Indeed; Harry could have said that the claim is they are a male or female, which are claims about sex.

Yes, but then it seems contrary to what we're talking about. Or, while I could have read him in that way, that seems to be the very distinction over which disagreement is following -- what Harry said follows if we make no distinction between the three phenomena.

But even the radical feminists, at least, acknowledge a distinction between sex and gender. Gender-identity is the term of disagreement there.


There's a book I read a few years ago (Kate Millett's Sexual Politics) that gives a structure to patriarchy -- in a patriarchal system biology is believed to imply mentality is believed to imply social role. And by 'biology', of course, all that is meant is sex. The mentality could be read as a social expectation, though. Women are expected to be nurturing, and so they are given the role of mothers, teachers, nurses, cooks, and so forth. The trick of seeing this as patriarchy was to inverse the relationship, and see the role as being prescribed, and having the rest follow as post hoc rationalization of said role.

Of course the mental lives of people are not expectations of said mental lives -- hence why women would object to such nonsense. And truth be told, isn't the determination of someone else's mental life the real question here?

If that be the case then distinguishing the three on the basis of biology, sociology, and psychology seems to make sense of the difference between the three. So we have at least a theoretical basis for the distinction. Also, I prefer to say the abolition of patriarchy to the abolition of gender, though the two look the same in a patriarchal culture since gender is built/grown with patriarchal values in mind.

That there is the primary point of disagreement. — Moliere

And the only reason I can't agree with you is because you haven't even defined "gender" in any coherent way.

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. — Banno

I don't see a difference between wanting to be treated as a male/female vs man/woman. Look it up in the dictionary. A woman is an adult female human being, while a man is an adult male human being.

Sex is gender and then there are arbitrary expectations (norms established) of men/males and women/females behaviors that contradict each other. There are also varying degrees of punishments for not abiding by those expectations. In some countries it is punishable by death, while others have no laws limiting what both sexes can do.

IF someone is saying that they want to be treated as a woman for example, and imply that it is only their culture's treatment and expectations of women, and not others, then they must not really mean that they ARE a woman because that would be inconsistent. But then, what does that question even mean in a country where both sexes are treated equally? In a society where the sexes are treated equally doesn't "gender" become meaningless?

And the only reason I can't agree with you is because you haven't even defined "gender" in any coherent way. — Harry Hindu

I haven't defined sex, either, but you don't have a problem there. I've been using a more ostensive approach -- by denoting the various things I mean to indicate with the words I am using.

Now I will just say here that I don't expect to persuade you. But identifying where disagreement springs from is still a win, plus it helps us to better see our own beliefs.

I don't think you can know what it's like to be a member of a gender in the sense of possessing completely precise knowledge, because people are so incredibly diverse, and the issue so complex, that it's not so far-fetched to think that there might not be any universal facts about gender.

That said, you can possess less precise knowledge learnt from sociology and other humanities, and you can possess insight and intuition - fuzzy "knowledge" gained from the interactions in your life. Social behavior contains subtle clues from which we can develop a lot of implicit, imprecise "knowledge." Call it street smarts if you will.

It's not definsible? What kind of defense do you require for the free pursuit of well-being and existential fulfillment? Personally, I only expect ethical defense for that, and I can't find ethical problems with transgenderism.

So @Harry Hindu refuses to make the distinction we are using in this discussion. That means he just drops out of contention. He is not saying anything worthy of much consideration.

And, @Moliere, I understand the notion of gender as a patriarchal construct.

SO let me put the problem in terms of the critique of that patriarchal construct. Let's dismantle the distinction between man and woman (gender, not sex). Yet Transgender people insist on that distinction.

Where do they fit?

Let's dismantle the distinction between man and woman (gender, not sex). — Banno

Good idea. How you gonna do it?

It seems to me that social constructs cannot just be abolished by pointing out that they are 'made-up.' Let's dismantle race too, and just be left with skin-colour. But as long as we haven't, which might be a while, expect the Michael Jacksons of this world to want plastic surgery to lighten their skin and straighten their nose, and poor folks to bathe in bleach and straighten their hair with hot combs.

It was a rhetorical question.

So the craziness of the trans-gender is perhaps rather a sane response to the craziness of society, and 'we' had best try and accommodate them within our social constructs.

Yep. Perhaps..

So where does that leave the argument that gender identity is not real, and therefore should be ignored?

I think the dustbin of philosophical history.

So the craziness of the trans-gender is perhaps rather a sane response to the craziness of society, and 'we' had best try and accommodate them within our social constructs. — unenlightened

You are absolutely right! It is impossible to understand the whole phenomenon as isolated from what is going on in the society. So many institutions and organizations, backed by mass-media are leading all the process of creating new self-identification of a transgender. Numerous talented young people see the
goal of their life in changing a gender and the whole movement is represented as a kind of revolution of nowadays. Yet, this "revolution" does not challenge any basic principles of our society.

Money, private property, justice, family, what social constructs do you want to challenge? And how does one challenge one construct - slavery for example - except in terms of another - justice perhaps? You're not making a lot of sense. One resists identification with an alternative identification; one bends gender until straight starts to look queer.

And, Moliere, I understand the notion of gender as a patriarchal construct. — Banno

Heh, sorry. I didn't mean to be patrionizing.

SO let me put the problem in terms of the critique of that patriarchal construct. Let's dismantle the distinction between man and woman (gender, not sex). Yet Transgender people insist on that distinction.

Where do they fit?

It seems to me that they don't quite fit, but that transgender still responds to patriarchy -- only in a different way. Rather than abolition it's reinvention. So gender stops being patriarchal, though it still has both social and psychological components.

I haven't defined sex, either, but you don't have a problem there. — Moliere

That's because we aren't disagreeing that sex is anything more than biology. We are in disagreement whether or not gender is anything more than biology or the arbitrary ways humans expect the different sexes to behave within any culture.

I've been using a more ostensive approach -- by denoting the various things I mean to indicate with the words I am using. — Moliere

And I've been pointing out that your way of defining "gender" is incoherent. Doesn't that mean that you should maybe try a different tactic rather than throwing up your hands and blaming me for being to ignorant to understand your whack wisdom? Sounds like religion to me.

Now I will just say here that I don't expect to persuade you. But identifying where disagreement springs from is still a win, plus it helps us to better see our own beliefs. — Moliere

You can persuade reasonable people with reasonable evidence. I was a "born-again" Christian, took my Bible to school, involved in my church, etc. but I began to question the very basis of what I believed. Eventually, after many years, I considered myself an atheist. I did a complete 180. I was persuaded with better arguments and consistent answers. Have you ever done that? Can you be persuaded, Moliere?

So Harry Hindu refuses to make the distinction we are using in this discussion. That means he just drops out of contention. He is not saying anything worthy of much consideration. — Banno

This is just another poorly veiled ad hominem attack. How does it follow from refusing to make the same distinction you are making to my arguments aren't worth considering?

I am using the terms as they are defined in the dictionary. You are not.

I have argued that your definition of "gender" is incoherent and arbitrary and your only defense is ad hominem attacks and more incoherent vagueness on the part if Moliere.

When you can't defend your own arguments, or even make an attempt to answer the questions I posed, it is you who aren't saying anything worthy of much consideration.

We are in disagreement whether or not gender is anything more than biology or the arbitrary ways humans expect the different sexes to behave within any culture. — Harry Hindu

Where you say "or" here that is where the distinction between sex and gender lies. So as long as you understand that there are these two components -- physiological characteristics, and human expectations (of various sorts, behaviors are just easier to point to) -- then you should be able to understand the distinction between sex and gender.

Doesn't that mean that you should maybe try a different tactic rather than throwing up your hands and blaming me for being to ignorant to understand your whack wisdom? — Harry Hindu

I'm not blaming you. I said I don't expect to persuade you. Mostly because of past experience with philosophy -- if I'm being strict with myself then I should say I don't expect to not persuade you too as persuasion also happens, but I am a creature of habit and usually philosophy does not persuade.

I'm not sure how else to proceed other than ostensively, though. I don't have another tactic. I'm not throwing up my hands and blaming your ignorance, but I am ignorant on how else to proceed.

You can persuade reasonable people with reasonable evidence. I was a "born-again" Christian, took my Bible to school, involved in my church, etc. when I began to question the very basis of what I believed. Eventually, after many years, I considered myself an atheist. I did a complete 180. I was persuaded with better arguments and consistent answers. Have you ever done that? Can you be persuaded, Moliere? — Harry Hindu

Yes, certainly. I've changed beliefs many, many times. But it's a process that happens over time, not in a single conversation. And, in the end, there was no one person who persuaded me -- it was me who persuaded me.

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

Perhaps it is that the gender of an individual is set by their mental and emotional characteristics, while their sexual characteristics are physical, 'set' by biology?

Can one know what it is like to be a man? Or what it is like to be a woman? How, if one can have no more than one's own experiences? — Banno

Our sense of experience of being a certain gender is based on how we view societies definition of the genders. If we feel that we are woman trapped in a man's body, we are feeling that our concept of experience is based around the experience we learned to be that of a man in our society. If the said person who feel trapped, were stranded on a remote island and hasn't had any contact with society and our values of gender, that person wouldn't feel trapped, they would just be themselves. People who have this view about themselves have this view because of their relationship with society and social norms, not because of their subjective experience. So feeling trapped is not out of knowing how the experience of being a man is, but by feeling more comfort in how they would be treated and act out according to what society has decided that the experience of a man should be, external and internal.

This is why gender has more to do with social norms than subjective identity. Most people are just who they are, but we are something else when we clash with what society has decided what people is. Whatever value we have on this subject matter, it's hard to deny that most of our sense of identity would be non-existent if we didn't have a society and norms around us to value and define them against.

Perhaps it is that the gender of an individual is set by their mental and emotional characteristics, while their sexual characteristics are physical, 'set' by biology? — Pattern-chaser

But gender is a social construct, and that means it isn't set by sexual characteristics or by what they feel, but by what we (society) feel. So an interesting question is why and when society's feelings should over-ride the individual's in personal matters.

gender is a social construct, and that means it isn't set by sexual characteristics or by what they feel, but by what we (society) feel. — unenlightened

Seriously? So those with gender dysphoria are actually just making a lifestyle choice, based on what society thinks about gender? You don't put yourself through gender reassignment surgery unless you're really serious. Really, personally serious. :chin:

One resists identification with an alternative identification; — unenlightened

You may think that "an alternative identification" is your private enterprise; yet, it should be examined if it is really a private one. Almost any identification nowadays is a way of getting involved into a socio-political
mass movement.

Seriously? — Pattern-chaser

Yes, we're all very serious about our identities. They're serious, and so am I, and so are those folk that feel to beat people up and murder them for their 'lifestyle' choices. What else is serious but identity?

You may think that "an alternative identification" is your private enterprise; yet, it should be examined how private it is. Almost any identification nowadays is a way of getting involved into a socio-political
mass movement. — Number2018

I may do, but I don't as it happens; I'm fairly conventional, in my male hetero-normality. But lose the paranoia, dude, penis amputation is not a mass movement.

In choosing between modifying the feeling or modifying the body --

While modifying the body is a dramatic change, I think that modifying the mind is equally dramatic when it comes to something as basic as identity.


Right now we have no such surgical power to modify the mind. We do not have that level of understanding. But what we do have is physical surgery. In a way physical surgery is actually easier because we at least understand the body and can perform physical surgery with relative safety.

But mental surgery? We're basically poking in the dark. We are largely ignorant of how the mind works, at least in comparison to our knowledge of how the body works. And any attempts that I've read about thus far usually end up hurting a person rather than healing them because of this ignorance.

So, relative to our time at least, it's actually more in the interest of a person's health to modify bodies to fit feelings on the basis of what it is we know and what we can accomplish.

In a theoretical future, when we have a better science of the mind, we could perform surgery on persons to modify their feelings -- to make them homosexual, to make them feel a certain gender-identity, to make them vote a certain way, to make them empathetic, to make them motivated to kill, to make them better workers, and so forth. It's a scary power to think about, but a science of the mind would allow for an engineering of the mind. We're just not there yet.

a science of the mind would allow for an engineering of the mind. We're just not there yet. — Moliere

Let's hope we never get there, then. :chin:

But lose the paranoia, dude, penis amputation is not a mass movement. — unenlightened

If most of these operations got support and provided by a variety of publicly funded medical institutions,(which is impossible without previous intensive research) and many individuals considering the possibility of this operations get publicly funded guidance and support
(which is possible just in the presence of numerous qualified and trained staff), and all related issues
may become (I am not sure about it) a part of the mandatory school curriculum - how would you call it?

I agree. If I'm actually correct, rather than merely following a moral impulse, then it would actually be impossible to get there.

But it's worth talking about because 1) it's an end-goal of some scientists, so it's possible, and 2) it's basically what would be required if we were to medicate the mind, rather than the body, in the case of transgender individuals.

Seriously? So those with gender dysphoria are actually just making a lifestyle choice, based on what society thinks about gender? You don't put yourself through gender reassignment surgery unless you're really serious. Really, personally serious. — Pattern-chaser

Gender dysphoria and gender reassignment surgery are socially situated phenomena. You don't get to make personal choices outside the prevailing social mythos without ending up in jail or a lunatic asylum. Or to put it another way, the communicable choices available to you are preset by your sociocultural context. In a hypothetical closed society where gender really does unambiguously equal what sexual equipment you display, the concept of gender dysphoria doesn't exist to be communicated and you can't have it. Just as up until recently you couldn't have ADHD. But in contemporary society, sex doesn't unambiguously equal gender and you can (which also makes an absolute equation of sex and gender either an expression of a lack of understanding of current social norms, or a misguided attempt to close the barn door after the proverbial horse has bolted).

Just as up until recently you couldn't have ADHD. — Baden

But you could still have the symptoms of ADHD. You would just be called something else like "scatter brained" or a free spirt, or lacking in the character needed to see tasks through.

Conditions still exist regardless of what label society wants to use for them, or whether they're even recognized.

You could. And by the same principle you might, if you identified as being a member of the opposite sex, be considered in some societies as being possessed by the ghost of a woman etc. You couldn't have gender dysphoria though.

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? — Banno

Your second question contains a false assumption. It can be either or both. And if it is set by what they feel, then these feelings typically relate to general characteristics associated with a particular gender. Otherwise these feelings would be nonsensical, but they're not.