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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29716 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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While I applaud the attempt, I don't think you can solve anything this way. At its core, the trans debate is a values debate, not a confusion of terminology. The left-ish side (as I understand it, not trying to strawman) is that you need to do whatever you can to respect people's feelings, and that this stuff is all socially constructed anyway. So if John says he's Jane now, then you owe it to Jane to try to be courteous by respecting her decision. The right-ish side is that while respecting people's feelings is important, recognizing objective reality is more important. And if John says he's Jane now, yeah no he can't become John just by fiat. He's a man who wears dresses and got his genitals removed, not actually a woman (which is something we simply do not have the medical technology to grant at this time).

There's nuance to this, and it's basically impossible to boil everything down to a simple "this vs that" idea. I have no doubt that there are many people on both sides of the trans debate whose positions I didn't capture. In fact, I know there's a religious argument I didn't touch on and really is kind of orthogonal to the "anti" perspective I gave. But the point is, even though many different values exist in this soup, the fundamental issue is one of values. If it were a terminology issue, then it would've been resolved ages ago. So as much as I think your post is well-intentioned, I think it's also fundamentally incapable of actually resolving anything.

I think of the quokka as something like the larval phase of a rationalist before they fully mature into a cynical old goat.

The problem is, of course, that while members of one's one species find the neotenic features of the quokka quite adorable, they mean nothing to the hungry jackals who would happily devour it.

A large part of the anti-trans side, such as the religious people you mentioned, wouldn't accept Jane as a woman even if we had magical-level medical technology.

As for those who do accept that medical technology currently cannot make Jane "actually a woman", but it might be able to do so in the future – and I am assuming you belong to this group – I have to ask: what is a woman? What medical procedure would Jane need to "actually" become a woman?

Is it about external appearance? In that case, Jane can already easily get very convincing breasts, and it is my understanding that a convincing neovagina can also be created, though this is more complicated than breasts. The neovagina wouldn't be able to provide lubrication for sex, but we're talking about appearance.

Is it about reproduction? Medicine isn't very close to allowing trans women to get pregnant, but if this is needed for a woman to be "actually a woman", then plenty of cisgender women who are unable to get pregnant would also be excluded.

Is it about genetics and chromosomes? Now we get into various intersex conditions, and again we risk excluding cisgender women, or even including cisgender men.

P.S. Note the complete absence of trans men in your comment, and their near-total absence in the broader debate. To me this indicates that concerns about trans women are not fundamentally rational, but that they are the result of some sort of deep-seated emotional concern about purity, or about women's safety (the latter indicative of a misandrist view that men are inherently dangerous). If there are people here who believe trans men aren't actually men, I kindly ask that they also provide the criteria for distinguishing men from non-men.

Most people use the scientific definition of male and female as sexually dimorphic species. Some use a religious context, God having made male and female to compliment one another.

This new definition comes from power. I declare an X can now be a Y if Power says so.

Rachel Dolezal had at least as good of an argument for being black as any man ever had to declare himself a woman.

She grew up with black siblings, immersed herself in black culture, went to an HBCU, married a black man, had black sons, and began living in the world as a black woman, tanning her skin, learning to braid her hair, etc. She got everything good and bad that came from living as a black woman in society.

Power has decided that one is desirable and the other undesirable. Not logic or science or the arc of history.

With your men vs. non-men argument, I'm sure you'll agree that a white Scottish bagpiper in a kilt who got off the boat five minutes ago IS a Black American descendant of slavery. If he identifies as one, then he always was one.

It's not his fault we're still laboring under regressive notions that one's ancestry is linear and genetic. Ancestry is fluid! Foster parents exist, which proves parenting isn't necessarily related to genes. And of course, "black" isn't a real thing either: there are some 'black' people with lighter skin than some 'white' people! And again, ancestry is fluid! And it's not about culture. That's fluid too! There are black ballet dancers, white rappers, nothing we think 'belongs' to a race or a culture holds true in all cases. "Scottish" and "American" also have unclear boundaries. Once we didn't think of Hawaii as being in America - now we do! "Slavery" doesn't mean just American slavery - it can mean many different things throughout history. And historical records aren't always accurate and only go back so far.

Anyone can do the "define woman" or "define a true Scotsman" gallop. But that only works in a world where nothing means anything. In that world I can state with certainty that your post was not at all related to sex or gender but was actually a glowing review of Taylor Swift's new album, because the words you wrote are merely an arrangement of symbols that society has arbitrarily assigned certain sounds and meanings, and just ignore your arguments enitrely.

I believe trans men aren't actually men. I also regard them as amusing in kind of a grotesque, mean spirited way, not as the sort of thing that will hurt anyone other than themselves.

And a man is an adult male human. That is, he is a fully grown member of the category that can impregnate a woman. Which trans men are not.

Which trans men are not.

That's the whole point of contention, though. From how you're constructing the definition, I assume you don't think being capable of impregnating a woman is a necessary feature of being a man, since many people who cannot do that are generally regarded as men. So you, correctly, broaden the definition by stating that it's enough to belong to the same general "natural" category as people who can father children. But where are the borders of that category (assuming it even has borders and doesn't gradually fade away at the edges)? In a pro-trans perspective, trans-men are, indeed, members of the category that can impregnate women, even if they can't individually do that themselves. Your definition does not forbid this.

If there are people here who believe trans men aren't actually men, I kindly ask that they also provide the criteria for distinguishing men from non-men.

Here's some shared foundational rationality. No matter what a man is or does he cannot - in the logic of transexuality too - be or become a transman. And vice versa for the complementary sex and gender presentation. It's paradoxical. Therefore a transman cannot be a man, and a transwoman cannot be a woman. Only a woman can become a transman. Only a man can become a transwoman. Therefore transwomen aren't women, transmen aren't men, and this accords with the logic of transexuality. They are, charitably, transexual men and transexual women for which I can accept the novel and less ambiguous labels of transwomen and transmen respectively.

Winning, or even arguing the trans-are-actually terminology war for the trans side serves to void its own logos and, if you'll forgive the irony, to argue against it is to bravely support transexuals.

To be explicit, if a transwoman can be a woman then it must subsequently render either the word transwoman or the word woman empty of any meaningful significance. With only net negative meaning to be attained the struggle to claim membership of the pre-existing categories is not only moot but actively counterproductive. If womanhood is meaningless there's no rationale for pursuing it.

Please note, I am not anti-trans actions. I am anti-trans rationale. Adults have been free to change their name, their wardrobe and undergo any elective medical procedures they can afford for decades and while I might not endorse those choices I have no issue tolerating them on the basis that my own choices are tolerated. What I cannot tolerate is being expected to unquestioningly accept a glaringly unignorable contradiction. After that's acknowledged we could get into any broader concerns that may be more based in prejudice than reason.

Here's some shared foundational rationality. No matter what a man is or does he cannot - in the logic of transexuality too - be or become a transman. Only a man can become a transwoman. Therefore transwomen aren't women, transmen aren't men, and this accords with the logic of transexuality.

You're playing word games, by saying "man" and "trans-man" when you are referring to the concepts "cis-man" and "trans-man". When using that language, your post becomes

Here's some shared foundational rationality. No matter what a cisman is or does he cannot - in the logic of transexuality too - be or become a transman. Only a cisman can become a transwoman. Therefore transwomen aren't ciswomen, transmen aren't cismen, and this accords with the logic of transexuality.

If this is not sufficiently illuminating, let's try with the following substitutions:

• cis -> native-born

• trans -> foreign-born

• man -> American

• woman -> Mexican

Here's some shared foundational rationality. No matter what an American is or does he cannot - in the logic of transnationality too - be or become a foreign-born American. Only an American can become a foreign-born Mexican. Therefore foriegn born Mexicans aren't Mexicans, foreign-born Americans aren't Americans, and this accords with the logic of transnationality.

Like you can find people who believe that but it's pretty clearly an argument over where the boundary should be drawn, and saying that it's "shared foundational rationality" is an attempt to consensus-build.

You accuse me of word games and then game my words. Explain how a man can become a transman.

The religious acceptance thing isn't as clear cut as you think. Christians for instance have a long history with intersex people.

...Emperor Justinian's Digest of Roman law incorporated the statement of Ulpian, "The question has been asked:—according to which sex are hermaphrodites to be treated? but I should say on the whole that they ought to be treated as having the sex which predominates in them."

...The theologians of the School of Salamanca consider the case of a predominantly male hermaphrodite who has been ordained to the priesthood, licitly or illicitly, in whom the female sex has begun to predominate on account of ageing. They say "by reason of the changed sex" this person could no longer validly consecrate the Eucharist; the priestly character would remain in the soul, but would now be in the soul of a person not capable of exercising orders, just as a priest who has died can no longer consecrate the Eucharist. Considering the case of a woman who, "nature itself breaking out," is spontaneously transformed into a man, which they say Pliny the Elder testifies is not only possible but has in fact happened, the Salmanticenses say this man could be validly ordained, but unless the matter can be hidden, it cannot be done on account of the astonishment and scandal to those who would see someone they had known as a woman ministering at the altar.

So there is some discussion where someone who can perform the male role in sex can be a priest, even if they haven't always been able to perform the male role in intercourse.

However, that's a natural development of an intersex person's body. It's interesting that they talk about "nature itself breaking out." I don't think Christians will ever encourage someone to artificially change their sex, or believe that artificial changes are sufficient to actually change sex.

The reason for this is the steelmanned definition of sex. A woman is a member of the species homo sapien who, if her body develops in a healthy manner, will be able to conceive and bear children between adolescence and menopause. In this definition I do not even go into chromosomes, someone with a Y chromosome can also sometimes become pregnant without medical intervention. The definition also acknowledges that women may not always be able to conceive, there are many reasons for a women to be infertile. These are either due to a natural cycle of fertility/infertility, or due to some sort of disease.

This published gender philosopher provides a very good explanation of what people mean when they say female or male, and how that relates to woman/man. Quoting the most relevant part:

In all these very mundane statements in biology - the heart pumps blood, the kidneys filter waste - there's an implicit 'when functioning properly' qualifier in the statement.. And the same thing goes for biological sex. To say that a male produces sperm isn't to say that producing sperm is actually necessary to be a male. It just says that "when functioning properly" at least in the adult form, at some level of maturation, we are going to get sperm production.

A woman is someone who, if she cannot become pregnant during any part of her lifecycle, has a medical problem. Her inability to become pregnant needs an explanation. A man's inability to become pregnant needs no explanation.

A woman is someone who, if she cannot become pregnant during any part of her lifecycle, has a medical problem.

And then the left responds: "Yes, she has a medical problem! The problem is that she received the wrong parts!"

But when functioning properly, outside of her wishes, would her body be producing ova or sperm?

I don’t think theological speculation as to the treatment of people with rare birth defects is a helpful compendium to Christian views on sex and gender more broadly.

I think looking at edge cases are helpful when trying to determine underlying principles. The very rare birth defect category shows us what questions Christians were asking, what details were being considered and weighed, how these details were applied.

If there are people here who believe trans men aren't actually men, I kindly ask that they also provide the criteria for distinguishing men from non-men.

And yet I have seen that in general, people who are all "What is a woman? How can I possibly tell, I'm not a biologist" have no problem at all when discussing what is racism, because they are pretty darn sure they can tell what is a race, which race is which, and how there is no such thing at all as transracialism, even if "biology no real" when it comes to male and female.

John-now-Jane can get very convincing breasts from any plastic surgeon or via hormones, and those are every bit The Real Thing when it comes to "Jane is a woman", but spray tan and sunlamps to darken your skin are not The Real Thing when it comes to "Jane is not black and shouldn't even try to be, that is disgusting and offensive".

If we can't define "what is a woman?" then why the hell is John so adamant that he is really a woman and not a man? That he doesn't 'feel' like a man but does 'feel' like a woman? I might claim I feel like a unicorn, but very few people are going to accept that it is true that I am a unicorn.

If a woman is a category as non-existent as a unicorn, why not simply tell John "you're a guy in a dress who wears makeup and wants to be called a different name, okay fine" rather than "Why beautiful stunning and valid Jane you are indeed truly a woman".

By the "biology no real" definition, I could define a chair as a woman. After all, if you don't need real tits, real vagina, and lack of womb and ovaries no barrier to being a woman, why not a chair that doesn't possess any of these characteristics either? Me and Diogenes there with his plucked chicken, we fucking dare you. Look, this chair has a beautiful wig and gold necklace and dress, why don't you say she is a real woman too?

As for the exclusion of trans men (1) up until recently there were many more trans women than trans men (2) if a five foot one inch guy with broad hips and no muscles goes into a traditionally male space and tries to start shit, there's much less fear of cis men getting hurt. A six foot 'woman' with a functioning dick in traditionally female spaces, on the other hand, can be - the happy mother? father? of two babies by female inmates 'she' was put into the same prison with:

A transgender inmate has been transferred out of the only women’s prison in New Jersey after impregnating two female inmates.

Demi Minor, 27, has been moved to the vulnerable housing unit at the Garden State Youth Correctional Facility, a prison for young adults ages 18 to 30, according to Dan Sperrazza, a New Jersey Department of Corrections spokesman.

...Minor, who is serving a 30-year prison sentence for manslaughter, impregnated the fellow inmates earlier this year following consensual sexual relationships, Sperrazza confirmed. He added that even consensual sex between inmates is prohibited in the state.

Oh yeah, the 30 year sentence was for this:

Demi Minor, as a troubled foster kid — then called Demetrius — had a record for burglaries and at least one carjacking at gunpoint before brutally stabbing foster father Theotis “Ted” Butts 27 times in 2011 at age 16.

But I guess gunpoint carjackings and brutal murders are only "a misandrist view that men are inherently dangerous", right?

I did say that there was a lot I didn't cover. There are many perspectives, and I know it would be a fruitless endeavor to try to distill everything down to a couple of sentences without losing detail.

This is also why I didn't mention trans men, contrary to your speculation. I wasn't trying to present some kind of exhaustive treatment on the issues, but to give a succinct example of why new terminology is not going to help here. As it happens, I don't believe trans men are actually men either. They are still women, just women who have mutilated their bodies due to mental illness.

Perhaps at some point we will have the medical technology to transform a man into a woman (or vice versa), but for now we don't. And until we do, no amount of terminology is going to solve the fundamental issue that I have with trans questions. Namely, one can't actually change sex, so it is ludicrous to expect me to treat them as if they were a member of the sex they wished to become. That person is an adult and it's their right to mutilate their body if they wish, but it's not their right to demand that I make false statements about them.

As for those who do accept that medical technology currently cannot make Jane "actually a woman", but it might be able to do so in the future – and I am assuming you belong to this group – I have to ask: what is a woman? What medical procedure would Jane need to "actually" become a woman?

This line of reasoning always gets me. Person claims to be of different gender. People point out that this person isn't actually behaving like the target gender. Person claims have wrong views about what that gender is like.... well then what makes you think you are of that gender? Maybe the gender you currently have is also misunderstood and your biology actually got it right but societies views of it is not right?

You say "what is a woman and what would be required to be one" and I say if someone cannot answer definitively what a woman is then how can they possibly claim to be one.

Pretty sure that gender to progressives is something you self ID as and not something you are. Yes, this seems obviously stupid and at least a little inconsistent, but more people are stupid and inconsistent than they are deliberately evil.

The best way to understand this ideology is to assume its trying to destabilize society by trans-ing as many people as possible. The purpose of destabilization is to facilitate a revolution toward some nebulous utopia. The individual agents of this ideology may or may not explicitly recognize this, and even fewer say it out loud and in public. Most have internalized some incoherent set of arguments which superficially appeal to liberal principles, and they intuitively understand what they are expected and forbidden to say and think. It is low status to be seen to disagree or oppose this ideology, and the worst fear of many people is to be mistaken for the wrong sort of person.

The arguments are just tools deployed strategically to increase the number of trans people given the context. There are no unifying principles, and there is no explanatory theory that ties it all together. Water is wet when saying so increases the number of trans people, and water is dry when saying so increases the number of trans people. Those individuals within the fold who try to stick to a principle or rationalize the theory inevitably find themselves as outcasts, because at some point they derive a position that doesn't increase the number of trans people.

Incoherence is swept away by continuously redefining and coining new terms. Both the theories and social dynamics encourage dogmatic thinking and suppression of wrongthink. Agents are led to enmesh their personal identity, their sense of self-worth and purpose, with the ideology, such that they cannot be separated. Attacks on these ideas are then reflexively construed as attacks on people. Objectivity is impossible. Rational discussion is prohibited. Conflicts can then only be resolved by manipulation and power relations.

These are the dark arts.

Please. "destabilize society in pursuit of a vague utopia" does not seem like a reasonable motive without some strong supporting evidence. I think what we're actually looking at is self expression values taken to their logical conclusion, not some kind of agenda against society because society being able to be undermined from inside just doesn't occur to them.

To distinguish a man from a non-man, check the chromosomes. I don’t know why everyone forgets to do that. But if you want “man” to be a social identity and you aren’t a compensatory narcissist, then counter to trans ideology you need to forget appearances (the mere trappings of maleness) and check behaviours. So examine the human in question and consider:

-Whether or not it is interested in objects with which it can DO something, like guns or computers or model trains or Magic cards.

-Whether or not it prizes mastery of skills, like jiu jitsu or Fortnite or coding or Magic cards.

-Whether or not it habitually considers recourse to violence in times of conflict, like war or crime or school shootings or Magic cards.

-Whether or not anyone would find that violence threatening if it were to be put into action.

-Whether or not it cares deeply about how you are feeling at any given moment.

-Whether or not it is moved by things that are cute.

-Whether or not it would have the capacity to provide for a group of others if the economic system were less bountiful.

-Whether a group of others would consider following it, uncoerced by bureaucratic structures, in the pursuit of any goal.

Non-men may possess some of the characteristics, and are-men may not possess them all, but anything that DOES possess them all is not a non-man. You might, as an objection, demand to know exactly what constitutes a credible threat of violence or what leadership is, but anyone about whom you would answer these questions in the right way would know. “What’s the right way?” They know that too.

A large part of the anti-trans side, such as the religious people you mentioned, wouldn't accept Jane as a woman even if we had magical-level medical technology.

Ironically, they're not the only ones to believe in a immutable gendered soul.

Religious objections are not grounded on the soul. Before anyone makes comments as to why "religious people" would have opinions one way or the other, first kindly define (1) what religion do you mean? (2) do you know their reasons, or are you only making a chain of assumptions about "religious people believe in souls -> they must think souls have gender -> this is why they object to transness"?

Which religion you mean does affect this answer, it's not one lumpen mass of "religious people".

plenty of cisgender women who are unable to get pregnant would also be excluded.

It's not about bright lines, it's about concept clusters. An infertile cis woman is still much closer to the most central example of "woman" than any transwoman is. And many of those infertile women still suffer serious gender dysphoria about it!

There is an author I enjoy well enough to have read eight of her books. Bu there came a point where my brain just rebelled at what I was seeing, and I simply could no longer believe that this book was written by a woman. I went to google and typed "Firstname Lastname T", and sure enough "trans" was the first autopopulate option. Someone with fewer quokka tendencies than I would have probably seen it in the first 20 pages, just from the male-autistic focus on mechanics and total dismissal of people/relations.

If there are people here who believe trans men aren't actually men, I kindly ask that they also provide the criteria for distinguishing men from non-men.

Generally, same as the way you criticize unmanly men, ramped up a fair bit, with extra asterisks for the medical differences. The actual reason no one worries about transmen is because they are losing privileges, and the reaction to women trying to play life on hardmode is more "LMAO, good luck, short king."

Mind saying the series? That's hilarious--haven't experienced it since wondering why that Andre Norton chap kept writing about space rangers having Meaningful Emotional Moments with each other. I thought he was just European!

One of my favourite moments was, after learning that James Tiptree Jr. was a woman, then reading a review by Harlan Ellison about the Hugos some year that "James Tiptree Jr. is the man to beat this year. Joanna Russ is the woman, but Tiptree is the man".

(I'm going by shaky memory so it might not have been Joanna Russ, but you get the drift).

Weirkey Chronicles.

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