What are you looking for in a criteria? I am not following. Are you wanting a precise equation where someone could plug in the values for the variables and it spit out "is this nature"?

I am not saying you are American; but my entire conversation about liberalism and conservatism in this thread is in the context of American politics. I am not well versed in other countries' politics, although I have a general understanding.

I am not arguing that these four concepts cause us to be incapable of forwarding a conversation: I am noting that our disagreements are very deep. The deepness of a dispute doesn't necessitate that there is not means of resolution. What we need to do, and what I've been asking you to do, is dive into metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics (in that order) and metaethics will probably require us to dive into ontology a bit.

Are you wanting a precise equation where someone could plug in the values for the variables and it spit out "is this nature"? — Bob Ross

I don't know; I wanted to know how you arrived at your certainties. You speak of 'empirical' as though you can look at nature and see essences ... I can make nothing of it, I think you are hallucinating.

I guess the thing that concerns me the most about these arguments is that you are implying that blind conformity to social expectations is inherently good, and disobedience is inherently bad. I'd rather surround myself with people who were more open minded so i could be more honest and less irritated with them. — ProtagoranSocratist

That is not what I am saying at all. If you've read all my posts you would have seen that I have said that a man can wear a dress if they want, but that does not mean they are a woman. It is those that insist on controlling other's speech that are the ones that lack a sense of being open-minded. It doesn't mean you can't call yourself a woman - only that you cannot make me call you a woman. Do you understand the distinction? If not, then I would need you to define, "open-minded".

It's not blind conformity. We all accept these soft rules for a reason - because we all have sexual orientations and desires and need a way to determine another's sex that aligns with one's sexual preferences. How would you feel if you took someone home with you that did not align with your sexual preference but was dressed like someone that aligns with your sexual preference? Saying that you have to ask just goes to show how closely gender is tied to sex.

For example, in the more renaissance time periods in europe, it was considered shameful for a woman to show her ankles in public in christian societies. Now, the expectations are much looser in western countries. In some Muslim countries, it's considered shameful to take off your head scarf unless you are around your immediate family (and once again, the stricter onus is on the women, as muslim men do not always need to cover their faces). If any of these things you or Bob Ross are saying is true about gender ideas being objective, or about trans identity being a mental illness, then how could any of these cultural conflicts exist? Would you ever question an authority figure's ideas about anything? — ProtagoranSocratist

Please read my all my posts thoroughly because you are just straw-manning me.

What you are saying aligns with what I have already said numerous times in that the easing of the societal expectations is exactly what eliminates the spectrum of gender identity as a social construct. Remove the expectations and you remove any spectrum to move along. A gender neutral society is a society in which transgenderism does not exist.

You might have missed this among all the nonsense going on in this thread:
Transgender identity mistakes intra-sex diversity (different ways of being male or female) for inter-sex distinction (being male vs. female) - confusing kinds of men/women (i.e., variations within sexes) with kinds of genders..

When someone transitions and says “I’m a woman,” they're not rejecting the sex/gender binary, but reaffirming it — they are still operating within the same two categories (man/woman), just switching sides. If gender is supposed to be distinct from sex, why use the terms? Wouldn’t that show that gender is still dependent on the sex binary? “Being male” or “being female” is a natural kind — something biologically grounded — and all the ways of living out those kinds are variations within that category, not grounds for a new category.

From this view, gender is not a separate ontological layer (“social role distinct from sex”) — it’s a descriptive shorthand for the spectrum of behaviors humans exhibit. So when we call a behavior “feminine” or “masculine,” we’re just naming a pattern that some men and women exhibit more often — not defining a separate gendered essence or identity.

I'm not denying we all have personal and subjective feelings and inclinations. What I am saying is that what we often interpret as “gender incongruence” is not a conflict between one’s biological sex and some separate “gender identity.” It is simply a reflection of the natural diversity in how humans live, feel, and express themselves. The supposed “incongruence” is a conceptual overlay imposed by the gender framework. Once you remove that framework (gender neutral), there’s no conflict — just human behavioral and psychological diversity. A man who feels like he “should be a woman” isn’t actually experiencing an identity mismatch. Instead, he’s just expressing a variant of male human experience — one that happens to share traits culturally associated with women.

The incongruence comes from knowing you are a man but society telling you that if you like to wear a dress, you must be a woman. Remove that expectation and now you can wear a dress and still be a man.

Please read my all my posts thoroughly because you are just straw-manning me. — Harry Hindu

I'm not straw manning you; the issue is that people who want you to call them a man, when you see them as a woman, are in disagreement. How you handle the disagreement is completely up to you. Don't try and force me to read all of your posts. In the end, gender is both about congruence and conformity...if you think trans is a sign of mental illness or poor health, this proves my point.

But this is the modern theory of gender. You just described gender as a social construct and social expression. This is exactly what we are disputing here. — Bob Ross

Sure.

I agree and am not meaning to convey that there are liberal or conservative theories of genders; but, rather, that there are gender theories compatible with liberalism and conservatism and some are prominent among each.

This is why I think diving into politics in this thread is and was a red herring: people are skipping past the philosophical and psycho-sociological discussion about gender theory to ethics—which puts the cart before the horse. Ontology is prior to ethics. — Bob Ross

Says who?

Levinas notes the opposite.

If gender is a performance within culture that is for self-identification, then gender is divorced from sex; for anyone can perform in a manner that is properly identified with such-and-such social cues and expectations and they thereby would be, in gender is just that, that given gender.

What the OP is getting at is something more subtle in metaphysics: is the ‘performance’, social expectations, and social cues identical to gender OR is gender an aspect of the real nature a being has. — Bob Ross

I'd say my position is both/and -- yes there are ties to sex from gender, but they are not essentialist ties which a philosopher can dream up within a normative frame to apply to everyone else(With respect to Aristotle and Aquinas: especially not for all time). Rather the gender a person has is something they come to find. There's a sense in which I can go so far as to say that person comes to know themself -- i.e. what they thought they are is not who they are -- but not so far as to say that any philosopher knows that better than the person.

We like to think now like Hume: doctors deny doing ethics when they inform you of the ‘descriptive facts’ about health because prescriptive and descriptive statements are seen as divorced from each other. — Bob Ross

I disagree with your first assertion: Many people do not like thinking like Hume.

Doctors do not deny doing ethics -- it's just a medical ethic that's informed in a certain way. I note the medical model because I don't think you're presenting a medical ethic at all, but rather a religious one. They also fit in an interesting place with respect to the Humean fork: i.e. it's a practice which blends factual and normative concerns in a productive manner.

When it comes to questions of sexual health I'm going to pick the people who really just want people to be happy and healthy regardless over the people who want people to be happy in a particular way, else they're sinners.

I think the Dominican priests, at one point, played the role of doctors of body, soul, culture, mind -- but no longer do.

I'm not religious, but if the religious want to continue to live on in the world we happen to be in -- rather than fight against it -- then they'll have to come up with some other function than advice on how to have sex.

Once upon a time it may have made sense -- but it doesn't any longer. Homosexuality is not a sin, and if a Christianity wishes to present it as such that's such much worse for that Christianity.

Likewise, health wise, it is obvious that many forms of sex that people engage in are unhealthy for the body. Like I stated to other people on here, anal sex does damage the anus (even granting it heals itself to some extent over time and one can do exercises to help strengthen it); and deepthroating does damage the throat’s ability to gag (which is for avoiding choking). — Bob Ross

Have you seen what birth does to a vagina?

It's not pleasant.

Like I was trying to note to Jamal, this is the real debate for sexuality ethics is indeed...ethics; and this isn’t incommensurable to resolve: we would need to start with metaethics, then normative ethics, then applied ethics. In order to dive into our metaethical disagreements, we will have to dive into metaphysics and ontology.

More importantly, the OP is really about whether or not gender is a social construct or something else; and whether or not the Aristotelian take accounts for it. It is not a discussion itself about ethics: it is a discussion about human ontology. — Bob Ross

Cool.

Then I'm squarely against the Aristotelian account of gender, obviously.

The question there is in what capacity?

Either Hume's fork applies, in which case we're speaking descriptively of gender rather than normatively, or it does not, in which case while you want to discuss human ontology ethics happens to apply since ontology and normativity aren't separated without an is/ought distinction of some kind.

Which way do you prefer?

I'm not straw manning you; the issue is that people who want you to call them a man, when you see them as a woman, are in disagreement. How you handle the disagreement is completely up to you. Don't try and force me to read all of your posts. — ProtagoranSocratist

Then don't expect your cherry-picked posts and strawmen to deserve a response.

Once you remove that framework (gender neutral), there’s no conflict — just human behavioral and psychological diversity. — Harry Hindu

The problem is that this just isn't based on any real culture: real cultures just have different ideas about biological sex and gender than others. Some cultures were possibly so simple that there was no need to discuss gender or an equivalent concept. Trying to logically invalidate transgenderism just won't work out.

Nature doesn't even conform to simple, binary ideas about sex. Hermaphrodites aren't just a mythological concept, but there have been real human heraphrodites. There have also been other kinds of transgender conceptualizations, like "two spirit" in native american culture. Trying to reduce trans to a logical error just isn't correct or based on modern medical and scientific understandings of transgender issues.

Then don't expect your cherry-picked posts and strawmen to deserve a response. — Harry Hindu

Wow.

The problem is that this just isn't based on any real culture: real cultures just have different ideas about biological sex and gender than others. Some cultures were possibly so simple that there was no need to discuss gender or an equivalent concept. — ProtagoranSocratist

Exactly. Which is just saying that there's the biology of sex and then there is a society's expectations of the sexes, and it can differ from culture to culture. This implies that for one to change their gender they would have to change cultures, not change clothes.

Nature doesn't even conform to simple, binary ideas about sex. Hermaphrodites aren't just a mythological concept, but there have been real human heraphrodites. — ProtagoranSocratist

:roll:

Hermaphrodites don’t exist. That is an outdated term implying that a person is both fully male and fully female, which isn’t biologically possible. — Cleveland Clinic

I saw a documentary about a real hermaphrodite who had non-functional sex organs, it's extremely rare, but i was not imagining what i saw. Don't believe everything you read online.

I and others have tried to show that you have adopted a muddled approach to the topic. You appear not to have been able to see the problem with your approach.

Sex concerns biology, gender concerns social roles. But because of your religious beliefs, you wish there not to be such a distinction, so that you can maintain that biology necessarily determines ones sexual roles. You wrap all that up in a pretence of misunderstood neo- Aristotelian metaphysics in order to to kid yourself that ist has some merit.

It's all pretty tendentious. And after 15 pages, tedious.

It's all pretty tendentious. And after 15 pages, tedious — Banno

Some people try to make solipsistic arguments, then accuse others of not understanding them, insisting that you didn't read enough of their posts. I don't understand these arguments that transgenderism is just a logical flaw. There's clearly more going on with these people than mental illness.

There's clearly more going on with these people than mental illness. — ProtagoranSocratist

With the trans folk or the ones doing the anti-trans posting?

As @Tom Storm pointed out, Bob Ross is clearly here to justify his authoritarian, conservative politics in the best way he can, which is, not very well.

His motivation is political, and religious, not philosophical. He has a parochial, patriarchal, patriotic view of humanity, such that everyone everywhere ought fit some fantasy about 1950's middle class 'Merca.

It's mainly interesting because it is so sad, so limited.

In the end there's not much we can do for poor old Bob.

With the trans folk or the ones doing the anti-trans posting? — Banno

I was referring to trans folks, but what i said interestingly applies to the people here who have been wanting to invalidate trans as a type of person as well...

Fragile masculinity, on some accounts. The need for control overwhelms rationality. In all truth some perhaps cannot see what is problematic in this view. The world simply must be ordered in the way he sees, no other option is available. Hence the faith in essences ordained by god, permitting him to divvy things up to suit his own self image.

Unnecessary psychologising on my part, of course. But it helps me make sense of such threads.

And yes, that is intended to be ironic.

I and others have tried to show that you have adopted a muddled approach to the topic. You appear not to have been able to see the problem with your approach.

Sex concerns biology, gender concerns social roles. But because of your religious beliefs, you wish there not to be such a distinction, so that you can maintain that biology necessarily determines ones sexual roles. You wrap all that up in a pretence of misunderstood neo- Aristotelian metaphysics in order to to kid yourself that ist has some merit.

It's all pretty tendentious. And after 15 pages, tedious. — Banno

:up:
I gave up. It's like talking to smoke.

Smoke doesn't repeatedly and insistently answer back with the same mistake.

:meh:

Nature doesn't even conform to simple, binary ideas about sex. Hermaphrodites aren't just a mythological concept, but there have been real human heraphrodites. — ProtagoranSocratist

:roll:

Hermaphrodites don’t exist. That is an outdated term implying that a person is both fully male and fully female, which isn’t biologically possible. — Cleveland Clinic — Harry Hindu

I saw a documentary about a real hermaphrodite who had non-functional sex organs, it's extremely rare, but i was not imagining what i saw. Don't believe everything you read online. — ProtagoranSocratist

Was wondering if this had already come up ...

Hermaphroditism wherein the lifeform reproduces with another such that both impregnate each other and become impregnated by the other does not occur in humans—but is quite natural in relation to Nature at large:

A rough estimate of the number of hermaphroditic animal species is 65,000, about 5% of all animal species, or 33% excluding insects. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermaphrodite

So, about 1/3 of all non-insect animal species are hermaphroditic. That’s more normal for Nature than is being a red-haired human (less than 2% of humanity at large is. And please, please, let’s not start on the human-relative abnormal condition of red-haired-ness).

In humans, the condition of having both ovarian and testicular tissue is nowadays called, “ovotesticular disorder”, with only about 500 reported cases. It is certainly not a normal phenotype for humans but, wait for it, “normality” has absolutely nothing to do with “natural”. Otherwise, stuff like red-haired people would then, rationalistically and all, be unnatural abominations of nature. Besides which, it does occur in nature.

Far more interesting and telling is the proportion of intersexed humans in humanity at large:

Sex assignment at birth usually aligns with a child's external genitalia. The number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 1:4,500–1:2,000 (0.02%–0.05%).[4] Other conditions involve the development of atypical chromosomes, gonads, or hormones.[5][2] The portion of the population that is intersex has been reported differently depending on which definition of intersex is used and which conditions are included. Estimates range from 0.018% (one in 5,500 births) to 1.7%.[5][6][7] The difference centers on whether conditions in which chromosomal sex matches a phenotypic sex which is clearly identifiable as male or female, such as late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia (1.5 percentage points) and Klinefelter syndrome, should be counted as intersex.[5][8] Whether intersex or not, people may be assigned and raised as a girl or boy but then identify with another gender later in life, while most continue to identify with their assigned sex.[9][10][11] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

Boldface mine. So up to nearly 2% of humanity might be intersexed. Quite importantly: and all this is just regarding the physiology of the human body. Goddess only knows of the vast diversity of genotypic and phenotypic expressions as strictly pertains to the physiology of the human brain as regards sexual identity and preference. The brain being that which (either in large part or in full) constitutes the mind, rather than the body per se.

I’ll end this post with the number one news flash of all news flashes: Nature, ergo the natural, is all about diversity, intra-species very much included . (And not, by any means, conformity to any one man’s or cohort’s notion of an ideal essential nature of this and that lifeform. Such as how some humans have, at least historically, wanted all humans to reach their "ideal essential biological nature" of being blue-eyed blonds.)

As to homosexuality and such dying out in our species due to such people not being able to reproduce, over two millennia of documented history clearly demonstrates that, nope, this just ain't happening. ... This as though it is a naturally inherent aspect of our human species of lifeform. :gasp:

Hermaphroditism wherein the lifeform reproduces with another such that both impregnate each other and become impregnated by the other does not occur in humans — javra

"hermaphrodites" in human terms just mean that the person has both forms of genitalia, and like i said: they're not both sexually functional, and very rare:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkjhpu6JnS0

no matter how many people want to believe that humans can only be grouped in the "male and female dichotomy"...does not mean it will happen...

Yes, I'm in agreement.

i had to update myself on this information a little (as i saw that documentary on the transgender hermaphrodite over 20 years ago)...what i'm reading is that hermaphrodite humans cannot reproduce at all, even though there are some intersex people who can.

"hermaphrodites" in human terms just mean that the person has both forms of genitalia, [...] — ProtagoranSocratist

...what i'm reading is that hermaphrodite humans cannot reproduce at all, even though there are some intersex people who can. — ProtagoranSocratist

To better clarify:

Yes, human cases of what is more correctly termed "true hermaphrodites" cannot reproduce at all.

In my previous post, what I stated about “ovotesticular disorder” in humans having only about 500 known cases ... this condition currently termed “ovotesticular disorder” is one and the same with what was traditionally termed "true hermaphrodism" in humans. You can verify this in the link provided to ovotesticular disorder in that post.

Now, technically,, ovotesticulral disorder / true hermaphrodism in humans is far more atypical than merely having a mixture of both forms of genitalia. It is having gonads (a technical term)--ovaries in women and testies in men (rather than the vulva or penis which are external genitalia, gonads being just one aspect of human internal genitalia (e.g. the male prostate and the female uterus are other aspects of internal genitalia))--that, as gonads in the one human, have both ovarian and testicular tissues, both together in the same gonad, which is then technically termed an "ovotestis". This is far more interesting than the issue of reproduction you bring up (and, again, yes, human "true hermaphrodites" cannot in any way reproduce) because the gonads control many an important hormone, both in adulthood and in development. (and ovaries deliver different enough hormones in women in comparison to testis in men, and the sex-specific hormones play a big enough role in how the two sexes differ physically).

All that stated, when it comes to genitalia per se (the whole entire shebang), in humans, cases where the two are combined to whatever extent are termed "intersexed" ... this rather than "(true) hermaphroditic"--the latter, again, only applies to gonads that are part male and part female. And, again, whereas "true hermaphroditism" is very rare (only about 500 reported cases in all of humanity past and present), cases of being intersexed are relatively quite common: up to nearly 2% of the global human populous might well be intersexed ... with a more or less absolute minimum of 0.018%, which is still quite a lot considering.

up to nearly 2% of the global human populous might well be intersexed ... with a more or less absolute minimum of 0.018%, which is still quite a lot considering. — javra

yeah, 2% is roughly the same percentage of people who identify as transgender, even though the two conditions are very different. We're talking very small minorities, but overall very large numbers of people...

yeah, 2% is roughly the same percentage of people who identify as transgender, even though the two conditions are very different. We're talking very small minorities, but overall very large numbers of people... — ProtagoranSocratist

Yup. (It's also roughly the same percentage of people who are red-haired.)

But as you say: the two conditions of being intersexed and of being transgendered are very different. Being intersexed (and there's a whole story about how far too many are mutilated at birth so as to conform to societal expectations) is a strictly physiological, physical, condition of the human body (complexities of how this affects behavior aside). Whereas being transgendered is entirely mental, psychological: the body typically is perfectly male or female in appearance while the brain is configured to identify to the sex it is not bodily.

While we're discussing, all that said--and all of it blatantly enough evidencing the natural biological diversity within the human species as regards sex--I have yet to understand something about ancient cultures in which homosexuality was accepted and relatively wide spread (well known and documented examples include Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and the less known in the west Ancient Japan, at least prior to Christian cultural "influences")):

Though homosexuality was by comparison rampant and readily accepted--and they no doubt had the same percentage of intersexed individuals--there is no historical record I can find of transgendered individuals in these cultures. Maybe I haven't looked deeply enough into the matter. Or maybe it might be the case that being transgendered is in some as of yet mysterious, at least to me, way intimately related with the culture(s) we ourselves are living in??? Then again, some of them Ancients wore togas most all the time, which kind'a look like skirts, so who knows? :grin:

While we're discussing, all that said--and all of it blatantly enough evidencing the natural biological diversity within the human species as regards sex--I have yet to understand something about ancient cultures in which homosexuality was accepted and relatively wide spread (well known and documented examples include Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and the less known in the west Ancient Japan, at least prior to Christian cultural "influences")):

Though homosexuality was by comparison rampant and readily accepted--and they no doubt had the same percentage of intersexed individuals--there is no historical record I can find of transgendered individuals in these cultures. Maybe I haven't looked deeply enough into the matter. Or maybe it might be the case that being transgendered is in some as of yet mysterious, at least to me, way intimately related with the culture(s) we ourselves are living in??? Then again, some of them Ancients wore togas most all the time, which kind'a look like skirts, so who knows? — javra

And there are ancient records of anal sex practices...

As far as transgendered people existing in those cultures, maybe it simply wasn't recorded or expressed as openly. You also bring up something I have thought about a lot, maybe there are certain mysterious purely psychological factors that drive people to have trans identities that are put into place by modern culture and social norms. If I had to guess, there would be some subtle biological and psychological aspects at work here.