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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29550 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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I blame the whole concept of gender. We didn't always have gender, it's a recent invention. We used to have sex and civilization ran pretty well with that alone.

Did it? Constant wars and plagues and famines and the rise and fall of empires over and over again, slavery, misery, death from disease. Childhood mortality at 50%, giving birth a 1 in 10 crap shoot of the mother dying. I don't think a lack of gender was helping that much.

Childhood mortality at 50 % was a good thing because it purged suboptimal genes from the genepool.

That isn't how it worked. Often is was just the one that was malnourished or late in the birth order, or unlucky in what crazy disease they caught. It wasn't some kind of fight to the finish. The smartest people haven't been winning some darwinian struggle to improve the human race since....ever.

That isn't how it worked

Yes it is.

Ah, then why aren't Congolese the smartest strongest healthiest people on the planet then? Maybe because natural selection doesn't always select for the traits we want, maybe it just selects people that will have the most people born to them. What a crazy stance to take, so "optimal" human life for you is just the ability to pump out 10 kids that can live in poverty?

...because tropical diseases and animals are infinitely less lethal than their fellow men ?

You really think you'd rather be exposed to Steppe Nomads than elephants ?

What? Africa is always at war, and has been since time immemorial.

Still likely a correlation between being the feeblest and not surviving childhood, versus these days in which serious conditions are extended ad infinitum for no particular benefit to society.

giving birth a 1 in 10 crap shoot of the mother dying

This is almost certainly not true. Historical birthrates were high enough that an absolute majority of women would have died in childbirth were this so. The historical record does not seem to support this, and it’s biased towards elite women who probably had higher maternal mortality rates because they married younger.

I took a moment to look this up. An example of an old-timey rate, In Sweden and Finland in 1800, for example, around 900 mothers died for every 100,000 live births. That's about 1% per birth, so if you had more than 10 pregnancies (which a married young rich woman might as you say) maybe you could get lifetime risks around 10%.

There are still countries in africa where more than 1 in 20 women can expect to die in childbirth.

https://ourworldindata.org/maternal-mortality

What? Maternal deaths were a mainstay of life for most of human history. What are you talking about?

The comment above yours has actual numbers- .9% per birth in Napoleonic-era Scandinavia, highest in the world right now is (predictably)South Sudan, at 1.2% per birth. There's no doubt been times and places slightly higher, but even the really crappy parts of sub-saharan Africa don't break 2% per birth.

Natural fertility ranges from 4-10 children per woman, depending mostly on female age at marriage. That would mean childbirth is a common, possibly the most common, way of dying for women in historical societies, but pretty far from a majority. And that checks out with deep third world numbers- no African country has a double digit percentage of women dying in childbirth.

Maybe you're right, certainly right if you did a bit of googling here, this is a nit and a pick, my overall point was that life was much much worse for most of history. Do you disagree with that?

P.S.

I also said one in ten, perhaps I was thinking over overall odds which are exactly in line with your research

Yes, one in ten certainly seems like a reasonable approximation of total lifetime risk of premodern maternal mortality. And of course childbirth before the Victorian era was orders of magnitude more dangerous than it is today.

I'm waiting for a non-self-referential definition of gender that doesn't just mean 'sex'.

So far, nobody has answered me.

Historically, the distinction was "gender"= social norms for manhood and womanhood, while "sex"= biological X/Y/ gamete status. A child raised in a distant lab by sexless robot aliens, with absolutely no conception of human society, might not have a "gender"; but they would still have a "sex."

That version of gender did have real uses as a rhetorical countermove against the sex-determinist appeal-to-nature fallacy, which runs: sexual dimorphism is natural, therefore (a) all sex-specific social expectations and privileges are also "natural" and can never be changed because duh, biology doesn't change; and (b) a society's sex-specific stereotypes are "natural" and nature is good, so women should try to perform their society's conventional stereotypes of womanhood (and men: manhood), and those who less closely match those stereotypes are unnatural and bad.

Basically, trying to circumvent the fallacies in "But you have to dress your XX baby in pink because pink is naturally for girls!"/ "Sorry Jill, I can't offer you the same salary as Bob because he supports a family, that's just the nature of things."

Unfortunately, I think this usage ran afoul of the trans folks' desire to deliberately re-conflate the natural and the social in order to argue that their social performance of gender stereotypes was, indeed, "natural," therefore biological, unchangeable and good. So whether there's a definition distinct from "sex" on that side of the aisle, I couldn't say.

Historically, the distinction was "gender"= social norms for manhood and womanhood, while "sex"= biological X/Y/ gamete status. A child raised in a distant lab by sexless robot aliens, with absolutely no conception of human society, might not have a "gender"; but they would still have a "sex."

If blank slateism is true, yes.

That's kind of the problem. The ideological fortress is of use to larger groups than just the trans activist segment that captured it so now people don't have a way to disentangle themselves from ridiculousness like Tickle without losing their motte entirely. And they haven't found it because

That version of gender did have real uses as a rhetorical countermove against the sex-determinist appeal-to-nature fallacy

If they were only attacking the fallacious version of that argument then trans activists would have a thinner wedge to work with. You can accept that it's ludicrous to assume static or totalizing gender roles without accepting that gender has nothing to do with sex (which is where we are) or the sort of doctrinaire blank slateist/anti-sex-based role position that came to dominate.

Simply having the sex-vs-gender distinction implies nothing about the relationship between the two, just that they're different things worth analyzing separately, like genotype vs phenotype or wealth vs. income.

I also think doctrinaire blank-slateism as you describe it is a bit of a strawman. Most of the instances I'm aware of sound more like (entirely reasonable) calls for for agnosticism or at least extreme skepticism about the precise extent to which biology determines culture (since everyone opining has serious skin in the game and we're certainly not at the point of making controlled experiments that could falsify our guesses). Similarly, there's an extremely good case for a presumption of blank-slatism as the best working approach to prevent grave injustice on an individual level.

Moreover, liberal modernity certainly works much better with fully interchangeable workers/citizens; and runaway gender-performance competition (like the kind the US saw in the 50s, or arguably is seeing today) is a costly Moloch-style trap that is hard to escape without externally-enforced change. So at a societal level I can fully understand advocating for periodic centrally-enforced sex-stereotype detoxes or elimination diets, just to reset to minimal levels.

I also think doctrinaire blank-slateism as you describe it is a bit of a strawman.

Strawman or the bailey?

If that view is a strawman then what is 'all sex-specific social expectations and privileges are also "natural" and can never be changed because duh, biology doesn't change'. How many American conservatives explicitly state this belief?

Most of the instances I'm aware of sound more like (entirely reasonable) calls for for agnosticism or at least extreme skepticism about the precise extent to which biology determines culture (since everyone opining has serious skin in the game and we're certainly not at the point of making controlled experiments that could falsify our guesses).

If it was mere agnosticism or even skepticism people like James Damore wouldn't be anathematized for trying to provide empirical evidence that challenged the blank slateist ideology.

Yes, everyone knows the caveats to the statement "men and women are the same". But it's hardly my fault that we continually allow some people to turn the ratchet in one direction until we're now arguing about men in women's sports. If there was any example even blank slateists should laugh off...it used to be this. But, seemingly, what one generation knows but considers too obvious or impolite to say somehow stops being common knowledge and you have to fight about it.

"Everyone knows" is true until it's not. The slope is slippery. I don't consider it a weakness of my argument so much as the point itself.

Moreover, liberal modernity certainly works much better with fully interchangeable workers/citizens

As @ArjinFerman asks: in what sense? It certainly has certain Darwinian implications. The liberal societies that have adopted this viewpoint are facing the basic problem of being unable to reproduce themselves - which probably won't be helped by telling men and women they can swap sex and dope themselves to make it stick. The flight may feel smoother but the plane hasn't landed yet.

My other retort is that this view is simply just false, and it only appears not-false insofar as people employ a bunch of hotfixes and participate in the very sort of doctrinaire "see no evil" blank slateism you're writing off as strawmen.

There are plenty of places where it's clear people are not interchangeable widgets and we solve it by various forms of redistribution that are intended to push them to look and act more alike (enforcing equal parental leave in European countries) and the deployment of a vast bureaucracy to root out sexual "bias" or "discrimination" across both employment and education and the burning of a witch every so often that points out this truth.

As a child of this period, it's hard to escape the view that this is much preferable to the alternative (certainly it's in my interests when we come to the racial version of it) but it's hard to argue it doesn't impose all sorts of costs.

So at a societal level I can fully understand advocating for periodic centrally-enforced sex-stereotype detoxes or elimination diets, just to reset to minimal levels.

Even if I accepted this as some worthy goal, I don't see how what's happening is some sort of stereotype of rationalist ChiCom planning with ten year plans to tap and reduce standard sex stereotyping (you'd think, if people were interchangeable widgets such totalitarianism would be unneeded).

Some of the tools used are products of the center but I don't see any retrenchment. Just various groups of people seizing Title IX or this or that handle of a ratchet and taking us further and further.

There's no, as far as I can see, cultural movement in the center that goes "maybe we don't need female Marines so leave standards as-is" or "maybe get male Secret Service agents, cause we're all fucked if the bullet skips past someone's 5'6 head into their principal's chest". Nope, some moral entrepreneur will find some new thing to be the first to diversify, and then we go from mere detox to imposing things like gender identity on schools.

Moreover, liberal modernity certainly works much better with fully interchangeable workers/citizens;

I don't know about that. Ever since we bet on interchangeability of men and women, we can't seem to reproduce ourselves and have to make up for the shortfall by importing people from more fertile parts of the world, hoping that interchangeability works out this time.

What's the upside it's supposed to have brought us?

and runaway gender-performance competition (like the kind the US saw in the 50s, or arguably is seeing today)

If we saw it in the 50's and we're seeing it today, I have to ask if the term has any meaning.

I don't know about that. Ever since we bet on interchangeability of men and women, we can't seem to reproduce ourselves and have to make up for the shortfall by importing people from more fertile parts of the world, hoping that interchangeability works out this time.

Industrial processes work best with other industrial processes, so I guess it's a race to industrialize that biology as we have various other forms of organic production. I'm not saying I'm a fan, but it's weird for a community as virtualized, urban and seemingly techno-optimist as the Motte to come down so hard in favor of artisanal methods in this single area.

The interesting and under-discussed thing is that male roles got liquidated by modernity way before female roles did. Watch some living-history documentaries about preindustrial farm life, or read about crime in early cities and roads, and it becomes extremely obvious why it would be helpful to have someone around who's taller with a lot of upper-body strength and greater potential for physical aggression, and why a smaller-bodied person might willingly relinquish a certain amount of autonomy to retain that alliance. Once men deliberately technologize themselves out of the hard-labor-and-physical-defense game, to which their biology is naturally suited, it becomes much easier for women to look at their desk-jockey vidya-playing husbands and brothers and ask why they get to demand so much and give so little in return.

Speaking of hotfixes:

The interesting and under-discussed thing is that male roles got liquidated by modernity way before female roles did.

I used to take this for granted too but then you look at something like student loans where women hold more debt and take longer to pay it off and student loan forgiveness is argued for specifically as a salve for women and I wonder.

Although women make up more than half of the college educated labor force, per the Pew Research Center, women still face barriers to paying off their loans due to the gender wage gap, a lack of generational wealth and gender norms placed on women.

If all of these jobs better fit a woman's temperament why can't they just pay their loans?

Male roles may have been liquidated by modernity but not necessarily just because the inevitable march of technology making lifting things and whacking people less useful. The modern liberal state may have given us a little push.

Yeah, as I pointed out a few weeks ago, men's roles are not obsolete. What's obsolete is giving men credit for their fulfilling them. Instead they're either generally taken for granted (as with various blue collar roles than are still 90-99% men) or men are actually criticized for doing it (as with engineering and other lucrative male-dominated white collar professions).

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Industrial processes work best with other industrial processes, so I guess it's a race to industrialize that biology as we have various other forms of organic production. I'm not saying I'm a fan, but it's weird for a community as virtualized, urban and seemingly techno-optimist as the Motte to come down so hard in favor of artisanal methods in this single area.

You may be mischaracterizing the Motte as a community, but even if you're right on average, you've run into the resident unironic Luddite.

I don't think you answered my question though, I still don't see any specific upside that, one can point to, to society as a whole treating everybody as though they are interchangeable. Definitely nothing that can counter the downsides of interchangeability that I mentioned.

I'm aware of the "industrialist" arguments for standardization, but the retort is simply that you're driving a square beg into a round hole, and breaking all sorts of things in the process.

Once men deliberately technologize themselves out of the hard-labor-and-physical-defense game, to which their biology is naturally suited, it becomes much easier for women to look at their desk-jockey vidya-playing husbands and brothers and ask why they get to demand so much and give so little in return.

Last I checked, men still tend to be the ones supporting the households, so that question seems to be misplaced. And you seem to be simply confirming what I said - interchangeability does not enhance liberalism, it drives it's extinction.

If blank slateism is true, yes.

Although the sex/gender distinction is still useful even in the real world where blank slatism is true. In a sane society (i.e. one which sets up a default where men are gently steered towards being Real Men TM and women are gently steered towards being Real Women TM) gender is a structure built on top of biological sex. Some of that structure (like war being for men and child-raising for women) is close to the root and necessary, and therefore conserved across cultures. But "blue is for boys and pink is for girls" is an accident of certain western cultures.

But "blue is for boys and pink is for girls" is an accident of certain western cultures.

Yes. That would be the fallacious version.

Historically, the distinction was "gender"= social norms for manhood and womanhood, while "sex"= biological X/Y/ gamete status. A child raised in a distant lab by sexless robot aliens, with absolutely no conception of human society, might not have a "gender"; but they would still have a "sex."

I don't think that's accurate. There were different social roles and expectations for men and women, but no one referred to them using words "man" and "woman", nor were the words "male" and "female" used in any sort of contrast to "man" and woman", nor was there any sort of confusion if taking on a different role would make you a different "gender" (an anthropologist asking one of the famed "third gender" tribesmen if they consider themselves something other than a man, and hearing "are you retarded?" in response, is a thing that actually happened in real life).

That version of gender did have real uses as a rhetorical countermove against the sex-determinist appeal-to-nature fallacy

Ironically it turned out that it was far less fallacious than the genderist argument. For all the attempts at "gender neutral upbringing" girls still tend to zero-in on girlie princess stuff, and boys on trucks and whatnot. Despite "Sorry Jill, I can't offer you the same salary as Bob" being cancellable and outright illegal, women still earn less money than men, etc.

Ironically it turned out that it was far less fallacious than the genderist argument. For all the attempts at "gender neutral upbringing" girls still tend to zero-in on girlie princess stuff, and boys on trucks and whatnot. Despite "Sorry Jill, I can't offer you the same salary as Bob" being cancellable and outright illegal, women still earn less money than men, etc.

I mean, I'm aware of many of the checkmate-libtard! style memes on these topics, but a couple weirdos failing at their halfhearted attempts to raise ungendered children in a very gendered social world, or some women continuing to lose out in pay negotiations despite their bosses' professions of fair treatment, says virtually nothing one way or another about the optimum extent to which a well-run society should embrace, enforce or renounce differential treatment of individuals by sex. I don't really know what the "genderist argument" is, since that's not how anybody seems to label themselves in these conversation.

The "genderist argument" is that these differences are a result of socialization, and that the appeal to nature is a fallacy.

says virtually nothing one way or another about the optimum extent to which a well-run society should embrace, enforce or renounce differential treatment of individuals by sex

I agree, but that seems irrelevant to the discussion.

an anthropologist asking one of the famed "third gender" tribesmen if they consider themselves something other than a man, and hearing "are you retarded?" in response, is a thing that actually happened in real life

You can't just drop something that funny without citing your source.

Here you go. Turns out I misremembered it, and they guy still hangs on to the sex/gender distinction, but also insists the way these obscure tribes understand it does not match how the activists are potraying it:

- Can you just share your opinion on like this attempt to blur the boundary between male and female that you see happening specifically in in the western context?

- I think there's an enormous amount of confusion about sex, what is sex, what is gender, and the two get mixed up and mashed up and the conversations very very very quickly become completely unproductive. You know in my class (...) we start off by talking about what is objectivity what, is subjectivity, what is inner subjectivity, what is sex what is gender... um so i i start the class off by really clearly defining these terms, and so i think i think an enormous amount of the confusion is just because what do people mean by sex, what do people mean by gender, and when they mean different things, or when you have two people in a dialogue, and they're using these terms differently, it just goes nowhere almost immediately.

And i as far as using Fa’fafine for example to blur the distinction between male and female sex categories i would say that that is a western project because the Fa’fafine have no doubt whatsoever what their sex is. The muxe [the Zapotec tribe's "third gender"] have no doubt whatsoever what their sex is. They know they're not... they know what their gender is... they know they're not men, and they know they're not women, but if you ask them are you... in terms of your body, are you male or female, they're like yeah... they might not say the word "male", but they're like, yeah... i'm i'm a man, i'm male... So I remember interviewing one... I mean this is how nonsensical things become, when you start translating some of this stuff into a field setting, in a non-western culture... so I remember being in southern Mexico and asking a muxe "you know, are you male or female... you know, do you have a penis or a vulva?" and she looked at me like and she actually said "are you stupid?"

The problem is that the source is a bit of a pain in the ass to cite. It was an interview with Paul L. Vasey, who originally documented the "third gender" phenomenon, and got frustrated with the way his research is brought up by trans activists. Somewhere in this or this podcast, he drops the anecdote. I can give them a relisten and ping you when I have the timestamp if you want, though I also recommend just listening to the whole thing, they're good interviews.

(Hello! I'm new here and this is my first post, so apologies if I'm messing up any social norms here. Please feel free to call me out! :))

That seems like a pretty easy challenge. Here's my definitions:

External Gender: When people greet me, they say "ma'am" instead of "sir". There's a wealth of subtler behaviors, but the basic idea here is that people perceived as "female" get treated differently than people perceived as "male".

Internal Gender: I prefer being called "ma'am", and am happier when my external gender is "female". In a lot of magical stories, a character has their sex transformed by some magic. "Internal Gender" is when a character wants to transform back, which is fairly common. "Internal Gender" is the idea that if you body-swapped with your mom, you'd still want to be called "him" despite the uterus.

Sex: the biological reality. A messy mix of chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy.

External Gender: When people greet me, they say "ma'am" instead of "sir". There's a wealth of subtler behaviors, but the basic idea here is that people perceived as "female" get treated differently than people perceived as "male".

This is the 'gender role' terminology: The social role played by a particular gender.

Internal Gender: I prefer being called "ma'am", and am happier when my external gender is "female". In a lot of magical stories, a character has their sex transformed by some magic. "Internal Gender" is when a character wants to transform back, which is fairly common. "Internal Gender" is the idea that if you body-swapped with your mom, you'd still want to be called "him" despite the uterus.

And this is the 'gender identity' or 'gender performance', depending on the exact thing being discussed: Either that internal feeling of what 'gender' you are or the behaviors that feel natural to you on account of your felt 'gender'.

But here is the hard part: What is 'gender' separate from all of those individual nouns? What does the modifier 'gender' alone mean in front of all of these?

The truth is that it's an empty signifier unless you treat it as as synonym for 'sex'. But that has a whole lot of implications that aren't like by the kind of activist theorists who invented 'gender' as something different: Someone with a 'gender identity' discordant with their physical sex has a body dysmorphia, for example, and not something more deeply psychologically central. If that's true, the drive to 'affirming' care runs up on the rocks of evidence based medicine, where it's not entirely clear that that paradigm is actually the best. And it also means there are only really two genders, because sex and gender are the same thing and there are, in humans, only one big gamete and one little gamete and the machinery to produce each (which may or may not actually work in any particular implementation). That means that the 'nonbinary' clique is a philosophically incoherent trend, rather than anything more meaningful (not like there is anything wrong with that -- there's a reason punk ranges from anarcho-communist radicals to skinhead Nazis: there's something at a the heart of punk that doesn't make sense or, more likely, there's really nothing there but loud, angry music).

But these results are disturbing, so the desperate pretense must be continue.

Now that I've learned a bit about the definitions here, this actually seems even easier:

The basic idea behind trans ideology is that sometimes you get a person, a trans woman, who is born as a guy. Despite this, they feel a strong desire to modify their body to have breasts and a vagina. When they modify their body in this way, they become much happier - it is one of the most successful medical interventions, on that axis.

So, a woman is someone who prefers to have a vagina rather than a penis, and vice-versa. But of course "prefers" is really hard to confirm, so let us instead say: a woman is someone with a vagina.

Tada! Nothing circular, and nothing referring to any sort of immutable biology.

I'm totally aware that plenty of trans activists want to go beyond this, of course, but it seems pointless to discuss anything past this point without first agreeing to this point. If you reject this, then obviously you reject anything more radical, and I'm more curious where the possible middle-ground is. I don't like the modern trans "grab as much privilege as we can" attitude at all; I just want to pee in peace, and that requires at least some willingness to compromise.

(I am less familiar with trans men, I will admit. I get the impression their goalposts are more "remove boobs and grow a beard", which still doesn't refer to anything immutable or circular)

The basic idea behind trans ideology is that sometimes you get a person, a trans woman, who is born as a guy. Despite this, they feel a strong desire to modify their body to have breasts and a vagina. When they modify their body in this way, they become much happier - it is one of the most successful medical interventions, on that axis.

Hi! I was skipping a lot of the conversation you started, because I didn't want to contribute to the "explain yourself now, trans person" dogpile, but my ears perked up at that one.

My understanding is that this view is pretty outdated. WPATH seems to outright reject it, and to only use it cynically as a foot-in-the-door thing in countries with lower trans acceptance. They hold that it's all about "authenticity" and self-expression, and that doctor's empashis needs to be on removing barriers, and on patient autonomy. They don't even think it's about transitioning from man to woman, or the other way around, and are happily endorsing "non-binary" surgeries.

Would you say they are out of line, or is it that you're more old-school and no longer representative of the community?

I think a lot of trans women genuinely fall into the older, classic model like me. It's really hard to say if it represents the actual community, because there's some loud voices that want to make the newest ideology the only one, but I do think there's a lot of people like me, and still are, even if we're no longer the majority within the trans community. I think there's a lot more of us than you'd guess, simply because we tend to be quiet: we already got what we want, as long as we don't draw attention to ourselves.

I have a bit of trouble taking someone seriously as a "trans woman" if they just want to self-identify, don't have dysphoria, and aren't even taking HRT, but... I'm asking people who don't believe I'm a woman to call me "she/her" anyway, so I'm at least fine with names and pronouns even there.

If we accept the idea that I want to have a cis-woman looking body despite not being born with one, it doesn't really surprise me that some people might want "non-binary" mixes. I don't really understand the category well myself, though. I think a lot of non-binary is much more about abolishing gender roles entirely - most cis women I meet who identify as "non-binary" just seem unhappy with society's concept of "female", or are viewing that concept through a fairly narrow lens. All that said, if you're actually going out and getting surgery, I'm going to take you seriously.

It's really hard to say if it represents the actual community, because there's some loud voices that want to make the newest ideology the only one, but I do think there's a lot of people like me, and still are, even if we're no longer the majority within the trans community. I think there's a lot more of us than you'd guess

Well, my guess was roughly what you're describing. I saw a pretty big generational difference in the trans community, and figured the more old school view is probably still strongly represented, but trended on it's way out I was wondering if an insider's view was different.

But my problem here is that this isn't a question of numbers and loudness, but one of position. Ten thousand reasonable trans women, who aren't bothering anyone, and just want to live their life, will easily be outweighed by a single Dr. Ren Massey simply by virtue of him being a doctor, and being in the position of training other doctors.

I have a bit of trouble taking someone seriously as a "trans woman" if they just want to self-identify, don't have dysphoria, and aren't even taking HRT

Well, if I understood the new approach to the issue, it's less about being trans without dysphoria and HRT, and more about taking HRT without dysphoria. The way you described it, HRT / pronouns / gender affirming care generally is something we do, because it's the best way to alleviate suffering. I'm not into causing unnecessary suffering, so I can go along with that, but the new view on this matter seems to be that there might not be any suffering involved to begin with, so this is where my patience starts to wear thin - I didn't sign up to be a part of anyone's grand project of self-expression.

most cis women I meet who identify as "non-binary" just seem unhappy with society's concept of "female", or are viewing that concept through a fairly narrow lens. All that said, if you're actually going out and getting surgery, I'm going to take you seriously.

That's interesting, because that's the opposite of my instincts. As long as it's about "roles" it's no skin off my nose, it's when doctors encourage body modification to express one's non-binariness that I'm starting to think that things are getting out of hand, and we need to put a stop to it.

it's when doctors encourage body modification to express one's non-binariness that I'm starting to think that things are getting out of hand, and we need to put a stop to it.

That feels a bit oddly phased. Presumably it is the patient who is expressing a desire for this, and going through a fairly lengthy bureaucratic process - especially for anything non-binary. I don't think there's a bunch of doctors out there going "have you considered transition?" I would indeed find it super creepy for one's personal doctor to be offering recommendations like that unless the patient is listing off dysphoria symptoms.

That said, if someone knowingly undergoes surgery, and this routinely makes those people happier, I don't see any reason to stop it. I support people doing other forms of cosmetic surgery, getting tattoos, etc.. My general understanding is that very few people regret these surgeries, partly because there is still generally a lengthy bureaucratic process weeding out anyone doing this on a whim. If it makes them happy, why not?

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The basic idea behind trans ideology is that sometimes you get a person, a trans woman, who is born as a guy. Despite this, they feel a strong desire to modify their body to have breasts and a vagina. When they modify their body in this way, they become much happier - it is one of the most successful medical interventions, on that axis.

I note that this is an empirical statement, not a normative one (like "adults have the right to modify their body however they please, and it's none of your damn business whether you think it's a good idea or not"). Hypothetically, if you were presented with persuasive evidence that the majority of trans women who fully medically transition later come to regret their decision, feel markedly less happy afterwards (according to, for example, a PHQ-9 or HAM-D survey), or feel that their quality of life has declined as a result of their transition - would that persuade you that trans ideology is a bad thing on net?

Well, keep in mind: I know thousands of trans women online. That's a lot of evidence that it is successful. So any study has to overcome my prior, and explain why there's a huge cluster of visibly-happy trans women, but I never meet any of these people who regret it. I'm the sort of trans woman who wanders onto The Motte and TERF forums and so forth, and I have yet to encounter any such cluster. (There's certainly a few, of course)

I'm also referring to actual studies when I say we feel happier, so you'd have to reconcile why the two studies disagreed.

But, yeah, if 10% of trans women regret it, I think we maybe need to tighten up the gates a little bit, or at least make that warning a LOT clearer within the community. If 50% regret it, I think I'd have to spend a few days seriously reconsidering my world view.

This is all assuming actual regret, too. Right now, "happiness" is a bit tricky to measure: Maybe someone gained 100 happiness points from transitioning, but lost 150 because now they're subject to a lot more bigotry. I think in that case, the right solution is to fix the cultural bigotry, not to block transition.

Just FYI, that was a literal hypothetical question. I'm not personally aware of any strong evidence that the majority of medically transitioned trans people eventually regret their decision, although the increase in subscriptions to /r/detrans over time suggests that the rejection rate is higher than the most outspoken trans activists would have me believe.

If 50% regret it, I think I'd have to spend a few days seriously reconsidering my world view.

It takes a great deal of intellectual integrity to acknowledge that and I commend you for doing so.

The basic idea behind trans ideology is that sometimes you get a person, a trans woman, who is born as a guy. Despite this, they feel a strong desire to modify their body to have breasts and a vagina. When they modify their body in this way, they become much happier - it is one of the most successful medical interventions, on that axis.

So, a woman is someone who prefers to have a vagina rather than a penis, and vice-versa. But of course "prefers" is really hard to confirm, so let us instead say: a woman is someone with a vagina.

Tada! Nothing circular, and nothing referring to any sort of immutable biology.

If "trans woman" was defined as "a male person who has undergone a surgery to change their penis into a neovagina", I think that's a definition I could get on board with: it's straightforward, non-circular and trivial to verify. Perhaps we could be even a little bit more generous and define it as "a male person who has undergone a surgery to change their penis into a neovagina, or is actively seeking one (has applied to the relevant medical practitioners etc.)".

I'd just like to gently point out that such a definition excludes almost everyone who identifies as a trans woman: only 5-13% of trans women have undergone genital surgery. Even if we allow that for every trans woman who has undergone genital surgery, there's another trans woman who has applied for it but is stuck on a waiting list (or even two such women), your definition still excludes anywhere from 61% to 90% of males who consider themselves trans women.

This is not intended as a "gotcha", it's a completely sincere question (echoing @Amadan, I'm genuinely grateful to get the input of someone with "skin in the game", so to speak). You're a trans woman who has medically transitioned. Supposing you're having a conversation with a visibly male person who has told you that her name is Samantha and her preferred pronouns are she/her. During the course of the conversation, the topic of medical transition comes up, you start talking about your own experiences, and Samantha mentions that she hasn't undergone bottom surgery. She also mentions that she has no interest in undergoing it and is perfectly happy with the configuration of her genitals as they stand.

Once she's made this clear to you, do you continue referring to her as a woman? Or no?

Once she's made this clear to you, do you continue referring to her as a woman? Or no?

I mean, personally, I'm not harmed at all by her. I personally have no objections to this. I'll call her "she/her" and Samantha, because it seems rude to do otherwise. My mental classification will be "female" because to me female just means "person I refer to as she/her".

Other women have expressed that, for instance, they would not be comfortable dating Samantha because of it. I think that's reasonable.

If Samantha goes on a rant about how people are transphobic for not dating her, just because she has a penis, I will think she's full of shit and making the rest of us look bad.

Okay, well now it seems like you're just flipping between definitions according to the needs of the moment. This time yesterday you said "a woman is someone with a vagina" (or neovagina). Now you're saying a woman is someone you refer to as she/her, even if you know for a fact that that person doesn't have a vagina (or neovagina). I find this inconsistent. Maybe the idea is that the word can have multiple meanings, e.g. a woman is anyone who has a vagina, or anyone who has a neovagina, or anyone who has expressed a desire to be referred to with female pronouns.

But now we're right back to circular definitions! A woman is anyone who has expressed a desire to be referred to with female pronouns. What are female pronouns? The pronouns we use to refer to women and girls.

If Samantha goes on a rant about how people are transphobic for not dating her, just because she has a penis, I will think she's full of shit and making the rest of us look bad.

Well I'm glad to know we agree on that much at least.

Words have multiple definitions, yeah. I think one can draw a reasonable consensus at "a woman is someone with a vagina", but I personally, in my head, use it to mean "someone in the ma'am cluster." If we are arguing about how you categorize people, I feel unreasonable imposing my personal definition. But if you ask me how I personally categorize people, I want to be honest about the system I'm actually using.

I don't think there's anything invalid with the category "people who want to use female pronouns". We can talk semantics about circular reasoning and all of that, but at the end of the day it seems very obvious that some people are delighted by "ma'am" and some people are extremely offended by it. Do you have some problem with me, personally, calling Samantha a woman and saying she/her?

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The basic idea behind trans ideology is that sometimes you get a person, a trans woman, who is born as a guy. Despite this, they feel a strong desire to modify their body to have breasts and a vagina. When they modify their body in this way, they become much happier - it is one of the most successful medical interventions, on that axis.

Yes, and this is a body dysmorphia, like phantom limb syndrome.

It may well be that the best treatment for gender/sex dysphoria is some form of physical transition surgery. But, if you can acknowledge that that is what is going on here, the only thing we really might disagree on is where exactly that line is on various axes of treatment.

Tada! Nothing circular, and nothing referring to any sort of immutable biology.

Of course, you're no longer talking about anything like 'gender' as separate from sex. Trans women are natal males who are born with an intense desire to be female and vice versa. This desire can cause such serious stress that it becomes clinical and they must be treated in some way, possibly (and, honestly, probably, once the evidence base catches up) including surgical transition.

I'm totally aware that plenty of trans activists want to go beyond this, of course

Yes, and they're the people I have a problem with. At heart, they're communists or the useful idiots of communists and their whole ideology destroys everything it touches, intentionally.

Hello, welcome to the Motte.

Putting cards on the table here, I was a little suspicious of you (not many people just independently "discover" us, and announcing yourself with a username guaranteed to set off a lot of folks here is a little suspicious), but I appreciate the discussion you have generated so far, and I will go with my presumption of good faith. Genuinely, I would like to see more posters like you.

So as you have probably figured out by now, the majority of people here are... not very friendly to trans identities. This ranges from "Thinks trans women are men but don't feel a need to start fights over it" to "Believes trans women are all AGP perverts who should be mocked and shunned and they really want you to know it."

Our rules require everyone to be treated civilly, so no is allowed to directly insult you just for being trans or advancing trans views, but nonetheless you probably will receive some vigorous challenges, so I hope you are prepared for that and have a thick skin. I am being sincere here - I would like you to be able to stick around despite what you will probably perceive as an adversarial environment. Because this is also one of the few places on the Internet where people are allowed to say "Trans women are men" without being banned.

Which, bringing this around to my point, is part of the reason even many more moderate folks like myself have become, if not radicalized, then rather more hostile to trans people than we once were. Putting cards on the table again, my own personal opinion is that gender dysphoria is real and I think people should be allowed to live and identify as they wish, but they shouldn't be able to force other people to accept their internal identification as biological reality. More concretely, I think people should address you as "Ma'am" out of politeness and people who go out of their way to "misgender" you are being hostile assholes. But most people don't really believe you're a woman and you shouldn't expect them to feel obligated to update their mental model on demand, nor should you try to sniff out signs of heresy (i.e., clues that they don't actually think of you as a woman, for which you would then try to socially punish them). I am not saying you do this - but many trans people do do this, and that is the cause of the much of the present hostility towards trans people.

In my opinion, until a decade or so ago, most people (at least on the liberal side) were much more accepting of trans identity because trans people sold themselves the way gay people did - "We just want to be left alone to live our lives in peace." Which is no doubt true of most trans people! But then we started seeing increasing pressure not just to accept, but to validate. Increasing demands to proactively affirm that we really, really see you as a woman, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a hateful bigot. Then came trans women who used to be mediocre middle aged male athletes suddenly joining a woman's sports league and crushing lifetime competitors. Trans women who were men until five minutes after their conviction for a violent sex felony, whereupon they discovered their female identity and a need to be housed in women's prisons. Trans women who really want to show off their erections in women's locker rooms and force low-wage immigrant women to wax their female balls. Trans women who transition after a lifetime of being a husband and a father and dress like minimal-effort clowns while representing the US government. Trans women who want you to be fired if you won't put pronouns in your email signature.

These are undoubtedly a tiny minority of trans people. But it doesn't take very many bad actors to cause a lot of disturbance and distress, and more importantly, the reaction from the trans community has been largely, not acknowledgment that there are bad actors and maybe it's appropriate to not assume "good faith" on the part of every single man who suddenly realizes he's a woman in his 50s. Not to allow us to apply some... gatekeeping and to acknowledge that biological sex is a thing and you can let trans women live as women and be polite to them without letting them compete against women in the Olympics. But instead, to double down on all these issues and say "No, a trans woman is a real biological woman and should be able to show off their female penis in front of teenage girls, should be able to beat up women in sports, should be able to share a cell with women in a prison."

And that... is why I personally have lost a lot of my sympathy for the trans movement. I still am polite to trans people I know personally. I would use your preferred name and pronouns in person. Even though I would not actually think of you as a woman. And I would treat you as a very dangerous person to interact with, socially and professionally, on the assumption that a slip on my part would result in you trying to bring down sanctions upon me.

I am interested in your thoughts on this. Do you think the trans community has "gone too far"? Or do you think this is an exaggeration and we just see the worst and most extreme outliers? Do you think people should be required to actually think of you as a woman (to the degree that you can police someone's thoughts)? I won't demand you defend trans women in women's sports or prisons, though I am kind of interested in that, but that's a very familiar discussion we've had before (albeit rarely with trans people actually participating).

not many people just independently "discover" us

I've hung around the Slate Star Codex space for a while, if it helps. I lurked in /r/TheMotte for a while, but that's been dead for a while.

and announcing yourself with a username guaranteed to set off a lot of folks here is a little suspicious

I figured if I was going to poke the bear, I might as well be open about my identity; I've got skin in the game.

I hope you are prepared for that and have a thick skin

It is indeed a thick skin. I'll admit I'm mostly disappointed with the response; I was hoping for more light and less heat. Your response is a lot more interesting than most :)

most people don't really believe you're a woman

I think a lot of people are more open-minded than you think. I think the vast majority of people I interact with either genuinely think I'm a cis-woman, or don't care. I've encountered people that DO care, and they tend to react much differently. Obviously there are many areas of the world where that would be different, but I've done a fair bit of business travel and I feel confident in saying most people just don't notice.

and you shouldn't expect them to feel obligated to update their mental model on demand, nor should you try to sniff out signs of heresy

At the end of the day, if you're trying to treat me with respect, I think that's what really matters. When I first changed, it was clear some people struggled to update my pronouns even though they clearly respected me. I'd have been offended if anyone tried to sic HR on them.

Then came trans women who used to be mediocre middle aged male athletes suddenly joining a woman's sports league and crushing lifetime competitors.

Oh boy, that's a complex one...

First off, I don't think anyone is going to transition just to cheat at sports - you're making life long changes to your body, and also we have tons of known cheaters who chose much easier routes.

Second, the evidence I've personally seen (and I'm hardly an expert), suggests that when people do this, they're usually placing middle of the pack, which suggests that transition and hormones and all of that really does have a negative impact on performance.

Conditional on "this person has completed hormonal transition, and performs in the cis-female athletic range", I don't see a strong argument for excluding them from the league - they're going to get trounced in the male league, and aren't exactly setting records in the women's league, so... that seems like a fair competition?

Look at the other direction of transition: If someone is taking testosterone, and performs in the male athletic range, do you really want to keep them in the women's league just because they were born with a uterus?

But to bite the bullet, yeah, IF trans women DO have a clear advantage over cis women, then that defeats the whole point of gendered sports leagues. I just don't think this is nearly as decisively established

(and it does follow that any law made before we've actually established the science is probably premature, although I also can't think of a better way to collect data - run this experiment for a few years and if trans people keep ending up at the top, we made a mistake. If trans people generally end up in the middle, well, what's the problem?)

Trans women who really want to show off their erections in women's locker rooms

I think the USA has a really weird culture around nudity. There's plenty of cultures where seeing grandma and grandpa naked at the hot springs is just a normal part of life, and everyone grows up well adjusted. Seeing a penis in the locker room shouldn't be so traumatic. But then US culture acts like any nudity OUTSIDE of a locker room is horrific, which just doesn't make sense to me. If you think seeing genitalia is so bad, we should clearly have single-person gender-neutral locker rooms.

You've got a row of men showing off their penises at the urinal in the men's room. If seeing a penis is so horrible, why are you so comfortable making people endure that?

And, I mean, do you really feel more comfortable in a bathroom full of bearded trans guys? What if they've had surgery and have penises?

But the whole problem is because the US can't decide whether nudity is a normal part of life or some horrifying thing. If nudity is a normal part of life, then seeing a penis in the locker room is nothing. If nudity is some horrifying thing, then get rid of communal locker rooms and urinals and all these other disgusting locations where guys feel free to show off their dick.

I simply don't get the idea that women are UNIQUELY scandalized by penises, but guys should all be totally okay with it.

(and as a trans person, the answer is "I change in a bathroom stall because no matter which choice I make, people seeing me naked are going to get upset", which sucks)

dress like minimal-effort clowns while representing the US government.

Aww c'mon, that's heat, not light.

Trans women who want you to be fired if you won't put pronouns in your email signature.

Amusingly, pronouns in email is actually something a lot of trans people hate too. Making it mandatory means everyone in the closet has to actively submit the wrong pronouns, and it's usually done in a way that just calls attention to the most androgynous / badly-passing trans people in the group.

compete against women in the Olympics

So, going the other way: I think one could reasonably say a lot of anti-trans voices are also acting in bad faith. For instance, JK Rowling recently called out an Argentinian boxer as "trans" with... basically zero evidence? And on the "not actually trans" evidence, we've got the fact that she's from a country where transition is illegal, we've got childhood pictures of her, we've got the IOC tests that every other athlete does, and we've got said boxer suing JK Rowling (not exactly a clever move if it really is all a fraud!)

Do you have ANY examples of an openly trans person winning the gold metal in a Women's Olympic event?

should be able to show off their female penis in front of teenage girls

I'm still not sure why penises are uniquely traumatizing to teenage girls, but have no harmful effect on teenage boys. I'm still not sure why only penises have this uniquely traumatizing effect, but men can handle vaginas just fine. Again, there's plenty of cultures where nudity is common, and everyone seems to do just fine seeing a penis there. But if you think seeing a penis is this horrifying traumatizing event, why do you keep inflicting it on little boys?

And I would treat you as a very dangerous person to interact with, socially and professionally, on the assumption that a slip on my part would result in you trying to bring down sanctions upon me.

I think this really depends on where we are in the world. There's plenty of countries that make my existence illegal, so I think overall trans people are in a lot more danger than you are. If you meet me on my home turf, I've probably got some ability to make things awkward for you, but I really doubt I could get you fired or cancelled or anything.

need to be housed in women's prisons

"Rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization in the previous 6 months were highest for female inmates (212 per 1,000), more than four times higher than male rates (43 per 1,000)." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2438589/

If someone wants to be put in with the more dangerous group, I'm not really clear what the controversy is?

There's clearly a huge sexual violence problem to solve here. I'd think solving that would take priority, and then in a few decades we can discuss the 1% of the population that's trans?

Similar to bathrooms, either nudity is a normal and OK part of life and you need to stop being scared of penises, or else you need to stop forcing people to get naked together.

Do you think people should be required to actually think of you as a woman (to the degree that you can police someone's thoughts)?

I'm pretty firmly anti-thought-police and anti-censorship.

That said, I'd again assert that most people that meet me don't give it that much thought, and really do just think of me as a woman.

Thanks, it was nice getting a juicy reply that was more than just "no, you're not a woman" :)

I'm still not sure why penises are uniquely traumatizing to teenage girls, but have no harmful effect on teenage boys. I'm still not sure why only penises have this uniquely traumatizing effect, but men can handle vaginas just fine. Again, there's plenty of cultures where nudity is common, and everyone seems to do just fine seeing a penis there. But if you think seeing a penis is this horrifying traumatizing event, why do you keep inflicting it on little boys?

I don't think the concern is trauma. Exposing a male sex organ to a girl/woman is seen as defiling her due to women being traditionally considered sexually "pure". There's no need to worry about defiling boys as they are inherently defiled.

You've got a row of men showing off their penises at the urinal in the men's room. If seeing a penis is so horrible, why are you so comfortable making people endure that?

Amadan touched on this, but I feel it's worth joining in: men very much do not show off their penises in the men's room. The norm is to give other men as much space as you can (leaving at least a urinal between you, especially in the case of urinals without privacy barriers), and to politely refrain from looking at other guys' penises even if one might catch a glimpse. In fact, someone who is showing off his penis (or deliberately looking at someone else's penis) is considered extremely rude and subject to social consequences for it. I'm not sure if you meant this claim literally or just as a rhetorical flourish, but either way reality is the exact opposite of what you describe.

We're talking about, like, 100 out of 300,000 trans women misbehaving. Do you really think there are not 100 men in the UK that have waved their penis around and tried to make people uncomfortable? Or are just socially oblivious and therefore always take the closest urinal instead of spacing out?

My personal experience with locker rooms is that if you take 100 guys, there'll be at least one that Really Clearly Does Not Mind Showing Off. Maybe they're not actively strutting around with an erection, but they're making zero effort to hide it, they're taking their sweet time changing, and they're more than happy to walk over for a conversation with it danging right there. Congratulations on you not personally being a victim of all that, but as a victim... I find it really weird that everyone here just wants to ignore that and reassure me that no, unlike my experience, everyone ELSE gets taken seriously an there's consequences when it happens to THEM.

But also, if the standard is purely "subjected to social consequences", then... what's the problem? It still feels insulting to me to say that cis women are utterly incompetent and can't even handle a simple disruption like this, but somehow it's absolutely zero problem for men to handle it. In what other areas are women too psychologically frail to handle things that don't affect men? If women can't even handle one person behaving inappropriately in the bathroom, why in the world are we trusting them to be police officers and politicians?

Ok you've moved the goalposts twice in one reply. First, I didn't say diddly squat about trans people so that's irrelevant. Second, we were talking bathrooms (and specifically the urinals therein), not locker rooms. The two are different situations so you're going to get very different results.

Sorry, I'm having a dozen slightly different conversations, and it can be hard to keep track of them. My point on urinals is that merely seeing a penis is not harmful. I have seen vastly more penises in the men's bathroom than I have seen in any other context. Stadiums and those big trough urinals are especially awful here. There are a lot of penises on display, even if supposedly no is trying to "show off."

I also, separately, think you're wrong about how often guys do enjoy showing off, but maybe I just got unlucky growing up. The core point is that people routinely have their entire dick out and exposed, and strangers are going to accidentally see a bunch of penises in there whether they want to or not. Maybe not every time you pee, but over a lifetime you're certainly going to see a lot more cocks than if we didn't have urinals. Some bathroom designs are certainly better here, but if we actually cared about privacy I dare say we could do a lot better.

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With regards to sports, I don't think anyone disputes that estrogen has a negative effect on athleticism and testosterone a positive. The dispute is over the "performs in the cis-female athletic range" part. I would probably put trans women and men in the men's category, in that testosterone is probably not going to give enough advantage to a trans man to really matter.

As for seeing penises, I guess it's one of those things where you probably just have to say America is prudish and you are an exception. Short of Amazon tribes, even less prudish places like Japan that have penis festivals have segregated restrooms.

Thank you for the response. Apologies if I don't cover every response (a lengthy quote-and-respond chain can get very lengthy), but let me address a few points where I think we either disagree or you misunderstood my objections.

I think a lot of people are more open-minded than you think.

I will take your word and your lived experience for it on this, but my own impression is that (a) most trans women think they pass much better than they do (because most people are polite and aren't going to go out of their way to tell you they know you're trans), and (b) most people are open minded, but you probably think "Accepts my identification and agrees with me when I talk about trans rights means they really think I'm a woman." You might be disappointed if you knew what everyone really thinks. I don't really know, any more than you do, how many people who say TWAW really, truly believe it - neither of us can read minds or hearts. But my own suspicion is that it's less than would admit it.

About trans women athletes: I haven't studied the issue enough to produce statistics, and trans women are sufficiently rare that there probably aren't conclusive statistics yet. We all know the high profile cases like Rachel McKinnon and Lia Thomas and Laurel Hubbard, et al - the cases of mediocre male athletes who suddenly blow away their competition after transitioning are pretty numerous at this point. The response from trans rights activists is always similar to yours: "Trans women don't win every competition they enter!" And what seems to me like a lot of handwaving to deny that having a male-sized, male-muscled body with testosterone (even if reduced post-transition) is a major advantage in pretty much every athletic competition. I mean, if 10 years from now we have solid evidence that trans women do not, on average, perform at a higher level than women of similar age and experience, that would be interesting, but I have to say from the small sample sizes we can see now, I am very skeptical. Certainly every time I see a trans woman standing next to women in a rugby or a boxing match, I cannot understand how anyone can claim there isn't an obvious problem there.

Look at the other direction of transition: If someone is taking testosterone, and performs in the male athletic range, do you really want to keep them in the women's league just because they were born with a uterus?

I think as a matter of legality, it would have all go the same way, one way or the other: either trans women compete with women and trans men compete with men, or everyone competes with their birth/biological sex.

I am not aware of any trans men who after taking testosterone have become competitive in a men's sport. Are you?

The fact that (a) we don't see a lot of trans men trying to join men's teams and it hasn't been an issue because (b) any trans men in a men's league would be crushed and everyone knows it, is evidence of my point, that biologically, you are still going to compete with the body you were (mostly) born with.

About locker rooms: look, I agree that in theory, if we had a more open culture around nudity, maybe this would be less of an issue, but my problem is not that I think teenage girls will be traumatized by seeing a penis. (Nowadays, they've probably seen one about five minutes after they first got a smartphone.) My problem is explicitly the bad actors who want to show their penis to women in a locker room, knowing that it will make women uncomfortable. They are, to put it bluntly, exhibitionists if not worse, and saying "Well, if we were all just more comfortable about nudity" is missing the point. Again, I know these trans women are a minority, but I have read enough stories to know they aren't singular incidents either; there is a very small but very aggressive minority of trans women who really seem to get their jollies by making women (and girls) feel uncomfortable in female spaces. Whether it's because they think this is some sort of sitting-at-the-lunch-counter stand for trans civil rights, or just garden variety harassment and exhibitionism, it is definitely doing nothing to convince me they are acting in good faith. And I can't say I am impressed by an argument like this:

You've got a row of men showing off their penises at the urinal in the men's room. If seeing a penis is so horrible, why are you so comfortable making people endure that?

Dude (I say with tongue somewhat in cheek), as a penis-haver (past and/or present), you know damn well that we don't "show off our penises" at the urinals. You have to kind of go out of your way to see another guy's junk in the bathroom, unless he's waving it around.

Which is also unfortunately the pattern I have heard from these penis-in-the-women's-locker-room stories. Men and women will both walk around naked in the locker room, but generally speaking, they don't like... display themselves, or go so far as to stand in front of another person giving them a belligerent full-frontal display. How often have you seen that, honestly? If someone walked up to you buck naked in the locker room and just stood there trying to engage you in conversation from an arm's length away while letting it all hang out and no effort to cover anything up, would you not consider that... strange? Especially if they are a stranger? Come on now.

I simply don't get the idea that women are UNIQUELY scandalized by penises, but guys should all be totally okay with it.

I mean, leaving aside the whole sexual assault survivor thing (some women probably genuinely are freaked out by seeing a penis in what is supposed to be a woman's space), I can say I was at a convention recently that decided (because everyone there is super-woke) that all the bathrooms would be "agender." Most people, of course, still used the "men's" and "women's" rooms as appropriate for their equipment, but while I was standing at the urinal, one woman (who I happen to know is one of those super-woke people and probably calls herself non-binary or something) walked out of a stall and past me. And you know what? I felt uncomfortable. Not threatened or anything, just -- neither of the bathrooms were crowded, so she decided to use the men's room to make a point. And it annoyed me.

Aww c'mon, that's heat, not light.

Well... I will cop to being a little snarky there, but honestly, Admiral Rachel Levine really does strike me as someone who is cosplaying a fetish. Maybe she really, truly does identify as a woman and has always felt female, but I am pretty skeptical, because her entire presentation is that of a man who knows she looks like a man and wants everyone to know it and dares you to say something about it.

As for Rowling and Imane Khalifa, I honestly don't know enough about Khalifa's status to pass judgment. To my knowledge, Rowling didn't say she was trans, she said she was a man. Which may or may not be true, either biologically or legally. I have defended Rowling in the past because I think a lot of the attacks on her are made in bad faith, but I think Khalifa's case is, at the very least, complicated and she probably spent the first part of her life believing she's a girl, which makes me less hasty to call her a man myself and I wish Rowling had reserved judgment as well. But I'm not a famous billionaire who's made this my personal cause (nor been subjected to attacks over it for years). I think someone who is (most likely) an intersex person with chromosomal abnormalities who grew up as a girl is a pretty edge case and a distraction from central trans issues.

I think this really depends on where we are in the world. There's plenty of countries that make my existence illegal, so I think overall trans people are in a lot more danger than you are. If you meet me on my home turf, I've probably got some ability to make things awkward for you, but I really doubt I could get you fired or cancelled or anything.

I live in the US so that's where I am talking about, not someplace where you could be killed for being trans or gay. I can't say I find it reassuring that you basically say "Well, I probably couldn't actually threaten you" but it seems like you would if you could.

"Rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization in the previous 6 months were highest for female inmates (212 per 1,000), more than four times higher than male rates (43 per 1,000)." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2438589/

If someone wants to be put in with the more dangerous group, I'm not really clear what the controversy is?

Okay, I skimmed this paper - can't say I read it in detail, but it sure doesn't make it easy to separate out sexual victimization by staff compared to sexual vicitimization by other inmates. Let's say that women do prey on other women in prison at a higher rate than men prey on other men. I can think of a number of explanations besides "Actually, women are the more dangerous group," but it definitely doesn't suggest that a trans woman being put in a woman's prison is in more danger from the other female inmates than she is to them. Especially if said trans woman used to be a violent rapist and has undergone no physical transition. Yeah, I saw that Orange is the New Black episode where Laverne Cox gets jumped by a bunch of other women. Let's say I was not persuaded of its verisimilitude.

it seems like you would if you could.

Forgive me for only skimming this discussion, but is there some other comment that gave you this impression? I don't get it from what you quoted.

It's hard to talk about threat in the capabilities sense without any subtext of threat in the intentions sense, but I don't perceive any deliberate subtext.

On trans athletes: honestly, I think we largely agree here. I think a few high profile cases don't provide as much evidence about the average result, but I'm certainly open to the idea that it's unfair.

I can't say I find it reassuring that you basically say "Well, I probably couldn't actually threaten you" but it seems like you would if you could.

I'm not sure what about this reply made you think I would want to get you fired/cancelled. Could you elaborate? I already said I was against siccing HR on people who used the wrong pronouns for me at work, so that seems like a pretty big disconnect

My problem is explicitly the bad actors who want to show their penis to women in a locker room

Presumably we should treat that person like a criminal? Sure, it's a hard problem, but so are the bad actors who want to show their penis to little boys. We still let gay people use the bathroom, though.

If someone walked up to you buck naked in the locker room and just stood there trying to engage you in conversation from an arm's length away while letting it all hang out and no effort to cover anything up, would you not consider that... strange?

Oh, I found that super weird when I was growing up. Quite a few guys discovered I was not comfortable with that, and would go out of their way to make me uncomfortable. But no one seems to want to do anything about that. So... again, why is it okay to expect little boys to handle this, but grown women can't?

Dude (I say with tongue somewhat in cheek), as a penis-haver (past and/or present), you know damn well that we don't "show off our penises" at the urinals. You have to kind of go out of your way to see another guy's junk in the bathroom, unless he's waving it around.

It really depends - those big trough-style urinals at stadiums don't leave much to the imagination. Certainly, I've seen penises while using the bathroom numerous times, while I have seen a stranger's vulva exactly zero times. And your whole concern was exactly the sort of guy who is "waving it around."

I felt uncomfortable. Not threatened or anything, just -- neither of the bathrooms were crowded, so she decided to use the men's room to make a point. And it annoyed me.

... okay? What's your point? People feel uncomfortable when I use the men's room, for exactly that reason. If my trans-masc friends show up in the women's room, it makes people SUPER uncomfortable. If it makes you uncomfortable, why do you want more of it?

Especially if said trans woman used to be a violent rapist

I mean, presumably we have methods for handling violent rapists in prison? I'm sure there's at least one lesbian violent rapist out there.

The prison thing has a lot to unpack. If you can show some strong evidence that trans women are reasonably safe in male prison AND are a threat to cis women in female prison, I'll have to seriously reconsider my world view. So far I've not seen much evidence of either.

and has undergone no physical transition

See, the goalposts for everyone else is "uterus". If we change the standard to "vaginoplasty" I definitely feel better. The idea of throwing someone into male prison, despite them having a vagina and breasts, just seems insane on the surface.

If you're willing to bite the bullet and say "anyone with a vagina is female"... I mean, I could still quibble and debate, but I'd honestly consider you more of an ally than an enemy in today's political climate.

I'm not sure what about this reply made you think I would want to get you fired/cancelled. Could you elaborate? I already said I was against siccing HR on people who used the wrong pronouns for me at work, so that seems like a pretty big disconnect

Sorry, I misunderstood that part about "I could make things uncomfortable for you." But as I said, I would not intentionally misgender you. I wouldn't tell you "I believe trans women are men" (even if it wouldn't bring HR down on me). I would, however, assume you have a certain set of beliefs and attitudes that make it very risky to draw attention to oneself as potentially not trans-affirming. I realize this might be unfair, but that's how things work nowadays.

Oh, I found that super weird when I was growing up. Quite a few guys discovered I was not comfortable with that, and would go out of their way to make me uncomfortable. But no one seems to want to do anything about that. So... again, why is it okay to expect little boys to handle this, but grown women can't?

Sounds like bullying, and those guys were assholes, and in an ideal world it wouldn't happen, but in the real world kids have to put up with a lot of shit they shouldn't have to. We mostly expect kids to grow out of that behavior, and adults not to have to put up with it.

Presumably we should treat that person like a criminal? Sure, it's a hard problem, but so are the bad actors who want to show their penis to little boys. We still let gay people use the bathroom, though.

But the problem is we don't treat trans women who wave their penises around in locker rooms as criminals. Unless they're literally committing assault, someone who does that, even if very blatantly doing it as a display of dominance and exhibitionism, mostly can't be restricted in any way.

A man who goes out of his way to show his penis to a little boy in a locker room might not technically commit a crime, but ya know, people would know and recognize what is happening and definitely take action. Because he's a bad actor and we can identify bad actors. But we are not supposed to identify trans people as being bad actors even when it's pretty obvious that's what they are. The trans woman strutting around with her cock on full display in the women's locker room is doing it to make women uncomfortable, and women who have reported feeling uncomfortable have been told they have no grievance (or even been kicked out themselves).

This isn't comparable to inadvertently getting a glimpse of your neighbor's dick while standing at a trough urinal.

... okay? What's your point? People feel uncomfortable when I use the men's room, for exactly that reason. If my trans-masc friends show up in the women's room, it makes people SUPER uncomfortable. If it makes you uncomfortable, why do you want more of it?

I don't, and I think generally speaking people should be able to use the restroom they "identify" with, and yeah, that means maybe some people are uncomfortable seeing someone who doesn't clock as the "right" sex in their restroom. My point was that I think this woman was being a bad actor (in a very small way). I believe she wanted to make me and other men uncomfortable to make some sort of point. I could be uncharitable in my interpretation of the situation (there are other explanations - she genuinely identifies as male or non-binary, she didn't know which restroom she walked into and she really had to go, she thinks gender is stupid and genuinely thinks no one should care about that, etc.) but it made me think that was a tiny sample of what a woman would feel like if someone with a dick wanted to make sure she saw it in the women's room. I just didn't understand why she didn't use the women's room.

I mean, presumably we have methods for handling violent rapists in prison? I'm sure there's at least one lesbian violent rapist out there.

There is probably at least one. But come on, are you not seeing the same news reports I have? How many women getting assaulted/impregnated by a trans woman would be enough to make it a problem? (And yes, ideally there should be zero sexual assaults in prison regardless of sex, but I don't see why we should make an already bad situation even more exploitable by predators.)

If you're willing to bite the bullet and say "anyone with a vagina is female"... I mean, I could still quibble and debate, but I'd honestly consider you more of an ally than an enemy in today's political climate.

I would not agree that having vaginoplasty makes you female (I will still consider them a male who had surgery, sorry), but I would consider it enough of a commitment to living as a woman that women's prison would be more appropriate.

I don't, and I think generally speaking people should be able to use the restroom they "identify" with

So, if I'm correct: You're fine using my preferred pronouns, letting me use the restroom I "identify" with, and (post-surgery) using the "appropriate" locker rooms and prisons?

I would not agree that having vaginoplasty makes you female (I will still consider them a male who had surgery, sorry)

At that point, wouldn't it be easier to just say "female", though? Like, except for my ability to join a sports team (I'm too old for that stuff anyway), I look like a duck, I quack like a duck, why not just call me a duck?

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The trans woman strutting around with her cock on full display in the women's locker room is doing it to make women uncomfortable

So can we also safely assume that the man strutting around with their cock on full display in the men's locker room is also a bad actor?

Is "strutting around naked" really an unusual thing to do in a locker room? Are your genitalia somehow NOT "on full display" while you shower? We have had very different experiences of the men's locker rooms if you've never seen another guy's cock.

I feel like it's pretty easy to come up with an alternate explanation for why someone might be naked in the locker room, beyond "wanting to make others uncomfortable". But if we really do care about comfort, why not move to single stall designs so that no one has to see unwanted genitalia?

There is probably at least one. But come on, are you not seeing the same news reports I have? How many women getting assaulted/impregnated by a trans woman would be enough to make it a problem?

Do you have any statistics there? Are trans women more dangerous than cis women? Are trans women more dangerous than cis men? All the statistics I've seen about assault and rape say that intimate partners are the major threat, not strangers in bathrooms.

But come on, are you not seeing the same news reports I have?

I mean, realistically, probably not! Media is a massive bubble of filters, there's dozens of sources out there, and we probably live in different parts of the world.

If I want to understand an issue, I consider news a terrible way to learn. Keep in mind that news reports are mostly heat, not light - the very fact that it made the news means it's unusual enough to report on that event.

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Sex: the biological reality. A messy mix of chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy.

I don't really think this definition is accurate. The only definition of "sex" which really makes sense is "do your reproductive organs produce small or large gametes?" (substitute "or did they ever" for menopausal women, women who've had their tubes tied, or men who became sterile after undergoing chemotherapy; add in "before you removed them" for men who've been castrated, or women who've undergone oophorectomies; substitute "or will they" for prepubescent children; substitute "were it not for some kind of birth defect, would your reproductive organs produce small or large gametes" for the congenitally sterile). This satisfactorily answers the question "what is your sex?" in 99% of cases. Bringing in secondary sexual characteristics adds nothing to the conversation and does nothing to demonstrate that (as so many trans activists have claimed) sex is a "spectrum": a male with functioning testicles but who incidentally happens to have breasts becomes no less male as a result; a woman with narrow hips and small breasts is not "less female" than a woman with wide hips and large breasts. Yes there are intersex people, but no one thinks that the existence of people born with one leg (or, more rarely, three legs) invalidates the definition of "human" as a bipedal species. And even as far as "intersex" goes, it doesn't complicate our understanding of sexual dimorphism as much as trans activists would like us to believe: if there has been an intersex person with functioning testicles who has also been impregnated, I would love to read about it.

Why does it make sense to include menopausal women, people with birth defects, etc. in that category? "People who menstruate and can be impgregnated" seems like a perfectly natural category, but you're adding all sorts of exceptions in. If we're going to add a whole bunch of exceptions, why not also "Trans Women who have undergone SRS"? If we can create an artificial uterus in the future, does that make transition valid?

Why does it make sense to include menopausal women, people with birth defects, etc. in that category? If we're going to add a whole bunch of exceptions, why not also "Trans Women who have undergone SRS"?

Menopausal women's bodies once produced large gametes, but no longer do. That is a historical fact about their bodies. Just because someone has one of their legs amputated doesn't change the historical fact that they were bipedal from birth. Just as we consider prepubescent girls females because in most cases their bodies eventually will be capable of producing large gametes, we consider menopausal women female because their bodies once did produce large gametes: the arrow of time points both forwards and backwards.

Women with birth defects rendering them infertile have all the relevant "equipment" associated with the production of large gametes, but something went wrong in the development process and they're essentially being included as honorary members in the set, as they possess every characteristic associated with the set except for one specific thing that went wrong. (Another way of looking at it is that "X, which is broken or defective" is generally considered a subset of "X". If someone owns a car, but the engine isn't running and it's sitting on blocks, they still own a car: the owner still belongs to category "people who own at least one car". Barren women may not produce large gametes, but they still belong to the set of "people with ovaries". Trans women neither produce large gametes nor possess even defective examples of the organs which produce large gametes.)

By contrast, essentially all trans women's bodies had all of the characteristics associated with the male sex since puberty, including the key rule-in criterion (the ability to produce small gametes). SRS does nothing to change this: from the perspective of "what sex are you?", all it does is remove the ability to produce small gametes without doing anything to aid the target body in producing large gametes. Trans women who undergo SRS have not really "transitioned" from the male sex to the female sex: from the strict definition of sex outlined above, all they've done is desex (or emasculate) themselves and gone to greater or lesser lengths to approximate some of the secondary sexual characteristics associated with female people. SRS doesn't involve implanting ovaries or a womb (even defective ovaries or wombs) into the recipient's body. A male body which cannot reproduce is not functionally equivalent to a fertile (or even infertile) female body.

A memorable and evocative analogy I once encountered is that motorcyclists wear helmets that cover their entire head and leather clothes in case they have a bad fall, while cyclists wear lighter clothes for aerodynamicity and smaller helmets. But it's the vehicle you're riding (literally, what's in between your legs) which determines whether you're a motorcyclist or a cyclist, not the ancillary clothing choices incidentally associated with it: a cyclist wearing leather clothes and a helmet that covers his entire head is not "on the motorcycle spectrum" or someone who has successfully "transitioned" from cyclist to motorcyclist. All that FtM medical transition does is add the leather and removes the bicycle without replacing the bicycle with a motorcycle.

If we can create an artificial uterus in the future, does that make transition valid?

Maybe, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Seems like a real armchair hypothetical given the current (decidedly primitive) state of the art in gender reassignment surgical procedures.

Sure, but what does ‘female’ and ‘male’ mean?

Ultimately, it comes down to biological sex. The actual definition of a trans woman is ‘a biological male by sex who performs a social role or set of roles associated with women’. The question thereof comes down to ‘why should we care’. Like the social roles associated with women that aren’t on some level arbitrary are the ones a male-sexed person can’t perform anyways.

Like the social roles associated with women that aren’t on some level arbitrary are the ones a male-sexed person can’t perform anyways.

It's worth noting that there isn't broad agreement about what these differences in gender roles are. As far as I can tell, the entire war between trans activists and radical feminists happened because a specific sect of feminism denies that there is (or ought to be, at least) a difference between those gender roles. If women can be, say, firemenfighters, there isn't a distinct "men" gender role to mismatch with your mechanical parts, and so from their perspective the entire idea is nonsensical.

I've always found it odd that radical feminists hold some of the strongest objections to men who voluntarily emasculate and feminise themselves while it reads as a rad fem fantasy.

If the choice were between encouraging men to emasculate themselves at the cost of sharing the label of "woman" with them versus the essentialist position of telling men that they'll never be women so stop trying I would have assumed they'd choose the former.

I don't always find myself agreeing with the most radical egalitarian types, but I can at least accept their viewpoints. We've largely broadened the definition of "woman" to include anything a man can do (specific corner cases, maybe not). But they weren't really successful, as far as I can tell, at broadening the definition of "men". We haven't really increased the acceptance of men in caregiving roles, or even wearing traditionally women's attire -- the reverse pant suit, as it were.

I'm not planning to do it myself, but "I'm not a trans woman, I'm a man wearing a perfectly egalitarian dress. Don't assume my gender. " would at least be an interesting wrench to throw into the debate.

I'm not planning to do it myself, but "I'm not a trans woman, I'm a man wearing a perfectly egalitarian dress. Don't assume my gender. " would at least be an interesting wrench to throw into the debate.

It's already been done. The shitstorm was pretty funny.

In my experience, TERFs tend to be a lot more chill with trans women who've undergone bottom surgery than with those who haven't. They tend to find males with fully intact male genitalia but who still want to be considered "women" much more aggravating/threatening than males without, for understandable reasons.

Sure, but what does ‘female’ and ‘male’ mean?

They're clusters that were originally based around sex, yes, but plenty of cultures use the categories without referring back to sex these days. It's like how "2024 AD" means "two thousand and twenty four years after Jesus died"; you're making a fairly simple error if you think our calendar system relies on the existence of an actual biological Jesus.

The actual definition of a trans woman

I mean, every word has multiple definitions, especially a controversial phrase like that. But also: that wasn't the question that was being asked.

It's like how "2024 AD" means "two thousand and twenty four years after Jesus died"; you're making a fairly simple error if you think our calendar system relies on the existence of an actual biological Jesus.

This seems like a fundamentally flawed analogy. The choice of the year 1 as the starting point of the Gregorian calendar was arbitrary, meaningless and didn't refer to any actual historical event (even most historians no longer believe Jesus Christ was born in that specific year), but changing calendars is an enormous hassle, so we're stuck with this one even if it's based on something which is ultimately arbitrary and irrelevant. With you so far.

But the "clusters" that are based around the words "male" and "female" are not meaningless and arbitrary. In fact, the concepts associated with these words have more predictive power than almost anything in the biological (never mind social) sciences. For instance: 100% of human babies born via natural birth or C-section were gestated in the womb of a person whose body produced large gametes i.e. a female person. Conversely, 100% of the human people who impregnated another human person were people whose bodies produced small gametes i.e. male people.

Of course there's loads of ancillary, arbitrary and irrelevant nonsense associated with these two categories of human being (there's no reason that people whose bodies produce small gametes shouldn't wear pink clothes or dresses). But pointing out that there's loads of ancillary irrelevant nonsense associated with a given category of entity doesn't mean that the category itself is meaningless, or that the category doesn't "cleave reality at the joints" in a manner demonstrative of underlying physical laws. Boats still float on the water even if they are given a male name and no one gets around to smashing a bottle of champagne against the hull. "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

If you're measuring by gametes, then post-menopausal women are a third gender, and the same gender as a eunuch. Does that really seem like it cleaves reality at the joints?

That seems to be an attempt to make others adopt your frame that it is possible to change genders. If it is not assumed that it is possible to change genders, then it explains quite handily why a pre-pubescent or post- menopausal female is still considered a woman, and a post- castration male a man.

In biology there is always a "when functioning properly" attached to descriptions. A heart pumps blood "when functioning properly." A kidney filters waste "when functioning properly." A female organism produces large gametes at the species-appropriate point in the life cycle "when organs are functioning properly." Reproduction is generally only applicable at certain times in an organism's life cycle, but a bitch that isn't in heat is still a bitch.

I mean, you can change heart conditions and kidney conditions, why not everything else? We treat "people who have heart problems" as a discrete category regardless of whether it's congenital or not. No one sane is going around saying "well, your heart USED to function properly, so it's ridiculous to suggest you can transition into not functioning properly"

Also, really, "bitch"? C'mon, try to have some manners :)

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Copy-pasting from my other comment:

Menopausal women's bodies once produced large gametes, but no longer do. That is a historical fact about their bodies. Just because someone has one of their legs amputated doesn't change the historical fact that they were bipedal from birth. Just as we consider prepubescent girls female because in most cases their bodies eventually will be capable of producing large gametes, we consider menopausal women female because their bodies once did produce large gametes: the arrow of time points both forwards and backwards. Likewise for eunuchs and prepubescent boys.

So, wait, you think people who lost their legs should still be considered bipedal? Like, you think they don't need a wheelchair, and we should laugh at them when they insist they've "transitioned" to needing a wheelchair?

How in the world is this cleaving reality in a coherent way, but "people who get treated as women" and "people who experience misogynistic sexism" are somehow radical ideas?

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Yes. They even exhibit the same kind of stereotypical behaviors, such as disproportionate use of the care/harm moral foundation and loyalty to established political order.

The energetic economics of reproduction are really quite enough to explain sex and sex stereotypes.

Veering into metaphysics can have merit, and there too I think the gnostic approach of gender theory is quite terrible, but that's not really necessary.

They're clusters that were originally based around sex, yes, but plenty of cultures use the categories without referring back to sex these days. It's like how "2024 AD" means "two thousand and twenty four years after Jesus died"; you're making a fairly simple error if you think our calendar system relies on the existence of an actual biological Jesus.

Those cultures are wrong. Not in the way that using AUC dating instead of AD dating would be on a sufficiently different page that answering '2777' to 'what year is it' would functionally be wrong, but wrong in the sense that it doesn't actually tell us anything. Pink skirts being associated with femininity doesn't have a particular reason behind it; skirts being associated with masculinity still exists in certain contexts, such as kilts or fustanella(this garment is even frilly). Pink is for girls and blue is for boys was the other way around in (barely)living memory, and in fact I can readily imagine a counterfactual world where girls wear blue because Virgin Mary and boys wear pink because that's what blood looks like on a white shirt. On the other hand, uteruses being feminine is obviously biological. Most historical cultures defined, and most cultures today define, femininity as uterus having, and the claim of transwomen is that in every way except having a uterus they are more like having one than not. This is functionally self-defeating for any claim to separate the biological fact of sex from the cluster 'women'.

Yeah. Just since the points of measure are arbitrary it's still an absolute distance that is being communicated whether you do so in Meters or Feet.

If you remove the uterus, does someone stop being a woman? Are you really excluding anyone who, via birth defect, didn't develop a uterus? If we figure out how to grow artificial organs, does that mean trans people become acceptable?

The category ‘women with severe health problems’ exists.

Welcome to themotte!

People who think gender is defined circularly have a certain intuition about words - namely, that words don't really mean anything. These are usually highly systematizing people who would feel at home in a math textbook. In math, there is no particular reason why the particular words are used. Math could be done with random words as long as the relationship between the words is the same relationship as in our real math. This kind of person is over-represented in this forum many times more than in real life because of this forum's genetic history. Go back 15 years and some of the people on this website were reading a systematizer systematizing things

The reason why they would say these definitions are circular is because these definitions revolve around the use of the literal word "ma'am." If we played the randomize-the-word-keep-the-relationship, it starts to look kind of empty to say something like

A fnord is someone who wants to be called "ma'am"

So what is the meaning of the word "ma'am?"

In any case, I'm not sure "circular definitions" are the true objection to following trans-activist policy and culture proposals. You have a reasonable desire, which is for people to treat you a certain way. I think "transphobia" really is the best word for the reason why people don't treat a trans person like they desire.

Likewise, widespread shortphobia among straight women is the reason why society doesn't treat short kings like people.

A circular definition is just not useful. It breaks down and is only tethered to reality by the lingering remembrance of a rooted definition. A tether that will only fray and disintegrate over time like a plant pulled from it's soil.

There are ways to define trans that aren't circular, they just would cleave off one or another group of the trans coalition or make some asks carry less weight. My current model of trans(I'm going to give the MTF case but assume a symmetrical FTM case) is that it is a feature of some male brains that they are able to be in a state where they genuinely believe that would be happiest if they had as close as possible the experience of being female. This belief can be true or untrue, suppressible or unsuppressible those are their own questions. This belief is genuine and following the principles of freedom of form these people should be allowed to pursue body modifications and ask those around them to treat them as if they were female in whatever ways are reasonable to accommodate. Polite people should humor them and there should be a general understanding that this is an acceptable way to live. However we should not blind ourselves to the reality that this is fundamentally a truth about male brains, that there exist no gendered souls and that a brain cannot be in the wrong body.

I think this is basically the truth of the matter combined with the most reasonable course of action to take in response to it. A circular definition doesn't let us solve anything, it says nothing about the state of the world and is evidence of poor reasoning.

People who think gender is defined circularly have a certain intuition about words - namely, that words don't really mean anything. These are usually highly systematizing people who would feel at home in a math textbook.

I've noticed people do not at all share my intuitions about these terms, so I'm curious to explore this a bit more:

a non-self-referential definition of gender that doesn't just mean 'sex'

Gender is which pronouns I prefer, the same way my name is an identifier I prefer. Does this mean "names" are also an "empty" concept?

that doesn't just mean 'sex'

So, names used to be based on profession, right? Smith, Cook, so on. Does this mean that a name "just means" profession, even though that's a historical feature, not a modern one? Are you okay with the modern tradition of divorcing names from that former meaning?

Currency used to be based on the gold standard, but now it's just a bunch of numbers on computers. Is currency still "just about" gold? Is currency now also a circular word with no real meaning? Are you okay with the modern tradition of divorcing currency from the gold standard?

For the present, English pronouns do "just mean" sex, but it doesn't have to always be that way. In the far-future, pronouns could easily be just a normal thing people choose, eventually divorced from its accidental history of indicating sex. I think most realistically, we would rid language of gendered pronouns altogether to reduce social friction. Why memorize two identifiers for everyone in your life? That someone wants to overhaul language but chooses to keep gendered pronouns around indicates to me they have an agenda.

I have no problem, personally, with language moving that direction. Personally I try to use any trans person's preferred pronouns (for fear of social censure). I have no problem, personally, with decoupling all connotations and emotions from "she" and "woman." Because most of my social circle is progressive, I already do that in my head.

In 2100, Rule 30 of the internet will apply to real-life and also be amended -- that all women are trans women unless she proves it. I nominate the rule text "women are trans women."

they have an agenda

You say that like it's a weird, nefarious thing, but it seems like everyone who wants to change anything is obviously going to have an agenda?

I'm certainly not adverse to "abolish gender entirely" but it seems a lot easier to slot trans women into the existing system -vs- getting rid of the whole thing.

Are you arguing that common definitions of gender (e.g. "a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman") aren't circular? Or are you being sarcastic and I'm too drunk to pick up on it?

I was explaining arguments without endorsing them because my personal opinion isn't that important.

"a woman is anyone who identifies as 'woman'" isn't circular exactly, but it is empty and silly. To engage in malicious compliance, you should just agree that a woman is someone who identifies as 'woman' but then play stupid whenever anyone ever says anything interesting about a woman. If playing semantic games with "woman" is beneath you, then I'm not sure why you'd care if [silly progressive definition] is circular or not -- it would be silly to you either way.

There is a coherent definition hidden inside the woke agenda: A woman is anyone who wants to be treated like a ciswoman adult human female. This is obviously the correct description for the category that progressives call "woman." Naturally, they are allergic to saying the quiet part out loud.

Edit: (Unsurprisingly, the natural definition reveals that ciswomen is a more fundamental category than woman. Ciswoman is like "red" or "purple" -- you just vaguely gesture at examples from the senses -- you know obviously what I'm talking about)

words don't really mean anything.

We can obviously agree, empirically, that there are two major clusters in how people get treated, male and female. "Ma'am" refers to one of those two clusters. The "ma'am" cluster includes both people with penises, and people with vaginas. This all seems like a basic objective observation of reality to me.

Given that, I don't get how this is any more circular than any other subjective category, like "nerd" or "tall" or "centrist"?

If you mean to argue that the way people treat trans women is functionally indistinguishable from the way they treat cis women - well, no. Indeed, even trans activists don't believe this - essentially every complaint made by trans activists (including Tickle, which started this debate) seems to ultimately boil down to "I wish people treated me as a [sir/ma'am], but they don't. Even when I can see that they're trying to treat me as a [sir/ma'am], I can tell they don't really see me that way and are just playing pretend in an effort to mollify me." And that's not even getting into the people who complain that "people keep treating me as a sir, even though I would prefer to be treated as neither sir nor ma'am and this should be obvious to outside observers even though everything about my appearance and comportment is entirely consistent with my being a sir" even though our society never created a script for how to interact with people who are neither sir nor ma'am because those two categories covered 100% of people until some teenagers spent too much time having their narcissism reinforced and encouraged on Tumblr, and now here we are.

I get called "ma'am" and don't see any particular difference in how I'm treated. Plenty of trans people "pass"; it's not exactly an obscure topic. It shouldn't be surprising that trans people who fail at passing complain more - the ones who succeed are already getting treated how they want, so there's no really much to complain about personally.

The supposed circularity of woman is just whenever people use quotes to say something like identifies as "woman." You sidestep that by changing the word to "ma'am" but what if someone says, "err, but you're not a ma'am"? Then you need to define ma'am and then you might run into some circularity.

If you don't want to define ma'am then it turns out woman is just a cluster unified by an arbitrary desire to be called a certain word. Realistically, it's also an arbitrary desire to be treated a certain way in general.

With tall and nerd you don't need to make reference to "quoted" "labels" and self-ID, so you are unlikely to run into any circularity.

I will re-iterate that the supposed circularity is not really the objection to trans activist policy and culture proposals. A significant part of the population thinks the trans desire is unreasonable. The circularity of the new woman definition is a strategy to give trans people what they desire (certain social privileges and connotations).

but what if someone says, "err, but you're not a ma'am"?

That would seem like a weird thing to say, since "ma'am" is how most people refer to me, and it'll confuse other people if you refer to me as "sir".

an arbitrary desire to be called a certain word.

I mean, isn't that how names work? What's wrong with wanting to be called a certain word? I'm not forcing anyone to use it

That would seem like a weird thing to say

You're not a ma'am. If you're going to continue to insist that you are, then please define ma'am.

You're not a ma'am.

It's simply a matter of fact that when people greet me, they use "ma'am" instead of "sir". I'm not sure what's unclear about that sentence.

please define ma'am.

"ma'am" is the word other people use to greet me. I'm surprised you haven't run into it before? You'd have to ask them what they mean by it, I'm not the one using it.

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We can obviously agree, empirically, that there are two major clusters in how people get treated, male and female. "Ma'am" refers to one of those two clusters.

Yes we can.

The "ma'am" cluster includes both people with penises, and people with vaginas.

No it does not. The ma'am cluster- otherwise known as women- includes people who have vaginas, xx chromosomes, uteruses, etc. Larping males don't belong there even if it makes them sad, any more than the various schizos who run for president on the platform that they have a chip in their brain belong in the oval office.

Having male genitals or xy chromosomes is disqualifying from being a woman. There are some people who don't fit into either category, for no fault of their own, and we call them intersex.

You can say that this way of drawing the line is arbitrary, but you would simply be wrong- my way, and the old way, is better because it gets at the information people actually care about. I don't find you wearing skirts to be some fundamental aspect of your identity because you can put on a pair of pants with, presumably, the same level of effort that I can. But you can't change your biological sex. It takes major surgery to change your anatomy- and artificial vaginas are not functional in the same way as natural ones in a variety of ways. It is impossible to change your genetic makeup. Transwomen having female-typical hormones requires constant intervention.

It is possible to be wrong about your own identity, even if you disguise yourself.

No it does not. The ma'am cluster

You're really claiming that not a single trans woman has ever been referred to as "ma'am"? 😂 That's a pretty amazing claim, so I'm assuming you have some pretty amazing evidence for it?

But, you know, people have called me personally "ma'am", totally unprompted! They do it all the time, in fact. If I try to explain that I'm a guy, they get confused. So... I mean, I know for a fact you're wrong. I'm pretty sure you can find other trans people with similar experiences.

My claim is that you are not a woman. Your disguise being good enough to pass for one does not change this, because being a woman is based on biology.

So when you meet someone new, do you treat them as some sort of third gender until you've had a chance to confirm whether they have a uterus or not? Like, in practice, how does this function socially? How many people's uteruses have you actually confirmed?

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I'm waiting for a non-self-referential definition of gender

External Gender: People perceived as "female" get treated differently

Internal Gender: I prefer being called "ma'am", and am happier when my external gender is "female".

This is self-referential. "The meaning of female gender is treating a person like a female, and a person who is of female gender is one who wants to be treated like a female."

So are you saying all subjective categories are self-referential? "Republicans are people who vote for other Republicans" and such?

To me, I'm looking out at the world and seeing "Objectively, society classifies people into two clusters, which it calls male and female."

For historical reasons, these clusters tend to correlate with biological sex, but are clearly independent of it - even cis people get misgendered. I think we can both agree that gender does exist as something independent of sex? In the classic case, gender seems to be something like "best guess as to your genitalia", but people can still guess wrong. In trans-positive spaces it's more like "my best guess which pronouns would make you comfortable", which removes the legacy connection to genitalia entirely

For historical reasons, these clusters tend to correlate with biological sex, but are clearly independent of it - even cis people get misgendered. I think we can both agree that gender does exist as something independent of sex? In the classic case, gender seems to be something like "best guess as to your genitalia", but people can still guess wrong. In trans-positive spaces it's more like "my best guess which pronouns would make you comfortable", which removes the legacy connection to genitalia entirely

This all sounds perfectly sensible - until you apply it to literally any other trait based on a biological substrate, at which point the reasoning collapses and the motivated reasoning is exposed.

One of the things people most frequently say about my physical appearance is that I look much younger than I am: people from all walks of life consistently place me at about four-five years younger than I actually am (and I've gone to no especial lengths to bring about this state of affairs other than regular exercise and moisturising my face when I remember to). Does it therefore follow that I have an "age identity" which is wholly distinct from my physical age? In the classic case, "age identity" seems to be something like "my best guess as to how much time has passed since you were born", but perhaps in trans-age-positive spaces "age identity" is more like "my best guess as to which age you would feel most comfortable if people thought you were that age". Which implies that Madonna's "biological age" is 66, but her "age identity" is 21. Perhaps it would be trans-age-phobic of me to remind her of her biological age (like sending her out an automated email urging her to get checked for breast cancer, as her age puts her at high risk for that condition), rather than "affirming" her age identity at every turn.

You don't have to be Rachel Dolezal to be mistaken for someone of a different ethnic group. I've had people start talking to me in Finnish unprompted, even though I'm not Finnish, have no Finnish ancestry and have never even set foot in Finland. I have Mexican friends who get driven up the wall by people thinking they're Brazilian. Does it therefore follow that everyone has an "ethnic identity" wholly distinct from their actual ethnic background?

Sometimes you think someone's skinny, then you weigh them and it turns out they're heavier than they look. Does it therefore imply that...

Rather than having to invent this whole elaborate set of epicycles around gender as a trait wholly distinct from sex, I would propose what I feel is a more elegant solution. "Humans are constantly observing and categorising other humans. Over time, they build up expectations of what a typical member of a given exclusive category looks like (or acts like, or sounds like etc.). Because everyone's training data is different, no one's training data is perfect, and there is huge variability in what the members of a sufficiently large category will look, act or sound like - inevitably some amount of humans will miscategorise Person X as a member of category A when they are in fact a member of category B. It does not therefore follow that Person X really is a member of category A in some kind of mysterious ineffable spiritual sense which transcends mere biology. The above is true of any category with a sufficiently large number of members - for any given sex, ethnic group, sexuality, age, height, mass, disability status, annual income, profession, dietary restrictions, level of educational attainment, criminal record etc. there will always be some amount of people who get categorised into the wrong category by one or more people. This is a normal human error, and the appropriate response is a simple 'oh sorry, my bad': we are not required to invent elaborate ancillary concepts and entire academic disciplines to explain and elaborate upon this discrepancy between individual expectation and observable reality."

People routinely get surgeries to try and look younger. There's a rather huge industry around catering to people's "age identity" and trying to "pass" as a younger age than they really are. It is in fact considered rude to go around pointing out that people are older than they look.

No one is going around calling women in heels "deceptive" even if it does make them seem taller.

Given all that, why should I feel bad about taking advantage of your classification errors to get myself called "ma'am"?

like sending her out an automated email urging her to get checked for breast cancer

I really don't get how this analogy is anti-trans. Presumably if someone has transitioned and grown breasts, we should acknowledge that reality and send them emails suggesting they get checked for breast cancer now that they're at risk? And equally, I don't think a trans guy who has had a double mastectomy is at huge risk, here.

People routinely get surgeries to try and look younger. There's a rather huge industry around catering to people's "age identity" and trying to "pass" as a younger age than they really are.

Right, but just because someone looks younger than they really are, that doesn't mean that in some ineffable spiritual sense they are younger than their actual physical age. In my experience, most people who undergo extensive cosmetic surgery to try to reverse the effects of aging (the Bogdanoffs, Madonna, Simon Cowell etc.) are widely ridiculed for being in denial about the plain reality of their own bodies. Truth be told, I do think it's rather sad and pathetic seeing someone who refuses to simply accept the fact that they've become older and don't look the same way they used to.

I notice that you completely side-stepped the transracial analogy even though in principle exactly the same arguments should apply.

No one is going around calling women in heels "deceptive" even if it does make them seem taller.

If a woman of average height started wearing high heels and began claiming to have a "height identity" distinct from her physical height (and complaining that she wasn't being offered basketball scholarships or modelling contracts), I think just about everyone would react with bafflement at best and derision at worst.

Given all that, why should I feel bad about taking advantage of your classification errors to get myself called "ma'am"?

I'm not saying you should feel bad about anything. You do you. If it makes you happy to dress in conventionally feminine clothes and have people mistakenly assume that you have a set of reproductive organs which you do not in fact possess, go for it, more power to you. I just reject the claim that, because people sometimes incorrectly classify you into a category of which you are not strictly a member, that therefore means that you really are a member of that category in some kind of spiritual intangible sense. Such a framing would imply that my "ethnic identity" is Finnish in some sense, despite the fact that I have no Finnish ancestry, am not a Finnish citizen, don't speak Finnish or have any connection with the culture, don't know any Finnish people and have never set foot in the country. Like "I'm not a female person, but I look female" is a perfectly coherent statement; likewise "I'm not Finnish but I look like I could be" or "I'm 35 but I look like I'm 25". But statements like "I'm not Finnish, but I have a Finnish ethnic identity" or "I'm 35, but I have a 25-year-old age identity" would widely be derided as incoherent - and I'm arguing the same is true of "I'm not female but I have a female gender identity".

I really don't get how this analogy is anti-trans.

Many trans activists (not necessarily including you, I don't know where you stand on this issue) get very irate and defensive when people make plainly true assertions like "it is impossible for a person to change their sex", "only female people can menstruate or be impregnated" or "trans women are at no less risk of prostate cancer than cis men". My point is, if it's mean to remind people of true facts associated with their anatomical sex instead of constantly affirming their stated "gender identity" (even if the reason you're bringing up these facts is in their own self-interest), then by the same token it should be seen as cruel to remind people about true facts associated with their physical age (such as propensity to various cancers) rather than constantly affirming their "age identity" (i.e. pretending that they really are the age they're attempting to pass themselves off as).

people mistakenly assume that you have a set of reproductive organs which you do not in fact possess

That seems like a pretty dumb mistake to make, though? You know trans people exist. There's plenty of people in the "female gender, but no uterus" category. So why would you keep assuming that just because I have a female presentation, I have a uterus?

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So are you saying all subjective categories are self-referential? "Republicans are people who vote for other Republicans" and such?

That is a volitional category, not a subjective category. With volitional categories you can give the appearance of circularity with statements like "Christians are those who believe in Christianity" or "Military families are families where a father/mother has enlisted in the military." This superficial circularity is resolved by defining the second term. "Christians are those who believe Jesus of Nazarath (0-33 AD) was the son of God and his teachings result in eternal life for those who follow them." "Military families are families where a father/mother receives a salary from the government to train in the use of weapons and fight in the event of war."

This cannot be done with "A female is someone who wants to be treated as a female". Even if female is understood to be volitional, the second term goes undefined.

I think we can both agree that gender does exist as something independent of sex?

With the exception of grammar? No. If gender is not sex, it is incumbent on gender theorists to provide a non-circular definition.

"External gender" is your term for "gender roles", which can be defined as the manners and expectations society has for the male/female biological sex. If you want to say "gender roles should be abolished", you have a coherent position. But trans advocates do not (usually) want this; they want the gender roles to remain even as they deny female/male (the real, definable concepts) as meaningful categories.

"gender roles", which can be defined as the manners and expectations society has for the male/female biological sex.

Then why do people keep expecting me to act like a woman? I didn't grow a uterus, but everyone is calling me "ma'am" and they get upset if I go topless and show off my breasts.

It seems pretty clear to me that "gender roles" aren't based on my biological sex at all, but my gender presentation.

Because they are mistaken as to the facts of your biology, and this mistake likely originated in your intentionally disguising yourself as having female biology.

You really think people are going around a trans-positive space, full of trans people, and thinking "gosh, that person looks like a woman, they must have a uterus"?

You're only "making a mistake" if you are, for some reason, thinking about whether I have a uterus in the first place. Plenty of people avoid this mistake :)

Internal Gender: I prefer being called "ma'am", and am happier when my external gender is "female". In a lot of magical stories, a character has their sex transformed by some magic. "Internal Gender" is when a character wants to transform back, which is fairly common. "Internal Gender" is the idea that if you body-swapped with your mom, you'd still want to be called "him" despite the uterus.

Or, in D&D terms, you'd want to find a way to get that cursed Girdle of Masculinity/Feminity removed, since unlike the Helm of Opposite Alignment, it doesnt update your brain to make you happy with the situation.

Exactly :)

Appealing to random niche cultural sex-worker and/or designated eunuch roles to establish historical precedent seems to be the most common.

Honestly surprising nobody's tried to recast the Catholic Priesthood as a third gender.

The Catholic priesthood refers to itself as an uber-masculine vocation and explicitly excludes women. Priests in the roman rite aren't allowed to be married but the Catholic church does have Byzantine and Syrian rites with very similar theologies of the priesthood and married priests.

Monks and nuns would make an even greater example. Even today, it’s not at all uncommon to come across brothers who adopted female saints’ names and sisters who adopted male saints’ names. There’s definitely a case to be made that “Father Mary Patrick” and “Sister Boniface” are at least a little gender-bendery.

Gender was just a synonym for sex because people wanted to avoid saying sex because of the fucking connotation. We were then gaslit as if they were different.

When I was a kid, I still had French and Latin textbooks that said that "gender" was a technical term in linguistics and genders were groups of things that used the same pronouns, noun declensions, verb conjugations etc. In English, grammatical gender is only relevant to pronouns. But in languages where grammatical gender is a bigger deal, it is obviously a separate concept from biological sex or the social roles around it that managed to acquire the name "gender" in English in the 2nd-wave feminist era. (At least in correct French as promoted by the Academie Francaise, grammatical gender is a property of the noun and does not change based on the biological sex of the referent, hence "Madame le Ministre" as the honorific for a female government minister).

Googling suggests that the technical grammatical sense was the only meaning of "gender" in English in the first half of the 20th century. Resources on both sides of the political fence seem to agree that the modern use begins with notorious genital mutilator and paedophile enabler John Money in the 1950's, so depending on how you define Money's views (I don't recommend going there) there is a pretty strong case that the trans movement was using the term before the feminists were.

I wonder if part of the acceptance of the modern use of "gender" is that educated English-speakers are less likely to be familiar with the grammatical meaning because formal grammar (and particularly formal French or Latin grammar) is no longer taught in schools.

It's really obvious when you're not a native English speaker. In most languages the word for (biological) “sex” doesn't mean fucking, the same word for sex is used for grammatical gender, and there isn't a word for “gender” (these languages are now importing “gender” as a loanword to refer to the foreign concept of gender identity as distinct from biological sex, which has absolutely no basis in the native language).

Similar with the idea that male and female refer to sex while man and woman are something else (which genderists are walking back now that that battle has been won). In most Germanic languages the words male and female are literally man-like and woman-like with no implicit distinction between sex and gender identity.

It's pretty apparent even in English: the retcon split the adjectives male and female as "sex" from the nouns man and woman as "gender". There isn't really a way to describe a "gendered" person with a specific job -- "woman doctor" doesn't roll off the tongue.

I suppose this is excluding grammatically gendered nouns like actress or aviatrix that are becoming increasingly archaic at this point, although that may be the result of the proto-wokeness of last century.

Funnily enough, "beangarda" is one of the few Irish words still in common usage even among Irish people who profess utter ignorance of the Irish language.

The Irish police force is called "Garda Síochána" (guardians of the peace) and an individual police officer is a "garda". "Bean" (pronounced "ban") means "woman" - hence "beangarda".

In my dialect of English 'actress', 'hostess', 'waitress', etc are in common use, with a masculine generic form, and 'woman doctor' merely sounds old, not awkward. 'Woman cop' is in common use. 'She preacher' would mark you as a bit of a reactionary, but 'she-demon' is a less obscene term for bitch.

I wonder how true this is. In Russian the word for grammatical gender is род while the word for biological sex is пол (I don't know if people these days are using род in other ways). Male/female (самец/самка) are not used for people except in a derogatory sense, instead мужской/женский (lit. manly/womanly) is used for that. I suspect there may be a variety of approaches in different languages.

I wouldn't say мужской/женский translates as "manly/womanly". More like those two words are "male/female (adjectives)" and calling someone самец/самка would be "a male/a female (noun)".

You're right about the parts of speech, but the point I was making is that you wouldn't call someone a самец/самка unless you're looking to insult them.

I've only seen someone use род for gender in the translation of C.S. Lewis' Perelandra (where the divine beings are sexless but gendered), but all modern discourse uses a calque, гендер.

That's interesting because I was going to bring up Lewis as a counterargument to the "gender/sex distinction recently invented to undermine gender norms" POV. Lewis discussed it extensively in both fiction and non-fiction and certainly didn't intend it to undermine gender norms. In multiple places he argued that God is infinitely masculine although not male, and that biological sex was in fact only the expression at the biological level of a more ultimate reality.

Looking forward to Russia breaking open the third axis in gender identity space.

because of the fucking connotation

I see what you did there.

And yeah, the whole gender studies "gender has always been different from sex, we have always been at war with Eurasia," thing is just retroactive claiming. I don't doubt that wacky gender idealism has been cooking in the academic pot for a long time, but the smarmy way in which progressives like to start talking about how "actually gender is different from sex and This Is Known" like we're describing electron orbitals and not human constructs is quite annoying. There's definitely a motte and Bailey going on where gender is a social construct when they need it to be and a totally reified pure science of raw material fact when that's more useful. And certainly different people believe different things on that note, each gets sold the propaganda that will convince them.

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