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Genuinely, I am here to get into the weeds so I would love to hear the line drawn between "cannot define what a woman is" and "epistemic collapse", and the threat that "epistemic collapse" poses, especially since throughout scientific history we've updated words to better match the scientific consensus of the model of our universe and our existence within it. I do assume you have more evidence for epistemic collapse beyond the "definition of a woman"?
I, too, have deep antipathy towards the perverse incentives within current academic institutions, and the actors who exploit those perverse incentives. Maybe you and I actually have some common ground there?
The epistemic collapse is that if a woman can be anyone who says they're a woman then we can't know what a woman is without asking everyone what they are, and taking their answer at face value. It's not an ultimate erasure of any meaning whatsover, but it's not really much better. It doesn't produce a model of our universe, it destroys the consensus and replaces it with an idiosyncratic label. What I call X he calls Z, and what he calls Z she calls Y. At that point you effectively are unable to talk about "women" in a meaningful manner.
Beyond women, what does violence mean? What does Nazi mean? If I tell you that violent Nazis are active on a local university campus do I mean that German centenarians who were members of the NSDAP are there physically wounding people, or do I mean that somebody mocked my objections to their putting up a Trump poster? Or what if I say that Europe was rocked by Nazi violence during the 1940s? Do I mean Belgians were upset about some Hitler posters they saw, or that stormtroopers kicked their doors in and killed them while tanks rolled through en route to Paris? You'll have to ask me what I meant to be sure because a consistent meaning has collapsed and now we can't talk about violent Nazis until you do so.
This is bad for the people who pushed it too because now there's no need to become a woman when they can simply say they're a woman without any other changes, and when people hear warnings about violent Nazis we can justifiably assume they're neither violent or Nazis.
It's worse than that. Under that definition I have no idea whether I myself am a woman, or not.
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Isn't the line, in this case, a dot? The entire point being that epistemology has collapsed to the point that the world's top experts in the field of gender can no longer define a commonly used word?
We're not talking about the definition changing, let alone changing to be more in line with any kind of science (or even scientific consensus), we are talking about the definition becoming incoherent, and experts outright refusing to give an answer about what they mean by the term.
The definition has done no such thing. People who refuse to give a straight answer to the question are trying to avoid political backlash for endorsing the radical ideas which are the necessary bedrock of a coherent and non-evil definition of "woman" (perhaps because they don't believe it themselves and are trying to have it both ways); not because no such answer exists.
Some might be avoiding political backlash, but some (the majority of academics vocal on the subject, in my estimation) are true believer queer theorists. Their basic belief is that anyone can (or should be able to) identify however they want, and express themselves however they want, that's why they see any constraint beyond a person wanting to be a woman as unacceptable. This is why they have to avoid even a "social" definition of "woman", and always put forward the circular self-ID based one.
Well, yes. I am a queer theorist. (Not in the sense that I do it for a living, but this is what I was referring to as the coherent, morally-correct, but unacceptably-radical-if-you're-a-mainstream-politician position.)
Then I have no idea on what basis you're saying that the definition isn't doing what I described.
Also, we're not talking about politicians refusing to state your position, we're talking about academics and clinicians.
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I was hoping a response would be more about the threat of epistemic collapse, rather than the certain evidence of it. But I'll bite.
The whole "what is a woman" thing is just a "gotcha" that abuses the fact that words have different meanings in different contexts. Very few words evoke a singular meaning in our minds. It's like asking "what is water"? Well, are you asking about the thing I can drink? The thing I can swim in? The chemical composition? My take is that if you asked people before the concept was politicized, very few people would spit out the answer "someone with a vagina". They would probably describe quite a few gender-coded concepts, thinking that you were asking something that had more philosophical depth than the most obvious answer. Just like when you ask me "what is water" I don't immediately go "H20, dumbass." Matt Walsh is a hack and this paragraph sums up his entire strategy.
More importantly, within our legal documents the word "water" takes many different meanings as well! Why not "woman"?
I disagree, there's no gotcha. This is literally a case where the group that refuses to give a non-circular definition does so, because they don't want to constrain the category. They will not give a biological definition, because they want to allow for transition, but they will not give a social definition either, because that means being a woman requires imposing a certain set of social expectations and that would contradict their ideology as well.
Their only option is to not give a definition at all, which is what they're doing. I think your explanation is incapable of explaining this behavior, so I don't think it's correct.
I don't think so, but even if you're right, that's a strictly superior situation to the one we're in right now.
Well, I'd say it's pretty obvious. If you can't tell the difference between your dog and your chair, you might sit on your dog, and take your chair out for a walk, which is exactly what we're seeing with things like male rapists being sent to women's prisons.
See that's the line I'm interested in. How do we go from "gender and sex are different concepts, and woman is attached to gender, not sex" to "Whoops I sat on my dog because I can't tell the difference between a chair and a dog?" That's the bailey and:
this is the motte. It's a real problem that I can't argue against. Why can't we update our institutions to be sensitive to the rights of inmates in general? Why does it take a "male rapist" being sent to a "women's prison" for us to give a shit?
They were more sensitive to the rights of prisoners 'in general' when we weren't forcing female inmates to bunk alongside male rapists. And plenty of people gave a shit about it and begged the government not to do it, and were told they were killing vulnerable trans women.
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No, it's not. We're not going from "gender and sex are different concepts, and woman is attached to gender, not sex", we're going from "I refuse to give you any definition of 'woman' that will constrain the category in any meaningful way (beyond, perhaps, it applying to humans, but even that is not certain)". How we arrive from there to treating men as though they were women because you're not able to define either, analogously to the dog & chair example I gave, should be clear and obvious.
It's not the motte. It's a supporting example for why my interpretation on what's happening with the definition of the word "woman" is correct, and your's is incorrect.
I'll note this is a complete change of subject, but I'll answer anyway.
We do give a shit, and not sending male rapists to women's prison is an example of that. The disproportion of strength between men and women is so massive, that basically every society came up with sex-segregation in contexts where it wanted to maximize the safety of women. If you're asking why we can't provide safety for all inmates, it's because we don't live in a perfect world, and we will never live in one. Unless you put the prisoners under total surveillance under all times (a violation of their rights) or into solitary confinement (a violation of their rights) you will never keep them completely safe. We opted for an arrangement where prisoners are sorted by how much danger they pose to each other, and I doubt you'd be able to come up with something better.
Regarding the trans-women-in-prison thing, I came up with a counterargument the last time this came up. Curious how you'd answer it. Some trans woman prisoners may try to rape biologically female inmates if put in women's prisons; but won't male inmates be even likelier to try to rape the trans woman if she's sent to the men's prison? If we assume that not all trans women are rapists, but all male prisons contain at least one rapist willing to rape a trans woman, it seems like sending trans women to female prisons will prevent more rapes than it will enable.
(By the way, this is unrelated, but AI could allow us to cut the Gordian knot on constant surveillance pretty soon. A 'dumb' AI can be constantly monitoring prisoners on video feeds human wardens can't access, and if it observes what appears to be rape, it rings an alarm. Slightly ahead of current technology, but IMO clearly achievable using the kind of tech that goes into self-driving cars. It wouldn't need to be foolproof, either, few positives have minimal cost.)
Sure, I have a few arguments. First, I'm not certain about this one, because I think I saw someone questioned the stats, but the numbers might not work out the way your argument is assuming to begin with, trans sex offenders seem to be overrepresented in prison compared to cis-men sex offenders.
Second, I think the strength disparity between men and trans women is smaller than between trans women and women, so they'd be in relatively less danger.
Third, I don't know exactly how the prisoner sorting system works, but my understanding is that if you're in for something nonviolent, you get pit in a low security prison, with other nonviolent people. You can also get transferred to one for good behavior. If we're talking about a violent trans offender that ended up in a high security prison, I'm less inclined to give a damn to begin with.
Fourth, what Amadan said.
Your first point isn't terribly persuasive to me, because I don't think most male prison rapists were put behind bars as sex-offenders. Relatedly, my answer to the second point is that male-on-male prison rape is still widespread to the point of being a punchline. And indeed, Wikipedia links to studies claiming to show that 70% of transfem inmates reported having been raped, with 60% claiming violent assault rather than "mere" coercion. Going by those numbers, even assuming all transfem sex offenders will attempt rape in prison, the average transfem prisoner is still more likely to be raped than to commit rape.
(I have no doubt the numbers are somewhat inflated, but you don't get this much smoke without a fair bit of fire.)
I can't condone that perspective - IMO rape is simply not acceptable; it's not appropriate karma for any crime no matter how depraved; it simply has no place in a civilized society. But if we grant the premise, then presumably a violent trans offender who gets sent to women's prison would only be able to prey on biologically-female violent offenders, too. If you don't care whether violent offenders get raped, then you have no reason to care which prison trans offenders go to either way, at least as far as the rape angle is concerned.
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Arguing that female inmates just need to submit to more danger because you've mathed out that it would be "worse" for trans women to be endangered sounds like you're practically making the TERF argument for them: that trans activists consider the feelings and safety of men to always be more important than those of women. "Well, sure, some trans women might be predatory sex offenders who will rape the female inmates they are housed with, but what if one of them was raped by a man? Wouldn't that be so much more horrible?"
I don't think this is quite the trolley problem you think it is. Trans women can be put in protective segregation in a men's prison.
And prison rape isn't actually a problem of not being able to prevent it. Other countries don't have the same problems US prisons do. We don't want to prevent it, because our prison system is dysfunctional in general, and also we have somehow adopted a cultural norm that getting raped in prison (or at least having that be an ever-present threat) is just part of the punishment.
With due respect, that's a caricature of my argument and I do not agree that I'm "practically" making it. I care equally about the feelings and safety of all human beings regardless of sex or gender. My concern here is based exclusively on the probability that more rapes would result from one policy over the other. It isn't remotely the same thing as saying I think a cis woman being raped is any better than a trans woman being raped.
I agree this would solve the problem, but nobody seems keen to make it happen. As you say at the end of your post, however, this is ludicrously far from the Overton window. So long as this is a thing, I don't think you're going to get anywhere advocating for that. Hell, if we agree with the principle of putting trans inmates in a special segregated section for safety, couldn't you do the exact same thing at a women's prison? I have greater confidence that the wardens at a women's prison would keep a close eye on transfem inmates to make sure they aren't raping anyone, than I have that the wardens at a men's prison would look out to make sure that the trans woman inmate isn't being raped.
(But fundamentally, again as per the end of your post, any rape-mitigating policy on trans inmates is a flimsy bandaid on a huge festering gash. We simply need to end prison rape in general, which I wholly believe to be achievable, and then… well, and then progressives can say trans women should be sent to women's prison for normal dignity reasons, and conservatives can say trans women should be sent to men's prison for normal insisting-on-the-primacy-of-biological-sex reasons, without rape coming into it. Which will be a step in the right direction.)
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No, it's a "gotcha" that uses the fact that the people "got" are using the word in a very non-standard way. Human beings are divided (not quite perfectly, but more perfectly than most things in biology) into two sexes and the term "woman" refers to a large subset of the individuals of one of those sexes. Those being "got" do not agree to that and so are stuck.
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