"How do you really know that the body is wrong and your mind is right? Could it not be possible that it is the other way around?" — Harry Hindu

Yes, of course it could. But, in purely practical terms, we cannot (i.e. we don't know how) change the mind to suit the body, but we can change the body to approximately match the mind. But these are details. The issue at hand is the mismatch between mind and body, not which one of them is 'wrong'. :roll:

What do we do in the case of schizophrenics and anorexics? We try to change the mind because that is where we know the problem is located.

Not only that, but there are plenty of stories of regret in going through with reassignment surgery. So it clearly isn't a fix for everyone. AND isn't it ironic that before you are allowed to go through the surgery you have to pass a psychological exam and get approval from a psychiatrist? You don't need that to get a tumor removed.

What does that even mean to say there is a mismatch between mind and body? It seems no different from what I have said. And again it just begs the question: "How do you know that it is the mind that is right and the body wrong", especially when the body tries to revert back after surgery and you have to use stents to keep the wound open?

↪Pattern-chaser
What do we do in the case of schizophrenics and anorexics? We try to change the mind because that is where we know the problem is located. — Harry Hindu

But in the case of a simple mismatch, as we have here, the source of the problem is unclear. It could be either. Schizophrenics and anorexics cannot be cured by addressing the body, otherwise I'm sure we'd give it a go. It isn't even clear that gender dysphoria can be directly compared with conditions like schizophrenia. Would you compare psoriasis with diabetes, and maybe try to treat them both in the same way? No, you would consider the suggestion to be nonsense, quite rightly. :up: Your problem is, well, your problem. Intolerance, bigotry and hate are your problems, and you should not be looking at trans folk to find their source.... :fear:

In other words, this talk by 'them' about the abstraction of 'transgenderism' is fundamentally inauthentic, as it does not relate to any specification of personality or existence, but of an objective generalization of what it might be for someone who fits under that category.
There must be, to remain within a sphere or paradigm of authenticity, a separation between what is real, like my trans friend Ryan and me the homosexual, and this talk of trans people and homosexuals. — Blue Lux

Could you explain your understanding of "a sphere or paradigm of authenticity"? Do you mean that your feelings and thoughts have another (maybe better, or more real) ontological status?

...? — Banno

Great reply. I don't think that I've said anything too difficult to get your head around. Like I said before, gender can be made sense of if you think in terms of general characteristics associated with male and female. You've rejected this way of thinking about gender for some unknown reason, and have instead chosen to stand by a method of analysis which leads to incoherence.

So be it.

Whose prose are we reading here? No author cited.

I was not born to be determined. I was born free. I have always been free. I choose everything that I am. — Blue Lux

These are heroic claims. They are validating and contribute to your sense of being a proudly autonomous being. They might, however, be a bit of a delusion, or misapprehension. I resist your confidence not because I want to degrade you in any way, but because your claim may be wrong, and I want to encourage you to think it through again. Whether you think it through again or not, you'll still be gay, still be confident of who you are, still be an autonomous being (more or less), and still be happy with who you are.

We are given a certain embodied form at conception and during prenatal development. The way the neural tube of the fetus develops into the brain has a great deal to say about "who I am" without any choice on my part. I am gay, male, visually impaired, fairly bright, 5'10", once dark brown but now white hair, male pattern balding (rats!), descended from English and Irish forebears, etc. I didn't choose any of this. I am reasonably well educated -- that was a choice pursued over many years of formal and informal study. There are people who (so they say) never read another book after college. I presume they chose to stop learning.

We are a mix of embodied conditions which we could not have chosen and choices which we could and did make.

Some gay men choose to dress in drag from time to time. I might have made that choice, but I was too stupid to figure out how to pull that off. Some people make wise decisions throughout their lives which advance their careers. I may have chosen--or it may have been a given--to be an obstinate resistor to the general goals of American society, so I failed to have a glorious career. That had to do with choice, mostly. (or maybe not.)

The list of givens, choices, chance occurrences, and so forth that make us who we are is long. Yes, we do make choices, but we can not be sure that the way we choose isn't also the result of a given. Some people, for instance, are risk averse (or risk tolerant), and make decisions accordingly. Risk tolerance or aversion seems to be present from an early age.

Facticity impeding freedom is what Sartre calls Bad Faith.

Be with another person who 'represents' these words. Be around them I mean. Engage in a real conversation about life and desire. Only in a respectful, meaningful exchange will you find the true meaning of what these words like transgenderedism mean, or homosexuality. That is the authenticity I am talking about. The paradigm of authenticity would be the paradigm that is not idle talk. Like, instead of saying that I am gay I say that I am absolutely, completely, unequivocally and unquestionably in love with and sexually attracted to someone who has the same gender and sex as myself.

Nonsense. Only women can have be pregnant and have babies. That is a result of their physical features and how those physical features give rise to certain behaviors only allowed by those physical features — Harry Hindu

This is an argument from bad faith. What of a woman happens to be physiologically sterile? Therefore she is not a woman? What if a woman has parts of her reproductive organs surgically removed because of a disease. That makes her not a woman?

You can't manipulate nature unless you have opposable thumbs, etc. Your capacity for any behavior is governed by not just the size and shape of your body, but also the processes that go on inside it, like the level of certain hormones and chemicals flooding your brain at any given moment — Harry Hindu

Surely you have some good examples!
...

It is what men with a delusional disorder have to do after having a doctor cut off their penis and makes a hole and calls it a "vagina" - a miscategorization of the Nth degree. — Harry Hindu

You are omitting the opposite, which is a f to m procedure...

But the sex organs are not the focal point. You clearly know no transgender people. They resemble what they identify as, and they recreate these concepts according to their own authenticity and creation and freedom, which you are undermining or obdurately and intransigently rejecting according to an empirical realism that is far from being unequivocal or infallible!

It was someone from Stanford I presume. There was no author posted.

Debra Bergoffen. The author is listed on SEP, at the very end of the web page, at least on mobile.

The Sartrian account of choice isn't a question of vapid consumerist trend or even an authority to be whatever your whim might want.

It's an analysis of our logical definition. Sartre is addressing the idea of what makes someone who they are. How is it we come by our identity? How do we have two arms? Or belong to a philosophy forum? Choose to forgive rather than take revenge? Choose to eat porridge rather toast?

Many will try to pass of the reason they do or are anything to someone else. They will say: "I did that because God made me" or "Nature necessitated I do that." Anything and everything to deny their existence was responsible for the event.

In saying we choose everything about ourselves, Sartre is pointing out we are the difference in every case. Our own existence defines who we are and who we are not.

We can "choose anything" because our future states are always to come. Who I am now cannot be used as a rule to devine who I will be in the future. Whether I have two arms, one, none or twenty, can only be given in my present. Our existence is the only way we are one thing not another. No constraints are doing the work of making us who we are.

!!!! Agreed!!! :up: :up: :clap:

ah didn't see the author posted. But thank you

Be with another person who 'represents' these words. Be around them I mean. Engage in a real conversation about life and desire. Only in a respectful, meaningful exchange will you find the true meaning of what these words like transgenderedism mean, or homosexuality. That is the authenticity I am talking about. The paradigm of authenticity would be the paradigm that is not idle talk. Like, instead of saying that I am gay I say that I am absolutely, completely, unequivocally and unquestionably in love with and sexually attracted to someone who has the same gender and sex as myself. — Blue Lux

I hope you don’t mean that discussing transgenderism with a heterosexual man is an idle talk. I asked you about authenticity just because it is important for me to find the criteria for differentiation between fake and authentic. As Adorno pointed out:” the sacred quality of the authentic talk belongs to the cult of authenticity rather than to the Christian cult, even where - for temporary lack of any other available authority - its language resembles the Christian. Prior to any consideration of particular content, this language molds thought. As a consequence, that thought accommodates itself to the goal of subordination even where it aspires to resist that goal.”

hmmm interesting

But I'm not really talking about an 'authentic talk:' this in itself seems to be idle.

I am referring to an adequate exchange of meaning.
Authenticity is the expression of oneself how they are, unadulterated by the conceptions that would label their authenticity as something objectively unequivocal, which is at base inauthentic.

I brought this quote to calm down our discussion. :smile:

Authenticity is the expression of oneself how they are, — Blue Lux

Any kind of human expression assumes the split between the expressed and expressing.
Actually, there is a real void between them. I think that the authentic thought is in-between.

I agree with you, though I am still uncertain.

I seem to think the seem thing about this in-between the expressed and the expressing...

Oh Lord, here it comes again.

What is doing the expressing??
I could say reasonably accurately that the expressed is an affect or an emotion.
Is there something doing the expressing?
Is there just an expressing?

An improvized analysis

I am expressing something.
"am expressing something" would be the predicate, something that gives information about the subject, something the subject can have or lack.
But this subject 'I' can not lack this expressed something. Let's say I am expressing existence. Expressing 'my' existence. This subject 'I' is more-so a 'my.' Therefore the expressed something is a fundamental quality of what does the expressing; the reference by which the expressing takes place.

This is the authenticity. The authenticity originates in the personality, in the being-in-the-middle, in 'the my.' The expressed never gets fully expressed. That is the state of affairs. Idle talk is based upon the objectivation of the expressed as actualized and apprehendable as a form.

I agree with you. That is why I am not sure about authenticity. We inherited Cogito as fundamentally split! "The act of Cogito is no longer a question of objective, representative knowledge -
there is a value and a meaning of Cogito, as of existence, which escapes the alternative of a determined madness or a determined reason...I philosophize only in terror, but in the confessed terror
of going mad". Yet, anyway, we must produce positivistic sentences and meaningful utterances!:blush:

where is that quote from ?

And I feel like we are on the same page here :nerd:

Derrida "Cogito and the History of Madness"

To me it just follows naturally from how I should take the statements people make about themselves. Feelings may change over time, but the person (usually) in the best position to say they are what they are or that they have changed or that they were different is the person feeling them.

What other aspect of identity comes under scrutiny like transgender identity does? It seems to me that we have no problem with people who identify as Christian, men (when their sex is in alignment with their gender identity), Democrat, liberal, stern, black, a foodie, an artist, and so forth. There is a certain ambiguity involved in all such identities, and can even be contradictory when we consider the multitude of people who identify as such.

There is something Cartesian in my approach to interiority. But there is a sort of truth that this approach captures that others do not. There is a very real sense in which, because I am not you I do not feel what you do. We can both see cats on mats, but we cannot both feel what the other feels in the same way. Feelings are contagious, but they aren't objects. They are internal. They are a part of what makes us unique. And I can feel what you feel only insofar that I feel it -- sometimes I won't, even if you happen to. With cats on mats, on the other hand, this is not the case -- someone may be blind, of course, but they can still pick up the cat. The cat is something like an object, just like our body is something like an object. There is just also an interior which is exterior to our own interior -- another's interiority appears as an exteriority, and not in the sense of an external world. Rather it is external to anything we experience -- it is outside of our field of vision. And it is only through relating to another that we come to encounter the fact of the exterior, while also never actually making it our own interior. Hence my emphasis on the act of listening.

I don't think that there is an unbridgeable gulf a priori -- sometimes it can come to seem like it is so through discussion, but I think that you have to try in order to determine if there is just too much divergence between persons. Then our interior experiences become something like a beetle in a box -- except to the extent that there are still some individuals who can relate, even if not everyone can.

To me it just follows naturally from how I should take the statements people make about themselves. Feelings may change over time, but the person (usually) in the best position to say they are what they are or that they have changed or that they were different is the person feeling them.

What other aspect of identity comes under scrutiny like transgender identity does? It seems to me that we have no problem with people who identify as Christian, men (when their sex is in alignment with their gender identity), Democrat, liberal, stern, black, a foodie, an artist, and so forth. There is a certain ambiguity involved in all such identities, and can even be contradictory when we consider the multitude of people who identify as such. — Moliere

Any aspect of identity that contradicts reality - like claiming that you are actually an alien, Jesus, President Obama's secret mistress, feeling like you are morbidly fat and need to starve yourself to loose weight, or that you are the opposite sex. When someone's feelings are not a true representation of reality - that is when we have a responsibility to question the claims of people.

Shouldn't the question be: "What is it about SEX that keeps us from scrutinizing those that feel as if they are the opposite sex, when we scrutinize all other feelings that are not consistent with reality?"

People can come to the wrong conclusions about the meaning of their feelings. We have no problem telling religious people that their dead loved ones don't exist and that there is no afterlife and we often get the same reaction that we get from the trans-people. We are told that there is a "War on Christmas", that you are "hater", "you don't know what love really is", etc. This is evidence that we are talking about a delusion (in both cases) - when ad hominem attacks are their only defense to what you are saying and they are fearful of questioning their own conclusions.

No one has been able to define "gender" in a meaningful way that implies any of what you have said. Gender is not some feeling of being the opposite sex. It is the behaviors unique to a certain sex that cannot be duplicated by another - like getting pregnant and giving birth.

Dressing a certain way, or wearing make-up, or shaving your legs are things both sexes can do and therefore aren't related to gender or sex. If it were then you are telling every woman that has ever existed, and that presently exists in other cultures, that they aren't actually women if they don't wear long hair, make-up and shave their legs.

Fear is what keeps people from asking the right questions - fear of being labeled a bigot and being disowned by your friends or social group. Fear and feelings should be the furthest thing from one's mind when trying to determine the truth.

When someone's feelings are not a true representation of reality - that is when we have a responsibility to question the claims of people. — Harry Hindu

And yet, when someone questions your claims, you complain (unreasonably) of ad hominem attacks.

Oh, and how do you know what reality is, that you are able to determine that the feelings of others contradict it? How do you know it's not your feelings that "are not a true representation of reality"? Please share your evidence...

Shouldn't the question be: "What is it about SEX that keeps us from scrutinizing those that feel as if they are the opposite sex, when we scrutinize all other feelings that are not consistent with reality?"

People can come to the wrong conclusions about the meaning of their feelings. We have no problem telling religious people that their dead loved ones don't exist and that there is no afterlife and we often get the same reaction that we get from the trans-people.

I have to point out here that this is something you have no problem with, but if we includes me then part of we does.

Any aspect of identity that contradicts reality - like claiming that you are actually an alien, Jesus, President Obama's secret mistress, feeling like you are morbidly fat and need to starve yourself to loose weight, or that you are the opposite sex. When someone's feelings are not a true representation of reality - that is when we have a responsibility to question the claims of people. — Harry Hindu

Identity is a part of reality, and feelings are not claims.

It's not sex that's being claimed. Sex is distinguished from gender is distinguished from gender-identity. Sex is biological. Gender is social. Gender-identity is psychological. Biology has to do with what you're talking about in getting pregnant and giving birth, but it's more complicated than that even. If a man cannot impregnate someone, because he is impotent, does his sex change? If he has erectile dysfunction, does his sex change?

Not at all. So the sex category a single person belongs to isn't exactly based on what a single person can do. It is based on their physiological characteristics or genome or what-have-you -- and there are people who don't fall neatly into the two categories there too, it's worth noting.

In the case of gender-identity there isn't much of a standard outside of the statements a person makes of themself and the actions they take.

When someone claims to be Jesus then there are facts to the matter which are ascertainable outside of the psychological profile of someone. I would believe the person feels like Jesus if they claimed they are Jesus. But there's more to the matter than the statements the person makes and the actions they take -- that he is the son of God, that he was resurrected after being crucified, that he has a second coming to judge the living and the dead. There is something else to look at.

In the case of gender-identity there is not. And the feelings someone has are as much a part of reality as the chair I'm sitting upon. And since the feelings aren't making claims about physiology (sex) there is no contradiction.

No one has been able to define "gender" in a meaningful way that implies any of what you have said. Gender is not some feeling of being the opposite sex. It is the behaviors unique to a certain sex that cannot be duplicated by another - like getting pregnant and giving birth.

Dressing a certain way, or wearing make-up, or shaving your legs are things both sexes can do and therefore aren't related to gender or sex. If it were then you are telling every woman that has ever existed, and that presently exists in other cultures, that they aren't actually women if they don't wear long hair, make-up and shave their legs.

I'm just going to note here I don't believe that gender has a fixed essence -- so any behavior can potentially be associated with the gender "man" or "woman", be it shaving, wearing makeup, making decisions, dieting, exercise, or what-have-you. In actuality there are certain behaviors temporarily affixed to genders, but they change over time and with place.

Fear is what keeps people from asking the right questions - fear of being labeled a bigot and being disowned by your friends or social group. Fear and feelings should be the furthest thing from one's mind when trying to determine the truth.

I suggest we just agree to stick to the topic. This is pretty out there, given that right here, at least, we are asking questions.

I have to point out here that this is something you have no problem with, but if we includes me then part of we does. — Moliere

So, you have never told someone that they were wrong, or contradicted their belief, or otherwise engaged in some debate where someone's deeply held belief was questioned? And "deeply held beliefs" are the ones in which feelings are attached to and cannot be uprooted without compromising those feelings. What about the feeling associated with being correct and the subsequent bad feeling of being wrong when your beliefs contradict reality? I can probably point to many instances on this forum where members are rude, condescending and indifferent to people's feelings, of which you could be included?

It's not sex that's being claimed. Sex is distinguished from gender is distinguished from gender-identity. Sex is biological. Gender is social. Gender-identity is psychological. Biology has to do with what you're talking about in getting pregnant and giving birth, but it's more complicated than that even. If a man cannot impregnate someone, because he is impotent, does his sex change? If he has erectile dysfunction, does his sex change? — Moliere

If a man has sexual reassignment then they are changing their sex, not their gender. So it is about sex and not gender as gender is arbitrary.

If a man is impotent or has erectile dysfunction, he is still a man because any surgery to try and change his sex ends up with the body trying to revert itself back to it's original form. This is why men have to use stents to keep their wound open (its not a vagina, it is an open wound). Just as there are men with physical disorders, there are men with mental disorders - something you seem unwilling to admit or be consistent about. The disorder doesn't make them less of a man, or more of a woman. That is determined by biology alone.

When someone claims to be Jesus then there are facts to the matter which are ascertainable outside of the psychological profile of someone. I would believe the person feels like Jesus if they claimed they are Jesus. But there's more to the matter than the statements the person makes and the actions they take -- that he is the son of God, that he was resurrected after being crucified, that he has a second coming to judge the living and the dead. There is something else to look at. — Moliere

The something else to look at would be the person's sex.

In the case of gender-identity there is not. And the feelings someone has are as much a part of reality as the chair I'm sitting upon. And since the feelings aren't making claims about physiology (sex) there is no contradiction. — Moliere

I still don't see a distinction. For someone who believes they are Jesus - their feelings are real too. As I pointed out, their claims ARE about sex, as they try to change their sex. Their claims are about being the opposite sex.

You end up having to make it about "gender" to avoid attributing some psychological disorder to transgenderism, yet you can't even come up with a meaningful definition of "gender".

I'm just going to note here I don't believe that gender has a fixed essence -- so any behavior can potentially be associated with the gender "man" or "woman", be it shaving, wearing makeup, making decisions, dieting, exercise, or what-have-you. In actuality there are certain behaviors temporarily affixed to genders, but they change over time and with place. — Moliere

Then "gender" has no meaning if there is no fixed essence. Any behavior could be "gender"-related, and trans-people can adopt any behavior they want and still be the sex that they are born with, but many don't want to stop there.

They claim that they are a woman or a man, which are claims about sex. If there are no clear distinctions between how they wear their hair, make-up, what clothes they wear (meaning there is no physical barrier to doing these things) then why are they making claims about being a man or a woman when these behaviors are not restricted to just a man or a woman? When men can have long hair and wear make-up, then why is their claim that they are a woman just so that they can have long hair and wear make-up, when men have no restriction to doing any of these things? IT IS about sex, no matter how much mental gymnastics you try to perform, you cannot escape this fact.

They claim that they are a woman or a man, which are claims about sex. — Harry Hindu

That there is the primary point of disagreement.

For clarity I am using sex, male, female; and gender, man, woman. — Banno

If someone is male, but wishes to be treated as a woman, I don't see an issue. If someone is female, but wishes to be treated as a man, no problem.

But if they are male and claim to be female, or if they are female and claim to be male - then there is something worthy of further discussion.

Like I said before, gender can be made sense of if you think in terms of general characteristics associated with male and female. — Sapientia

So we make sense of gender in terms of sexual characteristics?

Then how is it that the gender of an individual is set by what they feel, and not their sexual characteristics?