B) Subjectivism about sex

One's sex is constitutively determined by subjective features (one's attitudes etc). — Bartricks

That is sex stereotypes which is the foundation of transgenderism. It is about conforming to stereotypes to feel comfortable. Many women now wear trousers but if you go on reddit trans sub reddit's most of the men identifying as women wear skirts and say how great it feels.

They don't say anything that reminds me of my three sisters and their experiences as being women. It just comes of as a fetish.

One's sex is constitutively determined by sets of physical features. — Bartricks

Sexual dimorphism is the reason that there are billions of humans created by reproduction not because someone assigned our sex at birth.

There are two kinds of sex - mental and physical. — TheMadFool

I completely disagree. Who has discovered this "mental sex". By mental do you mean immaterial?

Before the discovery of hormones and extensive advances in plastic surgery there was no way to live other than in the body you were born in. There is no evidence of mass trans suicides before they could get surgery and hormones.

This mental sex appears to consists of an array of stereotypes about the opposite sex. Men and women's dress and roles has varied throughout time and culture.

A better question would be why the contents of other people's underpants cause folk such as you so much grief. — Banno

I am concerned about the erosion of women's rights, gay erasure, suppression of gender non conformity, life altering surgeries leading to a life time of health care etc not what is in someone's pants. Most trans people do not pass ( I have known four) I don't need to look in peoples underwear. The one's that pass are a luck minority. Elliot page looks unhappy and awful yet is being affirmed by people for what has happened to they.

Haven't you seen sissies in male bodies and a butch in female bodies? — skyblack

This is a result of sexism

Men are considered effeminate for not acting macho, women are considered butch for not acting girly.

Women are not camp men and men are not butch lesbians. Gender non conformity should not lead to genital mutilation and a life time on chemicals.

I have always been able to tell I use my ears. I can also tell when someone has had "gender reassignment"
— Andrew4Handel
That sounds anecdotal, not scientific — InPitzotl

In what sense is it anecdotal? I have survived 45 years using my ears and eyes to tell me how reality works. I am not going to distrust my senses based on someone else's self i.d. in their mind.

I thought gender dysphoria was a mental illness now we are told it's not these people are really trapped in the wrong body and being liberated by surgeons and big pharma.

Stopping a child achieving puberty and making them infertile is now liberation theology.

It's certainly debatable, but recognizing them as such is not necessarily unreasonable. — T Clark

It is reality denying. It is unscientific. It prioritises peoples mental states over reality. We don't apply this "logic" in many areas of life.

Breast reduction and enhancement surgeries occur in contexts other than in transsexual situations. Do you object to those? — Hanover

A double mastectomy is not a a breast reduction. It is breast annihilation and when performed on young women can lead to chronic pain in later life. Hysterectomies increase the risk of Alzheimer's, heart attacks and osteoporosis.

Plastic surgery has often been abused (Michael Jackson/Joycelyn Wildenstein) not all surgery is therapeutic or life saving.

The only reason trans surgeries are seen as life saving is because they are seen to prevent suicides but little to none of the literature supports that.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4771004/

Trans people aren't necessarily gay. — Hanover

Most of the Iranian transsexuals are and most detransitioned women are lesbians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_rights_in_Iran#Forced_surgery_for_homosexual_people


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg51RnpGn9k

Why would you only recognize distinctions that occur only at birth and not those through human effort. — Hanover

It is not a distinction it is a case of natural and artificial. I think pretending to be the opposite sex is a lie. Prove me otherwise That is the human effort. It is like camouflage. A woman is not something superficial but a biological reality and the reason we are all here because only women can gestate, and give birth

Some trans people have claimed they wish they could have abortions, they enjoy being catcalled because it validates their woman hood they have stated an array of sexist ideas about women hood that I can freely quote. It is clearly a fantasy that can never be achieved but based on misogyny but also women who want to be men are often trying to escape misogyny and the abuse they faced as women

The fact that to "pass" as the opposite sex requires numerous surgeries and a life time on medication shows that you cannot become the opposite sex through wishful thinking. You have to rely on unethical surgeons and big pharma. It is a money making scam that is undermining gender non conformity, women and gays. Instead of pray the gay away it is now trans the gay away.

But where is the philosophy in this? Who has defended this sex change magic?

How can it be ethical to chop off healthy breasts and penises?

You cannot tell the difference between a man or a woman.? I have always been able to tell I use my ears. I can also tell when someone has had "gender reassignment"

Chromosomal sex is not the entirety of sex — Pfhorrest

Who claimed that it was?

Having surgery to mutilate your genitalia and spending a life time on wrong sex hormones and other body damaging chemicals is not changing sex it is forcing your body to be something it doesn't want to be and once hormones stop it will revert back to it's natural self.

These surgeries (in my opinion) are Frankenstein surgeries and abusive. people who have had their breasts or penis removed and then detransition cannot replace them. The rate of detransition has risen with the rate of trans acceptance.

Presumably, sex is a matter of chromosomes — InPitzotl

No. I have never needed to know about someone's chromosomes to know whether they are male or female.

There are huge number of things that define someone as a woman. Wearing make up and dresses is not one of them.

Can a male be turned into a female? How?

Can a male have a period and give birth?

Has reality changed since I was born?

Exactly the kind of response you expect on this issue.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written a great essay on cancel culture.

“(young people) who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion”, who she says are part of a generation “so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow”.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/16/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-social-media-sanctimony

Where are these images from?

Mai Khalid Afana, a Palestinian doctor and lecturer was executed a few hours ago by Israel murderers after accidentally being on the "Jews Only" side of the road. — StreetlightX

"Attempted stabbing, ramming attack thwarted near Jerusalem The terrorist was shot and killed by IDF soldiers. One soldier was lightly injured and treated at the scene."

"A Palestinian woman who arrived at the scene attempted to run over soldiers who were securing engineering work and then exited her car and tried to stab the soldiers. The terrorist was shot and killed by the soldiers, and one soldier was lightly injured and treated at the scene."

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/attempted-stabbing-ramming-attack-near-jerusalem-no-injuries-reported-671156

Do you think that the people you notice are a representative sample of 'the left'? — bert1

Based on answering questionnaires I am classed as extreme left and woke. But I know that it is people claiming to be these thing who are advocating censorship. It is not inevitable to have left wing sympathies and then to descend into woke political correctness. It is not a religion.

But the dichotomies have taken over.

On a personal note my dad is black but I can pass as a white man. So I am deemed to have "White privilege" (By noveau racists.) Who think skin colour is everything.

The Wokeness of today is the enemy of mixed race autistic gay people like myself because it champions the opposite of diversity by seeking to categorise and vilify people based on their identity.

I consider myself broadly left wing. Do you think that I cancel and ostracise people? — bert1

I don't know you to comment on this.

But I know what happens of mainstream forums like Twitter, Facebook. It is the Left wing people/Woke/PC cancelling people.

Apparently Wokeness originated as a Black American term encouraging people to understand the depth and pervasive nature of historical racism and oppression of Black people.

But that is not what it means now.

Wokeness now means taking offence at what anyone else says and claiming that your sense of offense is your enlightenment.

Becoming aware of the prejudice you faced or faced is not the same as taking offense on behalf of other people that you are mischaracterising.

This why the left is eating itself. It has extended its reign of taking offense to the point that anyone even in the thick of the ranks can be cancelled and ostracised for a misstep.

a state suffused with racism from top to bottom. — StreetlightX

America? Britain? France? Brazil?

Where are the Jews supposed to Live? The Arabs have a massive area of land in the Middle East and North Africa. Many Arabic and Muslim countries. (Unproductive and mired in Islamofacist repression)

I sniff Anti Semitism. Anti Semitism is Anti-Semitism. A handful of ethnic groups have no homeland and you want the Jews to be in perpetual diaspora. Simply repugnant. You have signed your deal with the devil. Likewise most people on this thread have shown time and time again they don't care about children other than the ones that die when Israeli is defending itself against Hamas and other terrorists.

Let's consider a plot of land, call it an acre. Well, pretty clearly that cannot be stolen. — tim wood

I am surprised you would say this because that is often the main contention that someone took land from someone else. You stole the land from them, by evicting them from it or preventing them for returning to it.

It is possible to own almost anything now, from radio waves, stars, ideas, inventions, names, ever smaller slices of land selling for massive sums of money.

The idea that you can own something has cascaded to contention over ever smaller bits of matter.

The internet actually contrasts with that thanks to Sir Tim Berners-Lee. He allowed it to be a free for all. Which is why at a low cost or even no cost we can disseminate ideas from four corners of the earth to challenge the capitalist idea that you have to pay for everything and earn your opinions.

I think our freedom comes from people who offer free stuff and don't make you have to earn your right to dissent. Woke and PC ideals appear to be an off shoot of capitalism.

Is this forum woke and politically correct? No. It seems too chaotic and random to me - a mix of crackpots, monomaniacs, educated, autodidacts and political warriors of diverse camps. There doesn't appear to be consistent or monolithic approach. — Tom Storm

You're probably right.

So it's the exclusivity of it - which I pretty much agree with. But is that property? — tim wood

The owner can demand total control of the property or some one can make a claim on behalf of other people about their inalienable right to something. Or the owner can allow general access to the property

In the Israeli/Palestine debate I tried to get the topic of property/ownership off the ground and someone started a thread about it elsewhere but that thread was full of hyperbole. "War Crimes" "Genocide" "Ethnic cleansing" "Apartheid" "Theft of Land"

I said I think the conflict will become intractable under this approach.

Give me an example of a position or feature of philosophy that is not a bias of some sort or other. — Joshs

Questions have two sides.

Is reality a dream? Side 1 Yes Side 2 No.

A bias is to already favour one side of an argument explicitly or implicitly or to start an argument with unjustified premises and axioms. The dubious initial example I gave was just to show that certain ideas or arguments or already dismissed prior to any kind of investigation based maybe on "triggering " people.

You appear to believe that the striving for absence of bias is the ‘correct’ role of philosophy. Others will suggest that this view is just one among competing notions of what philosophy is about — Joshs

I don't have a problem with disagreement. As long as it is not based on emotions or ideology.

From their vantage your aim is what they call a god’s eye view, or a view from nowhere. (...) Not only does it likely conflict , but the ‘wokists’ will push hard to expose your view as ‘oppressive’. — Joshs

My view is more a kin to nihilism than the God's eye viewpoint. I don't invent axioms to start a debate but critique the axioms (Some of which have become PC and woke). I am not denying bias. I think PC and woke ideas are new or rehashed biases.

It feels that the whole internet is now just a bunch of people taking offense at something.

I may have started this thread well under the influence..

But I believe philosophy could benefit from taking nothing for granted.

Well, what my question is getting at is what, exactly, is claimed? — tim wood

What is being claimed is an exclusive right to something. This claim means none else can share the thing with you. You can share land and use it in a sustainable way.

How can "property," correctly understood, be theft? — tim wood

Because it is claiming something that isn't yours. It doesn't belong to anyone.

Whatever snowflake. — Benkei

How have you managed to sink to this level?

Ah, another right wing prejudiced poster — Benkei

I am a British gay left wing, mixed race pro-Israeli antinatalist agnostic who thinks property is theft. please direct me to my "right wing comments"

I have never voted for The conservatives here or any right wing party.

BitconnectCarlos Well done for persevering against massive prejudice and irrationality. I can't be bothered any more.

You have my support.

Censorship and murder of anyone criticising the official line has been the hall mark of genocidal dictatorships.

I expect almost no one here has ever lived under such a regime and are using censorship in a comparatively shallow egregious manner.

Free speech regimes allow ideas and claims to be freely debated the law only stepping in when threats to persons are made.

I think this is good juncture to compare science and philosophy.

Imagine science found a cure for cancers that involved using the remains of aborted foetuses with the eggs of near extinct bird.

Is this a cure for cancer? Yes. Is it ethically problematic? Yes? Science doesn't cater to or rely on feelings.

Facts are not eradicated by feelings. I think censorship increases prejudice by making censored ideas seem more tantalizing.

As far as I am aware I have never tried to censor anyone ever in my life and have always been willing to interact with people with beliefs I may hold abhorrent.

In the UK where I live giving increased coverage to the BNP (The British National Party) completely undermined them and lead to their rapid decline.

Ideally yes. So be careful of posting biased statements without evidence, was the point of my initial post.
If you didn't get it then it's ok, there is no point in creating a strawman, is there? I will let you carry on with others. Thanks — skyblack

I am sorry a thread of yours ended up in the lounge. I am not a mod here.

(...)philosophical discussions would identify the context of personal bias and ignorance that motivates such a claim as “Chinese people are inferior to Europeans”, rather than admit it into philosophical discussion as it stands. — Possibility

The History of Philosophy has been rife with racism, sexism, misogyny, nationalism , pro slavery sentiment, elitism xenophobia etc. So you seem to have just delegitimized all of philosophy.