word "woman" is exactly as circular as that I ridiculed in the OP. I will reiterate that spending five or six comments pretending that of course your definition of the word "woman" isn't circular, only to then finally admit that in fact it is circular: this is hardly the most honest and forthright behaviour. Rather than rambling off on digressions which according to you are irrelevant for several hundred words, you could have just as easily said "for medical purposes, a woman is a person with concave genitals; for all other purposes, a woman is anyone who says they are". That's what your "definition" ultimately boils down to, right? Why not just come out and say that? I'm sure it couldn't possibly be because on some level you're aware of how vacuous and incoherent this worldview is, and want to dress it up as something more grounded.
I presume the "narrow set of purposes" to which you refer are those in which anatomy is especially salient e.g. for the purposes of a prostate exam, a trans-identified male is a man, not a woman. For every other purpose, you essentially treat trans-identified males as secular Oracles at Delphi, whose accounts of their inner lives can never be questioned by anyone under any circumstances, no matter how suspicious or laughable. Outside of gender ideology, there are many contexts in which we do not accept any individual's word at face value (e.g. a police officer who pulls someone over for speeding will demand to see their driver's license, even if they're a charity worker, a man of the cloth, or a former President), up to and including claims about one's inner experience (doctors must separate the patients who are legitimately in pain from the addicts seeking opiates). But as far as you're concerned, any male person who announces he's a woman instantly becomes one, no questions asked; no questions permitted to be asked; and anyone who so much as raises an eyebrow, points out the incongruity of this claim, or suggests that the male in question might have ulterior motives for so "identifying" has thereby outed themselves as a fascist Nazi bigot. As far as you're concerned, it is simply impossible for the declarative statements "I am a woman" or "I identify as a woman" to be untruthful or knowingly deceptive. These statements need not be vetted for accuracy: regardless of who speaks them, they are true by definition. I will note, again, that I cannot think of any other statements in the English language (or any language) to which this description applies, although I am open to suggestions. I am curious why gender ideology is so important that it requires us to completely overhaul our entire practice of epistemology, the philosophical assessment of what is true, what is false and how we tell one from another. "Because if we don't, some people will feel sad." Okay.
When this topic has come up in the past, I've asked you for what specific "purposes" treating a trans-identifed male as a woman provides better predictive power than treating them as a male person. I believe your answer was "none of your business". Which was, well, illustrative.
As an aside, you've been expounding on your personal interpretation of gender ideology (at great length) for several months now, and to my eyes it seems, if anything, even more incoherent than it seemed at first brush. I'm curious if anyone who's read any of the comments you've posted has had their mind changed on any sub-facet of this topic. If my experience is typical, it suggests that, regardless of whether you do "lack confidence in your own arguments to persuade people", you shouldn't have much confidence therein.
I am afraid that there is no answer that will make the world fit into the neat little boxes which you learned in primary school
You know what else I learned in primary school? When you define the word "X", you cannot use the word X in your definition, as to do so renders your definition circular and hence meaningless. You must have been off sick for that lesson.
'man' and 'woman' are not sharp-edged mutually-exclusive mutually-exhaustive categories of humanity.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to plead "yes they are". Indeed, they are among the sharpest-edged categories in the animal kingdom, and in the known universe.
They are also, insofar as such a thing exists, the same kind of being. Women and men are not separate species, any more than English people are a separate species from Irish people.
Dude, this is just obnoxious. Did I ever even suggest or imply that men and women are different species? The fact that I don't agree with you about gender ideology doesn't mean I'm an idiot who you're entitled to condescend to like a six-year-old.
If you don't mind, I'd actually like to go through these "contexts" one at a time, as an intuition pump:
'genetically male/female' = which chromosomes they have
I assume you believe that a person with a Y chromosome who identifies as a woman really is a woman.
'gonadally male/female' = what gamete-producing organs they have
I assume you believe a person with organs that produce small gametes but who identifies as a woman really is a woman.
'gametically male/female' = what gametes they produce
I assume you believe a person who produces small gametes but who identifies as a woman really is a woman.
'natal-anatomically male/female' = what was between their legs when they were born
As discussed downthread, you believe that a person born with a penis who identifies as a woman really is a woman.
'current-anatomically male/female' = what they have between their legs now
As discussed downthread, you believe that a person with a penis who identifies as a woman really is a woman.
'hormonally male/female' = how much testosterone versus estrogen they have
I assume you believe that a male person who is not receiving hormone treatment of any kind (and whose testosterone levels are completely normal for someone of his sex) but who identifies as a woman really is a woman.
'aspirational-anatomically male/female' = what they intend to have between their legs, or would have given the opportunity
As discussed downthread, you believe that a male person who has not undergone a vaginoplasty and explicitly states that they do not want one is nevertheless a woman, if they identify as one. (As previously stated, this kind of makes me wonder why you even brought up the "viscerally feel they ought to have concave genitalia" thing when by your own admission it's irrelevant to the question of whether someone is a woman or not.)
'male/female identified' = whether they identify as a man or a woman
I assume you believe that a male person who identifies as a woman is a woman.
'male/female presenting' = whether they look like a man or a woman
I assume you believe that a male person who identifies as a woman is a woman, even if nobody could possibly mistake them for female under any circumstances. Even if they don't wear makeup, don't wear opposite-sex clothes, and make zero effort to pass as a member of the opposite sex – in your book, they're still a woman, so long as they identify as one.
Am I correct in all of my above assumptions? If not, which ones, and why?
As a child I watched the 2002 psychological/supernatural horror The Mothman Prophecies, whose virtues I think I was too young to appreciate at the time. I rediscovered the film about ten years ago and found that it was right up my alley. By the time Covid rolled around, my appreciation of the film had metastasised into a morbid obsession. Between 2020-21 I must have watched it at least ten times in varying states of consciousness and inebriation: it's one of those rare movies where you can nod off halfway through, wake up in a state of utter confusion, and have that enhance the experience of watching it. Great performances from the entire cast, amazing cinematography, original score so good that it's one of my go-tos when I need to concentrate in work: it's one of the spookiest, most atmospheric films I've ever seen, and one of the best films about the impossibility of trying to communicate with a genuinely alien intelligence (
I mentioned my obsession with this film in a thread some time ago, and someone (whose username now escapes me) @Muninn recommended checking out the source material, a book of the same name by John A. Keel, marketed as non-fiction. I dutifully bought it several months ago, but only started reading it this week.
It's a funny read. While the film adheres to a broadly conventional three-act structure, with a suitably impactful climax, it's hardly the most rigorously plotted film: large chunks of the second act simply consist of the protagonist talking to the residents of Point Pleasant, West Virginia about the strange things they claim to have witnessed or experienced. This is an accurate reflection of the source material, most of which consists of disconnected vignettes, not all of which are even told by Point Pleasant residents, and which appear to be organised by commonalities in sightings rather than chronology. (Keel has a particularly irritating fondness for ellipses.) Reading the book, I have a greater appreciation for screenwriter Richard Hatem, who had to corral all of this disparate material into something resembling a conventional Hollywood thriller. Most exasperating of all is author Keel's predilection for what RationalWiki (ugh) used to call "crank magnetism". It's one thing to believe in aliens and otherworldly intelligences: it's quite another to also (apparently) believe that the CIA are in cahoots with the aliens and conspiring with them to have them harass people in West Virginia (just like they conspired to have JFK assassinated).
Absorbing enough, for all that. Best approached as a work of fiction.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
Small world, my fiancée finished reading that the other day and loved it.
Yes, I consider her a woman for any purpose that does not involve her genitals. Gender identity strongly correlates with genitals, which is why the major gender identities are 'man' and 'woman'. If you draw a teal circle around everyone with a penis, an orange circle around everyone with a vagina, and a provisionally non-coloured circle around each of the two gender-identity clusters, one of the colourless circles will mostly, but not entirely, overlap with the orange circle, and the other will mostly, but not entirely, overlap with the teal circle; thus we colour them respectively pink and blue. Anyone in the pink circle is a woman, even if she has no interest in leaving the teal circle, unless you are personally interacting with the parts between her legs.
Cool, so your definition of "woman" is actually "a person who identifies as a woman". So all of this rubbish about "viscerally feeling they should have had concave genitalia" was just obfuscatory nonsense. Why not just come out and say "a woman is anyone who says they are a woman"? Why even bother mentioning the "viscerally feeling they should have had concave genitalia" thing if you then turn around and say that males who don't want concave genitalia are still women provided they "identify as" such?
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
You're what we call a "high-variance poaster".
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
I think it probably relates to the dynamic described by Freddie deBoer in "Our Product is Permission". Nowadays, it's much less socially acceptable to openly mock or bully people for being interested in anime (alongside other similarly nerdy pursuits), and consequently people feel much more comfortable about advertising their interest in anime openly, in public. But just because it's less acceptable to bully people over this sort of thing, that doesn't mean the people who are interested in anime are any higher in social status than they used to be.
I presume most people downvoted my psyops post either because I said that Biden legitimately won in 2020, or because I criticised the anti-Zionist movement. I'm curious about the ratio, and also people who downvoted for some other reason.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
When I first heard about this, my first thought was that the author would be feeling very smug if he'd lived to see it.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
monothematic
I think "monomaniacal" would be more apt.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
has been working to naturalize millions of immigrants.
And is the average Spaniard happy about this, in your opinion?
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
I agree with you that it may be coordinated. My question is why you don't consider the possibility that it was coordinated by the Moroccan government, but instead immediately jump to the conclusion that it's the Israelis pulling the strings.
(I mean, I know why you jumped to that conclusion. I'm just pointing out holes in your reasoning.)
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
This article claims that 1.2 million illegal immigrants have applied, with 600k applications having been processed so far. Half a million is the lower bound.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
Arguments from motives are meaningless.
"Johnson stood to benefit from JFK's assassination!"
"Okay, but do you have any evidence he was involved?"
"He stood to benefit! How much more evidence do you want?"
Motive and means and opportunity. Motive alone doesn't mean much of anything.
I would like to believe your reasoning is more sophisticated than "something bad happens in a country -> that country has criticised Israel in the past -> therefore, the bad thing was deliberately orchestrated by Israel". But you're really not presenting a lot of persuasive evidence that it's more sophisticated than that.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
Is it a coordinated geopolitical move? Possibly.
Is it a coordinated geopolitical move in which the Israelis are involved? I don't think you've even come close to arguing that claim.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
America, Israel, Morocco, and Spain are the players involved here.
Aside from tweets, what is your evidence for Israeli involvement?
Your post is arguing the Israelis are involved, but you're already assuming the conclusion.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
Although on the face this may seems like a stretch
You should have trusted your gut on this one.
The gloating is obviously of the form "you criticise how we deal with the Palestinians, but it's easy to criticise us when you don't have to deal with tens of thousands of hostile MENA men right on your doorstep. Now you understand what it's like to be on the receiving end." No conspiracy necessary.
You're telling me this book doesn't get good until 350,000 words in? That's as long as Anna Karenina!
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