Hostility, snark, misrepresentation. What’s with you guys? Your bigotry knows no bounds.

Hostility, snark, misrepresentation. What’s with you guys? Your bigotry knows no bounds. — NOS4A2

They're not exactly the brain trust of internet.

Yes, but psychologically a trans person is really their psychological gender and also really their biological sex. But I, for example, can't be a trans woman no matter how artistic I feel about it because I identify as a man and that's not something I believe can be willed in and out of existence on a whim any more than sexual preference can. — Baden

So I've thought way too fucking much about this, and this is what I've landed on.

Your comments resort to a mysticism that I'm not fully able to decipher. Your man-ness under this definition is a geist, incapable of discernment. The term "transition" has alternative meaning under your analysis. At the pragmatic level of application, "transition" means certain medical procedures are performed, chemicals are prescribed, wardrobes are changed, and government documents updated. At the spiritual level, I'm not sure what it entails, but surely the concept of gender is not immutable, which means I might be a gender male when I'm a child only to undergo the mental change later in life and then to consider myself the opposite sex. This problem lays large in your analysis. As Lady Gaga wants to say "I was born this way," but that denies the possibility of transition and fluidity if how you are born is how you must be.

To the direct question, can one undergo a gender transition? (Note, I'm not asking if they can undergo a physical transition, as the answer is obviously that they can).

What I think to be the problem is that gender is both a mental property and a social property, neither of which can be fully distilled from the other. That is, to say I am a man means not just I feel myself a man in some nebulous way, but it is to ascribe the social meaning of man-ness upon me. There is no coherence to the concept of the primordial man prior to social designations upon him. You can't claim this primitive man did the primary man things, like act on every sexual urge and do battle with his competitor males like some odd upright walking primate would. He did all sorts of things humans did because he never was a simple animal, but he had the social designations of maleness that were as much a part of his man-ness as his biological characteristics. What does a biological man that doesn't have any social manifestations of man-ness act like?

And this presents the limitations of the MU analogy presented by @Michael. What could it possibly mean to be a Manchester United fan without the social designations of what that means? It must mean cheering for the team, wearing the jersey, and having friends and family who are also fans. To say otherwise presents this idea that there's this inherent identity of MU fan-ness that's just there, just part of the way he's made.

Consider another analogy. I consider myself Jewish by identity. It arises from the fact that I was born into such a family, all my early educators were Jewish, my friends and social network was Jewish, etc. If one were to speak to an Orthodox Jew, they'd even give a nod toward the mystical theory that I have the soul of a Jew that cannot be denied, regardless of how I might attempt to suppress it. That's a theory that's hard to accept, but it's not an uncommon way for a religious community to view things, and it seems oddly consistent with what is being argued for here.

It's also entirely inaccurate to say that I've always considered myself Jewish, as I have traveled through atheism and back. I'm not so ridiculous to think I embarked upon a worldly search for meaning and found that what was being thrust upon me was the truth I had been seeking, but I realize my current beliefs are heavily influenced by my social upbringing. By the same token, I am not an automaton, as I still had some choice in the matter of how I wanted to identify, and I suspect there might be some fluidity in that regard as I age, or, more likely I'll just get more stubborn and ornery.

My point here is that "woman" is a social term, a biological term, and a mental term, but there aren't boundaries around each. They correlate with and cause one another. Just as I could change my identity from being Jewish, I could change it from being a man, and that change would demand some physical act. If it did not require any physical act, then my change would be only to the ethereal ghost of identity within me, whatever that means.

I don't disagree with much of this. And I don't think any of it directly contradicts what you've quoted above. Also, my position isn't necessarily the same as @Michael's though there's a lot of overlap. Anyway, thanks for giving me something to chew on. @NOS4A2, take note, this is how to actually participate. I was seriously considering putting forward an argument against myself (and I have some good 'uns) just to keep my brain alive.

I could change my identity from being Jewish — Hanover

There are even today people in the world who do not believe you can, whether you go to temple or not, whether you've ever even seen one. We do not want to be like them, the people who say "what you are is up to us."

The first alternatives people seem to reach for are: (1) what you are is up to you; (2) there is no "what you are." Neither of those seem entirely satisfactory to me, even though I'm committed to not being one of them.

I wasted a fair amount of time wondering what I am when I was younger. There is clearly a sense in which all of that wondering, and the object of that wondering, had biological underpinnings, just as much as if I had been wondering about my sexual identity. Sex is just an area where it's tempting to think we can point to an explanation not in biology at large, but in this specific little corner that's more tractable. (This chromosome, these organs.)

There's a curious little documentary about the so-called "warrior gene" hosted by Henry Rollins, who saw in this theory a potential explanation for his life, a revelation of who he really is. It turns out he doesn't carry that allele after all, and he concludes that this is a better result, because it means his personality is really his, he earned it through experience.

There are so many things you can say about how a person becomes who they are, and so many of them are true. There's no reason to indulge a desire for simplicity here.

There are even today people in the world who do not believe you can, whether you go to temple or not, whether you've ever even seen one. We do not want to be like them, the people who say "what you are is up to us." — Srap Tasmaner

I am aware of the peculiarities of Judaism, but I think that has more to do with prescriptive, legalistic definitions more than what we're talking about (although it might have something to do with how others in this thread are misunderstanding the conversation). That is, it is true that Orthodox Jews declare all whose mother is Jewish to be Jewish, even if that means declaring a devout Catholic a Jew. On the flip side of things, Jewish oppressors (most notably Nazis) also took a rigid view on who was a Jew for their purposes, regardless of the person's self-identification.

What you say here though doesn't address the issue of identity from a subjective perspective (which was our gender question), which is what this thread is more interested in. That is, the fact that the rabbis and my oppressors identify me as a Jew does not entail that I personally identify as a Jew. This conflict between what people want to call me versus what I see myself as is the entirety of this gender identify quandary.

This conflict between what people want to call me versus what I see myself as is the entirety of this gender identify quandary. — Hanover

Well yeah. I was pointing out that this issue is not unique to sex and gender. It applies to practically everything. Which isn't helpful, except to note that I don't think anyone has ever "solved" any of the many similar quandaries, so a solution here would be exceptional and unexpected.

This issue, like most, begins and ends with the definitions. The question of what makes a man a man, and a woman a woman has yet to be adequately answered. Is it the presence of specific genitalia? Is it specific traits or characteristics? Some combination of both?

Until that can be answered, it’s impossible to know what it means when someone says they identify as a man/woman. It’s reminiscent of figuring out what it’s like to be a bat. Unless you are a man/woman/bat you can’t claim to know what it’s like to be one.

The crudest way of putting it, is that identity is one of the many masks of the ego, and illusory. Gender is just one of the many attributes we use to dress up this image of ourselves in our mind. Nationality, gender, ethnicity, religion, favorite football team, etc. All essentially made up, except for perhaps minor biological factors which are generally meaningless.

It's an attempt at self-discovery by trying to explain the self through external means. It attempts to discover the self by connecting to a collective, and therefore fundamentally misses its mark.

The easiest would be for us to do away with the nasty thing altogether, and abandon these efforts to create a surrogate self, and accept only the real thing. Sadly, it seems the drive for self-definition is stronger than our sense of reason.

What you say here though doesn't address the issue of identity from a subjective perspective (which was our gender question), which is what this thread is more interested in. — Hanover

That's fair. I didn't address it because I have no idea what a trans woman, say, means when she says, "I am a woman." Literally don't know what that means. It doesn't much matter to me, so I've not read stories or talked to anyone with first-hand knowledge to try to learn what that means, for at least some people.

One of my children has changed pronouns from feminine to masculine, so in time I may learn more, or not. I am not, after all, owed an explanation and might not understand one if offered. It matters to me only insofar as it matters to him, but doesn't really change our relationship at all.

↪Hanover The crudest way of putting it, is that identity is one of the many masks of the ego, and illusory. Gender is just one of the many attributes we use to dress up this image of ourselves in our mind. Nationality, gender, ethnicity, religion, favorite football team, etc. All essentially made up, except for perhaps minor biological factors which are generally meaningless. — Tzeentch

Are there no robust , relatively stable and consistent. aspects of personality style that we carry with us our whole lives? Could we say that Asperger’s is a kind of personality style( as opposed to a disorder or pathology , a characterization many strongly oppose). Or Wilson’s syndrome, which has a cluster of personality traits associated with it, such as extroversion and musicality?

So why not look at gender , or at least the inborn brain-wired aspects of gender, as robust personality features that interact with culture in complex ways?

Are there no robust , relatively stable and consistent. aspects of personality style that we carry with us our whole lives? Could we say that Asperger’s is a kind of personality style( as opposed to a disorder or pathology , a characterization many strongly oppose). Or Wilson’s syndrome, which has a cluster of personality traits associated with it, such as extroversion and musicality?

So why not look at gender , or at least the inborn brain-wired aspects of gender as robust personality features? — Joshs

I think this is a very alluring trap to fall into, but my answer would be 'no'.

Let us suppose all we know about someone is their gender (or their nationality, or that they suffer from some mental quirk, etc.).

What can we really say we now know about this person in regards of who they are as a person?

Nothing!

Of course, we're invited to make a whole slew of generalizations, probably based on statistical probabilities, but those have no use in the context of the unique individual we are considering.

That's really all these labels provide us with - generalizations (that is to say, inaccurate simplifications of reality). Useful in some contexts, but not on the level of the personal.

What can we really say we now know about this person in regards of who they are as a person?

Nothing! — Tzeentch

We know valuable aspects of their style of approaching the world that allow us to engage with them in more intimate ways than we could have otherwise. This is precisely why, as a gay man , I have always found myself gravitating to other gay men , not because of sexual attraction, but because of a common affective-perceptual ‘style’. This doesn’t deprive me of my ability to to relate to many other kinds of groups, and it is not a narrow pigeonholing of people. Rather, it makes use of faculties we put to use all the time in relating to different sorts of people. Adults relate differently to children than to others adults. This isn’t stereotyping , it is a relational dance that maximizes connection between people.

Do you have a pet? Male and female dogs exhibit recognizable gender-related behaviors. Do you treat your male dog slightly differently than your female dog, independent of other personality features unique to each animal?

We know valuable aspects of their style of approaching the world that allow us to engage with them in more intimate ways than we could have otherwise. This is precisely why, as a gay man , I have always found myself gravitating to other gay men , not because of sexual attraction, but because of a common affective-perceptual ‘style’. — Joshs

I disagree.

I will insist that if all I know about someone was the fact that they were gay, I would still know very little about the actual person.

This doesn’t deprive me of my ability to to relate to many other kinds of groups, and it is not a narrow pigeonholing of people. — Joshs

Well, this isn't me throwing an accusation at you, so don't take any of this personal.

I'm pointing out a logical inconsistency which is almost the norm for human interaction (but no less problematic).

Suppose for example that I am going to meet a man, and all I know about them is that they are gay.

What good would it do to assume they have a particular sort of style, as you say, without ever having met the person?

Suppose for example that I am going to meet a man, and all I know about them is that they are gay.

What good would it do to assume they have a particular sort of style, as you say, without ever having met the person? — Tzeentch

What good would it do you know that someone is on the Asperger’s spectrum? It depends on how you want to interact with them
If you are a woman or man married for years to someone on the spectrum , and have become increasingly confused , angry and frustrated dealing with their inexplicable social shortcomings , it can be a blessing to have a way to put the pieces together. , to learn how the Asperger’s interacts with their personality , how they ‘own’ the Asperger’s. The person on the spectrum can have the same feeling of liberation when they learn for the first time why they are different from many around them.

Gay men and women, myself included , can profoundly benefit from learning that certain ways of acting that alienated us from heterosexual peers when we were growing up , that made us feel different and freakish, were not unique to us, and that there was a community where we could feel normal.


Just knowing that the person you are about to meet is gay may not make any difference to you in getting to know them, but what if you have had encounters with men who acted in ways that were extremely flamboyant and effeminate? And let’s say that this made you angry and disgusted , because you assumed that they were putting on a deliberate act that was childish or silly? I know a number of people like this.

Of course, not all flamboyantly acting men identify as gay or gender-nonconforming, but I’ve known many gay men like this , who were likely that way from birth and didn’t choose in any way to be that way , who would have given anything to be ‘normal’ growing up.

To understand that there is an inborn perceptual-affective style that can account for hyper-femininity in men can make a huge difference in one’s attitude toward someone who one assumes is ‘putting on an act’. It also makes one really that pen’s own personality involves it’s own gender style. that pervades every aspect of one’s social dealings. Knowing this about oneself can allow one to build a bridge between one’s
own style and that of someone with a very different inborn gender. But denying that there is such a thing as inborn perceptual-affective gender style , or insisting that all forms of gender behavior are socially constructed as some do, makes it impossible for one to build that bridge. One misses the overarching pattern organizing the particulars of inborn gender behavior and treats every action as arbitrary and conditioned by peers

What good would it do you know that someone is on the Asperger’s spectrum? — Joshs

I'd argue it wouldn't do much good to make assumptions about a person about which all one knows is that they have Asperger's either. All it requires is to delay judgement until after one has met the person, because then one has met the true person, and not a generalized image in one's mind.

But lets for a minute assume that this person indeed has Asperger's, so the bit of information we know about this person is accurate. That only gives us a very small piece of specific information about this person. It's a clinical diagnosis, and nothing more. Does it give us any real insight into the true nature of this person? No.

Similarly, biological sex gives us some information, but again does it give any real insight?

Gay men and women, myself included , can profoundly benefit from learning that certain ways of acting that alienated us from heterosexual peers when we were growing up , that made us feel different and freakish, were not unique to us, and that there was a community where we could feel normal. — Joshs

I don't know anything about that, sorry.

Just knowing that the person you are about to meet is gay may not make any difference to you in getting to know them, but what if you have had encounters with men who acted in ways that were extremely flamboyant and effeminate? And let’s say that this made you angry and disgusted , because you assumed that they were putting on a deliberate act that was childish or silly? I know a number of people like this. — Joshs

That's exactly the issue, isn't it? It's the other side of the same coin.

Usually generalizations are pretty unhelpful in personal interaction, but sometimes they can be downright destructive.

To understand that there is an inborn perceptual-affective style that can account for hyper-femininity in men can make a huge difference in one’s attitude toward someone who one assumes is ‘putting on an act’. It also makes one really that pen’s own personality involves it’s own gender style. that pervades every aspect of one’s social dealings. Knowing this about oneself can allow one to build a bridge between one’s own style and that of someone with a very different inborn gender. But denying that there is such a thing as inborn perceptual-affective gender style, or insisting that all forms of gender behavior are socially constructed as some do, makes it impossible for one to build that bridge. One misses the overarching pattern organizing the particulars of inborn gender behavior and treats every action as arbitrary and conditioned by peers — Joshs

I don't quite understand your point.

If through interaction with a person one recognizes patterns, I don't see what that has to do with identity labels and generalizations. Surely it wouldn't be right to assume those patterns exist before one has met the person? Again, it seems to me the true nature of someone can only be explored through real interaction, and not through the generalized images which make up identities.

What I find odd here is the suggestion that relationships ought to be mediated by, in essence, science.

You count anything not theorized as "arbitrary" but is that more than a nasty way to say "individual" ?

If through interaction with a person one recognizes patterns, I don't see what that has to do with identity labels and generalizations. Surely it wouldn't be right to assume those patterns exist before one has met the person? Again, it seems to me the true nature of someone can only be explored through real interaction, and not through the generalized images which make up identities. — Tzeentch

I’m not sure what you have in mind when you speak of recognizing patterns in someone. What I have in mind is something like Chomsky’s transformational grammar, in this case an inborn ‘logic’ of gender instead of language . Also, unlike Chomsky’s patterns, gender would not be a single universal grammar but a spectrum or family of grammars along an axis of masculinity-femininity. No two individuals occupy the same point on the spectrum. To complicate things further, the masculine-feminine gender spectrum interacts with culture such that no set list of definitions can lock in for all time what masculinity vs femininity ( aggressiveness vs passivity, etc) entails. What gender means will vary from culture to culture and from historical era to historical era. Given this vast variability, it might seem that gender is not a very useful concept.

But I think it can be quite useful. First of all, within any particular era and region of culture, the masculine-feminine binary can be consistently recognized. In general, girlsnand boys will continue to have relatively consistent and predictable differences in preference for many activities and interests.

I agree that exactly how inborn gender patterns manifest themselves in particular individuals can only be determined by getting to know that individual, but it isnt a question of finding out WHETHER such a ‘grammar’ exists as part of a person’s behavior, but HOWit expresses itself.

You wrote:
“Surely it wouldn't be right to assume those patterns exist before one has met the person” , but to me that’s like saying that it wouldnt be right to assume a universal linguistic grammar exists in a person before one has met them.
If gender patterning is not a given for everyone what kind of pattern would it be that only exists in some
people but not others? What exactly would hold a set of behaviors together as a gender ‘pattern’? It sounds to me like what you have in mind is more like a disconnected set of behaviors than an internally coherent pattern.

Even though we can’t determine how exactly gender operates in individuals without getting to know them , if we don’t at least treat inborn gender pattering as a given, we are not likely to recognize it when we see it.

This is certainly the case with many conservatives for whom the very concept of an inborn gender other than heterosexual male or female is incomprehensible. Trying to treat everyone as unique individuals isnt enough to understand how gender helps to organize our experience of the world. The conservative doesn’t know to look for gender patterns in themselves or others and so doesnt find them, only anatomical sexual structures, sexual preferences, and a seemingly random list of other preferences regarding fashion ,etc.

This can be a non-issue when gender differences are very slight, but a disaster when more extreme departures from the norm are encountered. The high suicide rate within the lgbt community is the result of a failure on the part of the dominant culture to recognize that there is such a thing as an inborn gender pattern that pertains to all
of us. What about you? Aren’t you made aware of this pattern in yourself at certain times. Not likely when you are with others of a similar gender. But , assuming you identify as male , what about when you find yourself with your wife, girlfriend or a group of women who characterize something you do or say as being a typical ‘guy’ thing? Doesn’t that bring to the fore gender dispositions that you otherwise would. not notice in yourself?

What I find odd here is the suggestion that relationships ought to be mediated by, in essence, science.

You count anything not theorized as "arbitrary" but is that more than a nasty way to say "individual" ? — Srap Tasmaner

It’s not science I’m arguing for , but the integrated, patterned basis of frame of reference. This is true not only when it comes to gender but all other aspects of our individual comportment toward the world. What I am labeling as arbitrary is the attempt to understand behavior as divorced from larger, internally integrated schemes of perception, affect and motivation that make human intentional acts of all kinds possible. Gender is just a very broad subcategory within this larger system of sense-making. It doesn’t really matter whether we assume gender is a specific genetically or hormonally determined disposition , or instead a more general personality disposition. The point is that we come into life with already formed schematic dispositions(m (perceptual styles), the broadest of which are very robust and consistent over the course of our lives, and his is how gender should be conceived.

I didn't address it because I have no idea what a trans woman, say, means when she says, "I am a woman." Literally don't know what that means. It doesn't much matter to me, so I've not read stories or talked to anyone with first-hand knowledge to try to learn what that means, for at least some people. — Srap Tasmaner

Well yeah, it would be a bit prying to ask the question, but you needn't conduct interviews to explore the question. You can just ask yourself what it means for you to be a man to answer the gender identity question we've been asking here.

My own answer is loaded with socially created stereotypes, dealing heavily with responsibility, control, strength, force, and certain virtues like honesty and reliability. Pretty much a cross between Ward Cleaver, Rambo, and a porn star.

You can just ask yourself what it means for you to be a man to answer the gender identity question we've been asking here. — Hanover

I'll say this much: I think being a man is being a person who likely thinks about or has thought about what it means to be a man aspirationally, what it is to be "a good man" often. (Maybe a bit in that ancient Greek sense of virtue as fulfillment of potential.) In practice that has a whole lot to do with social expectations regarding masculinity, which you will accept and which reject, and how.

While the trans experience may be similar (if, say, I find I have the sort of aspirational view of my gender that a woman might, rather than what a man might) it's also quite different because the social expectations don't line up the same way, and in effect the trans person will have to navigate two sets of gender expectations.

It's just that, quite naturally, a man's view of masculinity is formed precisely in this push and pull of social expectations, not developed in vacuo and then "applied". I don't know how that works for trans people, who will to start with be given the wrong set of social expectations to cut their teeth on. As a girl you fight to create your own individual take on womanhood. I don't know how that works if society "thinks" you're a boy. How do you develop an individual aspirational sense of womanhood there?

But then, I haven't worked out my sense of manhood solely through my own experience. We all rely on role models, and borrow what we understand of their experience too. Perhaps it's as simple as saying that a trans woman can look to her mother, her sisters, to other women, and emulate them. Insofar as society has treated you as a boy for some of your life, maybe that's just a sort of annoying distraction (though of course it can be horribly taxing emotionally, as the suicide rate among trans youth shows), something that doesn't "land" with you, doesn't feel meaningful, has not, for instance, spurred you to think about what sort of man you want to be.