Can one distinguish between bodily gender(genitalia, facial hair, bone structure, etc) and psychological gender( cognitive-affective processing differences correlated with masculinized va feminized behaviors )? — Joshs

Is psychological gender even a coherent concept? I'm no psychologist, but it doesn't make sense to me that there could be such a thing as "psychologically feminine" or "psychologically masculine". That would essentially mean that there are uniquely male personalities and uniquely female personalities. As far I know there isn't any actual support for this notion.

I won't try to convince anybody of this because it's just the opinion I have based on my own reasoning, but it seems to me that a man feeling as though he is a woman or vice versa is caused mainly by societal norms and the pressure put on individuals to be a certain way based on their gender. If a young boy wants to play with dolls or wear dresses, he is told directly--as well as indirectly and (constantly) subliminally--that those are things that girls do. I truly believe that if we didn't have these set gender roles, transgender people wouldn't exist. There would just be men who wear makeup, wear "women's" clothes, have long hair, etc., and women who wear "male" clothing, have short hair, etc. And they would be fine with being called their biological gender. The only reason this isn't the case is because these societal gender roles are so deeply ingrained in our psychology, that when a boy liked makeup and dresses etc. he thinks that this means he cannot be a boy and he must be a girl. This is the root of their psychological distress, these incompatible "realities" which they try their hardest to make peace between, and yet no matter what they do they cannot.

I'll say again, though, this is all just my own speculation. It makes sense to me that this is the case, but I know it's not a clear-cut issue.

Translation : Violence is the use of force or power, physical or psychological, to impose constraints, dominate, kill, destroy or damage. — Akanthinos

Going by this definition, putting up a stop sign could be considered an act of violence. After all, stop signs involve the use of power (i.e., from the government) to impose constraints on our actions.

Definitions like the one you cited weaken the term violence. They make it so even the most mundane acts can be considered violence.

what about all the research showing that men's brains are wired differently than women's brains, that men process Visio-spatial information differently than women, that male infants react to affective cues differently than female infants?
What about all the behavioral differences between males and females across the animal kingdom? This clearly shows there is such a thing as psychological gender, and if it can vary between biological males and females, why not within those groupings as well?
Here's a thought experiment:
I'm imagining that I am going back to just before your birth, and manipulating your hormonal levels such as to change your gendered brain structures and turn you into a feminine gay male. . Now let's flash forward to right now.
In what ways would you feel different? Quite apart from your sexual inclinations, this change in brain organization would have a wide range of subtle effects on your perceptual processing and behavior, affecting everything from how you perceive color to how you walk and talk and gesture, and how you socialize with others.

language that posits irreducible distinctions ( man vs woman, etc) is a kind of violent language. To verbalize, and believe in, sharp distinctions is to see alternate views as violating those irreducible distinctions, and justifying a response that counteracts that presumed violation. — Joshs

I'm not quite understanding how this makes the statement violent. Even if everything you said about believing in distinctions and justifying responses is true, how does that make it violent? What definition are you using of violence?

Furthermore, your statement about sharp distinctions would seem to lead to a host of absurd conclusions. For example, there is a sharp distinction between pregnant and not pregnant. You have to be either one or the other. There is no in between. But would that make statements about pregnancy --- e.g., "My wife found out she was pregnant yesterday" --- violent?

Those things are all emergent from your biological sex, though. I thought you were referring to a male/female psychology separate from one's biology. Or maybe you're saying that a literal male brain could form in an otherwise female body?

Regardless, if these things you describe are all so well-documented then we should be able to prove them through studying transgender people's brains, right? Why has't that been done to settle the debate?

Can one be in essence a psychological woman in a man's body? — Joshs

No, one can not.

One may wish one was a woman (when one is a man) or wish one was a man (when one is a woman); one may play the social role of the opposite sex; one may identify with people who are of the opposite sex; one can pretend that one is actually a member of the sex opposite that which one was born into. One may have some degree of feminized or masculinized brain (homosexuals). But in 99.99% of births, one is male or female.

Granted: there are people who are born with ambiguous genitalia which is a problem unto itself. Transsexuality is not thought to involve ambiguous genitalia (at least as far as I know).

You haven't addressed the issue of whether one can distinguish between bodily gender(genitalia, facial hair, bone structure, etc) and psychological gender( cognitive-affective processing differences correlated with masculinized va feminized behaviors ). — Joshs

I'm not a practicing psychologist, neurologist, endocrinologist, surgeon, or any other advanced specialty, so it has not been my job to precisely parse out these distinctions. However, 97% of speakers, writers, demonstrators, and practitioners about and of gender issues and/or transsexualism aren't either. None the less... you ask, can one distinguish...

Many aspects of personhood can be readily observed, or observed given sufficient time and care. From what I have read, from what I have heard from transsexuals, what I have observed most transsexuals were born with genitalia, hair distribution, bone structure, and endocrine system within the normal range of their biological gender. The normal range, however, is quite wide.

The way individuals think, imagine, process data, remember, and so on generally falls within a normal range, but again, the range is wide. Many of the differences among hyper masculine men, the average man, and the effeminate homosexual man will be lost in overlap of ranges. Just for example, the hyper masculine man (exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics, large, muscular body, male dominant personality) can be and sometimes is a homosexual. and not only a homosexual, but one who is sexually passive to boot. Similarly, there are kind of reedy, slightly built men who are domineering male STEM types. There are husbands and fathers who giver every appearance of thinking like "real men" and acting like "real men" but who have a sort of "swishy" style of speaking and who have a lot of "feminine interests" but who aren't at all homosexual or remotely transsexual.

Transgender M to F may be successful ex-soldiers, have lived very masculine lifestyles, think and talk in very masculine style, but may be 45 years old (or more) and decide they are going to become women. So they take the hormones, grow big tits, redistribute the surface fat layer, learn to dress and groom like a woman, but otherwise are still pretty much the same people they always were.

The jury is out on how much alike and how different men and women are. It is pretty much a hung jury, because "the jury" doesn't seem to be able to decide one way or the other. Men and women both argue both sides, back and forth, switching sides as is convenient. There is no consensus on what, exactly, is the same about men and women, except that everyone agrees that they are different.

Not talking about biology here.

The point is that a would be transsexual man can claim to be a woman, not on the basis of biology, but on the basis of psychology, and the range of psychological traits makes that a very hard case to prove or disprove.

It would be easy if transsexuals all had biological mismatched reproductive organs (like a penis and ovaries), and mismatched brains to go along with the mismatched reproductive organs. Unfortunately, that just isn't the case.

I am not a big fan of the "meme" concept, but I think a lot of gender-fluid talk is mostly meme and very little reality. No, I don't trust a 4 year old and his sometimes overly-invested mother to be on the level when the mother reports that her son wants to be a girl, and that he should be seen by a gender specialist, blah blah blah. No, I don't take it at face value when a screwed up teenager (there are such things as teenagers who are unusually screwed up) claims to be transgender. Or neuter, or whatever the fuck they come up with. If 4 year olds can pick up these memes, 17 year olds have been over exposed.

No it's not violence. In some contexts it might be considered harassment (i.e repeatedly seeking out interaction with particular transsexuals in order to use the pronoun they do not desire), but it's not violence.

Admitting that it is violence in any respect is the first step toward instituting "thought-crime laws".

So long as something is not a direct call for violence (or a "screaming fire in a crowded theater" type situation), freedom of thought simply demands that we have the right to hold and express our beliefs even if some find those beliefs emotionally offensive. Phams argument rests upon the idea that using the undesired pronouns for transsexuals is tacit approval for their lynching or their central cause of suicide. While it is possible that refusing to offer basic respect to transsexuals by using their desired pronoun be a factor in some actual lynchings and suicides, my guess is that they have many larger and more complicated problems to deal with. I don't believe the lynching of transsexuals is statistically significant in the modern west, and if failing to hear one's desired pronouns is statistically significant in contributing to transsexual suicide rates then I reckon such persons really ought to be sequestered in mental health institutions for their own safety. To be clear I do not think transsexuals are so emotionally fragile that name gender-calling is what drives them to suicide in disproportionate numbers, but I do think this constant infantilizing of women, non-whites, and non-heterosexuals (as if they're delicate snowflakes who shatter in the slightest breeze) is really getting quite old.

P.S: Without it Trump would never have won, and the alt-right would never have "cohered".

Is calling a trans woman a man (or vice versa --- i.e., calling a trans man a woman) a form of violence? — czahar

Lots of these types of discussions around lately, which are ripe for people talking past each other as it just depends on how broadly you define your terms. In a narrow common-understanding-of-the-word sense, no, it's not violence. In a broader more philosophical sense, yes, it could be. Slavoj Zizek wrote a whole book called Violence about this broader sense:

"We tend to fixate on what Žižek calls subjective violence: acts of assault, murder, terror and war. However, there are two other varieties of objective violence: "the 'symbolic' violence embodied in language and its forms", and systemic violence, the "often catastrophic consequences of the functioning of our economic and political systems".

Link.

Violence is the use of force or power, physical or psychological, to impose constraints, dominate, kill, destroy or damage. — Akanthinos

Like when colleges force students, faculty and staff to stop using certain pronouns?

Like when activists, pundits, etc. use their positions to marginalize, shame, humiliate, etc. anybody who does not think and talk in lockstep with their ideology?

Is she pregnant or not? What test was used? What was its accuracy? Will she carry to term? What was the purpose of the question about pregnancy and who was asking it, and who were they addressing? All these contextual things and many more go into any supposedly simple black and white yes or no question. They are a part of what the answer means. Much more important than a yes or no to a question , is the significance of the distinction.
What will happen as a consequence of the answer is a function of all the superordinate meanings and commitments, personal, social, cultural, that are tied up with it. Gay vs straight vs trams matters in a way that penis vs vagina do not, because they refer to deeper issues of meaning distinctions involving whole ways of behaving and societal reaction to them.

let me try and disentangle some of this. To begin with, it sounds like you're saying that , apart from the issue of a transgender claim of being a male in a Woman's body or vice versa, there likely is a biological component to what we could call masculine vs feminine brain function, even if that spectrum intermixes with cultural influences in complex ways, such as to make it difficult to universally define what masculine vs feminine is.
But I would argue that within a particular culture there would be enough commonalities to draw useful generalizations about such differences. My belief is that there is some period during fetal development where such brain structuring for gender takes place. I beieve this because I know many people whose constellation of behavioral and perceptual characteristics fit a pattern, a complex pattern consisting a large list of traits that were a part of their behavior for the time they were very young. These core traits I dont see as random and I dont see as culturally shaped. They include ways of walking and talking and running and throwing and pronouncing words. It misses the point to dismiss them as purely cultural because that doesn't t explain the complexity of the pattern or he fact that it so often emerges at such a young age. What I think does explain the pattern is that there are deep structures in the limbic system of the brain that deal with affective aspects of perception. When these are feminized it produces a range of perceptual styles that subtly condition the brain to organize experience differently than masculinized structures. A preference for more gradually unfolding contexts of processing as opposed to a more rapid 'testosterone' style is one way of describing it.
As far as transgender is concerned I tend to see a biological female with a masculinized brain someone with heir own unique style. They are not trapped in the wrong body because the body doesn't function independently of mind and vice versa. Behavior defines what he body is in it's functioning. So Kaitlin Jenner will never be just a woman, but neither will she be just a man.

Never mind settling the debate. What I want to know from you is whether you can conceive of there being a kind of brain structuring that produces what we think of as feminine behavior va male behavior, let's say an area of the limbic system where affective and perceptual processing interact(hypothalamus, etc). If you do, it's not really much of a stretch to propose that such differences can occur not just between biological males and females but also within each group, such as to produce gay and lesbian subgroups. In fact, one could imagine that each individual occupies something of a unique space within tha spectrum , even when they can fit within the large category of heterosexual male or female.
My own view is that , since the body and behavior are inseparable , a claim to be born in the wrong body is incoherent , and is caught up in the same categorical stereotyping as those they are opposing (if you behave like a woman, you must have a woman's body.).

I do not believe that there are biological races. Race is based on arbitrary physical traits that do not constitute a unique biological group.

Gender--I don't know.

I am not ready to say that reproductive organs are in any way arbitrary. Fair skin is a trait. Kidneys are not a trait. Are those who say that gender is culturally constructed saying that uteruses and testicles are arbitrary traits? Is the pattern of distribution of uteruses and testicles in the human population the same as eye color? Sex organs are as arbitrary as eye color and tell you as much about a person as eye color?

You hear about a "post-racial society" sometimes, and it makes sense. A lot of people are ready to discard racial categories and put race in our collective rearview mirror. Are many people ready to discard gender?

We have plenty of people, both men and women, lamenting the decline of "chivalry", so we have a long way to go if we want to discard gender.

This thread is further evidence of the power of gender. If transgender people really are as vulnerable as some people here have said, maybe they would be better served by focusing on how they are like everybody else instead of how gender does not work the same for them.

It appears to me as if we agree completely. I think you're saying the same thing I was saying, just in a different way.
There are certain traits which society has deemed male, and others female, but there are no objectively male or female personality traits or "psychologies" or whatever. While we may generally see certain traits in certain genders, there are also varying levels of cross-over, and this is what causes problems. We have decided that certain traits are distinctly female, even though they do appear in men (although more rarely). If a male possesses some of these traits, he's just seen as slightly feminine or "metrosexual". If he possesses too many of these traits, he will have trouble reconciling his male body with what societal norms which have been programmed into his brain tell him can only be female traits. As a side note, I really don't think these things have anything to do with sexual orientation. Some straight men are very feminine, some gay men are very masculine. This is also evidenced by the fact that not all transgender people are heterosexual or homosexual; there is a mix.

Anyway, as I said I think we do agree. And I definitely agree with your last sentence about stereotyping, and the hypocrisy of the transgender issue in regards to feminism (or just anti-sexism). The whole idea of being transgender seems inherently sexist, to me.

You hear about a "post-racial society" sometimes, — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Sometimes one hears about a "post-racial society" and then something happens which pretty much obliterates the idea that we are anywhere close to being a post-racial society.

If we were a post-racial society, then we would think about race as much as people today think about phrenology - measuring the bumps and indentations in your skull to learn about one's personality. We don't think about phrenology. We are a post-phrenology society. Post racial? Not even close.

let me try and disentangle some of this — Joshs

Good luck.

claim of being a male in a Woman's body — Joshs

This isn't literally true, of course. As I said, it's a cliché. It's a metaphor.

My belief is that there is some period during fetal development where such brain structuring for gender takes place. — Joshs

Agreed. The development of the fetus is sequential, and various parts, systems, and features are triggered by hormones from both the mother and the fetus.

It misses the point to dismiss them as purely cultural because that doesn't t explain the complexity of the pattern or he fact that it so often emerges at such a young age. — Joshs

No disagreement here. I imagined (infantile) homoerotic imagery at an early age. The interest in homoerotic fantasy, images, and activity with other males never changed. That's just one element. All sorts of human behavior are determined in pre-natal development through the genes of the fetus from the father and mother and through the genes governing the mother's reproductive system.

Most human features are scattered out on a continuum. Every more or less normal child learns the language of the people around him or her. Language acquisition is built in. But facility in even the native language varies so that some people can't spell worth a damn and other people do well in spelling bees (if they are sufficiently focused and motivated -- which is another set of features.

I think children have a host of not-all-that-flexible features and capacities at birth. However, the culture begins interacting with infants very early on, and thus it becomes tricky to sort out which features were culturally influenced and which were impervious to influence.

The maturing child will develop a unique gait, for instance, and that gait ill remain for life, baring injury or disease. Yes, people can learn to walk in one of several other gaits, but they will tend to revert to the natural one. Remember Jack Benny, the comedian? Jack Benny had a distinctively feminine gait -- he walked like a woman. He exaggerated it at times, and it was always funny -- partly because there was so little else about him that was feminine. It was the visual contrast between the man and the walk. That he walked like a woman, though, is a cultural judgement. The way women walk (just like the way men walk) is culturally influenced, even though biology gives us a certain gait.

Some guys can put on a wig and "become instant females" -- not that they are transsexuals, or particularly feminine, or even homosexuals; they just have the right facial features which when slightly modified (and in the right context) look feminine. Women, of course, can do the same thing in reverse. Everything we do can be (and usually is) judged culturally.

I tend to think people are much more alike than different, and I think this goes for women and men, as well as the Japanese and the French, for example. We are one species, we have a common biological/evolutionary history, we have the same requirements for survival, and so forth. The big difference between men and women is mostly cultural.

One may wish one was a woman (when one is a man) or wish one was a man (when one is a woman); one may play the social role of the opposite sex; one may identify with people who are of the opposite sex; one can pretend that one is actually a member of the sex opposite that which one was born into. — Bitter Crank

A social role of a sex is an oxymoron. As I said before, biological sexes don't contradict the gender theory.

biological sexes don't contradict the gender theory — BlueBanana

What is the gender theory?

The claim that psychological (/cultural/social) gender exists independently of the biological sex.

Is this an actual scientific theory, though? I thought the way you said it made it sound like it was, but I hadn't heard of it.

It strikes me as odd how readily some issues seem to get divided into being dealt with by one of two approaches. We either take a deeply metaphysical "nothing is ever certain" approach and allow people the maximum autonomy possible to express their beliefs, or we take a scientific, "best current theory" approach. I'm not sure I really understand the reasons why subjects get put in one or the other.

I would never deliberately offend a transgender person and I think society should accommodate their wishes where there is no risk of harm, but in conversing about the subject, I expect to be allowed to voice my own beliefs about gender (so long as they are neither incoherent, nor inciting immediate harm), which is not always the case in such debates. Furthermore, when it comes to actual potential harms, like the suicide of transgender teens, I have a duty to do what I thinks is best to prevent that harm, whether that is by lobbying government, campaigning within my social group, or just setting an example in my own personal behaviour.

As I've said before (and I've no interest in starting this debate again, I bring it up for context only), I believe that if a person sees potential harm in some belief, it is fair and reasonable of them to take what action they think is necessary to mitigate that harm i.e. they must resolve the uncertainty into what they think is most likely, they may no longer withhold judgement. In contrast, where there is no harm to be predicted, it would be grossly unreasonable to forcibly resolve an uncertainty, just for the sake of it.

Transgender issues are no different. One cannot say it is impossible that some people are born a woman in a man's body. Maybe God made them that way and so it must be true, maybe the dualists are right and this non-substantial 'mind' stuff from whence our free will derives also dictates our gender. When talking about religion, all sorts of metaphysical positions seem to be allowed, when talking about gender it all seems to get very biological of a sudden. A bit hypocritical when talking theory, but I think entirely appropriate when talking policy because of the potential harm.

Transgender teenagers have an alarmingly high suicide rate, something has to be done to reduce this and no-one is ever going to resolve the issue of whether it is possible for someone to be a man in a woman's body. If we can't use science to say a man did not walk on water (because sience is a metaphysical position that can't be proven), we certainly can't start invoking it to say that all of gender can be reduced to biology and culture, maybe gender too has a metaphysical component. But where we can see serious harms, we can, and indeed must, act nonetheless. We must pick one belief and act on it in such a way as to prevent the harm.

Personally, I think that as a society, the only fair way to resolve uncertainty into action when it is necessary is by science. Science invokes only experiences that we all share, in that it is based n the physical world. If there is no scientific evidence that brains are born women, even though they are in a man's body, then it is reasonable (no matter how uncertain we may be about that conclusion), to approach the suicidal teenager with that presumption, not play along with their delusion, just because it 'might' be true.

Rachel Dolezal: ‘I’m not going to stoop and apologise and grovel’ — Bitter Crank

Obviously she was deliberately deceiving. She did not have a genuine reason to identify in that way.

That does not change to fact. On a side note I think it would teach us all a great deal if we had to spend a week in another persons shoes.
Were her motives a genuine reason to witness prejudice first hand?

Is Calling A Trans Woman A Man (Or Vice Versa) A Form Of Violence?

Is telling a schizophrenic their hallucinations aren't real a form of violence?

Is telling someone they aren't a vampire, when they believe they are, a form of violence?

Is telling a theist their god doesn't exist a form of violence?

Is questioning anyone's assumptions a form of violence?

Is Calling A Trans Woman A Man (Or Vice Versa) A Form Of Violence?

Is telling a schizophrenic their hallucinations aren't real a form of violence?

Is telling someone they aren't a vampire, when they believe they are, a form of violence?

Is telling a theist their god doesn't exist a form of violence?

Is questioning anyone's assumptions a form of violence? — Harry Hindu

Your post suggests that 1) transwomen are men and that 2) it isn't violence to tell the truth. We're probably never going to agree about 1), so let's address 2):

Is telling a fat and ugly person that they're fat and ugly a form of violence? If we accept that the term "violence" covers psychological violence, and not just physical violence, then I think it is a form of violence. It's certainly something people say to bully.

No, it's not violence. This revising of words is a dastardly tactic and you shouldn't put up with it. How many laws get revised along with it if we accept a radically broad definition of violence? Be very careful with this.

When a surgeon cuts, we do not call it violence, because the intention is to heal and not to harm, and importantly, the intention is considered, and backed by training, evidence, and so on, and the surgery is consensual.

If I call you all a bunch of neanderthal misfits who do not understand the first thing about violence and parade your prejudices as if they had some philosophical merit, I would suggest that you could justifiably infer that my intention was to harm, and that I was being violent.

Now some people might seek to justify violence - I need to put you in your place, not for your own good, but for the protection of society from your craziness.

Is telling a fat and ugly person that they're fat and ugly a form of violence? — Michael

In general, of course it is. Again, in the consulting room, and phrased with gentility, it is not.

I remember the time when homosexuality was illegal, when it was not considered a legitimate form of manhood, and every kind of violence against homosexuals was justified as protecting society, including and especially, the exclusion of such people from the entitlements of human society, including being accepted as a man.

And I see no philosophical principle whereby we must inevitably agree that physiology shall trump inclination. Why may we not declare that the essence of manhood is attraction to women, regardless of one's equipment? In which case, lesbians would be men, and male homosexuals, women. But perhaps there is an argument to be made, on the grounds of liberty and respect for the individual, that self-identification should trump both biology and sexual preference.

What's being attacked if the metaphor of violence is to be used is a part of the self that is essential to self-understanding (not so for all assumptions), extremely socially vulnerable (unlike most religious beliefs) and not a simple delusion (hallucinations etc).



(Y)

No, it's not violence. This revising of words is a dastardly tactic and you shouldn't put up with it. How many laws get revised along with it if we accept a radically broad definition of violence? Be very careful with this. — Roke

Psychological violence isn't a novel term.

Besides, if you're focusing too much on the specific word "violence" and not allowing for similar words like "abuse" then I think you're missing the point of the original claim. This isn't some grammar lesson.

I think most philosophy is a grammar lesson or should be. Careless language costs thoughts.

On the topic, there is a view that both sex and gender are socially constructed and that therefore cisgenderism is as much drag and as little part of a person's essence, which does not exist, as transgenderism. I know I'm a man because I act the part. Society knows I'm a man because it was announced at my birth as my sex. The announcement was the creation of my sex, not a mere description. It's Judith Butler for anyone who wants more.

Semantics are important here. It's clear to me that this movement deliberately engages in compound verbal rounding error to appropriate shock from other contexts. I see a lot wrong with that. Be very careful with this.

BTW, do you see anything suspect about a self proclaimed gender noncomformist demanding that everyone conform to their ideas about gender?