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males have breasts — tim wood

Males "have" breasts you say, so breasts are a thing. I'm saying that "female breasts" are an ontological thing too

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Everyone knows man have breasts in the sense you mean. Are you saying they have breasts in the same sense that females do?

You would tell people with gender disphoria that gender is an illusion and to "feel" whatever they like. They should feel whatever they like, but understanding which gender they are is a real question although you think apparently think you are neither male nor female (that is, you believe that is the proper philosophical position to hold. I sure you think you are great)

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I also would warn you away from this topic--NOT because you know less about gender, sex, transgender, etc. than banno or wood--but because it's a political minefield. You may know as much as the rest of us. Look:

Most people do not understand what being a trans person means
Many people do not have clear ideas about gender and sex -- or they have extremely simple ideas
The whole topic of transgenderism may be a crock. My suspicion is that a good share of it is a crock.

Quoting Jung about males castrating themselves is not a good idea. My suspicion is that a good share of Karl Jung may be a crock (along with much of Sigmund Freud).

I do not know why transgenderism is such a hot topic now. Probably the algorithms that determine what the New York Times, New Yorker, National Public Radio, et al will natter on about decided that transgenderism was hot.

Ok. I won't post on this thread anymore. My ideas of male-ness and femininity are obviously more within certain bounds than for others. Thanks

I've never warned anyone off a topic before. It's for your own good, of course. You'll just get dumped on a lot.

In mammals, the female is the sex that bears the offsprings. It means they have an organ called a uterus that allows the growth of new individuals of the species, inside the body of the female.

Reproduction is part of earthly life. I was talking about male and female in the abstract, in the sense of essential form. I understand if people got confused but I don't understand what anyone would be upset by the topic. But if that's how it is, so be it

The essence of things is elusive. But the female sex is defined biologically as explained: the folks who get pregnant and give birth to new folks. The males are the ones not doing that.

This has consequences, for instance that males are relatively freer to do other things, including risky things.

Another is that in mammals, each individual male is of far lesser reproductive value than each individual female. Males are more 'expandable' than females, females are more precious than males. In social species, when the tribe is threatened it tends to sacrifice its males first, in order to protect the females. Hence the tendency to save "women and children first" in the case of a sinking boat, or to send men at war. Men are expandable. Their most fundamental biological role (as male mammals) is to protect women and children. This of course does not mean that men or women should always and only stick to their biological role.

A male is...
a) an organism of the sperm-bearing type in a species with two-part sexual reproduction in which one type carries eggs and the other carries sperm.

b) the artificial, socially constructed norms imposed on individuals born with such a body; a person who desires to adhere to, and to be recognized as adhering to, those norms (regardless of what body parts they were born with), rejecting the opportunity to live outside of any gender norms.

A female is...

a) an organism of the egg-bearing type in a species with two-part sexual reproduction in which one type carries eggs and the other carries sperm.

b) the artificial, socially constructed norms imposed on individuals born with such a body; a person who desires to adhere to, and to be recognized as adhering to, those norms (regardless of what body parts they were born with), rejecting the opportunity to live outside of any gender norms.


My personal belief: We should aim for a society in which these norms are no longer imposed on anyone. We should aim for a society where the next generation will grow up seeing those norms as just as archaic as theories of humours and astrology.
We should do this by choosing to live outside of either sets of norms, and encouraging others to do the same.
I don’t believe gender equality is possible until those norms are thoroughly deconstructed.

I do think that anyone who desires to should be allowed to change their body however they wish. I don’t think they should have to adhere to gender norms in order to do so.

In a world with the medical technology that we have, shouldn’t we put away those prehistoric notions of what people had to do when childbirth was dangerous? Shouldn’t we focus on improving medical technology even more so that reproductive concerns don’t have to dominate people’s lives and diminish their opportunities? That sort of talk is irrelevant.

Also: these norms are so different in different cultures that no one way is universal. Unless you want to say your culture is just better than everyone else’s, I think that proves that all of this is socially constructed.

Clothing, for example, has no gender. It’s just a physical object. There’s no valid reason for having separate gendered clothing styles. I think, to use Western clothing as the example, that men should wear dresses as often as women wear pants nowadays, and there should be at least as many long-haired men as short-haired women.

In a just society, there would be no outward markings of gender, because a just society would not code things that way.

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I said I wasn't going to debate this further since I've been asked not too. My opinions are out there though, so I will just tell you briefly that a female human has a specific curvature, breasts, and a female soul. A male perhaps is harder to describe but he has a male soul. I know people think or want to believe these matters are completely and absolutely relative, but I think you would be VERY hard pressed to prove it. People accept things dogmatically in this society and its not different from the Inquisition forcing their opinion on others in the Middle Ages except that the medieval Catholics were generally more violent about it.
That's all folks

Provide counter arguments and I will read them

Reproduction is not sex or gender. It's done by bodies. Bodies which act in reproduction as they do, whether they are female, male or anything else.

People have a problem with your account because its equivocating biological reproduction with a person identity and supposing a restriction upon identities which fails to recognise, and unjustly discriminates against, whole host of people.

I didn't discriminate against anybody. I say that all humans by soul are either male or female but all have equal dignity. Representations of these genders in bodily form will, yes, take many forms but that does not mean a general outline cannot be given

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As I've said many times of this forum, I'm a Hegelian materialist nominalist. But if we take twi oak trees they have something in common (clearly), and although I don't say its because of forms united to prime matter (Aristotle), the soul emerges from the brain and spinal cord and it seems to me (I am not a Pope) that it comes in 2 types. I'm trying to let this thread die because my ideas were causing people distress, but if you have a question I can answer approximately, be my guest

(I do not believe "identity" should be forced on anyone. I am politically independent and about in the middle. This is a philosophy forum though)

(I do not believe "identity" should be forced on anyone. I am politically independent and about in the middle. This is a philosophy forum though) — Gregory

Why then are you insisting humans must have a male or female soul? That's enforcing an identity. You are saying the must have either of these identities, rather than respecting any fact made by their own being.

If we aren't enforcing identity, people will only have a male or female soul if they have a male or female soul. It is not necessarily humans have either.

I didnt realize how explosive this issue could be even on a philosophy forum, so be open enough to leave me with my own ontology

I'm worried about the contradiction in your statement here. You say you aren't for enforcing identity, yet that's exactly what your ontology does. Why would I be open to such a statement? We aren't even to the polical concerns yet. This doesn't make sense purely on a rational/truth/description basis of the claims itself.

Either you don't understand your ontology is enforcing an identity or you are willing to tell falsehoods that it's not. That's a violation in philosophical terms, a bad understand of your ontology at the very least, if not a bad ontology, which deserves to be called for what it is.

I never said its always psychologically valuable to find your identity. But you are denying it can ever have value to believe as I do and you have no evidence

I believe you did choose a particularly difficult subject, but at the same time I think that is exactly why an understanding would be that much more rewarding and satisfying. I suggest we all leave assumptions about one another's knowledge unsaid and just try to understand.

Can I try restating your view and see if you agree?
You don't disagree that there are two biological genders, male and female. These have their appropriate characteristics to some degree, like penis and such for the male, and breasts, curves and such for the female.

Then there are what you refer to as the abstract male and female souls. This is what everyone is having trouble grasping. It doesn't sound like you are categorizing souls by the body it inhibits, where the body determines the type of soul or the right soul is always with the right body. It sounds like instead you are asserting that, they can be mixed up, hence a need to consider trans people.

When you say male and female souls, do you believe these souls are inherently better off in their "appropriate" bodies? If so, when you say female souls have breasts, does that mean that soul needs a body with the corresponding breasts? If not, what is the significance of this and why don't male souls have this?

If someone doesn't have breasts but everyone calls them a girl, the situation is not unnatural. I assume those who appear male have male souls but I don't know for sure. The aspects I listed about how bodies show the soul to an extent shouldn't be taken to mean any body is bad or unnatural. But I do think it gives some insight into the types of souls people can have and alternative positions go to the extreme that male and female are just words, which ye does not make sense to me

I've even said that reproduction doesn't even define the sexes

Did this clarification make matters worse?

So to reiterate, you consider the body a sort of mirror or window to be able to view the soul, and that an opposing position to you is that male and female are merely words.

So if that's your opposing position, then your definition for male and female is both about the body and the soul.

I'm trying to let this thread die because my ideas were causing people distress — Gregory

While I warned you away from the topic, there's nothing wrong with, on the one hand comforting the afflicted and, on the other hand, afflicting the comfortable (my favorite activity).

I am an old, ornery, binary, cisgender, gay, male, democratic socialist, W.A.S.P. (without the money and more of a Protestant atheist).

I view humans as one of many vertebrate species (and many invertebrates and plants) who are hatched out as either male or female. That physical reality is why we have 2 genders and not 3, 4, or 50. Individuals can imagine that they are not simple male or female (as per the evidence presented from an ultrasound or at birth), but almost always they are one or the other. Yes, that does limit people's gender identity options. Just drop the focus on gender. There are many ways of being in the world. There are plenty of options in that sense for everyone.

As to souls, I know nothing about them. "Soul" is a rather spongy noun.

We gather from seeing bodies and knowing people something about male and female souls. There are no perfect bodies, just clear ideas