So what might we do or think or discuss in the meantime? — unenlightened

Make long term plans because Dr Jem Bendell doesn't speak for anyone else but himself. Bottom line, how many educated individuals are predicting societal collapse within 10 years?

Even worse, how accurate has previous doomsday predictions been? (I'm looking at you Al Gore!).

This thread will not age well.

Excluding one tenth of a percentage is not arbitrary, then? — Echarmion

Nope.

It's not just the transgender movement though. As was pointed out in the OP, the idea is also supported by parts of the feminist movement. — Echarmion

Be that as it may, the transgender activists, whatever labels they place on themselves, at least based off what I've read, push for transgender rights. They do not push for the idea that a lot of cisgendered people out there are actually transgendered, which is what you need to escape the idea that the vast majority of people's gender identity matches their biological sex. That's the base of my argument, there's certainly a biological aspect to gender roles, that's why you see a 99.9% overlap between the two. You're not going to get that sort of overlap with just socialization.

Things are never "true by definition", unless you think definitions can be true or false. If your argument is "true by definition", it just means your constructed your definition in a way to preclude the conclusion - i.e. your argument is circular. — Echarmion

Without getting too far off into the weeds, the "by definition" was describing the true dichotomy created by the terms transgender and cisgender. You're one or the other. If you're not one, by definition you're the other. If you're not married by definition your single and vice versa. The fact that so many more people, "so many more people" being over 1000:1, admit that their gender identity matches their biological sex should tell you all you need to know about how society views sex, gender, and gender roles.

The behaviors that are acceptable expressions of masculinity / feminity have changed a lot over the past, say, 50 years. If you want to look at sports, look at the changed status of female leagues in many traditionally masculine sports. Association football in Europe is one example. 20 years ago, noone cared about the female teams, now at least the international tournaments garner significant media attention.

The position of women in politics has also changed dramatically. So has the status of "stay at home dads" and in general the role model for fatherhood. — Echarmion

As there are outliers with toe counts, whether or not people's gender matches their biological sex, there are outliers with typically male and female traits. Given a large enough population you'll find enough extremely competitive women who have whatever traits are needed to accel at soccer (not too familiar with the sport, especially at a professional level) to create enough teams for competition. But the existence of such a league isn't a reflection on the female population as a whole, that's not evidence of some sort of social shift where women are becoming more and more competitive, or whatever other trait that's traditionally not associated with females.

I understand there are bell curves, and at the extremes you'll see more masculine women and more feminine men. I don't think claiming that gender roles are largely biologically based necessitates ignoring those extremes.

Just because Superman was the last person to tighten the plastic wing nut on the spare tire shouldn't be taken as a strength deficiency. Maybe your wife just hasn't had to deal with enough wing nuts in her life. (Or maybe she has,) I've been outfoxed on a number of occasions by nuts and bolts, — Bitter Crank

While my wife certainly isn't very mechanically inclined she knew how to get the nut off. She just didn't have the strength. Sure, there are some women who could easily have gotten it off but she's not one of them.

Despite what a lot of people think, many guys who sit at computers all day still have a stronger grip strength than many female athletes.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0113637

Looking at men and women in their 30's, the lower 90th percentile of men are about as strong as the upper 10th percentile of women.

This study was of 50,000 people so the population size is large enough to be reliable.

And yet you kept arguing — NKBJ

You're correct. I'm new to this forum so I'm still learning everyone. Next time I see you trying to drag me into an argument like this I'll just ignore you.

Yes, which shows that categories, like gender, are always somewhat arbitrary constructions. — Echarmion

There's nothing arbitrary about it when less than one tenth of a percentage of the population identify as transgender.

So you say. But it seems to me that there are rather large movements that disagree. — Echarmion

It's been my understanding that the transgender movement is pushing the idea that gender is a social construct, not that the vast majority of people aren't cisgendered. A simple poll could solve that (and has).

If your claim is true "by definition", it's also circular. — Echarmion

Sorry, I'm not following. How are public polls and definitions "circular"?

Isn't the fact that "most people" (I think we need some serious qualifiers here) think gender roles are not rigid evidence that gender is constructed? Gender roles are obviously shifting. In western countries, they have by and large become much more permissive over the last decades. This would not be possible if they were simply a result of biological changes, since biology does not change that quickly.

If "most people" were truely comfortable with binary gender, why has the notion of gender changed so much? — Echarmion

I'm not sure it has changed so much. Maybe we're speaking about different things... This probably isn't a great example but hopefully it'll at least give you an idea of what I'm speaking of.

Look at football, I think its safe to say that it's generally seen as a male sport. Why is football seen that way? Is it a male sport because of the shape of the ball? Or because touchdowns are worth 6 points? No, its because you need a high level of aggression to play the game well and higher levels of aggression are much more common in males than females. Lets say that football is becoming less popular (it sort-of is) and video games are becoming more popular (it certainly is). If more and more boys/men are playing video games instead of football, is that a gender role shift? I happen to like both (football and video games) and, for many video games, at a competitive level, aggression is just as necessary as it is in football. I'm a huge League of Legends fan, there's a large element of risk taking and aggression if you're playing that game at a high level (professional). Those traits are much more common and also are much larger in males than females.

So what do you mean by the idea that gender is changing so much? If its just activities/hobbies it might not be changing all that much.

it doesn't change my actual point: biology is not destiny. — NKBJ

Great, go find someone who disagrees with you because I do not.

Might be due to a small population size, as those numbers seem like an outlier. I see no reason to see that drastic of an increase in your average 30-34 woman compared to that of women in their 20's.

If 75 was the overall average, but 30-34 averaged 98, how much lower than 75 was the sub 30 group? That suggests a larger difference between women in their early 30's and 20's than women and men in general.

But today, older millennial men and women are roughly equal when it comes to grip strength." — NKBJ

This is also a very misleading summary of the results.

98lbs to 75lbs is roughly equal?

So why is the seventy something cents women are supposedly paid to a man's dollar considered to be so horrible if its "roughly equal"?

It's not roughly equal. It's about 33% stronger.

That's definitely a malleable physical trait: — NKBJ

And its also a trait that's heavily tied to biological sex - which was my point.

I can't do it any better than a woman with similar practice. — Bitter Crank

You probably could just considering strength differences. My wife can change a flat tire, I still had to assist her a few weeks ago because she didn't have the grip strength to get the large plastic wingnut that secured the spare tire to the bottom of her SUV's trunk.

I'm sure the greater strength would also net you a faster tire changing time (could jack it up faster, pick up/mount the tire faster, etc.).

Sure some women are stronger than some men, but the vast majority of men are stronger than the vast majority of women.

Sure, all categories are ultimately constructed. But whether or not I am a human with 10 toes does not carry many consequences, being considered male or female does. — Echarmion

There are almost an infinite amount of qualifiers one can add to any comparison. Heck, you could even make an apples to apples comparison an apples to oranges comparison. They fell from different trees. They have different weights. One came from the side of the tree that got more sunlight.

At the end of the day its true that for the vast majority of people, their gender, socially constructed or not, matches their biological sex. Whether or not there are social consequences because of that is a different conversation.

I think you're overstating your case a bit, in the absence of any reliable numbers. Sure many people get along with two genders just fine. But it's not just transgender people that get pigeonholed by gender roles. You can probably find people who don't fit into common gender roles in every classroom. — Echarmion

By definition it has to be only transgendered people. Trans/cisgender is a dichotomy. Your gender identity either matches your biological sex or it doesn't.

Less than .1% of the population identifies as transgender, meaning the other 99.9%+ identify as cisgender (their gender identity matches their biological gender). Sure certain social media platforms might make it appear as if its more than that but it's not.

The problem I generally see with what you've said is that many people who push for more than two genders see gender identity/roles as very rigid. If you're a male you have to like all sports, fast cars, beer, young women, big houses, grilling meat, cigars, fancy watches, etc. If you like all but one of those well sorry you're not actually a male, you're somewhere between the male and female spectrum. Most people do not see gender identities as that rigid. And before you suggest that there aren't any reliable numbers for that just look at the 99.9% of people who are cisgender but don't fit the ken/Barbie doll check list for male and female.

It just means that the traditional binary distinction between genders doesn't accurately reflect biological factors. — Echarmion

Neither does the claim that people have 10 toes, because some people are born with less or more. There's almost always exceptions to rules relating to this sort of thing, I don't see why this case is any different.

For the vast majority of people the genders do accurately reflect biological factors, most men and most women are wired differently.

It's handy to have a term for that. The term we use for it is "gender." — Terrapin Station

Or "individual", assuming there are literally an infinite amount of genders that people can identify as. At that point you might as well acknowledge that if you categorize and quality literally everything that no two people are exactly alike and we can just see everyone as individuals and throw away all of the nomenclature I've seen thrown around over the last half decade integrating anything from temperature to animals into gender terms and phrases. At that point, at least to me, it's getting out of hand and quite frankly silly.

All of the above can be ignored if we're going to stick to two, or at most, a few different types of gender.

I disagree. If you avoid a moral judgment based upon the negative consequences, you're not Kantian. — Hanover

This is my understanding as well. Kant believed that morality resided in the act itself. An unjust killing could never be justified no matter the consequence. While the calculations of Utilitarianism may seem cold, they at least allow for wiggle room in extreme circumstances. That's not to say that Utilitarianism isn't without its flaws, at some point you might find yourself putting a dollar value on human life and weighing it against all sorts of things you might find distasteful.

It's not straight forward, at least not for me. Which is why I wanted some opinions outside of my own.

Not quite :)

No offense to you or anyone else here, but the "golden nuggets" are found in the works from Kant, Bentham, J.S. Mills, Carl Jung, etc. While I won't claim to be an expert in the field of ethics, and I have no doubt many of you know a lot more about this subject than me, I'm confident I know enough from reading the aforementioned great thinkers to create my story. I'm interested in what people think about this scenario, would killing the kidnapped victim be considered moral? You could have two people with the same education and understanding of this topic have two completely different answers because they give different factors different weights. I'm only interested in what I asked for.

I will say this though, if you think you have a golden nugget with respect to the major or minor disciplines, don't post it on a public forum. I'm particularly pleased with the dilemma I've thought up, I think it's an interesting twist on the trolley problem. Imagine the side track option where you kill the one worker is modified to where the one worker is simply further down the main track and the side track only lets you bypass the 5 workers. Your choice is between killing the 5 plus the one further down the track or bypassing them and only killing the one person who was going to die either way. It's also a bit more realistic imo, is the horn out on the trolley too? Even the mechanical break? They won't hear it coming? Or hear you yelling? It also makes it much more personal, you're directly killing someone, you're not just driving a trolley. Sure there's the modified trolley dilemma where you're asked if you'd push a large person in front of the trolley in order to save the five, but that doesn't include the first thing I mentioned that my dilemma introduces, the fact that no matter the choice one specific person will die.

Maybe I've stumbled across a very good moral dilemma that might make it into an ethics book later on, or maybe I've overestimated my own creativity. It's almost assuredly the latter, which is why I didn't have an issue posting it on a public forum where anyone could read it.

It may not even be all that artificial. I gather that gangs and cartels at least sometimes perform rituals which are similar to the hypothetical. — Bitter Crank

I agree, while scenarios might not play out exactly as I've described, I do think its close enough to reality to pass off as realistic in a story setting - which is what I was trying to accomplish. While likely not intended, I did enjoy reading the following line:

The purpose of this sort of exercise is to bind the subject to the group by drinking from the trough of guilt and moral degradation. — Bitter Crank

That's pretty much what I was aiming for. The vision I have for this story is fairly dark, and it's about a hero, if the reader sees this person as such but that's my goal, attempting to pull himself back out of that trough. Thanks for the non-sugarcoated observation :)

Its a thought experiment, similar to the trolley dilemma, which, at least in my opinion, digs at the question "from where does morality reside?". Does it reside in the act itself or the consequences of the act?

One can always suggest ways to avoid the dilemma, maybe install a mechanical break on the trolley and check its function prior to driving it, but that's just avoiding the truth attempting to be uncovered with the thought experiment.

Personally I'm exploring how far you could push a hero and some readers still think that they could be considered a hero. But the previous implications would feed into that.