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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33194 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Those things really don't say what you think they do. The Merriam-Webster definition c) is listed after b) : the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex; the fact that it is listed after b) indicates that it is less common. More importantly, dictionaries are descriptors of both technical and vernacular usages.

Going back to the beginning, the question was: what do** leftists/gender acivists/whatever** mean when they refer to gender? You said, "The point is that "gender" meaning "gender identity" and "gender" meaning "gender roles" are different and incompatible definitions," - well, yes, that is true, but not relevant if the terms are not used that way. The fact that you found a few people being sloppy does not change the fact that gender is a sociological concept that means something other than gender identity.

See [here}(https://open.lib.umn.edu/sociology/chapter/11-1-understanding-sex-and-gender/)

If sex is a biological concept, then gender is a social concept. It refers to the social and cultural differences a society assigns to people based on their (biological) sex. A related concept, gender roles, refers to a society’s expectations of people’s behavior and attitudes based on whether they are females or males. Understood in this way, gender, like race as discussed in Chapter 7 “Deviance, Crime, and Social Control”, is a social construction. How we think and behave as females and males is not etched in stone by our biology but rather is a result of how society expects us to think and behave based on what sex we are. As we grow up, we learn these expectations as we develop our gender identity, or our beliefs about ourselves as females or males.

and here

Definition of Gender

(noun) The attitudes, behaviors, norms, and roles that a society or culture associates with an individual’s sex, thus the social differences between female and male; the meanings attached to being feminine or masculine.

and here

Sex refers to the biological differences between men and women

Gender refers to the cultural differences between – it is to do with social norms surrounding masculinity and femininity.

Gender Identity is an individual’s own sense of their own gender. Their private sense of whether they feel masculine, feminine, both or neither, irrespective of their biological sex.

and, the whole last part of your post seems to be about something else - For example, I don't understand the relevance of the quote, "The idea that science can make definitive conclusions about a person’s sex or gender is fundamentally flawed."

Finally, the declaration from Deanna Adkins is about justifying sexual reassignment surgery:

  1. Medicine and science require that where a more careful consideration of sex assignment is needed that it be based on gender identity rather than other sex

characteristics.

  1. In the past, when mental health and medical practitioners identified a disconnect between a person’s gender identity and assigned sex at birth, treatment often focused on efforts to bring the individual’s gender identity into alignment with the assigned sex. These practices were unsuccessful and incredibly harmful. Deep depression, psychosis, and suicide frequently resulted.
  1. Medical science has since recognized that appropriate treatment for individuals who are transgender must focus on alleviating distress through supporting

outward expressions of the person’s gender identity and bringing the body into alignment with that identity to the extent deemed medically appropriate based on assessments between individual patients and their medical and mental health providers. These treatments have been very successful.

  1. In infants with sex-characteristics associated with both males and females, if an assignment is made that later conflicts with gender identity, then the only

appropriate medical course is to re-assign or re-classify the individual’s sex to align with gender identity.

So, when she says that "From a medical perspective, the appropriate determinant of sex is gender identity" she is not saying that gender identity = sex; she is saying that gender identity is the determinant of what sexual organs doctors should give to patients who are transgender or who were given surgery as infants because they had both types of primary sexual characteristics.

The point reiterated across the conversation is that there is strategic equivocation between the "gender identity" and "gender roles" definitions of gender used by trans-activists. (Both in what definitions is explicitly stated and what definitions are implicit in how they use the word.) I have no idea how you think that point is contradicted by them sometimes saying one of the two definitions being equivocated. What it does contradict is your claim that "Gender is not used to mean gender identity."

she is saying that gender identity is the determinant of what sexual organs doctors should give to patients who are transgender or who were given surgery as infants because they had both types of primary sexual characteristics.

No, the classification of which sex someone is by gender identity is regardless of having had surgery or any other traits besides gender identity.

It is counter to medical science to use chromosomes, hormones, internal reproductive organs, external genitalia, or secondary sex characteristics to override gender identity for purposes of classifying someone as male or female. Gender identity does and should control when there is a need to classify an individual as a particular sex.

Again, she seems to me to be clearly talking purely in the context of deciding whether or not to perform gender-reassignment surgery.

The point reiterated across the conversation is that there is strategic equivocation between the "gender identity" and "gender roles" definitions of gender used by trans-activists.

Not in the original post. The original post, IIRC at this point, claimed or implied that sex and gender mean the same thing. And see my previous post, in which I said:

Once again, the claim I am defending is not that someone "becomes male." It that they identify as male. A concomitant claim often is that society should treat those people the same as those born with penises (ie, of the male sex), but that does not necessarily follow. In other words, there are two claims: 1) sex and gender are different things; and 2) society should, in many instances, treat them as if they are the same. I am discussing only #1, which is true by the definition of "gender"

In other words, the original post seemed to say, not trans activists engage in strategic equivocation, but rather that their claims are wrong or even nonsensical, even when read in the most sympathetic way possible. And, as I read that post, that argument was based on a conflation of "gender" and "gender identity." (or perhaps it was "sex" and "gender'). Hence, I merely pointed out that the claims of trans-activlsts are not intrinsically wrong; they are intrinsically wrong only under the vernacular understanding of "gender," one which is not normally used in sociology, nor by the many pro-trans sources I have cited. Is it possible that you are correct that some trans activists sometimes use the term differently, as part of a rhetorical strategy? Sure. But, again, that is not the original claim that I took issue with.

So, basically, I think we are arguing about two different things.

Again, she seems to me to be clearly talking purely in the context of deciding whether or not to perform gender-reassignment surgery.

It is an expert declaration to a court regarding H.B. 2, the North Carolina "bathroom bill" which prohibited municipal governments from mandating that organizations segregate their bathrooms according to gender identity, and further required schools and government facilities segregate them according to physical sex. It is not about gender-reassignment surgery. It is about categorizing which sex someone is for the purpose of segregating bathroom usage by sex, and argues that according to medical science the only valid determinant of someone's sex is gender identity.

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