It's not just about addressing. The terms 'woman' and 'him/her' are not used solely for addressing people. They are terms within a community of language speakers used for all sorts of purposes. For whom are the 'women' s' toilets set aside, those who are physiologically women, or those who think they're women? At whom is a positive discrimination programme requiring 50% women applicants aimed at, those who are physiologically women, or those who think they're women? Which group of people is women's studies investigating, for whom do women's rights campaign, who may join a women's support group, who is included in "women and children first", who is being referenced by the expression "women were traditionally oppressed", who are biblical and other religious texts referring to when they mention 'women', at whom should the WHO aim it's excellent women's health initiative? — Pseudonym
Both you and Willow seem to have this bizarre concept that if you state something is the case that's the end of the debate on the matter, if I still disagree I must have not read you clearly enough.
I disagree with your argument that it doesn't mean they are exclusive, for the reasons given. — Pseudonym
You keep repeating these assertions as if they were arguments. I provided a seven point argument in logic with which you disputed only one point (which I later provided a counter argument to). — Pseudonym
I'm not discussing the claims of intersex people, so why bring it up? — Pseudonym
Yes, trans people (and those who agree with them) use the term as they wish, others use the term as they wish. — Pseudonym
No, I don't agree with your premise that identity is defined by the person to whom it refers — Pseudonym
What logical argument have you got which takes you (in logical steps, without further bare assertion) for interpreting the meaning of the claim "I am a woman", as referring only to non-exclusory membership criteria? — Pseudonym
What premises have I applied which ignore trans claims? — Pseudonym
Where in any of that is there anything about the addressee's respect for the speaker? — Pseudonym
So what have you given up from your original position that people should be addressed by the terms they prefer? You do know what compromise means? — Pseudonym
I said that membership of a set is mutually exclusive on the basis that being labelled as a member of the opposite set is offensive. — Pseudonym
It is traditionally held that whatever the membership criteria are for the group {women}, they are mutually exclusive to the group {men} (like swimming and non-swimming. Without even having to examine the nature of the membership criteria, we can tell that the trans claim involves this kind of mutual exclusivity because the whole reason for asking people to use a particular term of address is the upset it causes to have the alternative used. It is implied then, that choosing "woman" as the correct term, automatically makes "man" the incorrect one. — Pseudonym
Once you've grasped what I mean above, I hope the fact that offence is reasonable in some situations and unreasonable in others is simple enough to be obvious. — Pseudonym
We are definitely talking about changing the universal meaning of the word 'woman', no doubt about that. — Pseudonym
I've presented an argument in fairly logical rational steps showing that the trans use of the term 'woman' is inconsistent and incoherent — Pseudonym
If you have a counter argument for any of the points I laid out, that's what I'd be interested to hear. — Pseudonym
I think it's about all of them. Language use dictates and expresses a great deal (some would say all) of what we feel about the world and ourselves, including our identity. So language use is inherently tied to relative harms. I'm, broadly speaking, an ethical naturalist, so relative harms are intrinsically tied to how we treat each other (we should try to minimise relative harms). Where our desired treatment clashes, there needs to be some method of seeking compromise, and I believe that method should be rational thought. — Pseudonym
we come back to the (I think false) idea that respect is only one way, that respect constitutes only adhering to the way the addressee wants to hear a word, and not the way the speaker wants to use a word. — Pseudonym
If it is possible to be both a man and a woman, then it would be the case that claiming to be a woman would not (on its own) constitute a claim that such features as were being used to support such a claim could not also be the features of a man. But anyone who really genuinely believes that would have no cause to claim either and no cause to take offense if either term were used. — Pseudonym
Remember, taking offence (or any other strong emotional response) without rational cause is one of the psychological definitions of a delusion. — Pseudonym
The problem, for me, arises when one group tries to tell the other it's using the word 'wrong' and must change — Pseudonym
or when one group has an inconsistent definition that it is impossible to use. — Pseudonym
1. Any statement which begins "I am a..." is a statement which claims membership of a set. — Pseudonym
things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all of the things.
2. Sets must exclude something in order to be meaningful. — Pseudonym
3. Words must have public meanings in order to be useful in discourse. — Pseudonym
4. From 1), the term "woman" in common language is the name of a set since it is used in a sentence of the form "I am a..." and all such sentences are declarations of set membership. — Pseudonym
5. From 2), the expression "I am a woman" must be making an exclusory claim about the membership criteria of the set {women} because all sets must have exclusory criteria in order to be meaningful and the claim "I am a woman" is logically identical to the claim "I am not a man" since the sets are mutually exclusive. — Pseudonym
6. From 3), the term "woman" being a word, must have a public definition in order to be of use in discourse, since without a public meaning it conveys no information. — Pseudonym
7. From 5) and 6) the statement "I am a woman" makes a public claim about the membership criteria of the set {men} and likewise the statement "I am a man" makes a public claim about the membership criteria of the set {women}. — Pseudonym
What is wrong with the definition of it that I provided in my last post. "it is proper courtesy for you to address me as a man because I feel like a man"? — Pseudonym
So how are people's wishes not a psychological feature? — Pseudonym
Why have you changed the word "woman" to the word "she" — Pseudonym
If "not all women feel the same" as you claim. Then how can someone 'feel like a woman'? — Pseudonym
I'm making an argument about what is logically implied by trans claims. — Pseudonym
No, the point is that the midwife is using a term based on physiological features which, later on in life, you like us to use based solely on psychological features. Why on earth would you want to go through this rigmarole rather than just have two different words? — Pseudonym
No, the point is that the midwife is using a term based on physiological features which, later on in life, you like us to use based solely on psychological features. — Pseudonym
Yes, only this time I'm asking you for some evidence to back it up (a request you have conveniently ignored). You're making an empirical claim here. That the word was used a certain way hundreds of years ago. — Pseudonym
It is more morally complex because a category name implies other members of that category, a non-category name carries no such implication. I can say "bill is an idiot" and be referring only to a particular person called Bill. This is because although there are other people called Bill, Bill is not a category, the other people are called Bill entirely incidentally. There's is no equivalent with the term "woman" I can't say anything of women without implying that the same applies to all women. — Pseudonym
...after the analysis you've put in so far the best you've got is "if you don't agree with me you must not be trying hard enough"? — Pseudonym
So if a girl (who thinks she is a boy) is addressed as "girl", that would be fine because 'girl' is a sex distinguishing term? — Pseudonym
Are you suggesting it's not true that the word "woman" was not, in the past, used to describe those people with particular physiological characteristics? — Pseudonym
A personal name is not a category. People called Bill are not claiming to be similar to other people called Bill. They're not claiming, based on private feelings to be part of the set {all people called Bill}, the only criteria for membership of the set {all people called Bill} is being called Bill. — Pseudonym
Words are based (insofar as possible) on features available to everyone, because words belong to everyone. It's not that physiological features have primacy because they're more important than how you feel. It's that physiological features have primacy because they are most available to everyone and language is a communal thing. — Pseudonym
The trans claim is implicitly that there is a connection between chromosomes and gender identity. — Pseudonym
If there were no connection, than a man (who feels like a woman) could still be called a man (based on his chromosomes) because there's nothing 'not man-like' about the way he's feeling. — Pseudonym
That a person thinking and feeling that way can't be a 'Man' they must be a 'woman', because that's one of the ways 'women' think and feel, not one of the ways 'men' think and feel. — Pseudonym
The word 'Woman' was used to describe those people with particular physiological characteristics. That's just an historical fact without any judgement value. — Pseudonym
Men who have these thoughts/feelings that they call 'like a woman' have requested that they be labelled by the term currently used as the default label for anyone with breasts and a vagina. — Pseudonym
but I'm pretty sure that there was no sense in which "woman" was used to describe anyone other than a person with (at least some of) the physiological characteristics associated with two x chromosomes until maybe forty or fifty years ago? — Pseudonym
When a midwife says "it's a girl" she's not doing a psych analysis. — Pseudonym
Yes, the claim that some feminists are making (that their identity is being undermined by people claiming to 'feel like a woman') requires that the category "women" be defined. But so does that claim "I feel like a woman". There must be something it is like to be a woman in order for someone to feel it. It may not be a tightly defined thing — Pseudonym
A private language simply doesn't make any sense, how would you know if you were using the terms correctly? — Pseudonym
Secondly, I am using sex, male, female; as distinct from gender, man, woman. — Banno
A person with specifiable physical characteristics is considered male. But this does not imply that they ought be treated as a man, regardless of their own disposition.
And contrawise, a person who wishes to be treated as a woman, may (must?) still be counted as male because of their physical characteristics. — Banno
But I'm not hung up on primacy. It's just that at the moment "woman" is used to describe them too and some of them are upset about the association with a certain group of feelings. — Pseudonym
I'm saying that people should be free to apply whatever primacy they feel comfortable with (which freedom includes freedom from undue social pressure). — Pseudonym
We are all different, the only way you could address the inhabitant of a body alone is to have a different term for each person. — Pseudonym
The solution to this problem you're advising seems to be just "put up with it". — Pseudonym
It doesn't make much difference to the argument if there is one thing it's like to be a woman or several things. The point is that it is a limited group. If it was not a limited group (and so neither was being a man) then there would be no problem with calling anyone a man no matter what they feel like because any set of feelings would be entirely consistent with either term. — Pseudonym
Yet you think someone who is confident in their identity will be upset by how they are addressed. — Pseudonym
The word "marriage" used to mean (to some) — Pseudonym
In the case of the word "woman" however, I'm more persuaded by the feminist argument that its current use causes less harm than an expansion/alterations might. — Pseudonym
I never have said that there is some connection between chromosomes and feeling. — Pseudonym
This is, however, the opposite of what is being claimed by the conflation of the term "woman". What this conflation implies is that there are some properties of having two X chromosomes which are intrinsically shared by those who feel like something they would describe as a woman. — Pseudonym
The harm is if you (as an obvious man) told me (a woman, (for the sake of this example)) that you feel sufficiently like me and everyone else with my biological sex to be addressed in the same way because we're basing terms of address on feelings not observed facts. — Pseudonym
Why have you cherry-picked this one property of terms used as an insult and argued against it as if it were the only property I ascribe? — Pseudonym
If there's no alternative how can the person using the term possibly be accused of doing so with the intent to insult. — Pseudonym
How are you so sure on this? The way we use language defines us. As I said in an earlier post, many intelligent thinkers have concluded that it is not even possible to have advanced thought like identity and personhood without language, so it's completely unwarranted for you to simply assert that it has no impact on defining the user. Words 'mean' something, that's their whole point. That means they 'mean' something to the speaker, not just the listener. — Pseudonym
Gay marriage does affect straight marriage. It means that 'marriage' no longer refers to an act of union under God between a man and a woman. — Pseudonym
So why are they asking that a term previously used to describe {people who, by appearances, were born with two X chromosomes} now also describe {people who have a feeling they describe as being "like a woman"}. If they're not making a claim that the two are the same, then why would they want to use the same word to describe both. — Pseudonym
The point of labelling it an insult is to point out that it is an alternative term for a group already defined. — Pseudonym
If you're not sure how to quantify harms, then how have you reached the conclusion that people ought to be called by their preferred term? If you've not derived the 'ought' from minimising harm, where have you got it from? — Pseudonym
Yes, and you seem to have ignored my arguments that insisting on the agreement (by language use) that there is such a thing as something it 'feels like' to be woman is equally imposing properties of personhood on someone born a women who may not wish to have herself defined that way. — Pseudonym
I don't understand what you are saying here at all. I may have got the terminology wrong. By 'trans man' in the quote you cited I meant someone who is born a man but has a feeling they would describe as 'like woman'. Is that the wrong way round. If so, my apologies, please re-read the section with whatever the correct term is. — Pseudonym
the sets {those born with two x chromosomes} and {those who have a feeling they would describe as "like a woman"} are the same — Pseudonym
You and I have different definitions of discourse. Mine involves a to-and-fro analysis of arguments. — Pseudonym
No, we assess the harms that such a worldview might cause and come to some appropriate social consensus on their expression. So can you point to the assessment that's being carried out here of the harms? Because all I read is an assertion that trans people must be called by their preferred terms, not a discussion about the relative harms. No-one has written a single word in answer to the issue I raised about the meaning of the term 'woman' to some feminists and the harm that taking away that meaning might cause them.
Calling someone a "nigger" is actively designed to insult them. It's not a noun passively describing a group — Pseudonym
What trans men (for example) are asking is that the same term applied to people born with two x chromosomes is applied to people who feel a way they would describe as "like a woman". It is exactly "an assertion that who they is totally defined by us and not by them". It is an assertion that the sets {those born with two x chromosomes} and {those who have a feeling they would describe as "like a woman"} are the same, or similar enough to share the same defining term and most importantly, are so similar that they do not even need their own individual defining terms. How is that not imposing a definition on who women are? It is literally saying that all people born with two x chromosomes are in some significant way the same as all people who have a feeling they would describe as "like a woman". — Pseudonym
I don't understand the point you're making here. — Pseudonym
One might consider it crucially important to one's world-view that proper names are bestowed by parents, not the person themselves. In that case, it would be imposing on that person's world-view for Mary to demand of them that they now refer to her as Molly. — Pseudonym
Maybe by discussion, maybe by some compromise. What it wouldn't be resolved by is making it an act of violent bigotry against Mary simply to have (and wish to express in one's language) the world-view that names should be given by parents. — Pseudonym
Secondly that's not "Evil", that's corrupted data. Which is an inevitability for beings who inhabit a temporal structure. — Lucid
Before you were talking about whether the question is significant or meaningful, now you are stating that it is "un-grounded". — Metaphysician Undercover
I found it wildly speculative, as I said, and uninteresting. — Metaphysician Undercover
This is an interesting line of thought, then. So democracy takes place in the moral climate of the country it is implemented in. This explains many things, such as segregation. So apart from seeing democracy as right or wrong, it is simply a vehicle to mirror the common view. — FreeEmotion
Can democracy be separated from morality? — FreeEmotion
Now do you not agree with me? If I am interested, then the question is meaningful, and therefore significant. — Metaphysician Undercover
So let me get this straight. You do not see the significance of the question concerning the relationship between existence and time, and so you are asking me to explain to you the significance. — Metaphysician Undercover"
Oh, it seems like you have forgotten the disrespect in your approach to the question. You didn't simply ask a relevant question, you made a comparison, making fun of the question. — Metaphysician Undercover
You seem to be turned off by some "backstory". — Metaphysician Undercover
I interpret this as a dislike for the significance which I apprehend as pertaining to the question — Metaphysician Undercover
If you had proper respect for the interest I have in the question, you would have simply agreed with me, that it is something which I have interest in, but you have no interest in, instead of trying to argue that the subject is meaningless. If you do have interest in it, as you have said, then you would only contradict yourself to argue that it is meaningless. — Metaphysician Undercover