I'll gladly follow along with a parents' observations over my own thoughts, though offer my thoughts if asked for.

I can definitely see the thumbing your nose stance. I often times feel that, but then I'm drawn back because so many people are attached to these things in various ways.

Gender is more important than I thought it was, at least, as a has-been abolish-gender international class-first anarcho-marxist.

parents' observations — Moliere

Honestly there aren't a lot of those and this is probably the only example you're going to get. (Wouldn't have posted what I did except the language is so interesting.) As a dad, I don't even need to understand my kids to support them and love them, so it's a whole different thing. And I don't ask my teenager for explanations, because he's not a research subject.

Anyway, I don't think much of anything I've posted about trans kids reflects my personal experience of the subject -- just not how I'm approaching it.

My personal experience of masculinity is part of my approach, which ought to be obvious.

Honestly there aren't a lot of those and this is probably the only example you're going to get. (Wouldn't have posted what I did except the language is so interesting.) As a dad, I don't even need to understand my kids to support them and love them, so it's a whole different thing. And I don't ask my teenager for explanations, because he's not a research subject. — Srap Tasmaner

Sorry to jump in here (uninvited) but you are not alone. There are increasing numbers of parents who are having to come to terms with this issue. There is more information and support available than ever before. I linked earlier to the NHS site on gender dysphoria.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/

But perhaps these are more relevant:

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/sex-relationships/gender-identity/

https://gids.nhs.uk/parents-and-carers/

Hope you find the information useful, even if you can't access UK services.
Best wishes.

The trouble I have is that I want to get there by seeing those expressions as performance, but the people using these expressions keep talking like they're supposed to be taken as incontrovertible fact, or as witness -- however you do that you're opening yourself to the same types of skepticism and critique as any other expression. — Srap Tasmaner

Exactly.

No one would consider 'racist' an identity worthy of the same deference. Why gender specifically? — Srap Tasmaner

My take on this is relatively simple, but in it's simplicity it denies lots of wishy-washy stuff about 'feelings' so may not be overly popular...

There a socially constructed role (character in our collective story) for which we use the word 'woman'. Some people like the look of that role and want to play it, some of these people are born male (sex, not gender). So these people ask to be treated as playing the role 'woman' despite the lack of traditionally qualifying features (mostly around reproductive organs). Group A

There are also a group of people who who dislike the role, would rather step outside of it some (or all) of the time. Some of these people are born female (sex) and resent being pushed into the role just because they have the traditionally qualifying features. Group B

The simple solution to this is that we say no matter what your qualifying features, you just say what role you want and we'll all just agree to treat you that way (socially understood badges are useful here like dresses, hairstyles, and make-up). Or if you want neither role, that's cool too, but you might get some surprising responses from people because we can't mind-read (if there's no public script we can wing it, but aren't always successful).

There are then three problems which get us from that utopia to here

1. Toxic masculinity (for want of a better term). There are a lot of people who really like those roles to be filled only by those with the traditionally qualifying features. They might be willing to make exceptions for injury, or medical oddity, but are less comfortable doing so because of a free choice. So they push back. This is just boring conservatism, probably has a lot to do with our stifling neuroses about sex, and is rather uninteresting as a social phenomena.

2. We have a victim culture, a means of assuaging western wealth-guilt by taking on the victim role, the poor clearly deserve, for some reason other than poverty. To be a victim one needs an immutable condition, (choosing to live on the streets instead of your suburban semi doesn't make you a victim of homelessness). So there's an attraction to making the preference more like an affliction, it gains social capital and avoids guilt. And there's some merit to this - maybe I can't avoid my preference for tea over coffee, maybe it's innate.

3. The word we use for this role is also used for the sex 'female' in different contexts. One of those contexts applies to female victims of male dominance and needs addressing to help that specific victim group. This wouldn't be a problem were it not for (1) and (2). As language users we're quite comfortable with words having different meanings in different contexts. But here, because of (1) there's an attraction to insisting the word means one and the same thing in all cases - it forces those with the qualifying features (sex) into the role like a linguistic crowbar. and because of (2) people don't want there to be any situation in which their 'womanhood' is treated differently because that makes it all look a little too choice-like and not enough affliction-like.

So we are where we are, with 'woman' being nebulously defined as an 'identity' which is here acting as a catch-all term just loose enough to avoid having to ever resolve the tension, maintaining the affliction-like status Group A(2) want but without denying the freedom Group B want to behave however they like. As such, the word becomes almost deliberately meaningless. Being a 'woman' now doesn't actually mean anything for any practical purposes, but if needed gives you an affliction-like need to be treated in accordance with a social role, like an ace up the sleeve.

It's a fudge. But an understandable one. No one wants to give in to 1s, no one wants to be harsh enough to tell 2s to snap out of it and stop their first-world whinging (I say no one, but...). And of course, no one wants to have to draw any kind of line which demarcates genuine psychological conditions from bandwagon jumping. Same is true of depression, was true of anorexia, and strangely becoming more true with dissociative disorders (watch this space - I'm predicting the next 'trans' issue).

I think we could do better but I think to do so we have to give up on this victim politics we've been sucked into. To do that we have to re-align ourselves to the proper measures of inequality (opportunity), but that involves a little too much self-criticism for most who these days probably are reliant on quite a lot of that inequality of opportunity for their psychological crutches.

Because men and women and all the others can and do wear dresses -- and women also don't wear dresses. That is, the behavior doesn't define the identity, nor do traits. Whatever identity is, it's not those (though some identities identify with those). There are some roles which are slotted for the genders which people are attached to, but people also overcome these along with traits-based views while maintaining their gender identity: Think here not of trans but of cis -- how many cis people have you known who undergo physical and occupational changes which don't align with their self-picture, but still manage to identify as their gender? Does a man cease to be a man if he doesn't have a job? Does a man cease to be a man if he has erectile dysfunction? Does a man cease to be a man if he has feminine feelings? — Moliere

I agree, but my point is that this is currently one way. Does a woman cease to be a woman if they're referred to as 'he'? No. Do they cease to be a woman if they use a bathroom labelled 'men'? No. But these matters are not treated with the same degree of unimportance to gender.

If the performances do not define your gender, then why do the responses? Why have I 'misgendered' the trans woman by using 'he'? It's like you want to say that gender is not defined by the individual's part to play, but society has to confirm to a set of behaviours in response. I'm asking why it's only society that has the mandated role to play, why is my responsive behaviour socially restricted along gender lines, but not the performative behaviour of the actual person whose gender it is?

I don't ask my teenager for explanations, because he's not a research subject. — Srap Tasmaner

Now you're just making me look bad. In my defence I changed the names before publishing...

I know (feel??) myself to be a woman; the other side scrambles to find something else because whatever the criteria are that's not it. How will negotiation proceed? — Srap Tasmaner

Negotiation about what, though? It's relatively easy to use the pronouns someone wants you to. It's a bit harder to see someone as the gender on a gut level if they identify with if they look or act stereotypically otherwise. I think those are behavioural commitments though.

Do you think they're separate from whether it's right to call someone a woman or a man though? I think I do.

If you dial the clock back a hundred years, say, and someone born a woman claims, without being metaphorical or something, to be a man, not to have a preference for presenting as a man, in the culturally standard way, though a woman, but to be a man full-stop, then the likely conclusion would be that this woman is suffering from a delusion. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes.

I would even find that possibility tempting today except it just doesn't look delusional, or not like any delusion I'm at all familiar with. I literally do not know what it's supposed to mean, which suggests to me that people making such identity claims are up to something completely different. — Srap Tasmaner

What's not clear is whether my understanding is expected or required. Usually with words people say to me, it is, but I'm honestly not sure here, which is odd. I can think of two explanations for this: it is not a message, say, but a signal; or language is being used in some new way, and I don't just mean in a Humpty Dumpty way. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. Such an identification might not have a a correctness condition. Since that correctness condition would bottom out at being judged, in the aggregate, as correct. Thus "I'm a man" or "I'm a woman" might be more of a declaration. An affirmation without a specifiable basis. Like an "I love you". Such a statement maybe forms part of the system of judging whether the declarations themselves are correct. If it's performance all the way down...

If it's the latter then the world has changed and maybe this is *real* postmodernism, not the piddly warmups we've been living through but the real thing, a through-the-looking-glass kind of change. All of us on the forum here are suddenly dinosaurs no matter how cool we thought we were. — Srap Tasmaner

Then we might be living through a recognition that our categories were always this way. And the only thing that kept them from evaporating was believing that we treat gender distinctions more rigidly, and acting in accord.

I do think it's very unlikely that we could get, even in principle, a list that boils down who counts as a man or a woman without also constructing an incomplete stereotype of the role - in terms of behaviour, attitudes, social standings etc. And we'd already know that behaving in accord with a stereotype is neither necessary nor sufficient for being the type of being that stereotype is associated with.

Maybe we can look at it in a pragmatist manner, which in some respect is a refusal to get down into these issues. You count as X if you have a tendency to act as if you are X.

it's creative rather than literal. If anything this is just thumbing your nose at all gender categories. — Srap Tasmaner

I think that might be true. Though it might also be typical of gender categories. Manhood and womanhood as creative rather than literal. That move always seems available. Manhood and womanhood as always thumbing their nose at each other - since they're internally inconsistent corpuscles of behavioural commitments and expectations. Why should their ascription be expected to work in a well behaved fashion when man and woman never had, and even something as concrete as "builder" has major difficulties by these standards?

So the change might be more of a collective realisation of how things were before.

I'm asking why it's only society that has the mandated role to play, why is my responsive behaviour socially restricted along gender lines, but not the performative behaviour of the actual person whose gender it is? — Isaac

There's room for there to be different classes of restrictions. As in: your responsive behaviour is socially restricted because it's the ethical thing to do regardless of metaphysics or social theory, the performative behaviour of the person whose gender it is is restricted on pain of counting as what they (feel they) are. So if you were to say "You're a woman! Not a man" to a trans man, because they were wearing a dress, what's restricted in that moment is the violence of your assertion... Not an academic discussion like this.

Admittedly some people really do think academic discussions like this are unethical and part of the logic of dominance. But I think talking about that would take us too far afield.

I'dd say the malformation is at least related to the definition of toxic masculinity offered, the way toxic masculinity presents is violently, and we are the ones who get to diagnose it. — Moliere

I think perhaps the problem with the term 'toxic masculinity' is that it is not clear-cut. From previous posts, we can see how meanings vary with more or less violence attached. It can suffer from vagueness and being overgeneralised.

That is why I try to supply real examples. I read current news. What's going on? To bring it back to your question of 'Ethics'. However, the post re Iranian women and the 'morality police' was ignored. Why? Other posts more attractive. Ears might have pricked up if I'd chosen another news item:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/24/vladimir-putin-signs-law-banning-gender-changes-in-russia

***

What's up with the continued violence women are subjected to in our society? One possible explanation is that we have unhealthy identities which makes it feel right (enough, at least) to use violence. — Moliere

I feel I have to say that it's not only women who are subjected to violence, and violence itself can take many forms. All genders, ages, and cultures are affected. Seen and unseen.

However, here is one article which describes problems and offers solutions, related to women and patriarchy. With some new terms to consider:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jun/01/disaster-patriarchy-how-the-pandemic-has-unleashed-a-war-on-women

***

Though I don't think we'll be able to encompass all concerns with a single antidote, right? This answer more in the spirit of answering the original question, or riffing on the notion of real man which I reject at the outset.

What would you propose as antidote? — Moliere

Of course, there is no single solution to global concerns.

What is the antidote to systemic 'toxic masculinity'?
Could it be philosophy? As in this kind of thread? Education. Listening and learning. A way of looking at problem-solving as in Pragmatism?
There are so many levels and approaches to be considered.
I think back to previous responses from those participants I recently tried to recall. But I think we are going over old ground; like them perhaps it would be wise to move on.

If it is agreed that there is a systematic problem, then any antidote would require action to change or dismantle the system. Different directions might be taken according to a philosopher or activist's analysis.
Of course, this might include a denial of the claim that there is such a thing as systemic toxic masculinity.
Is 'toxic masculinity' simply a useful slogan or is it deeper and ingrained so much that it is not even recognised? Should we concentrate more on particular beliefs and practices, starting with ourselves?

In this thread, I was introduced to Susan Haack. Thanks @Ciceronianus. Then using the TPF Search facility, I noted others who acknowledge her impact on their thinking. I'm wondering why I failed to notice all the mentions. So, paying attention and knowing how others have tracked and dealt with similar problems before - that's a start.

Regarding the complexity of interrelated problems, I seem to remember Haack's analogy of the crossword puzzle. Looking it up, I see it is related to foundherentism:

Haack introduces the analogy of the crossword puzzle to serve as a way of understanding how there can be mutual support among beliefs (as there is mutual support among crossword entries) without vicious circularity. The analogy between the structure of evidence and the crossword puzzle helps with another problem too. The clues to a crossword are the analogue of a person's experiential evidence, and the already-completed intersecting entries are the analogue of their reasons for a belief. She claims that her metaphor has proven particularly fruitful in her own work, and has been found useful by many readers, not only philosophers but also scientists, economists, legal scholars, etc. — Foundherentism - Wiki

I think perhaps the problem with the term 'toxic masculinity' is that it is not clear-cut. From previous posts, we can see how meanings vary with more or less violence attached. It can suffer from vagueness and being overgeneralised.

That is why I try to supply real examples. I read current news. What's going on? To bring it back to your question of 'Ethics'. However, the post re Iranian women and the 'morality police' was ignored. Why? — Amity

I read it, couldn't think of a response, moved onto the next post and then continued to pursue that thread.

Basically I got distracted.

Yes. Isn't that why you posted the thread in the 'Ethics' subforum?
Why is it hard to get to a 'should'? Is this all Hume's fault? The is-ought problem? — Amity

It is why I put it in the ethics subforum.

It's hard to get to a "should" because most will feel that any "should" is either obviously true or obviously false. People's minds are usually solidly made up on matters of ethics, and they're not interested in changing their mind, so they're not interested in exploring the logical or conceptual relationships between their ethical beliefs.

I think it's our attachment to moral commitments that makes it hard to get to a "should" -- we can easily accept the is-ought problem and then proceed from there (I tend to favor moral anti-realism via error-theory, but clearly I care about ethics even though I'm more "pro" is/ought distinction these days -- it's something I go back and forth on though)

And so it goes with gender, sex, and identity.

When you see something that is clearly wrong, isn't there an impulse to do something about it?
But not everybody knows or cares enough about whatever 'it' might be.
Some believe it is above their pay grade.
Sometimes, we feel helpless, frustrated, and impotent. After all, what power do we have?

However, when enough people are adversely affected, there can be spontaneous collective action. Sometimes there can be coordinated efforts by different activist groups.
Unfortunately, even after apparent success or progress, the problem is shown never to have gone away.

Today, I read of Iran's 'reinstatement' of the 'morality police': 'to deal with civilians who “ignore the consequences of not wearing the proper hijab and insist on disobeying the norms”.
This comes 2 months ahead of anniversary of the death in custody of Mahsa Amini for not properly wearing the Islamic headscarf.

Among those killed during protests after Amini’s death was Minoo Majidi, a 62-year-old mother who was shot with 167 pellets. She reportedly said to her family before attending protests in Kermanshah: ‘If I don’t go out and protest, who else will?’ Her daughter Mahsa Piraei said her mother always valued women’s rights and freedom.
— No other option but to fight - Iranian women defiance against morality police

***
I admit my ignorance. I had wrongly assumed that those policing the women, in what some term 'gender apartheid' by the clerical regime, would be a male-only force. So, I was surprised when I looked at the Guardian's headline photograph of 'Two veiled ‘morality police’ approach women on the streets of Tehran.' Then again, there is nothing new about women v women. Females are not all 'sisters'. Just as males are not all 'brothers'.
So, who are the morality police?

For most of the 1980s and 1990s, the Komiteh was comprised of religiously devout followers of the regime who joined the force at the encouragement of clerics. However, by the early 2000s, Iran’s population was comprised mostly of young people. When Ahmadinejad made the Komiteh an official police force, a number of young men joined to fulfill their mandatory military conscription. This younger generation was more lax than their older counterparts, leading to inconsistent patrolling.
— Who are Iran's Morality Police? - The Conversation

And here we have it. A question for wonderer1: Is this a result of 'evolutionary psychology'?
A changing sense of morality? Young men unwilling to act against their modern (possibly secular) beliefs yet are forced to do so.

A line from the film 'Australia':
Just because something 'is', doesn't mean it should be.
Who polices the 'morality police'? — Amity

This is the part that threw me off before. I'm not sure what to connect this to. So mentally I marked your post as "get back to" -- but then got distracted.

But in terms of "What is to be done?" -- my answer, as ever, is to organize.

But on this site I think all that can be done is to philosophize. And that is as it should be. There really should be more spaces where people can express their weird thoughts and pick them apart.

, the performative behaviour of the person whose gender it is is restricted on pain of counting as what they (feel they) are. So if you were to say "You're a woman! Not a man" to a trans man, because they were wearing a dress, what's restricted in that moment is the violence of your assertion — fdrake

Yes. I see that and wouldn't advocate such a violent assertion, but we're not merely talking about assertion. If I'm asked to use the term 'she' in a way I wouldn't normally use it, then it wasn't a violent assertion (my previous use) its was just a performative commitment to my narrative (that 'she' is something I say to refer to females). What I mean by the asymmetry is that there's behavioural commitments attached to all of our narratives. Asking to be treated a certain way is a request that others modify their public behaviour in ways that might not accord with their understanding of the world. That's all well and good when it's a good spirited request as part of a cooperative attempt to reach some compromise among clashing worldviews, but it's less of a reasonable request as it becomes demand... becomes assault (not to)... and finally demands it become hate crime (not to). That's not a co-operative attempt at compromise.

I think this is why the debate get pushed toward identity. The strength of the 'misgendering' argument relies on there being a truth which is denied, not a request which is negotiated. But as @Moliere can attest to, we can't even concretely pin down what identity is, let alone use it as truth so universal that its denial is only and always abusive.

As far as my world-view is concerned, trans people simply want to be treated as if they were members of one of the available social groupings which to which membership has traditionally been denied on the basis of biological traits. That might be expressed as 'identity', but I no more believe that an accurate expression than I would if someone told me they were 'Libran', or had a powerful 'aura'.

The request itself is innocuous, but in some contexts we apply our responses (including speech acts) to other groupings (not social roles) because the context is different. Unfortunately because of the vagaries of language, these other groupings share the same terms ('women', 'men'). A little reasonable care and this ceases to be a problem, we'll muddle through, but in this highly politicised and polemic environment and we haven't a chance.

I appreciate this response. I should probably have done more in the way of dotting the i's and crossing the t's. Clarifying connections. Never mind. Now moving on... :sparkle:

I like the analogy. I think it reflects Dewey's view that philosophy has too often thought of the relation between ourselves and the world as one of knowing; that of one between the knower and the known--the world being made up of objects of our knowledge (the "spectator" theory of knowledge), and that in fact we're part of the world and our lives made up of our experience interrelating with the rest of it, and others.

I like the analogy. — Ciceronianus

Yes, it made sense to me. However, I would like to see an example of it in use. I can't imagine how it would help with the issues raised in this thread, for example. Grateful for any references.

In fact we're part of the world and our lives made up of our experience interrelating with the rest of it, and others — Ciceronianus

Indeed. I think that is part of my frustration and why I tend to want practical examples.
As I scroll down walls of text, I often think: "So what? What difference does your theory make?".
How does it help? Does it clarify or confuse?

This strikes a chord, except I'm none too sure of the final sentence:

Pragmatism takes the meaning of a concept to depend upon its practical bearings. The upshot of this maxim is that a concept is meaningless if it has no practical or experiential effect on the way we conduct our lives or inquiries. Similarly, within Peirce’s theory of inquiry, the scientific method is the only means through which to fix belief, eradicate doubt and progress towards a final steady state of knowledge. — Peirce, Charles Sanders - IEP

I'm asking why it's only society that has the mandated role to play, why is my responsive behaviour socially restricted along gender lines, but not the performative behaviour of the actual person whose gender it is? — Isaac

I think that's just how pronouns work. If you misgender a cis person then you are corrected, right?

It's the same correction.

The peculiarity of gender and sexual identity in this culture is that what Nature contrives must first be hidden from public gaze, and then indicated by conventional signs of hairstyle, clothing, and behaviour. This invests sex and sexual identity with totemic power that makes this thread significant in a way that a discussion about, say, eye colour is not. Genitals are hidden like The Holy of Holies, and other such religious mysteries. Sex is the religion of modernity, and this thread should belong in the philosophy of religion section, except that no one here is questioning the foundations of practice and belief. — unenlightened

I agree that sex is the religion of modernity. Individual romantic love with a sexual partner is constantly shown not just as the positive relationship that it is, but as a kind of cure-all for life.

Also I think I'd like to develop this relationship between gender and religion more. There's a strong analogue there -- it could be that religion satisfied needs which gender now does, which would explain why people dig in. Also I like that religion doesn't have traits or behaviors really associated with it, though partially so -- much like gender.

Negotiation about what, though? It's relatively easy to use the pronouns someone wants you to. It's a bit harder to see someone as the gender on a gut level if they identify with if they look or act stereotypically otherwise. I think those are behavioural commitments though. — fdrake

Sure. People push back on the pronouns, but the real flashpoints have been spaces and sports, and that's clearly a matter of negotiation.

I do think it's very unlikely that we could get, even in principle, a list that boils down who counts as a man or a woman without also constructing an incomplete stereotype of the role - in terms of behaviour, attitudes, social standings etc. And we'd already know that behaving in accord with a stereotype is neither necessary nor sufficient for being the type of being that stereotype is associated with. — fdrake

After many, many drafts, here's where I am at the moment.

When someone says "I'm a girl" or "I'm a boy," that expresses an intuition.

What we want to know is, what is the source of that intuition? Is there a mental module for gender, perhaps one that produces intuitions about the gender of others as well as yourself? Plausible. There's lots of research on the age at which children begin to distinguish between male and female in various ways, and it is just the sort of thing you'd expect natural selection to take an interest in.

But this is trouble. If there is a gender module, then the most natural thing to say about an anatomical boy having the intuition of being a girl is that the gender module is making a mistake. We would want to know if it's making other mistakes: does it get the genders of others wrong as well? I don't happen to know if there's any research whatsoever on that.

Or perhaps it's not making a mistake but producing the self-gender intuition differently. If -- and it's unclear so far as I can tell -- the brain is gendered, perhaps during development, then the gender module might not even be interested in your sexual anatomy but just report the usually well-aligned gender of the brain hosting it, even if that gender is not the same as your anatomical sex. --- And it's still conceivable for both to be true, that the brain is gendered and the gender module is producing the wrong intuition.

I've been using the word "gender" but we could substitute anatomical sex mostly. On the other hand, if there's always been variation in sexual expression and behavior, it might be worth the trouble for natural selection to classify that. Do gay male gorillas compete with cis male gorillas for female mates? They might, I don't know, but if they don't it seems like that would be worth knowing. Why fight with a guy who's not a threat to your reproductive success? --- Anyway, it seems not crazy that there might be a module for specifically gender intuitions rather than just anatomical sex, because gender might be helpfully predictive of some behavior that matters. In which case, despite it no doubt being mostly culture, there might be something to "gaydar."

If you misgender a cis person then you are corrected, right? — Moliere

Or they are. If a toddler were to refer to a girl as 'he' you'd correct them. If someone learning English mixed up 'he' and 'she' you'd correct them. The words have correct usage in our language by virtue of our collective agreement on how they're used.

I've spent the last 50 odd years of my life using 'she' to refer to females. I've done so on a rough estimate based primarily on looks but sometimes on name or title of address. I've never been corrected. It's worked fine for 50 years, as it has, I suspect for virtually everyone for the 50 years prior to that.

So no, if someone who is male thinks they ought to be referred to as 'she', they've misunderstood how the word is used. Doesn't mean they can't wear dresses, doesn't mean they can't wear make-up. It's just an odd facet of our language that we use a different form of address for different sexes.

Maybe (I strongly suspect, in fact) in 50 years time its use will have changed. But right now, one is not misusing a word because a particular group want it used differently.

Of course, I've no intention of traumatising anyone by deliberately doing something which is going to upset them, but honestly, if people are going to be upset by the fact that the entire world does not jump to it in support of their preferred treatment, I think they have much bigger issues to concern themselves with than my habits of address.

So no, if someone who is male thinks they ought to be referred to as 'she', they've misunderstood how the word is used. Doesn't mean they can't wear dresses, doesn't mean they can't wear make-up. It's just an odd facet of our language that we use a different form of address for different sexes. — Isaac

I think it's a pretty common distinction across languages, though my familiarity is European languages: English as primary with some studies in German and Spanish. So it's not the linguist's viewpoint.

I don't think it an oddity at all though because patriarchy -- the patrilineal descent and control of property -- is a common among the cultures which utilize these languages. We mark distinctions which are important, and being able to tell who is going to own the stuff after I die is important. I'd say that patriarchy is so deep that it's influenced our very way of speaking, and thereby, thinking.

. But right now, one is not misusing a word because a particular group want it used differently.

Of course, I've no intention of traumatising anyone by deliberately doing something which is going to upset them, but honestly, if people are going to be upset by the fact that the entire world does not jump to it in support of their preferred treatment, I think they have much bigger issues to concern themselves with than my habits of address. — Isaac

In real life, and not on the internet (which is different), any trans person I've known has been gracious towards me figuring out the customs they prefer.

Probably why I'm pro-trans. I've never really had a problem with any trans person I've met in real life. (the internet, though, as I said earlier -- I really think it changes the way we relate, at least on the social media pages with algorithms designed to increase engagement no matter what)

[ Feel now I shouldn't have posted this at all, so if you missed it, it's too late. ] — Srap Tasmaner

Why do you feel you shouldn't have posted it? Too open and personal?
I responded to what I felt was a real struggle in understanding and coping.
It wasn't only for your benefit but for others reading. For me, that's important.

Too open and personal? — Amity

It's one thing to share my own private life, but it's uncool to share someone else's. Pretty simple.

I responded to what I felt was a real struggle in understanding and coping. — Amity

Which was kind of you.

On the other hand -- and we've all glancingly noted this -- you don't have to have a philosophically or scientifically rigorous understanding of someone to treat them decently, so the analytical challenge I've been dealing with here is a whole separate thing from just being as good a dad as I can.

It's one thing to share my own private life, but it's uncool to share someone else's. Pretty simple. — Srap Tasmaner

Understood.

Which was kind of you. — Srap Tasmaner

Not really meant to be kind but informative at a practical level.

you don't have to have a philosophically or scientifically rigorous understanding of someone to treat them decently, so the analytical challenge I've been dealing with here is a whole separate thing from just being as good a dad as I can. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't see the two things as being all that separate.
The challenge is to understand a particular problem issue, gender identity.
Both involve reflecting, analysis and dialogue but at different levels.
For an improvement in wellbeing.

The one can inform the other. The personal is a motivating factor in the deeper challenge. How does reducing subjective behavioural aspects to an objective mental, gendered brain module help, even if such existed. You think it would predict behaviour? With a view to what?

I think that just as we seem to have specialized modules for recognizing faces, for noticing mood, for guessing at intent, all these sorts of things, it would make sense for us to have a module for making gender determinations, and since we are as a rule binary, it makes sense for this module just to provide intuitions of the form 'same gender as me' or 'the other one', since our sexual behavior is what natural selection is going to be most interested in, and that means the gender module also implicitly provides the intuition about our gender.

And I think what we've all been struggling with in trying to classify statements like "I am a woman" spoken by anyone -- what is this identity it supposedly expresses? -- is best approached by recognizing to start with that the right word here is 'intuition'. In retrospect, it looks obvious to me, and I don't know why it didn't occur to me before. (Not least because I've just finished reading a book about intuitive inference.)

Thanks for reply. It's early morning here, so I'll be brief.

I don't struggle with what it means to be a woman.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman

I think it's a pretty common distinction across languages, though my familiarity is European languages: English as primary with some studies in German and Spanish. So it's not the linguist's viewpoint. — Moliere

I meant 'our' as in humanity, not 'our' as in English-speakers. I don't know of any language that doesn't have those distinctions, but my knowledge of language is very limited.

I don't think it an oddity at all though because patriarchy -- the patrilineal descent and control of property -- is a common among the cultures which utilize these languages. We mark distinctions which are important, and being able to tell who is going to own the stuff after I die is important. — Moliere

So the correct application is to sex (reproductive capability, here), not gender (a much wider grouping of expressions and roles)? You seemed to be saying earlier that the correct usage was to apply it according to individual preferences.

In real life, and not on the internet (which is different), any trans person I've known has been gracious towards me figuring out the customs they prefer.

Probably why I'm pro-trans. I've never really had a problem with any trans person I've met in real life. — Moliere

Me neither, but I've met probably three or four. I can easily think of three or four men I know who have zero toxicity, yet here we are with a thread on it. Men are about 50% of the population, trans people about 0.3% in America, so your potential for base rate errors is very large.

the internet, though, as I said earlier -- I really think it changes the way we relate, at least on the social media pages with algorithms designed to increase engagement no matter what — Moliere

These people aren't on the internet, ruining a woman's career because they disagree with her...



Neither are these...



I can't see any more good reason to limit your assessment of the general trans movement to the people you've met that you would limit your assessment of masculinity to only those men you've met. We have means by which we can expand our knowledge of how larger groups act.

On the subject of the admirably obdurate Stock...

This latest piece is very apt to the current discussion.

https://unherd.com/2023/07/who-is-the-asshole/

So the correct application is to sex (reproductive capability, here), not gender (a much wider grouping of expressions and roles)? You seemed to be saying earlier that the correct usage was to apply it according to individual preferences. — Isaac

In the beginning there was the binary, and it was judged good. The binary stated that our biological make-up accounted for our mentality which accounted for our social role.

Then, lo and behold, Kate Millet turnethed the binary on its head and said -- no! It is the role which is the foundation, the mentality which is the excuse, and the biology which is the marker.

In the beginning there was no gender, there was only sex used in a gender-wise fashion. But the beginning is at an end, and so we have this new distinction called "gender" to highlight differences in the use of "sex". Furthermore there is "gender" that shall be distinguished from "gender-identity", where the former is the social role and the latter is whatever identity is.

I was saying pronouns work by referring correctly. They were correcting your usage with regards to themselves. We make slip ups (not even related to this topic) all the time, and usually charity is what sees us through. Further, anyone whose asked me to change my use has been charitable and gracious. So that saw us through. Now I can use the word still.

This is how pronouns work.

I can't see any more good reason to limit your assessment of the general trans movement to the people you've met that you would limit your assessment of masculinity to only those men you've met. We have means by which we can expand our knowledge of how larger groups act. — Isaac

People often remark that philosophy is useless. One favored thought experiment to demonstrate its uselessness is the Evil Demon scenario. Of what use could absolute skepticism be?

One thing I learned from my time doing activisty things is that the newspaper is pretty much always picking a side. Further, that social media would rip groups apart -- useful as tool for communication, but not as tool for organizing (at least my style of it). The organizers task was half planning half counseling, like a priest of modernity.

Absolute skepticism is useful when we encounter a scenario where we have good reason to disbelieve almost everything, or at least be doubtful of almost everything. And I pretty much take that stance towards the news, social media, and so forth. Almost always there's another side to a story if you want to dig into it, a way to justify one side or the other, a deeper reason than the one presented -- and sometimes, as in the cases of police violence, there are outright lies.

Now, people go around reading this stuff thinking it's real. In part it is. You can't write good propaganda without truth -- this is something that's often missed. Propaganda is a mixture of truth and non-truth with an emotional message intended to reinforce or flip people's attachment to their beliefs.

When all the messages we're receiving are from the propaganda machine then absolute skepticism is warranted. Not that these things don't exist -- but there's a reason I'm being told this story. For my money I think the propaganda machine is automated now, not even caring about what beliefs people have but caring about what people will do. To make people predictable, going back to Machiavelli, you use fear. And capital "wants" people to be predictable because then you can plan profit flows, have workers show up on time, and so on. Or maximize engagement -- the propaganda machine automatically selects for any belief which will maximize engagement.

This is how pronouns work. — Moliere

I'm sure they could. It's not how they do.

Unless I'm very much an oddity, I've been using pronouns to address people differently on the basis of sex (assumed from sight, name, etc) for my entire life. So has everyone I know. It is absolutely not how pronouns work.

It might be how pronouns ought to work. It might be how pronouns could work in future. It might be how you'd like pronouns to work. But it is not how pronouns actually do work. We look at someone (or their name) take a guess at their sex, and apply the appropriate word.

I've never in my life thought about what someone's gender role is, and I couldn't even possibly think about what their gender-identity is because I've still no idea what such a thing could possibly even be. And yet, miraculously it now seems, I can't think of a single occasion until now when my use of a pronoun has had to be corrected on that basis.

This is exactly how the absolutist framing of this discussion is self-defeating. I don't even think it's that terrible an idea to stop using different pronouns based on a guess about sex. I think it might be better if we ditched the whole practice altogether, or, as many places do now, just ask. But that's not the plan... Better isn't good enough, discussion isn't good enough, because the Holy Grail here is not a better world, it's victimhood. I must be wrong, not merely behind-the-times. I must be wrong so that they can be wronged.

capital "wants" people to be predictable because then you can plan profit flows, have workers show up on time, and so on. Or maximize engagement -- the propaganda machine automatically selects for any belief which will maximize engagement. — Moliere

Totally agree with you here. Probably disagree as to which 'side' this most affects.

Is there even a side? Or are there a multiplicity of sides being generated in order to keep people coming back?

Either way, no one is immune. I think it affects us all pretty equally. It's like when you learn there's this cognitive bias called such and such: just because you know about it doesn't mean you're immune to it. Even if you have a ritual, as I've outlined with absolute skepticism, the propaganda still effects feelings -- Propaganda works.

I must be wrong, not merely behind-the-times. I must be wrong so that they can be wronged. — Isaac

Well, I wouldn't make this claim, at least. But I don't think anyone is playing victim either -- I think trans people are victimized through violence against them. The bit on pronouns is kind of a test: how do you view me? If you reject me then there's no reason to trust you. But it's not like misgendering someone is a mortal sin. It's just rude. Or, if you're wanting to know if you're safe, valuable to know who doesn't believe you.

Is there even a side? Or are there a multiplicity of sides being generated in order to keep people coming back? — Moliere

Yes, I think that's right, but as you said, predictability is the key, so that limits the number of opposing groups to a manageable level. Pushing people into a marketable niche. My favourite example of this is one given by a speaker I saw decades ago, but I can't remember her name; I'm paraphrasing - " think about how hard it is for you and your partner to agree on a wall colour for the spare room, it's not easy. so what are the chances of everyone in the world deciding that almost the exact same shade of blue is the ideal colour for their casual trousers?" It's just easier to get a profit off mass produced blue jeans, the marketing worked, we all think that colour is the one that would look best now.

No marketing company wants hundreds of different nuanced groups with different ideas about gender. They want a small number of groups with the same ideas so they they can profile them, advertise to them and design products to appeal to them.

A bank needs to know that a rainbow flag on it's door is going to work to distract people from the fact that it is destroying LGBTQ+ lives for profit in exactly the same way as it's destroying anyone else's. The shocking thing is that it actually works.

I think it affects us all pretty equally. It's like when you learn there's this cognitive bias called such and such: just because you know about it doesn't mean you're immune to it. Even if you have a ritual, as I've outlined with absolute skepticism, the propaganda still effects feelings -- Propaganda works. — Moliere

Yeah, I have to say this a lot as a psychologist. People assume that if I make some statement about how we think, I'm declaring myself 'above it all' somehow, but no. Knowing about it doesn't seem to do much to get around it.

I don't think anyone is playing victim either -- I think trans people are victimized through violence against them. — Moliere

This seems like an oversimplification. why would no one play victim? We're on a thread where half the human population are being at least implicated in oppressing the other half. We've heard the insensitivity of white folk to their privilege. there doesn't seem to be any hesitation in assuming all sorts of malicious (conscious and subconscious) behaviour on the part of the currently vilified (whites, men, cis), so why would minority groups suddenly become so angelic?