As a rule I do not discuss female sexuality, because it is pretty much outside my ken. But... what I have observed (and read) is that women often establish sexual relationships with other women later in life than gay men do with other men. While a "lesbian" identity seems to be very strong for some women, many women in same-sex relationships don't identify strongly as lesbian or homosexual.

Sex seems to work a bit differently for women (so I have heard) than for men, for which there are various evolutionary reasons.

But... what I have observed (and read) is that women often establish sexual relationships with other women later in life than gay men do with other men. While a "lesbian" identity seems to be very strong for some women, many women in same-sex relationships don't identify strongly as lesbian or homosexual. — Bitter Crank

That seems consistent with how my daughter lives her life.

The answer to this one is a bit complex. There a many layers. One level is a personal identity, how someone understands how they belong, similar to people understanding the belong to a gender son account of a particular trait the posses. Someone thinking they are a man because they have a penis is one example.

Another is the confusion or doubt people have about being accepted. Under social pressure of needing to be something to belong, people will play out certain behaviours. They’ll pretend, even to themselves, they need to as or have something to feel like they belong in terms of others.

Others might just knowing feel falsehoods in pubic to fit in, just to avoid the tension or drama or violence other would subject upon them for breaking their gender expectations. Even if you know a gender role is bullshit and it has no place win your identity, it’s sometimes easier or safer just to play along, to get others to recognise a gendered belonging. One may not care for long hair and dresses, but that might be one of the only way to get other people too read them as a woman.

In terms of the question you appear to be going for, it does becomes a cultural thing for some. Dressing and presenting up as “feminine” as possible. This kind of culture has the same kind of problem did does amongst cisgender roles. Cis gender roles get in trouble for insisting someone only come in the particular shapes, such roles within trans culture have the some problem of ignoring the existing of women who fall outside those standards. Just like a cis gender role claiming the absurdity that a woman with short hair and pants is not women/less of a woman, the trans version ignores woman come in al shapes and sizes.

So it foes happen, but it is not good. It is not the reason (even amongst trans women who perform those roles) a trans woman is a woman. It can never be the point because such gender roles only amount to following a rule other insist upon you. They aren’t descriptions of a gender itself. Just like cis gender roles, some may think they have to perform certain behaviours or characteristics to belong to to a gender, but it's really just a violence of a social hierarchy.

I have yet to hear or read an explanation by anyone that maps out the metaphysics of transgenderism.
What is a "true woman"?
What does it mean to "feel" like one?
What about you can be "in the wrong body"? — thewonder

The tricky thing is there isn't an answer to these question. Gender it always a question of the particular identity itself. It has no standard for when it appears or not.

Take the example of being "in the wrong body." There is no reason or constraint for this to amount to a transition in gender. To someone is might appear appear in purely biological terms. We might have, for example, a man who felt a body of a vagina and breast. He might have no identity or identification as a woman. Describing himself, he might say: "I am a man. I've always been a man. My body just feels like/ought to be one of breasts and a vagina."

For the instance of the "wrong body" to amount to a transition of gender, there has to be a certain kind of identity truth present itself. The body must come in tandem with a particular truth of identity itself, a fact that this particular instance of the body is a certain gender.

Using the usual concepts of gender, the metaphysics are impossible to grasp because they don't really talk about them. Everyday notions of gender just view gender as an act of following a rule. They don't give truth to gender itself.

At the limit isn't a singular identity almost contradictory? If I'm not constrained by any accidental properties, I float off into the aether.

We're always floating in the aether.

Whether we manage to find ourselves there or not, each of us is one floating around others. Identity is always singular and never constrained. The contradiction is to think the accidental was ever given by a property.

If you were not floating in aether, if you were the constraint of something else (not you ), you would not exist at all. There would just be a dick. Or a vagina. Or some short hair. Or a dress hanging on a body.

At least that would be the mirage. Till the question of who or what they were was asked, then they would be discovered to be floating in the aether themselves. They would be realised as accidental singulars, given by no property of constraint. Or else themselves become a mirage of the world of no dicks, vaginas, shot hair or bodies wearing dresses.

So the cycle will repeat endlessly, until one is comfortable recognising singular difference.

Will you two speak English? Y’all are too smart for me.

I'm not sure I've ever seen csalisbury speak proverbial English, poetic flourish has been his demeanour for as long as I can remember.

My feeling is he's going for a certain sense that would be lost in technical outlay.

The English version of what I just said might be:

Things are present on account of themselves. Until we reorganise this, we'll endlessly be rejecting the existence of things and be incapable of describing the metaphysical relation. We'll be stuck thinking everything is something else (a given "property" which supposedly make a thing).

To being this back around to the topic, this is why the wonder cannot identify the metaphysics of sex and gender. If we are describing the presence of something with a sex or gender, we are referring to a specific existing person.

So if I try to take the route of defining sex on the basis of the property of a certain kind of body, my metaphysics will fail. My movement is try to say that this person is present as they are (e.g. someone with the sex of male) on account of something which isn't them at all, just the property of having a bodily characteristic (e.g. penis, which might be found on all sorts off people). I've left the person I'm trying to describe out entirely.

We're always floating in the aether.

Whether we manage to find ourselves there or not, each of us is one floating around others. Identity is always singular and never constrained. The contradiction is to think the accidental was ever given by a property. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Focusing in on one part - what does it mean to say 'accidental given by a property'? That makes me think something like this: 'A property is still too general; what's accidental, is singularly accidental.' Sure, but ---

There comes a moment where someone asks 'who are you?' and you say ' nothing you could ever recognize' and to that I agree! but thats what floats out endlessly. What makes a life is the clash of that singularity against the recognizable, right?

You can drop it all, but at the cost of floating beyond anyone's grasp, ever - safe, but alone. Self-realized, with no actual realization.

Ah but that is the reverse mirage formed on trying to find other in properties: we already know our singular selves in that situation. Who are you asking the question about if you don't know this?

I'm telling a falsehood and your question is asking for what you already know.

I have floated/I am out endlessly, which you have recognised is asking a question about who I am. What endlessly floats out is the opposite of unrecognisable, you already know it perfectly.

Well I know you, so I'm asking it of someone who meticulously opposes the singular to the universal. And really I truly don't know you because you've brilliantly posted up on the paradox itself. but the cost of that is I might as well be talking to the paradox. Everythig eternally orbits around that. Its the safest space around. Willow vanishes in the concept.

So then a metaphysics of gender is ultimately doomed to failure? My intuitive sense is that a person identifies as a certain gender because of their emotional feeling reflecting their concept (often cultural biases and norms) of what the gender is. I identify as a heterosexual man because I am sexually attracted to the opposite sex and I have a penis. I also like having a penis. This is my concept of a heterosexual man. Now that’s not to say that some people wouldn’t perceive in me anything feminine, as most of us fall on a spectrum from totally masculine to totally feminine (which as concepts are mostly cultural biases and norms).

So, a transgender male born in a female body would most likely feel like they should have a penis and they don’t belong in a body with a vagina. They can be gay, straight, or bi or whatever sexuality they are. So sexual orientation is an instinctive drive, while sex is anatomical (and can be changed through surgery and hormones), while gender is a feeling on a spectrum based on concepts of male and female roles (or masculine or feminine attitudes or traits) situated in cultural biases and norms.

In terms of the question you appear to be going for, it does becomes a cultural thing for some. Dressing and presenting up as “feminine” as possible. This kind of culture has the same kind of problem did does amongst cisgender roles. Cis gender roles get in trouble for insisting someone only come in the particular shapes, such roles within trans culture have the some problem of ignoring the existing of women who fall outside those standards. Just like a cis gender role claiming the absurdity that a woman with short hair and pants is not women/less of a woman, the trans version ignores woman come in al shapes and sizes. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't have any problem with what you're saying. My comment that you're responding to is this:

Intuitively I would think that a transgender woman would want very much to fit in with societal gender roles. That would sort of be the whole point. Again, I'm talking about something where I don't have much experience. — T Clark

This still seems right to me. If a man is going through all the difficulties it requires to become and be accepted as a women, it just seems to me she would want to be considered a woman as typically defined in society at large. That's my intuition. More than that, it's what I feel when I try to place myself in their shoes. Yes, of course, it is a bit presumptuous for me to think I can do that, but it's disrespectful for me not to try.

I'm inclined to say that means you don't really see me.

When presented with my singular difference, you seem to want to insist you don't I exist unless I met some standard of properties, unless I'm able to tell you everything I am at the moment or how I am constrained.

You do truly know me, but you're unwilling to accept that you do, for it is not enough. Willow vanishes because you need me to be more than just Willow to qualify for existence. To just know my difference, is not enough for you. You want me to be funny. Or smart. Or insightful. Or something. For me to just be is not enough for you.

Perhaps then, that is why the paradox is so intractable to many. They want others to be something more to them than just a singular they exist with. Sometimes, this is great and necessary of course-- relationships, teachers, ideas, ethics, etc.-- but it seems to easily spill over into a demand people can only exist if they are this something more.

I'd love to meet Willow, but I don't feel like I ever have. I've met ideas about Spinoza. I've met patterns of thought. That all tend to general concepts about what exceeds the general.

You do truly know me, but you're unwilling to accept that you do, for it is not enough. Willow vanishes because you need me to be more than just Willow to qualify for existence. To just know my difference, is not enough for you. You want me to be funny. Or smart. Or insightful. Or something. For me to just be is not enough for you. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Well, I don't know you in real life. I know you online, on philosophy sites, where you talk about certain things. You could just be, and not talk about philosophy, but I mean, that's not what you're doing here, on philosophy forums, talking about specific conceptual areas.

I would agree that I don't see you, but how would I?

Metaphysics trying to describe gender or sex by talking about something else are doomed to failure. If you are trying to find gender or sex be the fact someone has a particularly body part or behaves in certain way, it will always fail because you aren't talking about the existence of a person's gender. You're just describing the presence of another kind of fact.

The description of gender or sex you are tying to give just because an ad hoc just so story about a person-- e.g. "Well, this person a penis, so must be a man..."-- which doesn't engage with describing a fact of sex or gender itself.

You identify as heterosexual because you are heterosexual and recognise it. Plenty of people are attracted to the opposite sex and have a penis, but are not heterosexual. Those two properties don't define one as heterosexual.

One cannot be heterosexual just because they have a penis and are attracted to the opposite sex. There are many sexual orientations a person with attraction to the opposite and a penis might take. It's even possible they might have none (e.g. a person who falls outside of categorising their sexual attraction under an orientation).

There's perfectly a coherent metaphysics of sex, gender or sexual orientation. People just have to realise they aren't talking about the fact a penis exists. Or that any instance of anatomy exist. Or the fact of someone being attracted to the opposite sex. That sex, gender or sexual orientation is it's own fact about a person itself. A truth not given by properties (e.g. "I'm a man because I have a penis"), but rather one given in itself (e.g. "I am a man") which occurs alongside their properties (whatever those might be, be they a penis or a vagina, burly or scrawny, short hair or long, etc.)

You identify as heterosexual because you are heterosexual and recognise it. Plenty of people are attracted to the opposite sex and have a penis, but are not heterosexual. Those two properties don't define one as heterosexual.

One cannot be heterosexual just because they have a penis and are attracted to the opposite sex. There are many sexual orientations a person with attraction to the opposite and a penis might take. It's even possible they might have none (e.g. a person who falls outside of categorising their sexual attraction under an orientation). — TheWillowOfDarkness

It's not clear to me what you have in mind here. I might agree with you, but I don't know what an example would be.

There's perfectly a coherent metaphysics of sex, gender or sexual orientation. People just have to realise they aren't talking about the fact a penis exists. Or that any instance of anatomy exist. Or the fact of someone being attracted to the opposite sex. That sex, gender or sexual orientation is it's own fact about a person itself. A truth not given by properties (e.g. "I'm a man because I have a penis"), but rather one given in itself (e.g. "I am a man") which occurs alongside their properties (whatever those might be, be they a penis or a vagina, burly or scrawny, short hair or long, etc.) — TheWillowOfDarkness

I can accept that (many, not all) aspects of gender are social constructions.

It makes no sense to define sex as such. Sex refers only to biology. You're born male/female/intersex, and that's just the reality you have to live with and can choose to shape your gender presentation around.

sex, gender or sexual orientation is it's own fact about a person itself. A truth not given by properties (e.g. "I'm a man because I have a penis"), but rather one given in itself (e.g. "I am a man") which occurs alongside their properties (whatever those might be, be they a penis or a vagina, burly or scrawny, short hair or long, etc.) — TheWillowOfDarkness

What is the truth of belonging to identity itself? What kind of identity do you use here?
Do we need the principle of identity to define gender or sexual orientation? Butler claims that categories themselves, as products of regimes of power, produce the identity they are deemed to be simply representing.
"A genealogical critique refuses to search for the origins of
gender, the inner truth of female desire, a genuine or authentic
sexual identity that repression has kept from view; rather
genealogy investigates the political stakes in designating as
an origin and cause those identity categories that are in fact
the effects of institutions, practices, discourses with multiple
and diffuse points of origin."

Just like a cisgender role claiming the absurdity that a woman with short hair and pants is not a woman or less of a woman, the trans version ignores the fact that women come in all shapes and sizes. — TheWillowOfDarkness

That's simply not true, it's merely biased speculation on your part. It's illogical to jump from the fact that a transgender woman - or someone who has a desire to become one - wants to transform themselves to reflect a more traditionally feminine image, to the conclusion that therefore they ignore the fact that women come in all shapes and sizes.

Intuitively I would think that a transgender woman would want very much to fit in with societal gender roles. That would sort of be the whole point. Again, I'm talking about something where I don't have much experience.
— T Clark

This still seems right to me. If a man is going through all the difficulties it requires to become and be accepted as a women, it just seems to me she would want to be considered a woman as typically defined in society at large. That's my intuition. More than that, it's what I feel when I try to place myself in their shoes. Yes, of course, it is a bit presumptuous for me to think I can do that, but it's disrespectful for me not to try. — T Clark

It's not far off, and I'll just come out and say that, yes, that's based on my own experience of having had these sort of thoughts and feelings ever since I was a child, to varying degrees over the years.

Those are interestng questions, but I do not recall asking them.

I just used "ey" for God in a different thread. I kind of think that God should have eir own pronoun. I was thinking azey, azem, and azir, but it's too alpha and omega. What about just ay, am, and aur? Maybe "ae"? I kind of like "ae" better.

I also just changed that on the other thread so that this will catch on.

https://www.academia.edu/38273657/le_bon_dieu_nest_pas_comme_%C3%A7a.docx?auto=download

This is the most sensible talk about transgender people and transgender metaphysics I have come across so far. Perfectly captures my view on the matter at least.

Whether we manage to find ourselves there or not, each of us is one floating around others. Identity is always singular and never constrained. The contradiction is to think the accidental was ever given by a property. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This doesn't account for the instances where we can be wrong about our identity. There are no accidents in a deterministic world. Genetics AND upbringing are the primary contributors to the essence of one's identity.

There's perfectly a coherent metaphysics of sex, gender or sexual orientation. People just have to realise they aren't talking about the fact a penis exists. Or that any instance of anatomy exist. Or the fact of someone being attracted to the opposite sex. That sex, gender or sexual orientation is it's own fact about a person itself. A truth not given by properties (e.g. "I'm a man because I have a penis"), but rather one given in itself (e.g. "I am a man") which occurs alongside their properties (whatever those might be, be they a penis or a vagina, burly or scrawny, short hair or long, etc.) — TheWillowOfDarkness

If someone isn't referring to some physical property about themselves that distinguishes them from "not-man" when they say "I am a man", then what use does the word, "man" have? What would it mean?

Besides being ugly, the hubbub over gender pronouns is not the use of these terms, but the demand for them, that people must conform to your language even if they know them to be untrue.

That's why they matter in the first place: to misgender speaks an untruth about someone.

Demands are made prescisly because what is thought untrue is actually true. After all, it is this truth speaking the terms is about. The language was never isolated to "terms" which were just a fun, arbitrary nickname.

That's why the matter in the first place: to misgender speaks an untruth about someone.

Demands are made prescisly because what is thought untrue is actually true. After all, it is this truth speaking the terms is about. The language was never isolated to "terms" which were just a fun, arbitrary nickname.

But who is speaking the untruth? If I see a person asserting what appears to be the opposite of the case, their “truth” can be doubted,

Such "doubt" is dime-a-dozen and not at all instructive. Anyone can "doubt" quite literally anything in this way. Just see a claim, assert we don't know anything about it.

It's lazy and directed at "winning" an argument. The question of what is true is not even approached.


If we are concerned with what is true and what we know, this approach is closed to us. We have to turn upon our own "doubt." For if something is true, if there is good reason to accept it, taking a postion in which we just reject anything is a gross error.

Well said.

Likewise, any claim is a dime-a-dozen. Anyone can claim literally anything. It’s not only a lazy argument, but not even an argument.

In this case, the reason to doubt it, even to fully refute it, is that the assertion does not match up to the biology, the claim contradicts the reality.