If inquire into why spaces are separated we get various arguments based on human behaviour: safety and hygiene are the most common arguments I hear. Stuff like modesty/embarrassment/nakedness etc. are not usually talked about as much, but - I feel - often implied. I find the comparison to saunas interesting; they seem to be often mixed without problems: but there are two important differences: while nearly everyone uses public toilets, using saunas is far more optional. And the taboo nature of excreting heightens feeling of shame, which is absent with saunas. — Dawnstorm

This got me thinking about changing rooms in various gyms I've been in. None of them have been mixed, and women have complained about the presence of biological men, as in this story:
https://www.newsweek.com/gym-chain-center-tish-hyman-dispute-flooded-negative-reviews-10989692
This is also an issue in school locker rooms. Girls, understandably, are not always comfortable with biological boys being around them while they're changing.

Well, here's where differ: I do not think bathrooms are "divided by sex." I believe this is surface rhetoric. Bathrooms themselves are social constructs. And bathrooms being "divided by sex," means that bathrooms are gendered: there are bathrooms for girls and bathrooms for boys and unisex bathrooms. Gendering bathrooms is, first and foremost, something we're doing. Something we're used to doing. Something ingrained in our daily praxis. Gendering bathrooms is social behaviour. — Dawnstorm

That's interesting. It may be due to a difference of gender definition. For most of the life of the term gender it was a synonym for 'sex'. Probably about 60 years ago there was an introduction to create a new meaning from gender. This meaning of gender is 'Non biological social expectation from a particular sex."

So what does this mean? We know from biology that on average, men are taller than women. Can an individual man be shorter than a woman? Sure. This is biological expectation, not gender expectation. Gender is when society places cultural actions on a biological sex that have nothing to do with their biological sex. So for example, "Women wear dresses". Is there anything innately biological in a woman wearing a dress? No. Its purely a cultural construct of subjective expectation.

A trans gendered individual is not a trans sexual individual. It is an individual of one sex that does not like the cultural expectation of their sex. So they might be a man who likes to wear dresses, or a woman who likes to wear top hats. Or perhaps a man believes that only women stay at home and take care of the house while men have to work. So he lets his wife work and stays at home.

Bathrooms are not gendered. They are divided by sex. Urinals are designed for the biology of males, not females. The privacy is afforded each sex because there is also more than urination and excrement, but menstruation from women. Not to mention that there is nudity and clothing removal to take care of biological needs. One does not go into the bathroom to affirm that one is male or female, they use the bathroom because they are male or female.

The trans gendered community wants to argue that enacting the cultural expectation of the other sex gives them the right to be in spaces divided by sex. So if a man wears a dress, feels like a woman, and acts in a cultural way that he believes women aught to act, that he should be allowed in the women's bathroom, lockers, sexual abuse centers, and jails. This male can be fully intact and not on hormones.

To make my position clear: sexual facts applied in social contexts is always gendered. That includes biology: the way we organise the facts to make sense of them could be different. But biological facts do set boundries of what is likely to be successful. So empirical research is going to be far more strict than socially structured excretion. — Dawnstorm

So this is an incorrect view of gender within gender theory. Gender and sex are completely different meanings. Meaning you can have division based on sex differences, and based on gender differences. Anything based on biological differences is a sex differentiated situation that is not cultural. For example, getting a prostate exam. Since only men have prostates, the exclusion from females getting the exam is not a cultural difference, but a reasonable one based purely on biological ones.

The issue with many trans gendered individuals is they are likely unintentionally applying sexual differences as cultural expectations. Either that, are they are really trans sexuals and desire to have the cross sex access without the need to take hormones or have surgery. And of course there are always bad actors who want to cross these spaces for duplicitous, malicious, or perverted reasons. I want to be clear I do not think this is the majority, but it must be recognized they exist.

Smart people are good at building elaborate justifications that work out logically. But these elaborate legitimisations, too, are constructs, and not ones likely to be shared with trans people - or me, for that matter. — Dawnstorm

True and well said. I hope my point is based on rational argumentation and not merely bias or lazy thinking. The key is when we start saying things about rights and laws, we have to be very specific and accurate with definitions.

Now I'm a cis male and use bathrooms for boys without a second thought. I neither know or care if I ever shared a bathroom with a trans man. As a result, this is not an issue that intimately impacts me. Which also means that I'm talking from an easy place. I can question the status quo with little problem, because a change won't impact me personally at all. — Dawnstorm

Same, I really appreciate your humbleness and self-awareness in this.

Does Ms Pacman have a female biology? My personal take (in worldbuilding terms; I know Ms Pacman is just pixels... or scan lines... depending on the technology) is that Pacmen reproduce by mitosis (when you've eaten enough you get an extra life, no?). This is only partly a joke. — Dawnstorm

Its light hearted, but your point is well stated. Its interesting to think about what people feel. Some people might view Ms. Pacman as 'biologicaly female' as in 'female pac-creature'. Some people may feel that there is no separated sex intent between the two creatures, and that the only difference is that one wears a bow while the other doesn't. In the same way, it may be possible that humans view 'man and woman' in similar fashion sometimes. I personally cannot view a person in any other way than biology. If you pointed at the blue sky and told me it wasn't blue, I could no more unsee the blue sky than view a man or woman as a biologically distinct person. But, it may be that there are people who do not see biology, and generally only see cultural actions as their primary view of 'man or woman' and legitimately could swap them out in their mind without any compunction.

I think though that my viewpoint is the norm. When Mulan was found to be female, no one said, "Oh, well you were a man, but now you're only a woman because we made you wear a dress." Its an odd way of thinking that doesn't seem quite right.

This got me thinking about changing rooms in various gyms I've been in. None of them have been mixed, and women have complained about the presence of biological men, as in this story:
https://www.newsweek.com/gym-chain-center-tish-hyman-dispute-flooded-negative-reviews-10989692
This is also an issue in high school locker rooms. Girls, understandably, are not always comfortable with biological boys/men being around them while they're changing. — RogueAI

Hello RogueAI! To bring it to the OP, do you believe that it is a human right that a person's gender allow someone to enter cross sex spaces? That if a woman is uncomfortable with this, she is against a human right?

Hello RogueAI! To bring it to the OP, do you believe that it is a human right that a person's gender allow someone to enter cross sex spaces? That if a woman is uncomfortable with this, she is against a human right? — Philosophim

No, I think women have a well deserved fear of biological men. I think they have a human right to some traditional women-only spaces and sports. This is easy to do in sports, but incredibly difficult to legislate wrt bathrooms and changing rooms. Suppose you have a biological woman who has transitioned to a man and looks like a man. Do we want him to have to use the ladies bathroom/changing room? And vice-versa? On the other hand, if a biological man is walking around the PlanetFitness women's locker room with his junk hanging out, the ladies have a right to complain.

I think they have a human right to some traditional women-only spaces and sports. — RogueAI

What is this human right?

Suppose you have a biological woman who has transitioned to a man and looks like a man. Do we want him to have to use the ladies bathroom/changing room? — RogueAI

I personally don't mind. I had an encounter with a trans gender woman years ago in the male bathroom and it was fine. I think the case here is whether a person can identify the trans person as their natal sex. A person could disguise themselves as an employee and go 'behind the counter', behave like an employee, then leave without anyone knowing. But is that right? If someone can disguise themselves (trans gender, not trans sexual) as the opposite sex, does it make it ok for them to use opposite sex spaces?

Ah, but I do believe in a rational moral structure apart from the law. I don't make the all too common mistake of equating one with the other, though.

but I do believe in a rational moral structure apart from the law. — Ciceronianus

Structure? What kind of structure?

Ah, but I do believe in a rational moral structure apart from the law. I don't make the all too common mistake of equating one with the other, though. — Ciceronianus

Yes, a few had implied this equation, but you never did. Human and natural rights are rational moral structures apart from the law. Is yours something similar or is it a unique system? If similar we could address it, but if its unique that might be too much to tackle in this thread.

They might or they might not go away. Again, I think the situation could be considered analogous to that for gay people. Although the problems are not gone, social acceptance has improved. — T Clark

I'm not sure how to reply. After thinking this through, I'm not sure I understood you right. Are you talking about the results of a social justice movement? I was talking about the effects of a single personal transition and the results on that individuals life in the portion you quoted. But even then I was simplifying far too much (there's "being able to pass" vs "a perceived pressure to pass" - there's a tension field here or not, depending on the trans person's personality. I've lost track and I'm confused. I apologise.

This got me thinking about changing rooms in various gyms I've been in. None of them have been mixed, and women have complained about the presence of biological men, as in this story:
https://www.newsweek.com/gym-chain-center-tish-hyman-dispute-flooded-negative-reviews-10989692
This is also an issue in school locker rooms. Girls, understandably, are not always comfortable with biological boys being around them while they're changing. — RogueAI

Yes, that is one of the situations where empathy tears me apart inside and I dispair. In my darker hours I just think people deserve each other. Not all the time, I'm getting there more often than not lately.

I can't side with anyone here. Not with the trans woman, not with the lady, not with the gym. At the same time I realise it's a difficult situation. Given my personality: If I'd been the woman, I'd likely have been uncomfortable, too, but I'd have kept my head down. If I'd been the trans-person, I'd not have been there in the first place, and if for some reason circumstance would have driven me there, I'd have tried to be as inconspicable as possible, which wouldn't have been very inconspicable. If I were an employee present at the time, I'd be physically sick while being faced with firm policy, and two people fighting it out without giving a quarter.

This is stand-your-ground territory, and I tend to choose flight over fight whenever possible. It's people who choose fight over flight that tend to make headlines like these. And then people line up on either side of the fence, and that's what dominates the discourse. We're doomed, I tell you. Dooooooomed.

(Sorry, I'm better now.)

So what does this mean? We know from biology that on average, men are taller than women. Can an individual man be shorter than a woman? Sure. This is biological expectation, not gender expectation. Gender is when society places cultural actions on a biological sex that have nothing to do with their biological sex. So for example, "Women wear dresses". Is there anything innately biological in a woman wearing a dress? No. Its purely a cultural construct of subjective expectation. — Philosophim

This seems too crude a term to be analytically useful if the goal is to understand what's going on within the wide area on gender-non-conformism. For example, intersex is a biological condition, but it doesn't easily fit the expectations we have about bodies. Our society doesn't really provide easy categories and thus they're "deviant bodies". That implies a social role.

So on to "transgender":

A trans gendered individual is not a trans sexual individual. It is an individual of one sex that does not like the cultural expectation of their sex. So they might be a man who likes to wear dresses, or a woman who likes to wear top hats. Or perhaps a man believes that only women stay at home and take care of the house while men have to work. So he lets his wife work and stays at home. — Philosophim

I know you make that distinction, but it's a difficult one to make, because the terms aren't clear. There are people who are trans who use the terms like you do here, for sure. There are people who are trans who have no use for the term gender to being with. There are people who are trans who reject that they can ever be tanssexual, no matter how much they'd like to be; the latest reasoning (read by doing research while reading this thread, but I didn't keep a link) was that "they can only tinker with their phenotype; their genotype they have no control over").

I dispense with the distinction because I don't find it useful. Also simply cross-dressing does not make you trans. You lose a distinction here that is socially meaningful:

A cis woman who wears a dress, is the default expectation. It's unexceptional. Women these days don't stand out (at least not where I live) for wearing jeans and t-shirt instead. That's very common, too, so these days it's a "can-norm".

Every other constellation is aware that what they're doing shirks gender expectations. The model above would suggest you lump them all in the same category: people who are not biologically female yet still like to wear a dress are all trans. They're not. They're all aware that they shirk some sort of gender expectation, but their motivation and behaviour potential vastly differs:

A cis man can wear a dress for many reason. It could be a sign of rebellion. He could just like wearing dresses. It could be the outgrowth of an interest in haute couture... He'll generally not try to pass as a woman, though, unless he's into trolling.

A trans woman who wears a dress, wears the clothes of the gender she feels like. It could be what she wants to do, or maybe she'd prefer to wear her usual attire, but thinks that would make it harder for people to accept her chosen gender. Maybe it's peer pressure; other trans people want her to wear dresses.

More importantly, a cis man who likes to wear dresses may be at odds with a trans woman who uses wearing dresses as a signal of her felt gender. One wishes to loosen the dress code, while the other - as a side-effect, mind you - re-inforces the dress code. In places, where women are still expected to wear dresses and face censure for wearing trousers, cis women who like to wear trousers find themselves more aligned with cis men who wear dresses than with trans men who wear dresses: it's "I'm a man, and I can wear a dress if I want to," vs. "look at me, I'm wearing a dress, I'm a woman."

With the trans woman, wearing a dress also might help her "pass". That may relief the stress of having to explain yourself over and over again, but it carries the risk of being "found out". This might carry the stigma of dishonesty, even though that's not the intent. The mismatch is two-fold here: you're subjectively misgendered on account of your body, AND you're accused of a personality flaw you do not have.

A trans man who is wearing a dress is actually conforming to the expectations people have of him according to his body, and thus it's perhaps the least obvious form of shirking gender norms. I've recently learned of the term "girl moding". As long you're not close to passing you pretend to be what others think you are, but not you yourself. Once you're close to passing you may switch (or not, who knows).

It's far, far easier for me to navigate this messy situation if it's not only behaviour but also bodies that are gendered.

So:

When Mulan was found to be female, no one said, "Oh, well you were a man, but now you're only a woman because we made you wear a dress." Its an odd way of thinking that doesn't seem quite right. — Philosophim

Yes, that's an odd way of thinking. And it's not how I think.

Its light hearted, but your point is well stated. Its interesting to think about what people feel. Some people might view Ms. Pacman as 'biologicaly female' as in 'female pac-creature'. Some people may feel that there is no separated sex intent between the two creatures, and that the only difference is that one wears a bow while the other doesn't. — Philosophim

That, too. But what I'm drawn to here is that I think most people only perceive the gender and never topicalise sex to begin with. I think this might be more common in real life than we realise. I wish I could explain what I think this means in detail, but I'm unsure. It's certainly not that I think biological sex is irrelevant.

Where I do agree, I think, with @T Clark is that I do think treating the "mental condition" of being trans in the sense of "making them realise what they really are" is akin to conversion therapy for gays. But at the same time I think being trans is a real, bodily thing, and you can be wrong about being trans. And finally I don't trust that anyone currently alive knows enough about the subject to tell the difference. And that's a rather difficult postion from which to approach the subject.

[Argh, what a long post.]

This seems too crude a term to be analytically useful if the goal is to understand what's going on within the wide area on gender-non-conformism. — Dawnstorm

If we mean 'gender is purely a social construct' then its not crude. If we intend to tie 'gender is sex', then it is crude because then gender as a definition is ambiguous and crude itself. The way to 'uncrude it' as it were is to use sex for sex based realities and expectations vs gender for gender based realities and expectations. Conflating the two in any way muddies thinking and is the wrong way to approach it.

I know you make that distinction, but it's a difficult one to make, because the terms aren't clear. There are people who are trans who use the terms like you do here, for sure. — Dawnstorm

What's important in a philosophical analysis is to pull the terms that people may use indiscriminately and carefully define them in a way that makes rational discussion possible. "Slang" is not anything we can think rationally about. To have rational thought we must first use clear and unambiguous definitions. We can clearly note that if someone uses the term in a different way, that's a different concept. So we use the term in one clear context and concept, which is gender as a social construct. In this way using gender to mean anything related to biological sex expectation is poor vocabulary, unclear thinking, and emotional subjectivity. Nothing can be reasoned with poor and unclear vocabulary. Anyone who desires something at the expense of a person's rational thinking understands this and pushes it. In philosophy we have a responsibility to clarify and pull out the emotional and ill thought out uses of terms into something clear, rational, and unambiguous. What I've noted as the definition for gender is the basis of gender theory.

There are people who are trans who reject that they can ever be tanssexual, no matter how much they'd like to be; the latest reasoning (read by doing research while reading this thread, but I didn't keep a link) was that "they can only tinker with their phenotype; their genotype they have no control over"). — Dawnstorm

If 'trans sexual' means 'fully the other sex', then no one can be trans sexual. But 'trans gender' doesn't mean, 'fully the opposite gender' either. If we are to keep the terms in similar use, trans gender is crossing gender boundaries, trans sexual is crossing sex boundaries. Anyone who alters their biology in an attempt to cross a sex boundary is a trans sexual under this definition.

This is important, because there are many trans gendered individuals who do not attempt to alter their body. They are satisfied crossing the gender divide, but not the biological sexual divide. As such the two terms create a clear distinction that covers two separate modes of thought and process without leaving anyone behind.

A cis woman who wears a dress, is the default expectation. It's unexceptional. Women these days don't stand out (at least not where I live) for wearing jeans and t-shirt instead. That's very common, too, so these days it's a "can-norm". — Dawnstorm

Correct. This is because gender can change from person to person, group to group, and culture to culture over time. It is a purely subjective notion of behavior for a person's sex. As such it holds no objective weight.

Every other constellation is aware that what they're doing shirks gender expectations. The model above would suggest you lump them all in the same category: people who are not biologically female yet still like to wear a dress are all trans. — Dawnstorm

To be more accurate, they are exhibiting 'trans gender behavior'. "Trans" is a slang term. If we intend this slang term to mean, "A person who holds a trans gender identity", this would be a person who consciously chooses where possible to embody the culturally expected behaviors of the other sex while shunning the culturally expected behaviors of their own sex.

cis women who like to wear trousers find themselves more aligned with cis men who wear dresses than with trans men who wear dresses: it's "I'm a man, and I can wear a dress if I want to," vs. "look at me, I'm wearing a dress, I'm a woman." — Dawnstorm

This is 'trans gendered behavior" in the eyes of the social group, while in the subjective mind of the individual, it is a rejection of the social group's idea of gender. Lets say I was raised in a family that discouraged men from being dancers because "Real men don't dance." I grow up and really like to dance. Further, I think its completely stupid that they think men can't dance. I reject the idea of gender entirely and dance. To them, its trans gender behavior. For me, its not because in my definition of 'male gender', 'not dancing' isn't part of that definition.

This is the problem with making gender into a means of law or enforcement. What one believes gender should be for each sex can be different for every single person, group, or country. It is culturally enforced prejudice or sexism. Nothing more.

It's far, far easier for me to navigate this messy situation if it's not only behaviour but also bodies that are gendered. — Dawnstorm

No, its far, FAR messier. Keeping a clear distinction allows clear thought. Once you realize the difference between trans gender and trans sexual, you can correctly identify people's motivations. Some people truly only want trans gender situation. Other only want trans sexual situations. There are men who want to grow boobs, but behave like gendered men. There can also be blends. There are people who want to be both trans gendered, and trans sexual. Identifying which aspects are trans gender and trans sexual allow clear distinctions and greater accuracy in identifying people's situations.

That, too. But what I'm drawn to here is that I think most people only perceive the gender and never topicalise sex to begin with. — Dawnstorm

I disagree with this. I think you're still blending in expected sex behavior with cultural behavior. Imagine that you see a six foot tall man who walks with a physically straight gait, has a large nose, and is wearing a dress and a bow in their hair. The dress and the bow are gender, the gait and large nose are sex features. Perhaps I am wrong, but most people will look at the sex features over the gender features every time. To be clear, a female can have a large nose and a straight gait instead of a hip sway, but biologically it is more common for men to have large noses and a straight gait. Do you see the difference between gender expectations and sex expectations?

Where I do agree, I think, with T Clark is that I do think treating the "mental condition" of being trans in the sense of "making them realise what they really are" is akin to conversion therapy for gays. — Dawnstorm

Conversion therapy refers to sexual orientation. We know conversation therapy doesn't work because you can't change your sexual orientation. The attempt to claim "conversion therapy" is to claim the negative connotation from the word so that trans gender and trans sexual people can justify what they desire without having to do the work that went into demonstrating why changing a person's sexual orientation is doomed to fail.

Now, as I've noted above, many straight men have a sexual impetus to transition. Phil Illy's "Autosexual" book makes a great argument that this is a sexual orientation as it is lifelong and does not break. Just like a gay person has the wrong triggers for sexual attraction, a trans sexual person (all people who transition are tran sexuals by definition) are able to take the normal outside attraction they have for a woman and place it upon themselves. This is not farfetched, as there is another orientation called 'Autosexual". This is a person who is sexually and/or romantically aroused by themself. A person with this condition looks at themselves in the mirror and is physically turned on by themselves, and can fall romantically in love with themselves. A trans sexual with this orientation is essentially an auto sexual who gets the attraction trigger that they see in other women when they present themselves as a woman.

After examining all kinds of different motivations to transition, this is the only motivation I can actually see as being viable. It is something that cannot be removed from the individual as it seems to exhibit all the hallmarks of a sexual orientation. (I cannot say for sure, I am not a sexologist) If this is the case, then 'conversion therapy' would actually apply here. In the other cases in which it is non-sexually motivated, it seems to all boil down to confusion, trauma, or fear which cause transition. These all seem to me to be treatable as it wouldn't be treating a person's desire to transition, but treating the underlying issues that lead people to view transition as a coping mechanism.

I appreciate your long post! Its been a nice conversation.

I'm uncertain whether any thread so entirely devoted to claimed non-legal rights is an appropriate place to respond to your posts. That's because it should come as no surprise that such supposed rights have no place in what I think is moral conduct.

I favor a kind of virtue ethics, together with consideration of what conduct is appropriate to achieve eudamonia. It's based on ancient views concerning what is right conduct on our part rather than demands we be treated in certain ways by others. Hope that suffices for now.

I'm not sure how to reply. After thinking this through, I'm not sure I understood you right. Are you talking about the results of a social justice movement? I was talking about the effects of a single personal transition and the results on that individuals life in the portion you quoted. — Dawnstorm

Without going back and checking our previous posts, as I remember it, this whole discussion arose from me pointing out that homosexuality was once considered a mental disorder as gender dysphoria is currently. It no longer is.

I favor a kind of virtue ethics, together with consideration of what conduct is appropriate to achieve eudamonia. It's based on ancient views concerning what is right conduct on our part rather than demands we be treated in certain ways by others. Hope that suffices for now. — Ciceronianus

I much appreciate your polite contribution to the thread! Thank you for your viewpoints.

I have justification for my claim, admittedly, weak, but something. You have nothing. — T Clark

No. We are on equal footing. Which I pointed out (I appreciate you at least meeting 1/3 of the way there). We, neither, could access good enough information to defend our positions strongly, but we both have good reason to think the way we think. There is no need to interrogate that further, given no basis for comparison could be made out in a way that would be helpful. No?

We’re not going to get any closer to agreement — T Clark

Yeah, for sure. If you'd like, we can try to re-structure how we're talking to restrict it to Western countries/social structures/expectations.
I think my description is accurate. It may simply be that the number is still alarming for you. That's also fine. But there is clearly no large group feeling the way you say. Although, and this is definitely a bit weak, I would posit that plenty of religious people will make claims of this kind, but not actually believe it. Again, weak. Just a thought.. Most people aren't predisposed to be bigoted (in the West).

I didn’t say that and you know that’s not what I’m talking about. We’ve had the same kind of discussion in the past with you claiming that there is no longer significant discrimination against Black people here. This is just more of the same. Again, we’re not going to do any better than this, so let’s leave it. — T Clark

Huh. It strikes me that (for both of those issues) that would be a good reason to sit down and talk? It can't be that both of us are right. I am interested in that, personally. Either way ,i appreciate a fully civil resolution to those exchanges. I just like to talk..

Assuming I’m doing my math correctly, which is by no means certain, this comes to fewer than 800 incarcerations a year in the US out of a total of about 60,000. — T Clark

To discuss both issues: No, i'm not being cute, and I would appreciate you resiling from the propensity to assume motivation. I said exactly what I meant to say, and it looks, based on your reply, that I was probably right. Looking at numbers in the USA as raw numbers is disingenuous. The correct metric would not be "how many". It would be two other things:

How many vs how many not (i.e how many of the group 'trans' tend to be arrested or convicted of a crime. The other, would be a control group: Non-trans males (I want to be explicitly clear: all of hte issues I could argue about when it comes to trans being in any way 'dangerous' or whatever, have to do with being male. Not trans. It is the same discussion we have to have about non-trans males. Being 'a man' doesn't give us anything to discuss in these terms).

The numbers i've looked at, for reasons that should probably be obvious, are in the UK. So, with that, i'll continue responding, but note that I may have to come back with different numbers as I'm not fully across the US situation with this exact issue.

For the purposes of my calculations above, I assumed this was correct, although I’m skeptical. That information is not available for the US. Can you provide the documentation for the UK? — T Clark

I appreciate that. I crunched the numbers directly from a Government prison population survey from, I think, 2022. This is all on a sticky note on my computer at home - apologies I can't simply be direct with that information. I've just done a shallow dive and re-found another doc - this (which was not my initial source, ftr), from which I can glean some pretty relevant passages:

"MOJ stats show 76 of the 129 male-born prisoners identifying as transgender (not counting
any with GRCs) have at least 1 conviction of sexual offence. This includes 36 convictions for
rape and 10 for attempted rape. These are clearly male type crimes (rape is defined as
penetration with a penis)."

"76 sex offenders out of 129 transwomen = 58.9%
125 sex offenders out of 3812 women in prison = 3.3%
13234 sex offenders out of 78781 men in prison = 16.8%"

The piece (by quote)also points out that the statistics do not count those with a GRC as trans. Which is.. legally, and socially bizarre (that's not a moral complaint. Administrative) given that several will also be part of those numbers, and given how low they are each single case is significant.

There is also addressed the problem of deceit (although, this isn't a main limb for me):

"The converse is the ever-increasing tide of referrals of patients in prison serving long
or indeterminate sentences for serious sexual offences. These vastly outnumber the
number of prisoners incarcerated for more ordinary, non-sexual, offences. It has been
rather naïvely suggested that nobody would seek to pretend transsexual status in
prison if this were not actually the case. " - British Association of Gender Identity Specialists to the Transgender Equality Inquiry’ (2015)

Putting aside some of the more nuanced stuff there, we can see quite clearly that I am either close to the mark, or bang on with my analysis in general(although, I clearly and unsure whether this is hte data set I used at the time so .. pinch of salt..). I really wish I had just emailed my work-self the other stuff months ago when I presented it to someone else in another thread. I apologise for that.

I acknowledge, understand and do not argue with the fact that we're talking about an extremely small population. We're talking about negligible numbers of offenders. But if those offenders, as a class, are more likely to commit these crimes we want to know and take that into account. We would for any other group which presented this way. And in fact, it's getting, socially, to the point where people are swinging back around to bigotry because of the suppression of discussion on the topic (i here think immediately of the current 'black fatigue' trend - although, I most often see that from black people, not whites). I am not saying you're doing this, I'm just taking the opportunity in conversation with someone pretty much fully civil, to say thse things.

This is literally, obviously, and unarguably true. — T Clark

While I acknowledge what you're saying, and I definitely could have been clearer about where I believe you're massaging things, it is pretty damn clear that being male is the problem. Not being cisgender. Given that trans women are more likely (it seems) to commit a crime against a female, we're looking at (in some views) male + mental aberration (and potential one tied to sexuality, i guess). That all stands to reason, and there's no point mentioning 'cis gender' as it does nothing to change the categories we need.

I appreciate you.

I acknowledge, understand and do not argue with the fact that we're talking about an extremely small population. We're talking about negligible numbers of offenders. — AmadeusD

Agreed. That says everything that needs to be said. I think we’ve taken this far enough now.

One is too many, when it could be prevented. So, that isn't all that needs to be said.

There also vanishingly small numbers of people kidnapping Nepalese babies for racial reasons, for torture and murder. But we wouldn't say this about that issue.

So, that isn't all that needs to be said. — AmadeusD

But it is all I'm interested in saying right now.

As always, you have created a thorough and thought-provoking OP. If I may, I would like to give my two cents and hear your thoughts. Out of respect for the OP, I am going to use the terminology in the ways you define them to avoid muddying the waters.

We have many points of agreement from what you said in the OP, but the central issue I have comes out to play here:

Human Rights - Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status
…
Gender – a subjective social expectation of non-biological expressed behavior based on one’s sex. Example: Males should wear pants, females should wear dresses.

In your definition of ‘human rights’, you seem to, and correct me if I am misunderstanding, be acknowledging that rights are innate, inalienable, and grounded in the human as a human being; and this implies that rights are inherent to the nature of a human. There is something it is to be a human, of which both male and female humans have and participate in, and in virtue of this we have rights. If this is true, then what rights we have are tied and anchored in our nature as a human; and so we look at that nature to expose which rights we have and which rights we think we have but don’t.

Now I would like to turn your attention to your definition of gender: “a subjective social expectation of non-biological expressed behavior based on one’s sex.”. A right is, by your ‘human rights’ definition, grounded in the nature of being a human; and the nature of a human is never subjective; so it follows from this, I think plainly by my lights, that ‘transgender rights’ and ‘cisgender rights’ are internally incoherent phraseology in your schema. For gender is subjective (by way of social expectations, expressions, etc.) and rights are grounded objectively (in the nature of the being); so a, e.g., ‘transgender right’ would be a ‘<subjective category of thought tied to sex by a society> <that grounds a right any member of that subjective category has>’.

This is critical to the conversation, I would say, because if this is true then we can’t speak of ‘cisgender’ nor ‘transgender’ rights; instead, it is just ‘human rights’ and every human has such rights indiscriminately of gender. This means that the idea that, e.g., I have the right to use a certain pronoun to identify myself because I am of such-and-such gender is incoherent with your view on ‘human rights’. Instead, I would, e.g., have to argue that something innate to my nature grants me the right to use a certain pronoun (although I understand you were arguing against anyone having such a right).

However, if we are acknowledging that rights are grounded in the nature of a being and this is central to what rights a transgender has; then the question arises: “do all humans have the same rights as humans but not necessarily as male and female?”. That is, are we merely discussing what rights both sexes of our human species share in common; or does the other aspects of their nature not get weighed in for other rights that may not be grounded in their mere human nature but rather their specific nature as a male or female? For example, do women have the right, as women, to refuse conscription but men must fight? Do they have the right to enter a female bathroom space when men don’t? These are considerations that are incoherent with a view that thinks that all the rights humans have are ‘human rights’ as you defined it; because it considers rights that one sex may have that the other doesn’t which, by definition, will not be considered in a generic evaluation of our nature as a human instead of femaleness or maleness. I don’t have the right to go in a female’s bathroom; but women do. The right for me to use a male bathroom is not the same right as the right for females to use female bathrooms: those are two different rights.

I appreciate the fact that you addressed the view that sees transgenderism as a mental illness; and I largely agree with your conclusions from your hypothetical entertainment of it. Here’s something that is important though on that note:

As such, I believe it is a right for people to be able to, of their own free will and money, alter their body as a trans sexual. Bodily autonomy is a human right

You touched on this a bit in the OP; but it is important to note that bodily autonomy does not cover the right to do anything you want with your body. For example, does a suicidal person have the right to kill themselves? Does a masochist have the right to continually cut themselves to the point of risking bleeding out everyday? Does a person have the right to, in modern terms, “rationally and freely” decide to become a drug addict?

The point being, the critical thing that the OP skipped passed is: “what are rights for?”. I humbly submit, they are for allowing ourselves to have the proper ability to realize our natures—to flourish—unimpeded by others. If this is true, then actions we could “rationally and freely” will against ourselves that are sufficiently bad for ourselves would not be covered under rights for our own protection. We would not, then, have the right dangerous immoralities that we could commit against ourselves in a ‘rational and freely willed’ way—e.g., drugs, gambling, pornography, masochism, suicide, etc.

The question then becomes: “is it sufficiently bad for a person’s well-being to try to transition to another sex when it is currently medically impossible to do?”. I would say emphatically “yes”; as it is, I honestly think it is mutilation granted that it doesn’t actually change the body from one sex into the other—we simply don’t have the technology to do that. On these grounds, I would see it like giving someone the option to do meth: that’s not a right one has because it is too dangerous for them—not even in terms of the right to bodily autonomy.

Of course, I know you probably disagree with a lot of this and perhaps you evaluate ‘well-being’ more in terms of modern ‘happiness’ (so maybe transitioning is, under your view, not dangerous at all if ‘happiness’ is central to the good-life); but my main point is that I think the OP needs to weigh in how dangerous something is for a person when calculating if the right to bodily autonomy covers it; and it needs to clarify what it thinks rights are for, as a ‘right’ is a concept we developed to get at something about our nature for ethics. If it isn’t for helping us flourish relative to our nature, then I would need to know what your view is viewing it as.

Cheers

Ah - very fair. Thank you.

In your definition of ‘human rights’, you seem to, and correct me if I am misunderstanding, be acknowledging that rights are innate, inalienable, and grounded in the human as a human being; and this implies that rights are inherent to the nature of a human. — Bob Ross

I confess, I should have defined this better. It only took until page 5 for someone to read the OP in seriousness and point that out. :) What I really defined was natural rights, and assumed human rights were an off shoot of them. Turns out human rights are specific to international law, which I'm not sure is the intent of the slogan, "Trans rights are human rights". So lets do a little combo if that's fair. Human rights are rationally agreed upon rights that should be conferred to all people. The key provisions of human rights are:

Universal, non-discriminatory, equal, and ideas that we would like to respect, protect, and fill. And yes, they are human rights, not monkey rights. :)

If this is true, then what rights we have are tied and anchored in our nature as a human; and so we look at that nature to expose which rights we have and which rights we think we have but don’t. — Bob Ross

No objection. We may have to define human nature, but I think we both have a general sense of what that is for now.

A right is, by your ‘human rights’ definition, grounded in the nature of being a human; and the nature of a human is never subjective; so it follows from this, I think plainly by my lights, that ‘transgender rights’ and ‘cisgender rights’ are internally incoherent phraseology in your schema. — Bob Ross

Are you saying that the definition of human nature can never be subjective, or that a human being's nature can never be subjective? I agree with the first part, but not the second part. Our subjective nature of thinking, feeling, and being is a living part of human experience. The subjective viewpoint of a cockroach is very different form the subjective experience of a human being.

For gender is subjective (by way of social expectations, expressions, etc.) and rights are grounded objectively (in the nature of the being); so a, e.g., ‘transgender right’ would be a ‘<subjective category of thought tied to sex by a society> <that grounds a right any member of that subjective category has>’. — Bob Ross

Lets replace your argument with other examples and see if it still works. Freedom from cruel and unusual punishment is often a right. But if we disregard a person's subjective experience, then we would be able to inflict immense pain on a person without a care or doubt.

But, on looking at it again, I think what you're saying is, "Can there be a human right about cultural subjective expectations?" So you're not saying anything about the personal experience of an individual, but a subjective expectation about an individual based on their sex.

To be more thorough, its also best to differentiate between biological expectation and social expectation. For example, we know by fact that men on average are taller than women. This isn't a subjective expectation, this is a statistical expectation based on biology.

So back to what I think you're saying. Lets plug it into another example. Is there a right that society should have certain subjective expectations of someone with a red hair color? It doesn't seem so. For one, everyone could technically have a different expectation of someone with red hair color. But then a right is a reasoned conclusion, and we must ask, is there a way to reason that someone should ever be showed a subjective expected viewpoint in society?

If we look at what is common to many rights, "The right for women to vote and the right to equal treatment under the law", what we see is a consistent pattern of people being free from the subjective expectations of others. Despite there being people who think women can't vote or that we should treat certain people differently under the law, rights expect us to treat each other equally in opportunity, not in expected actions or outcomes.

So then if we say, "trans gender rights" the only way for this to make sense is if there are certain human rights being denied to trans gender people simply because they are trans gendered. I think that's the only way this makes sense.

This is critical to the conversation, I would say, because if this is true then we can’t speak of ‘cisgender’ nor ‘transgender’ rights; instead, it is just ‘human rights’ and every human has such rights indiscriminately of gender. This means that the idea that, e.g., I have the right to use a certain pronoun to identify myself because I am of such-and-such gender is incoherent with your view on ‘human rights’. Instead, I would, e.g., have to argue that something innate to my nature grants me the right to use a certain pronoun (although I understand you were arguing against anyone having such a right). — Bob Ross

Yes, with what's been brought up so far, I mostly agree. With the caveat that I think we can talk about valid trans gender rights that are attempting to remedy rights that are owed them as human beings that they are not currently receiving because they are trans gender. Asking for things separate from human rights would not be a human right, nor a valid 'trans gender right'.

However, if we are acknowledging that rights are grounded in the nature of a being and this is central to what rights a transgender has; then the question arises: “do all humans have the same rights as humans but not necessarily as male and female?”. That is, are we merely discussing what rights both sexes of our human species share in common; or does the other aspects of their nature not get weighed in for other rights that may not be grounded in their mere human nature but rather their specific nature as a male or female? — Bob Ross

In common, but in common based on biology and function. Do we consider that a person who cannot walk has a particular right that a human who walks does not? Of course we would say its "All humans who cannot walk". In such a way we can say, "All humans who are men". The key here is this cannot be due to a social expectation, it must be based on the objective realities and consequences of biology. I say this as a proposal, not an assertion. I'm curious what you think here.

You touched on this a bit in the OP; but it is important to note that bodily autonomy does not cover the right to do anything you want with your body. For example, does a suicidal person have the right to kill themselves? Does a masochist have the right to continually cut themselves to the point of risking bleeding out everyday? Does a person have the right to, in modern terms, “rationally and freely” decide to become a drug addict? — Bob Ross

In my view I say yes to all three. Does a person have the right to kill themselves by throwing themselves into traffic and causing a mess? No. These are all things you have the right to do in your own home. The moment your actions start to unduly impact other people's freedoms, then its no longer a right. So if I use drugs at home and bother no one, its fine. If I use drugs, get in my car and drive into another vehicle, that's not a right. But to your point, I have a subjective expectation that a person should not do that. My subjective expectation that someone shouldn't do something is not a right that should be enforced.

The point being, the critical thing that the OP skipped passed is: “what are rights for?”. I humbly submit, they are for allowing ourselves to have the proper ability to realize our natures—to flourish—unimpeded by others. — Bob Ross

I would argue rights are not for personal flourishing. We would have a very different society if that were the case. I feel that rights are about the freedom from other people's subjective expectation of what we should do with our own life. It is to live and die as we wish and will, be that for good, or be that for ill.

The question then becomes: “is it sufficiently bad for a person’s well-being to try to transition to another sex when it is currently medically impossible to do?”. I would say emphatically “yes”; as it is, I honestly think it is mutilation granted that it doesn’t actually change the body from one sex into the other—we simply don’t have the technology to do that. On these grounds, I would see it like giving someone the option to do meth: that’s not a right one has because it is too dangerous for them—not even in terms of the right to bodily autonomy. — Bob Ross

You and I may differ here. If an adult wants to use meth, I say they have the right to do so. Now I want to be clear, I would not encourage or condone anyone I know to start taking meth. But they have the right to make that choice. My expectation of how they should behave does not trump their ability to decide themselves how they want to live in their own body. What I think of transitioning personally is irrelevant to whether someone should have the right to do so.

Nice to see an actual breakdown of the OP Bob!

Apologies for the belated response: I meant to respond yesterday but ran out of time ):

Human rights are rationally agreed upon rights that should be conferred to all people...Universal, non-discriminatory, equal, and ideas that we would like to respect, protect, and fill.
…
“If this is true, then what rights we have are tied and anchored in our nature as a human; and so we look at that nature to expose which rights we have and which rights we think we have but don’t.”
— Bob Ross

No objection. We may have to define human nature, but I think we both have a general sense of what that is for now.

I think we will need to dive into what a nature and human nature is; because, to me, the idea that human rights would be necessarily, in principle, universal amongst humans is incoherent with the idea that, in principle, rights are grounded in human nature. This is because ‘human nature’ is not a real nature: (human) femaleness and (human) maleness are human natures that exist within our species. The species itself is an abstraction; and, likewise, ‘human nature’ is an abstraction of the subset of essential properties that (human) males and (human) females share; but the fullness of the real nature that a male or female have is broader than that. In principle, there is nothing restricting rights to only what can be grounded in what each share. Again, why should be believe that two beings of different natures should have the same exact rights—and not just a subset of shared rights—in virtue of their personhood? Perhaps you are open to the possibility of different rights that persons of different natures could have such that they don’t share all the same rights with other persons of different natures; but that, perhaps, there simply aren’t any meaningful differences between them that, in actuality, would warrant different rights. If so, then I would ask you to elaborate more on that.

So you know where I am coming from, I am an essentialist: I think there is a whatness—viz., what it is to be this particular thing contrary to another thing—that real objects (e.g., cars, roads, humans, cockroaches, trees, iron, etc.) have intrinsically. In my case, I account for it with form realism: I think there is a unification, actualization principle of things in matter which provide its innate intelligibility (of what kind of thing it is). Someone else may account for it, for example, by suggesting that each type of thing is that type in virtue of exhibiting some essential set of properties (as opposed to having a unification principle that provides it) and, so, anything that has that set of properties is that type of thing. Admittedly, if one takes the latter route, then it could follow that ‘human nature’ is real; because things could embody multiple natures as a mere collection or aggregate of parts that exihibit different but compatible sets of essential properties (e.g., Bob having brown hair and being a human exhibits both the nature of brownness and humanness). In my case, since the form provides the whatness, I would say that the real essence is embodied in its form, in the fullness of its essence, and this entails that, for humans, their form is what provides their intelligibility as the kind of thing that is a human; and this form is male or female—so ‘human nature’ is an abstraction of what the two forms have in common. In simple words, I don’t think it is possible for their to be a human being that embodies a real nature of ‘humanness’ that is neither male nor female (and I say this knowing about intersex people); but the counter would be obviously that nothing embodies natures in a ‘real’ way like I am describing if forms are not real or they are a set of essential properties something embodies.

My main point would be: why should we believe that the part of ‘female’ and ‘male’ nature that is shared between them is all that we look at to determine their rights if rights are natural?

Are you saying that the definition of human nature can never be subjective, or that a human being's nature can never be subjective?

So, for me, a ‘nature’ is an essence; which is what provides what it is to be this kind of thing as opposed to a different kind of thing; and it can be real (viz., innate and intrinsic as embodied in the being itself: essence realism) or not real (viz., conceptually used by our minds to help categorize similar things: nominalism). To me, valid essences are real and embodied in virtue of the form of a being. So the form, which is the self-actualizing principle of the body that provides it with its whatness (viz., the simple ‘I’ that guides the material processes of the body, which is called a ‘soul’) is what counts as the real nature of the given human; and this nature is never generically ‘human’. Moreover, that nature is embodied in the being independently of what they feel or think about it; so it is stance-independently existent—hence ‘objective’.

You bring up a good point: what about the subjective experience we have? Isn’t that a part of our nature? Yes, but our subjective experience we have is not itself identical to our nature that provides us with being a type of thing that ‘has subjective experience’. To be fair, this is where the differences between essence being a set of properties vs. form get impactful. In my view, your form provides you with being the kind of being that will, under the right circumstances, develop into a being that has experience; but for ‘set theoriests’, for lack of a better term, the being doesn’t have that nature until it exhibits the set of essential properties; so if one thinks that ‘having consciousness’ is essential to being human, then anyone who isn’t currently conscious is not human.

The main point would be that the nature one has is not dependent on the subjective stance you take on it; and that’s all I mean here by ‘objectivity’. I understand, if I remember correctly, you use the terms to distinguish between the qualitative experience we have (viz., subjectivity) and what we are experiencing (viz., objectivity); and I think that schema holds much merit in the context of many discussions, and I agree with you that our nature includes ‘being a subject’.

But if we disregard a person's subjective experience, then we would be able to inflict immense pain on a person without a care or doubt

So, I would say that the nature itself is not identical to the experience we have; our nature entails that we will have such an experience (all else being equal). We do need to consider, to your point, the sensible aspect of our nature, as well as the nutritive and rational aspects, but this is irregardless of if someone is realized sufficiently at their nature. For example, to counter your example, imagine I could drug someone so they won’t feel the pain in your scenario: does that mean I have sidestepped the moral consideration that they are sensibility that are being violated? I wouldn’t say so. I would be purposefully depriving them of feeling which is a privation of their nature; so it is immoral (and I say this knowing that this may sound strange, but by ‘purposeful’ I mean ‘directly intentional’: I may intend to deprive them of feeling as a side effect of the means towards some good end [such as numbing them for surgery to save their life]).

Is there a right that society should have certain subjective expectations of someone with a red hair color? It doesn't seem so. For one, everyone could technically have a different expectation of someone with red hair color
…
I think what you're saying is, "Can there be a human right about cultural subjective expectations?"

This is one of my main points: if ‘gender’ is solely a social expectation, then it has no objective grounding (i.e., it isn’t a social expectation about the real nature of a being—like your ‘biological expectation’ examples); and this means that all social expectations are irrational and immoral. If I expect you to behave some way out of pure subjective feelings or thoughts I have, with no underlying basis in reality, then I am being irrational and immoral because I am viewing you as having an obligation towards submitting to my own feelings are baseless thoughts. This is the consequence of modern gender theory as you outlined in in the OP: ‘gender’ becomes something which we can’t even talk about ‘gender rights’, because those would be just be rights we grant based off of social expectations that have no basis in reality (in objectivity). I understand that’s not what you are really conveying, but that’s the consequence of defining the terms in the way it is defined in the OP (by my lights).

So then if we say, "trans gender rights" the only way for this to make sense is if there are certain human rights being denied to trans gender people simply because they are trans gendered. I think that's the only way this makes sense.

Agreed.

In common, but in common based on biology and function. Do we consider that a person who cannot walk has a particular right that a human who walks does not? Of course we would say its "All humans who cannot walk". In such a way we can say, "All humans who are men". The key here is this cannot be due to a social expectation, it must be based on the objective realities and consequences of biology. I say this as a proposal, not an assertion. I'm curious what you think here.

Are you saying here that the only aspects of male and female biology that matter for consideration of rights is their rational will or intellect? I am not following how the biological and functional differences of women and men wouldn’t be, in principle, taken into account when discussing rights.

Another major difference, I suspect between us, is that I would say that social expectations and obligations can be, if done right, grounded in the real natures of humans; so the ‘biology and function’ of a male or female does legitimately lead to different social roles between them that are grounded in ‘biology and function’. Whereas, in the OP, if I am understanding correctly, the social roles would just always be purely inter-subjective.

In my view I say yes to all three.

I see now you are very libertarian (:

I would briefly note that goodness is the equality of a thing’s essence and existence; so ethics, for me, is going to be centralized around helping realize natures and not the freedom to make choices. I think the main difference here in what you said and my view is that you seem to believe that freedom to make choices (not withstanding you perhaps trying to talk people out of doing bad things or it harming other people) is what freedom truly is about; and I deny this. This is the difference between what’s called ‘freedom of indifference’ and ‘freedom for excellence’. I don’t think freedom fundamentally consists in being about to choose between options; but, rather, consists in a state of being that is most conducive to flourishing.

To really contrast these, let’s rope God into this (;

If freedom is about being able to choose from options (especially contraries), then God is the kind of being that is the most unfree being that could possibly exist because He cannot do evil (and in some views, like mine, He cannot do anything contrary to what is the best option); whereas, if freedom is about being in the best state of being to realize and act in accord with your nature, then God is the kind of being that is the most free being that could possibly exist because He is unimpeded by anything else as a pure intellect, has perfect knowledge of what is good, and has no conative aspect of His being (like the possibility of vices, appetites, etc. overcoming the rational will—e.g., “I really think I should workout, but I really don’t feel like it”).

You can see here how utterly incompatible the modern metaphysic of freedom is to the traditionalist metaphysic.

Freedom for excellence suggests that humans are more free the more virtues they cultivate, the less vices they have, the more knowledge of what is good they have, and the more their environment is setup for their good (viz., their realization and maintenance of their nature as a human); whereas, freedom of indifference would suggest that humans are more free the more options they can choose from without being coerced either way, so this will look like humans being the most free in a society that leaves them do their own devices.

In my view, because I take a different view of freedom, it makes someone less free to give them even the mere option to take hard drugs; and this is bad for them because it makes them less capable of realizing their nature.

Perhaps you would say that even if freedom is in either way expounded above, that we should be able to choose to do evil; and I agree, but not to the detriment of our long-term good. When we parent children, we give them some leeway to make their own mistakes so that they grow to love what is good for them (as someone shoving ideas down their throat doesn't make them love those ideas); but we also safeguard them against themselves so that things that are too dangerous can't ruin their lives.

No rush Bob! We all have lives outside of here.

Again, why should be believe that two beings of different natures should have the same exact rights—and not just a subset of shared rights—in virtue of their personhood? Perhaps you are open to the possibility of different rights that persons of different natures could have such that they don’t share all the same rights with other persons of different natures — Bob Ross

This is what I proposed earlier considering someone who is crippled or has a different hair color. It is nothing I'm settled on for or against, though I admit to being careful before accepting it.

So you know where I am coming from, I am an essentialist: I think there is a whatness—viz., what it is to be this particular thing contrary to another thing—that real objects (e.g., cars, roads, humans, cockroaches, trees, iron, etc.) have intrinsically. In my case, I account for it with form realism: I think there is a unification, actualization principle of things in matter which provide its innate intelligibility (of what kind of thing it is). — Bob Ross

I agree in a certain context. There is a whatness to you being Bob Ross. There is you, and only you as you. When we talk about rights between people, we have to talk about shared 'whatness'.

so ‘human nature’ is an abstraction of what the two forms have in common. — Bob Ross

I think we're in agreement!

My main point would be: why should we believe that the part of ‘female’ and ‘male’ nature that is shared between them is all that we look at to determine their rights if rights are natural? — Bob Ross

I viable question.

In my view, your form provides you with being the kind of being that will, under the right circumstances, develop into a being that has experience; but for ‘set theoriests’, for lack of a better term, the being doesn’t have that nature until it exhibits the set of essential properties; so if one thinks that ‘having consciousness’ is essential to being human, then anyone who isn’t currently conscious is not human. — Bob Ross

I think we're adding extra steps that aren't needed. You don't actualize into a form. You are. Your existence is what you are, and that may or may not fit into an abstract that we apply. For example, I might have a form that "Humans walk on two legs". Then a human is born with one leg. They don't actualize into a human being. They are a human being, just with one leg. The essence of what one is is independent of our labels of that essence.

The main point would be that the nature one has is not dependent on the subjective stance you take on it; and that’s all I mean here by ‘objectivity’. — Bob Ross

Agreed.

For example, to counter your example, imagine I could drug someone so they won’t feel the pain in your scenario: does that mean I have sidestepped the moral consideration that they are sensibility that are being violated? — Bob Ross

To be very clear, I was talking about cruel and unusual punishment that inflicted no long term damage, but simply mental anguish. If you gave them a drug that also had no long term damage or side effects I would view that as unusual punishment.

Thought experiments can quickly get out of hand however. The point is that a person's subjective state can also be a consideration in their being and nature.

If I expect you to behave some way out of pure subjective feelings or thoughts I have, with no underlying basis in reality, then I am being irrational and immoral because I am viewing you as having an obligation towards submitting to my own feelings are baseless thoughts. — Bob Ross

I believe this is the crux to why many of the rights requested by trans gender individuals such as mandated pronouns and opposite sex entitlements, are not rights but personal desires.

Are you saying here that the only aspects of male and female biology that matter for consideration of rights is their rational will or intellect? I am not following how the biological and functional differences of women and men wouldn’t be, in principle, taken into account when discussing rights. — Bob Ross

That's what I was proposing. I do think physical differences to a point can be rights based. Where the line is drawn is something I do not know. Does a person with a missing index finger have different rights than someone with five? What If I'm missing my pinky toe?

Another major difference, I suspect between us, is that I would say that social expectations and obligations can be, if done right, grounded in the real natures of humans; so the ‘biology and function’ of a male or female does legitimately lead to different social roles between them that are grounded in ‘biology and function’. Whereas, in the OP, if I am understanding correctly, the social roles would just always be purely inter-subjective. — Bob Ross

To be clearer: Expectations about biological sex are not sociological. They a fact based. Expecting most men to be taller than women on average is a fact based expectation. Expecting women to wear earrings and men not to is cultural. It is not that one or the other exist, they both do. Gender is simply always a cultural expectation and never a biological expectation.

In my view I say yes to all three.

I see now you are very libertarian (: — Bob Ross

Ha! I'm really not. Libertarians often take for granted the things they have. A society based completely on absolute freedom, or the freedom to cross other people's freedoms, is no society at all. I believe in a balance of many things, but one thing I am fully on board with is the personal freedom to do what you want as long as it does not unduly affect other people's freedoms.

I don’t think freedom fundamentally consists in being about to choose between options; but, rather, consists in a state of being that is most conducive to flourishing. — Bob Ross

I would call that, "Responsible living". But you are free to live irresponsibly as long as it does not affect other people's freedoms. Freedom has no other purpose than the ability of an individual to live as they truly wish. It doesn't mean this can't be irresponsible or cut one's life short. And it doesn't mean we can't talk to each other and try to persuade each other that our innate desires do not always lead to the best outcomes. But I should be able to go into my own home and eat a pint of ice cream without the law coming and throwing me in jail for living irresponsibly.

If freedom is about being able to choose from options (especially contraries), then God is the kind of being that is the most unfree being that could possibly exist because He cannot do evil (and in some views, like mine, He cannot do anything contrary to what is the best option); — Bob Ross

I have no objection about conversing about a God, but we should be careful of assumptions in the argument. It may be better to abstract what you mean instead of ascribing that abstraction as a necessary identity of a God. Maybe another thread on logically what must a God be like? :)

If freedom is about being able to choose from options (especially contraries), then God is the kind of being that is the most unfree being that could possibly exist because He cannot do evil (and in some views, like mine, He cannot do anything contrary to what is the best option); — Bob Ross

Why can't a God? What if its that God could choose to, but chooses not to? To compare with human beings, I am free to beat a puppy to death, but I choose not to.

if freedom is about being in the best state of being to realize and act in accord with your nature, — Bob Ross

If we define freedom as, "The ability to act based on what you are", that fits. A cripple cannot walk, but their reality denies them the ability to choose to do so. I could easily strangle a puppy to death, but I choose not to. There are of course consequences to one's choices, and some choices will likely give you a better outcome to you and those around you than others. But freedom in itself does not deal with morality. Freedom is simply "the capability to do, or do not do X".

In my view, because I take a different view of freedom, it makes someone less free to give them even the mere option to take hard drugs; — Bob Ross

It may deny them other opportunities, but if they choose to lose those opportunities that is active freedom, not being less free. In other words someone is free to choose to be less free. Again, I wouldn't encourage this and would consider this an improper way to live. But morality has nothing to do with 'freedom' in itself.

Surely trans people have the same human rights as everyone else.
The issue is can a male (sex) become a woman (gender) and the have the same rights as a female (sex)
I say they cannot make that change and go from being a male (sex) to a transwoman (gender) but are still male and have the same rights as any man.

The issue is can a male (sex) become a woman (gender) and the have the same rights as a female (sex) — Malcolm Parry

This is what the majorly active part of the trans community is asking as a right. They believe that gendered actions allow one into cross sex spaces or confer the right to be treated as that cross sex. The rest of the rights I mentioned fit human rights and I believe are already serviced in Western countries.

I believe this is the crux to why many of the rights requested by trans gender individuals such as mandated pronouns and opposite sex entitlements, are not rights but personal desires.

Agreed; and, moreover, they are trying to get rights that the other sex has—not the rights they have relative to their own sex: that’s what is so controversial about it.

You don't actualize into a form. You are. Your existence is what you are, and that may or may not fit into an abstract that we apply

A ‘form’ is not a ‘concept’ in the sense I am using it: a concept is an idea in a mind, whereas a form is an actualizing principle in a being. A ‘principle’ here is being used to denoted something objective: something which is not stand-dependent nor an aspect of a mind’s ‘subjective experience’. The actualizing principle of a being is its act(uality); and the matter which receives it is its potency (potential).

Which leads me to:

This is what I proposed earlier considering someone who is crippled or has a different hair color.
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There is a whatness to you being Bob Ross
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Does a person with a missing index finger have different rights than someone with five? What If I'm missing my pinky toe?

A real essence is a ‘whatness’ which is inscribed in the being itself objectively: it is not an abstraction of a mind. In the case of a mere concept of what it is to be something, that is, by itself, insufficient to provide intelligibility innate to a being; for it is an idea conjured up by a mind for its own understanding and, consequently, is not something real in the being that it is contemplating. When I conjure up an idea of a circle, that by-itself is just something I use to understand circular beings in reality; but that in-itself provides no innate intelligibility to the circular beings such that they really are circles.

If the essence is real, no matter if one justifies it with form realism or not, then it is embedded in the object itself—not a mere abstraction from a mind.

If an real nature (essence) is intrinsic to the being, then whatever one believes makes it that kind of being as opposed to another must be (1) in that real nature and (2) universal to any kind of that type.

So:

There is a whatness to you being Bob Ross

Essence is never identical to a particular. An essence captures a type of being; which, in principle, could be instantiated in multiple of that type: it’s a genus. It’s gets tricky with God, but let’s put a pin in that one (;

Likewise, I think you are conflating the psychological identity of a being (person) with their ontology. Who I am is unique: there cannot be someone that is me in the sense of ‘me’ as a specific subject; but what I am is common to all male humans. If you remove enough of my personality, maybe who I am changes; but only by changing my biology do you change what I am. Likewise, you can change certain things about me without changing fundamentally what I am; such as swapping out my hair color.

This is what I proposed earlier considering someone who is crippled or has a different hair color.

A cripple cannot have any rights that are grounded in their crippleness, because that is a deprivation of their nature—not a part of their nature. Their nature is such that they should have legs; and, again, I would say they have that nature fully in virtue of their ‘form’ (soul).

They may have certain rights grounded in their nature that grant them special needs; because their right to things pertaining to walking are still a right they have because their nature dictates it—it just wouldn’t be in virtue, intrinsically, of them being crippled that would warrant such rights. Same with losing a pinky.

To be clearer: Expectations about biological sex are not sociological.

A social aspect of human life is any that pertains to inter-subjectivity. When people expect the penis, to take a sex-specific example, to behave, to be purposefully vague, in such-and-such ways is a social expectation grounded in biological sex. There is no such thing as an expectation held by multiple people that is not social; because a group holding an expectation is them inter-subjectively agreeing upon the belief that such-and-such should work this-and-that kind of way.

Any ‘biological expectations’ that are inter-subjective, which would be the vast majority of them, are social expectations; and the only way for there to be an expectation that isn’t social is if it is purely subjective instead of inter-subjective—like if I were the only one that thinks that things should work a specific way.

If this is true, then all I am noting is that social expectations can be grounded in objectivity—including biological sex; and this is go much farther than you might think, such as women wearing makeup as an upshot of their female nature and men not wearing it as a part of their nature.

If we define freedom as, "The ability to act based on what you are", that {freedom for excellence}fits

(emphasis and notes added)

This presupposes the idea, again, that freedom fundamentally is about being able to choose from options; and this is not compatible with freedom being fundamentally about a state of being most conducive to flourishing.

If I cultivate, for example, the virtues; then I am biased towards what is good; so I am less apt to choose ‘freely’ in the sense of purely choosing from contraries; so it follows, under your view, that I am less free the more virtues (or vices) I cultivate. On the contrary, in my view, I don’t need the ability to choose otherwise or to choose from options to be truly free: if I am most able to will in accord with what is good, whatever that state of being might be (which is going to be a state where I, as a human, are most prejudiced towards doing what is right), then I am the most ‘free’ in my view.

This is why I gave the example of God, but admittedly I think it missed its mark. The point was not to get into a debate about the nature of God: I was just trying to demonstrate where these two theories of freedom go when we apply them most radically.

Another famous example, to try again, is the holocaust (or any extremely authoritarian regime that snuffs out ‘freedom’, in your sense, in a dystopian and horrific kind of way). If freedom is about having the ability to choose from contraries (options), then a government that restricts options is restricting freedom; and so it is impossible for one to become more free in an environment that is actively restricting or has restricted people’s ability to choose from options (assuming they don’t rebel or something like that); but if freedom is about being able to will in accord with what is good, which is to be in a state of being more conducive than less to your flourishing, then one can, in fact, become more free even in such an environment.

In the holocaust, as horrific as it was, in a freedom of indifference view it is impossible to say that anyone in a concentration camp became more free as they lived there compared to when they were in normal cities because the Nazis had rounded them up and severely limited their ability to make their own choices; however, in a freedom for excellence view, although this is not a condoning of what they did, some people, in fact, became more free because the horrific conditions forced them to cultivate the virtues and have a much deeper appreciation of what is good compared to when they were living comfortable lives in the cities—of which makes their state of being more conducive to their flourishing (notwithstanding the malnourishment, torture, etc. that they were inflicted with of course). The love they acquired for the good, in a much deeper sense, and the virtues which came with it, built saints in those very torturous chambers.

Again, I am not using this example to condone Nazism (and I just say that just in case Jamal decides to read this, lol): it’s just another radical example to juxtapose the two theories of freedom.

Which leads me to:

But freedom in itself does not deal with morality.

In freedom of indifference, this makes perfect sense and I am inclined to agree; for you are thinking of freedom as fundamentally having the ability to choose from options; and so this naturally has no bias towards what is good or bad (and, as a side note, that’s where it gets its name of ‘indifference’).

However, in freedom for excellence, as the name ‘excellence’ suggests, freedom and goodness are interrelated. There is no separation between them such that one can be more free while, for example, acquiring less good. I become more free the more I acquire what is good; whether that be knowledge of what is good, virtues (viz., good habits), or an environment more apt to allow me to realize my nature (e.g., lots of healthy food available, no hard drugs at my disposal to use, time to workout, no gambling, etc.).

I know you disagree, but I hope I have demonstrated sufficiently the differences between our ideas of freedom; as they are central to the discussion so far.

I look forward to hearing from you,
Bob

Forgive me for the double post, but I just thought of another example that provides clarity into our differences on the nature of freedom.

To build self-discipline is inherently to limit one's options to get their body to obey their mind (e.g., I am not going yo indulge myself with this delicious cake because I know I shouldn't and I want to cultivate my brain to obey what I believe I should or shouldn't be doing irregardless of how I feel about it). This would, under your view, limit freedom; but I would argue that it actually makes me more free by limiting my options to cultivate and maintain self-discipline because it makes me more capable of willing in accord with my beliefs of what I think I should be doing and prevents my feelings, desires, passions, etc. from impeding on or overcoming that. I would say I am more free by limiting my options in this way exactly because it sets up my subconscious to be more biased towards what is good for me; which is to will in accord with my reason—it makes me be in a state more conducive to my flourishing.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on that.

This is what the majorly active part of the trans community is asking as a right. They believe that gendered actions allow one into cross sex spaces or confer the right to be treated as that cross sex — Philosophim

Give some examples of gendered actions that would allow one into cross sex spaces? Specifically, female gendered actions that allow males into female exclusive spaces.

Give some examples of gendered actions that would allow one into cross sex spaces? Specifically, female gendered actions that allow males into female exclusive spaces. — Malcolm Parry

Great question. First, a major misunderstanding that I know I had in the beginning of the movement was I thought trans means 'trans sexual' with all the bits cut off. No, it doesn't mean that. It literally means, "I feel like the other sex and might dress or act like them in some way." The issue is of course mostly with trans women, but you have men who have everything intact and might, or might not be on hormones saying, "Because I think I'm a woman, I can go into a woman's locker room". "I can enter an all female race". "I can go into a woman's bathroom." "I deserve to be put in female prisons." Go read up on that if you want an example of "Every reason you can think that's a bad idea played out".

The trans gender movement is partially the trans sexual movement. But it mostly is the, "I feel or act in ways that I feel the other sex should feel and act like, so I should get to be in cross sex spaces" movement. This is the issue that I do not feel is a proper demand for rights, much less an argument rooted in logic or fairness. This just seems to be discrimination and sexism wrapped up in a male desire to get things they want. But feel free to point out if you disagree.

Agreed; and, moreover, they are trying to get rights that the other sex has—not the rights they have relative to their own sex: that’s what is so controversial about it. — Bob Ross

Yes, I have mulled it over repeatedly over the years and I just don't see any logical reason why a trans gendered individual deserves cross sex rights and privileges. If people want to volunteer them personally, I have nothing against this. But a right or obligation seems out of the question.

A ‘form’ is not a ‘concept’ in the sense I am using it: a concept is an idea in a mind, whereas a form is an actualizing principle in a being. A ‘principle’ here is being used to denoted something objective: something which is not stand-dependent nor an aspect of a mind’s ‘subjective experience’. The actualizing principle of a being is its act(uality); and the matter which receives it is its potency (potential). — Bob Ross

Ok, so a form in your definition is essentially the maximum potential a person can be. This is a moral principle I'm not against, but do we also have a term for "what a person is"? Few people fully actualize into the potential they could be, so what do we say about a person's present or 'actually actualized' state?

A real essence is a ‘whatness’ which is inscribed in the being itself objectively: it is not an abstraction of a mind. In the case of a mere concept of what it is to be something, that is, by itself, insufficient to provide intelligibility innate to a being; for it is an idea conjured up by a mind for its own understanding and, consequently, is not something real in the being that it is contemplating. — Bob Ross

To follow up with the above, this seems to be 'real essence'. But the 'whatness' of a person in relation to a form seems to contrast with the full potential of the form itself. Is this a correct assessment of what you're saying?

Who I am is unique: there cannot be someone that is me in the sense of ‘me’ as a specific subject; but what I am is common to all male humans. — Bob Ross

This is where I lose you and think we need another term, or I need to understand your concepts better. I see this as

form- full potential
actualization - the whatness of a being's form (Can be less than full potential)

I have a hard time seeing a male as a form, as there can be many types of males. You did mention there is a sort of 'genus' earlier, but that seemed to apply to actualization. For example, and not intending to be crude but there are men who have their testicles inside of them and appear to be female at birth. Technically they're still male, but that's not common to all males.

I think this is a problem any form type capturing of words has to contend with. There are almost always exceptions and sub categories. I'm not saying it can't be handled, but how does your particular approach handle this problem?

If you remove enough of my personality, maybe who I am changes; but only by changing my biology do you change what I am. Likewise, you can change certain things about me without changing fundamentally what I am; such as swapping out my hair color. — Bob Ross

Where is the line for this? This is essentially what I'm asking.

A cripple cannot have any rights that are grounded in their crippleness, because that is a deprivation of their nature—not a part of their nature. Their nature is such that they should have legs; and, again, I would say they have that nature fully in virtue of their ‘form’ (soul). — Bob Ross

It seems here to you that rights should be based on the form of an individual, not the actualization of an individual. At a birds eye view, I agree. When we get into the specifics of what an actual form is, I feel that's where we run into the problem of 'exceptions'.

They may have certain rights grounded in their nature that grant them special needs; because their right to things pertaining to walking are still a right they have because their nature dictates it—it just wouldn’t be in virtue, intrinsically, of them being crippled that would warrant such rights. Same with losing a pinky. — Bob Ross

So if I understand correctly, a handicapped parking spot is provided to a cripple who cannot walk, because the nature of their form as a human is that they should be able to walk. So your exceptions to forms are in essence to acknowledge them, not not give them any credence in themselves. This is why a handicapped person would not have a right to a handicapped spot, and this would best be considered a privilege?

A social aspect of human life is any that pertains to inter-subjectivity. When people expect the penis, to take a sex-specific example, to behave, to be purposefully vague, in such-and-such ways is a social expectation grounded in biological sex. There is no such thing as an expectation held by multiple people that is not social; because a group holding an expectation is them inter-subjectively agreeing upon the belief that such-and-such should work this-and-that kind of way. — Bob Ross

That is not what gender means by social expectation however. It means "Social expectation divorced from the biological reality". Taken in your context, biological sex and its expectations are a form. Gender is an expectation that society places upon the form that have nothing to do with the biological form itself. We have evidence of this because different cultures often have different expectations of dress and behavior from males and females that often contrast. At one time in France, pink was associated with men, while blue was associated with women. So if you were a man and you liked the color blue, society would view you as "girly".

Another way to see gender is if we took the same biological form of a man in both cultures, but one culture believed that all men should be warriors while another culture believed all men should be scholars. Its not a biological expectation, but a cultural one. This is what I mean by 'subjective'. There is no underlying objective grounding for this expectation, it really is just a societal opinion or pressure. Why society puts out these pressures can vary from control, sexual dynamics of power, or just good ol' bias and tradition.

If this is true, then all I am noting is that social expectations can be grounded in objectivity—including biological sex; — Bob Ross

Nothing wrong with this, the point that is being made is this is not a gendered expectation, but a sex expectation. Whereas your make up example is not a sex expectation, but a gendered one. In ancient Egypt men used to wear make up just as frequently as women. There is no biological aspect that necessitates men or women wear makeup, its a cultural strategy and/or outlook about biological differences that has nothing to do with the 'form' of the biological being itself.

This presupposes the idea, again, that freedom fundamentally is about being able to choose from options; and this is not compatible with freedom being fundamentally about a state of being most conducive to flourishing. — Bob Ross

True, but I'm going to stick with that for the following reason. We have better vocabulary that accurately describes situations.

Freedom - The ability to choose your own outcome in life based on your own limitations.
Responsible decisions - Free choices that maximize your potential
Irresponsible decisions - Free choices that inhibit your potential

Tying 'freedom' as being equal to 'responsible decisions' muddies the vocabulary for me and makes it harder to think clearer about these particular distinctions within the English language.

If I cultivate, for example, the virtues; then I am biased towards what is good; so I am less apt to choose ‘freely’ in the sense of purely choosing from contraries; so it follows, under your view, that I am less free the more virtues (or vices) I cultivate. — Bob Ross

No, you're not less free. You are choosing to cultivate virtues. A person who chooses to lie often is cultivating a personality that leads them to ruin their potential, but it is a free choice. A person who chooses to tell the truth despite the personal risk chooses to cultivate good character. There is also nothing from stopping a virtuous individual from ceasing to cultivate truth and start lying. Yes, the decision to cultivate habits to make good or bad choices makes it easier to continue making those choices, but a person freely chose to cultivate those habits.

On the contrary, in my view, I don’t need the ability to choose otherwise or to choose from options to be truly free: if I am most able to will in accord with what is good, whatever that state of being might be (which is going to be a state where I, as a human, are most prejudiced towards doing what is right), then I am the most ‘free’ in my view. — Bob Ross

I think this contrasts too much with the common understanding of freedom, and can just as easily be described by "Making responsible decisions means you will have better and healthier outcomes that lead you to be able to make more free choices". If you take care of your health, then you have more options to choose from in life than if you don't. I get that. But the choice between options is freedom, not "Choosing good".

if freedom is about being able to will in accord with what is good, which is to be in a state of being more conducive than less to your flourishing, then one can, in fact, become more free even in such an environment. — Bob Ross

If freedom is just about the ability to choose your outcome in a particular situation, then we can argue that some choices are better than others. Again what I feel you are arguing for is "Responsible use of freedom" which is a fine thing. But if you eliminate freedom as a concept independent of morality, the concept doesn't go away and we still need a word to describe that situation. It just seems more reasonable to keep freedom in its base simple form and add adjectives to it then tie freedom necessarily into the question of what should be done with it.

However, in freedom for excellence, as the name ‘excellence’ suggests, freedom and goodness are interrelated. — Bob Ross

Again, I have no issue with adding an adjective to freedom to describe responsibilities or moral precepts to what people should do with freedom. I just don't think its reasonable to lose freedom as the simple description of "The ability to make choices within your limitations".

To build self-discipline is inherently to limit one's options to get their body to obey their mind. This would, under your view, limit freedom; but I would argue that it actually makes me more free by limiting my options to cultivate and maintain self-discipline because it makes me more capable of willing in accord with my beliefs — Bob Ross

Its not a limit of freedom, its a free choice to build self-discipline. And I would argue self-discipline is about the mind controlling the body, not the other way around. If I work out every day as a choice to build muscle and make physical work easier, that's a free choice of mine. Yes, it makes being able to handle physical work easier, and my habits make it more likely that I will work out in the future, but its still always a mental choice to continue to stick with those habits. Freedom has nothing to do with "the likelihood of what I will choose". Its just a descriptor that indicates, "I can choose".

form- full potential
actualization - the whatness of a being's form (Can be less than full potential)

Act is what provides the being to something; and potency is the capacity to change (viz., to have a potential actualized). Act is not the same thing as being: a material being is comprised, in being, of form (act) and potential (matter). Matter is what receives the form: it is what is actualized. For example, I can mold a pot out of clay: the ‘potness’ is the form (act) and the clay is the matter which receives it (potency).

Form and act are identical; and potency is just a something that has potential that could, in principle, be actualized.

There are almost always exceptions and sub categories. I'm not saying it can't be handled, but how does your particular approach handle this problem?

True, but this is one of the many reasons that I think form realism is the only way to coherently account for essence realism. If one says, like I previously noted, that the essence of a thing is embodied in there mere fact that it exhibits some set of essential properties that make it that type of thing, then you are absolutely right that there will always be exceptions where one will want to count a thing as that type even though it doesn’t exhibit all the essential properties (e.g., this cat only has two legs but is still a cat).

Form realism gives the only coherent account because it avoids this issue. If there is a real distinction, not a merely conceptual distinction, between a material being’s form and matter—viz., the actuality that actualizes the potential to be that kind of thing and the stuff that has the potential to be actualized in that manner to be that kind of thing (e.g., the ‘potness’ and the clay)—then even if the matter doesn’t properly get actualized by the form the form still has the fullness of the essence in act. My act of molding the clay into a pot has the fullness of the essence of a pot within it, but perhaps the clay breaks or something. Now, a ‘soul’ is just a type of form that is self-actualizing: it is an act of a being in virtue of which it is alive. In this view, a unified principle of the body, not a mere aggregate of cooperating parts, is what actualizes, dynamically through time, the organism: this is what is called a ‘soul’—it is the form of a living being. All living beings have a soul, including plants. The plant can grow into a tree, e.g., of its own self-development given the right environment: the unified act of its own self-development is its soul. With non-soul forms, with static forms that don’t develop the matter through time of its own accord, there is no possibility of the matter which doesn’t receive the act (form) properly still being that kind of thing because the act doesn’t ‘stay with it’. For example, if the pot breaks after it dries, although the act of molding it contained the fullness of the essence of a pot, that pot is no longer a pot if it cannot fulfill the purpose of a pot (perhaps it has a whole in the bottom now and can’t hold any liquids).

Crucially, with souls (i.e., ‘dynamic forms’ or self-actualizing principles), they contain and stay with, in being, the living being as the full essence which is being actualized, through the self, in time. My unified actualizing principle, which is not the mere aggregate of parts of my body working together, has within it the whole essence of male humanness, which it has to have in order to attempt to actualize the matter—the body—into a fully developed male human; and so even if the matter—the body—does not get actualized properly, due to external factors, the soul has the fullness of the essence of human maleness or femaleness. This means that a man that has, to use your example, testicles inside of them still has the fullness of maleness, which would have the testicles on the outside, in virtue of their soul.

Again, if you take the view that we account for essentialism with the idea that we are just an aggregate of parts working together to cause this emergence of a living being and that we are some type of thing if we have the set of essential properties for that type, then I completely agree that it fails to account for essentialism because there always will be things of that type which truly, in matter, lack some of the essential properties of that type of thing. This is just one of many reasons to abandon this kind of essentialism for either nominalism or form realism.

This is why a handicapped person would not have a right to a handicapped spot, and this would best be considered a privilege?

I am not sure. All I was noting is that they wouldn’t have right because they are handicapped: it would have to be grounded in their nature and being handicapped is a privation of that human nature. I was thinking maybe one could argue cogently that since a human does have the right to walk, it may be coherent to ground proxied rights of helping them move around if they are handicapped. It gets sticky though, because we technically don’t have a right to walk anywhere we want; such as private land. So maybe it is a right to have a handicap parking spot on a public buildings but just a privilege on private ones. I would have to think about that one more.

Another way to see gender is if we took the same biological form of a man in both cultures, but one culture believed that all men should be warriors while another culture believed all men should be scholars. Its not a biological expectation, but a cultural one. This is what I mean by 'subjective'. There is no underlying objective grounding for this expectation, it really is just a societal opinion or pressure.

This is a really good and important point to bring up, because this highlights the differences between modern gender theory and an older kind like mine. Modern gender theory, by associated gender with sociology, has collapsed gender into something that is not real: it is inter-subjective, which is not real. Modern gender theory is a form of gender anti-realism; and this falls prey to the same issues, analogously, with moral anti-realism.

In my view, as a realist about gender, your examples highlight the real disputes between cultures about what the gender facts are where one can be truly wrong or right, more correct or less, about gender; whereas, under modern gender theory as you expound it, there is not true disagreement because there are no facts about gender (since they are just inter-subjective stances that people have of what they expect in people’s behaviors) and so these examples you gave are highlights of equally right stances on gender (because there is no objectively right stance to take) which is just an exposition of the tastes of the given culture.

In my view, there is real, rational disagreement we can have about what gender is and how gender roles work; and so I can admit that cultures have gotten it wrong, some have gotten it sort of right, and some have gotten it sort of wrong.

Whereas your make up example is not a sex expectation, but a gendered one. In ancient Egypt men used to wear make up just as frequently as women. There is no biological aspect that necessitates men or women wear makeup, its a cultural strategy and/or outlook about biological differences that has nothing to do with the 'form' of the biological being itself.

I would say it is a gender fact that women are the one’s that have the role of wearing makeup, although it is morally permissible for them and not obligatory, and as such any culture that said otherwise got the facts wrong, and this is because women a procreative role that makes them the object of sex. This is not to be confused, to be clear, with saying women should be ‘objectified’ in the modern, colloquial sense of that term; but, rather, that the way sexual attraction works when there are two sexes in a species is that one gets aroused by being the object of the sex (viz., of someone putting themselves in them) and the other from taking something as the object of the sex (viz., of themselves putting themselves in someone else). This is not to say that we should be lustful, but loving relationships always involve this dynamic, which should also include a deeper communion between them and the willing of pleasure for both in the sexual act, because without it there can be no such thing as a two-participate sex where both get aroused. Even in non-traditional sex, there is an imperfect resemblance to femininity and masculinity in this sense: it’s necessary for sexual attraction to happen. Makeup is something that attempts to exemplify its object—usually the face—as beautiful, attractive, etc.; and this is to objectify it (which is usually the face). This is an upshot of the way sexual attraction works: a beautiful women is an attractive women, and this is to say that the women taken as an ‘object’ (which is not to say to objectify them lustfully or abuse them) is exemplar of being the kind of sex that receives sex and does not give it. This is why women naturally feel empowered by putting on makeup, dressing up, and being very interested in their outward appearance whereas men do not in the same ways (even in the case that a man cares about his appearance); and this is also why feminine men, like gay men, will also feel empowered and tend to gravitate towards makeup, wearing outfits that show off their figure, etc. These are all naturally grounded in femininity: they are grounded in the natural sexual role that women have.

Yes, the decision to cultivate habits to make good or bad choices makes it easier to continue making those choices, but a person freely chose to cultivate those habits.
…
Its not a limit of freedom, its a free choice to build self-discipline. And I would argue self-discipline is about the mind controlling the body, not the other way around

With all due respect, I think you missed my point. I agree that you are freely choosing, in these examples, to cultivate the virtues: my point is that you are freely choosing to make yourself less free. Virtues make you more biased towards what is good which makes you less capable of choosing between options; and most of them actively limit your options (like self-discipline).

I think this contrasts too much with the common understanding of freedom

The reason I don’t find this compelling is because the vast majority of human history has used freedom for excellence—not your nor our society’s modern understanding of it. Freedom of indifference is a new theory that was brought about during classical liberalism. Just to clarify, and this doesn’t mean my theory is true, your theory is the one here that is much younger; so if you are trying to adhere to the ‘common historical understanding’, then it would be uncontroversially true that you should go with liberty for excellence: that one is centuries upon centuries old in the premodern world. Only with the Enlightenment and classical liberalism did people start thinking freedom is about making choices between contrary options.