Interesting. So would you say that wanting to be different physically is not necessarily tied to gender? I'm definitely inclined to suspect this, since I myself am cisgendered and would also change things about my body in a heartbeat if I could. So that would mean there's:

- sex
- gender
- feelings about one's body

and none of them are necessarily connected.

Ok, so I posited in my last post that one's gender and one's sex should have nothing to do with each other, and that it wouldn't make sense to prefer a pronoun based on the feeling that one's gender does not align with one's body. In other words,

sex ≠ gender; therefore,
if gender = pronoun,
sex ≠ pronoun.

And if gender is also distinct from body-preference (i.e., preference toward this or that gender performance and not connected to preference toward this or that body), then it wouldn't make sense to prefer a pronoun based on the feeling that one is in the "wrong" body. Or,

body-preference ≠ gender; therefore,
if gender = pronoun,
body-preference ≠ pronoun.

So, if preferring pronouns based on one's sex or one's body-preference doesn't make sense, all that remains is the idea that pronoun preference ought to be based in gender performance. That is, I suspect this is the best possible line of argument in favor of pronoun preference, which would go something like "my performance/behaviors tend toward 'x', therefore I identify as 'x', so please address me as 'x', even if my body be 'y'."

And here I am back to wondering if this is a strong enough argument to alter our use of language, lol. Again, not saying it isn't, just that it's contentious. Not quite weak enough to say it's wrong and deny a person's contrary-to-sex preferred pronoun; but not quite strong enough to want to go as far as calling some biological men women, and some biological women men.

Your "bearing" terminology honestly sounds viable, definitely the most sensible suggestion I've heard on the topic to date. I'd be interested in hearing it fleshed out a little more.

Also I want to point out (not to you Pfhorrest but just in general) that generally speaking I have no aversion to using new or strange or different words, so long as I can more or less agree that they're meaningful, and that I suspect this is true of many people (maybe I'm an optimist), and I think it's really short-sighted and unhelpful to assume that everyone who resists different use of language does so xenophobically.

If what they claim isn't clear, then what could they be insisting?

Is this a moral/political issue, or a metaphysical/epistemological issue? What does a person mean when they claim to feel like, or be, a man or woman? Is it a mental problem? Is it possible that we have souls that are male and female that get put in the wrong bodies, or what? The fact that there seem to be so many people willing to just accept what others insist that they do without asking these questions is a great example of how political propaganda has an effect on weak minds. — Harry Hindu

Good point, the distinction is definitely over-used and under-defined. Perhaps correcting that is the place to start in clearing up the tensions of these issues, rather than trying to determine the meaning of the pronouns.

I think it's become a moral/political issue only because it's a metaphysical/epistemological issue that hasn't ever really been solved.

In my head it goes like this:

Gender is performative, a matter of behaviors and traits that find themselves somewhere on the masculine/feminine spectrum, which has nothing to do with one's body (sex).

But, for so long it was thought that certain behaviors ought to exist only in certain bodies, and that when they don't it's strange or wrong, so that there are still many people who feel strange about seeing certain behaviors coming from certain bodies. Therefore, when a person feels inclined toward behaviors that some consider strange or wrong for their body, they're put in a difficult situation (many people see them as strange). As a reaction to this, some of these people are prescribing as a solution a language that refers to their behaviors, not their body.

Now, if everyone could instantly disassociate behaviors from bodies (gender from sex) this would not be necessary, because it would be understood that whether you're called a "he" or "she" or a "boy" or a "girl" has nothing to do with your personality. (This, by the way, would be my answer to the metaphysical question of sex/gender. So in a sense, yes there are male and female souls (and souls in between), in that humans have psychological pre-dispositions (biologically and culturally influenced) causing them to exhibit behaviors that are mostly what we would call "masculine," mostly what we call "feminine," or anywhere in between.) But because this disassociation is awkward and takes time, people are revolting against the thing that seems most immediately to hold it together (gendered language).

To use the example from Pfhorrest,

But meanwhile, you have the group of fat people who want to be skinny, who feel like fatness is not an essential part of themselves, that it's even contrary to themselves, who hate having to live life in their fat bodies and dream of some day being able to walk around as a skinny person, and in the meantime, just wish people would stop constantly addressing them as a fat person.

.

But here's the problem. If gender and sex are distinct and not connected, then how can one say they're in the wrong body? One's body has nothing to do with one's gender; if it did why ask to be addressed by your gender in spite of your body? If you say, "I feel my gender is x, therefore my body should be x too," aren't you affirming the idea that gender and sex are supposed to be connected? In the example above, the person who feels fatness is not an essential part of themselves feels that a particular material thing (body type) should be connected to a particular immaterial thing (personality), and the fact that it doesn't is an indication that something is wrong. But were they to adhere to the argument that divides the bodily and the performative, shouldn't their gripe be, not with their body, but with this very feeling, and with anyone who speaks in a way that affirms and reinforces this feeling in society?

Sometimes they need to be bothered, especially if their comfort is based in error.

Definitely, and I think what's happening these days is folks on either side of these gender discussions are both uncomfortable, but it's really not clear whose comfort is based in error. Or rather, whose is more based in error; I think they're both imperfect. That is, the view that 'how I feel should dictate how you address me,' and the view that 'how you appear to me should dictate how I address you,' are both problematic (not that they're incorrect period - they both have a point - but that they both seem to only tell part of the story).

I think empirically, most people historically and continuing down through today probably intend to refer to sex, both with their use of pronouns and their use of the terms "man" and "woman". If shown e.g. a series of images of a person with feminine gender presentation undressing to reveal that they have a masculine body underneath their clothing etc, I expect that most people, both historically and probably still today, would think "that's a woman" at the first picture and use female pronouns to refer to the person in the picture (something often used in support of "man" and "woman" referring to gender the social construct, not sex), but then "oh, no I was wrong, that's a man" at the last picture and use male pronouns to refer to the person in the picture (which of course runs counter to that preceding parenthetical). That suggests to me that people are aiming to describe sex, and merely using gender presentation as a proxy for sex.

And I think that needlessly fighting to change the use of language from that historical course has caused little other than harm for the trans (and nonbinary) community. (But that fighting back against that in turn only causes more harm, so I don't really know what to do besides just speak however least bothers one's present audience).

^^ this.

I think you hit the nail on the head on all accounts. I think a lot of people don't know what to do other than just speaking in a way that least bothers one's present audience, and ultimately this is the issue I mean to address, because this can lead to people using language in a way they don't understand, or worse, don't believe in (and this I think is what spurs damaging arguments, because here people quickly become indignant). In the example above, where a trans person wishes to be addressed according to their performance and not their body, I don't know that this is fair - obviously it's not fair to a trans person that their language can't accommodate their identity, and this is indeed where the issue begins. Nonetheless, speaking in a way that overrides a society's perception and use of language is not a solution. A solution in theory would be a compromise between individuals whose language isn't equipped to express their identity and a society who finds this language meaningful. It's a difference I think between the killing of a language and the evolution of a language. I don't know what this solution is of course, I just know we haven't found it, and again, I think finding it should start with ontological conversation rather than ethical debate (though of course there's always a bit of the one going on in the other).

No, the question only presupposes that we use scribbles to refer to things, not what those scribbles should or should not refer to.

You're right, I should have been more clear- what I meant was, in asking the question, I'm presupposing the distinction. In other words, what I mean is: supposing the distinction sound, what do they refer to?

It seems to me that you have to first determine what the relationship between sex and gender are to be able to determine whether or not it is meaningful to use some scribble to refer to one or the other, or both.

I'm presupposing that the relationship is one of biology and performance. I think the question only really makes sense in light of this presupposition. That's why I said at the beginning if one doesn't affirm the distinction then the question is meaningless, because the answer would be "the pronouns refer to sex and gender both, which are the same thing." I think they have indeed been used to refer to both traditionally, because I think traditionally we've considered them to be the same. But these days folks are arguing that they're different, and then insisting upon certain uses in a way that, I think, doesn't really make clear how they're conceiving of the relationship between sex and gender and the pronouns. For example, "he" can refer either to a male body or a male performance, so if a trans person says "call me 'he'..." and they mean "...because I identify as/perform male, even though my body is female," then they seem to presuppose that the gender pronouns do (or should) refer to gender and not sex, and I find this contentious. Not saying I disagree, I don't disagree or agree, I just find it contentious, and haven't really heard any compelling arguments for either side of it. Usually in place of such an argument, which would be essentially ontological, what you get is an ethical argument for trans rights, as though the question somehow threatens these rights.

Off the table are both what the pronouns have meant and what they should mean.

Not sure what you mean by off the table? I'm curious about how people think the pronouns have been used historically because I think this can make it easier to think about how they could be used in the future.

I suppose the exact answer to your question is that gender and sex have been since time immemorial the same thing

I assume this is true

Whether there is a benefit to separating them now is more than I can judge

I think the benefit is a better understanding of reality. Men do things women do and women do things men do so much so that these days we wonder if there's any difference between them. Understanding gender as performative I think is a necessary step to adapting to and better understanding how our reality is changing

but it seems to me the language cannot yet really handle it.

I think you're right. But again that's why I pose the question of how the language has worked thus far, so that it's easier to think about what kind of adaptation could make it equipped to handle the distinction.

I’ve got a reddit thread going with the same questions, and just posted some clarification on my questions; may as well put them up here:

Re: I) (collective unconscious):

The equivalence principal (according to my book) states that if some psychic energy in the consciousness, personal unconscious, or collective unconscious is lost, it doesn’t disappear, it will re-appear somewhere else (e.g. if I forget something there’s a displacement of psychic energy from the consciousness to my personal unconscious.)

This makes perfect sense to me if you don’t include the collective unconscious as a potential recipient of psychic energy. Otherwise it’s like saying certain ideas existed before the human mind ever developed, and if we all suddenly disappeared from the universe all those ideas would still harbour our psychic energy. I’m wondering if Jung needs to be read this way?

Re: II) and III) (psychic energy quanta)

I’m wondering about having more overall psychic energy, and about having more or less psychic energy apportioned to the consciousness and unconscious.

II) From what I’ve read so far, I understand that the more consciousness develops, and the more your personality is balanced (integrated shadow, etc.), the more psychic material you’re able to assimilate and “convert” into psychic energy. So no doubt some psyches have more (psychic) energy due to the amount they appropriate throughout maturity. But I guess what I’m wondering is if Jung thought one psyche could be better inclined to appropriate energy than another; or in other words, if he thought a psyche could be more energetic not only through nurture, but by nature as well.

III) Another way of putting this question is: do various individuals have differing ratios of conscious/unconscious psychic energy. I can imagine, for example, a person (a) who’s ego works “faster” than another’s (b), and brings more psychic material into consciousness. In this case, if the other person (b) has the same amount of overall psychic energy, they’ll presumably have more material stored in their unconscious than person (a) (equal sum different ratio). Or, if the overall psychic energy is different between the two individuals, it could be that person (b) has less conscious AND unconscious psychic energy than person (a), even if their ratio favours unconscious energy. If this way of thinking is sound, it prompts questions like, what would a personality with more conscious energy be like? And what would a personality with more unconscious energy be like? I’m wondering if Jung or any Jungians have addressed these questions, or if I’m getting something wrong and they’re unsound.

It might seem that I’m overthinking these things, but I really want to get the fundamentals of Jung’s thought straight before I move on. Not that I need to agree with the fundamentals of his thought before I move on, I just want to know what I’m dealing with.

The problem with writing it off as non-physical for me is that the equivalence principal seems to treat psychic energy as something of which there’s an amount...

But I realize this may be a problem for interpreting Jung; that is, the belief that everything human, including the psyche, is ultimately physiological. I realize psychic energy is distinct from metabolic energy; but to say it’s entirely non-physical is a metaphysical view that to me is akin to Platonism. So I guess I’m wondering if he needs to be read this way, or whether it’s even clearly stated anywhere where he stood on the matter. I suppose I’m partly curious because I can’t justify spending $80 on volume 8 of the collected works unless I have reason believe there’s more to Jung than Platonism... lol.

Thanks for the reply!