Comments

  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪Hanover


    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.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪NOS4A2


    You have nothing intelligent to say. You simply keep repeating that all that matters is biology. Now that you have stated that yet again, and are clearly incapable of saying anything else, you have no further place in this discussion.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪NOS4A2


    You've made the same vacuous point in a dozen different ways now. You don't believe in anything beyond biology. Ok. Now go away, please, if you have nothing else to say, so an intelligent conversation can resume without distraction.

    ...A guy who doesn't believe the mind or society are even real lumbers into a thread about a psychological phenomenon and its place in a social context and starts blabbering on about bones and testes. I've met pot plants with more self awareness.
  • Antinatalism Arguments
    It's very possible for me to see all there is to life, the good and the bad and yet still not think this is enough for me to stay. Life is nothing but a slip of consciousness and just like that you could say it is amazing but I will say this is to be destroyed. Why? Because it can. Do not tell me it's a matter of what feels good and what doesn't, because then choosing to feel bad by choosing to die becomes something that feels good; so feeling good isn't the pinpoint at hand here.

    So since I CAN think like this, how can I not think like this? Do not tell me to just be one with life in experience because this is futile and never has been fulfilling. Do not tell me that if I can choose either I should choose life, because I'm saying to you my choice IS non-existence, this is the dilemma: the choice and the confusion of life.

    I am looking for the answer that breaks down this thinking and builds myself a new thought basis.     — Obscurelaunting
  • Why should life/existence by valued if i can choose to not want to value it?
    This discussion was merged into Life Sucks: (General Anti-Life Discussion)
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    And when archeologists dig up his bones and see the male skeleton, what then? — NOS4A2

    Whose bones? And why is Archie O'Logist after 'em? :chin:

    But by the same token I’m going to call people with testes “men”. — NOS4A2

    How do you go about the testes checking? And is that legal in your parts? :brow:
  • Chimeras & Spells
    ↪apokrisis


    :lol: :cry:
  • Chimeras & Spells
    ↪god must be atheist


    Another way of putting it is that such arguments are off-topic here because climate change is specifically not the subject of the OP.

    But this isn't about climate change. — Xtrix

    Thanks for cooperating.
  • Chimeras & Spells
    ↪apokrisis
    ↪god must be atheist


    For the purposes of this thread not being derailed, we accept the scientific consensus that humans cause global warming and the focus is on a more specific question. If anyone wants to argue otherwise, try the general climate change thread.
  • Chimeras & Spells
    I think @apokrisis has nailed this.

    But:

    Thus to fix the problem, it is not just about providing better information. It is about redesigning the very psychology at work in “tackling the threat”. — apokrisis

    Any ideas?
  • Chimeras & Spells
    ↪unenlightened


    Actually, it's our inherent love of a good tune that will ultimately drown us. Can't blame the pipe or the piper for that.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    I think the general sentiment of the opposition isn't anger or a desire for physical interference, but it's ridicule and an eye roll. — Hanover

    Fair enough, the sentiment depends on cultural context, but the general progression of reaction from most to least negative, I would say, is anger>>ridicule>>acceptance.

    We are and are not what we present. Free artists of ourselves, self-marketing products, we long also to have fate and not just choice, to be something (really a man, really a woman). — Pie

    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.

    A classic liberal perspective demands egalitarianism, which should result in a denial of gender roles and distinctions. Under an established egalitarian society, we should expect men and women's clothing to move toward androgeny, with equal likelihood of skirts, heels, and makeup for everyone — Hanover

    Equality of opportunity and equal rights doesn't mean male and female cutlures, or any other cultures, can't and won't persist. That's not to imply there is some objective justification for the differences or that they should be enforced, just that distinct group identities are part of how human societies function. We may see more overlap and/or change in these but not their dissolution.

    The point being we seem to have two strains of not entirely consistent progressive liberal thoughts going on here: (1) gender roles and gender expression should not be designated by biological sex, and (2) transsexuals should be able to express themselves by the gender roles traditionally assigned to them by their biological sex. — Hanover

    Maybe some progressives suffer from the contradiction of both wanting to abolish gender roles and celebrating their expression in certain instances, but the trans person that asks to be recognized for their psychological gender is no more liberal or conservative than any other person who expects to be recognized for their psychological gender. It's an issue of rights, which can be approached from several distinct political perspectives and/or through a simple acceptance of the psychological fact that gender identity can and does differ from biological sex and that people are more important than the lumps of flesh they inhabit. It's convenient for some, of course, to associate trans rights with political correctness etc but that's a strategy of guilt by association. It's much easier to attack the amorphous bogeyman PC than to attack the facts of how psychological identity functions.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    (I don't think btw that "pregnant women" is offensive because it's exclusive or anything like that. That would be traveling to the other extreme in looking for reasons to be upset imo.)
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪Bitter Crank


    If you think the writers of the latest editions of every modern major dictionary and encyclopedia are lunatics but you're not, look harder in the mirror. Projecting this on me is silly. I don't write that stuff though I'd still make the argument for recognizing trans people regardless. And the use of "pregnant persons" is just a logical conclusion of the recognition that trans men exist. There's nothing extreme about the rhetoric mentioned. That's all in your head.

    That doesn't mean extreme positions aren't possible. But you'll need to find an actual one to get annoyed about. I might even agree with you. I won't be raging and gnashing my teeth like you are though as it might put me in danger of becoming a source of amusement rather than edification.

    He created the Rocky Horror Picture Show. — Tate

    OK.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪Tate


    Never heard of him and neither has Google apparently. Unless he's that Rocky Horror show actor?

    Anyway, the dictionaries and encyclopedias have left poor Richard and his band of merry retrogrades behind.
  • Chimeras & Spells
    ↪Xtrix


    Ideologies in the form of religion, media, politics etc. are society's reproductive organs. And society's primary function is to reproduce itself. So, analagous to biological evolution, any advancements are byproducts of that blind process and there's an inertia there that is not suited to dealing with existential threats. The result is it doesn't matter so much how aware we are as individuals of these threats, what matters is whether they are enough to upset the social reproductive process. If the path of least resistance is to go on pretending to deal with an existential threat then that's the path we'll most likely take right past the point which it's too late to do anything about it. And yes, this manifests in the whole thing becoming a kind of entertainment. The disaster movie and the disastrous headlines psychologically relieve us of the will to act. They do the emotional work for us. We are not going to go out on the street protesting until our crops are dying and we don't have enough to eat because only then social reproduction is really threatened. There's a sense we're under a spell. But we're just scting as social atoms only know how to act.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪ssu


    Maybe if you'd read the thread properly, you'd see the philosophical element here. The intersection between biology/psychology/society and the primacy of identity over behaviour, preference etc. But if you're not interested, that's OK too.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    I’m not against dress-up and pretend — NOS4A2

    You can only pretend to be something if you don't identify as so being. So, I can pretend to be a woman because I don't identify as one, but a trans woman does, so she can't. Of course, you can pretend a trans woman is not a woman even though social reality defines her as such. It just carries no weight or significance beyond your personal standpoint. It's like pretending Joe Biden isn't President because it hurts your feelings to admit it. That horse has bolted. When you've lost the dictionaries and encyclopedias, you've lost, period. The media (as demonstrated by BC) and then the public in general will follow. What's left of the debate (in advanced Western democracies at least) is specifically what it takes to qualify as a trans person and details like how we deal with trans people in sports etc. Interesting issues worth discussing if you're up for it.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪ssu


    It depends on the specific context. In some ways, we are very similar to animals, yes, but it's a minor side issue here anyway.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    Why bash animals? I've always thought that we are just smart animals, but otherwise there's not much different other than our extreme hubris about ourselves. — ssu

    In the context of my posts, it should be clear I'm not "bashing" animals.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    lvykupanyt1nsu36.png

    If this person's existence makes any of you angry, I suggest the problem is with you, not him. And you can't stop him existing or being recognized as existing. You lost the battle for social reality. That part is over.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪Bitter Crank


    "A trans man is a man who was assigned female at birth."

    "Trans men may or may not be capable of menstruation and pregnancy depending on their individual circumstances."

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

    "a transgender man : a man who was identified as female at birth"

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trans%20man

    The usage is accurate. There is nothing to be angry about. Social reality shall do its thing regardless.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    Identifying as a Manchester United supporter. — Michael

    Identity is the base level of personal reality — Baden

    :up:
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    I hope that doesn't sound slippery by the way. Identity is the base level of personal reality. And the minute you try to define aspects of it as this or that, you easily get caught in exceptions. I don't know what it means to be a man, and yet (I feel) I know I am a man, that a man is a meaningful category, and that being a man is meaningful. But yes, you could change my anatomy without changing my opinion that I am a man. I would just feel you put the wrong body on me. I could also change my behaviour and act like a woman and still feel that I was a man. Or both. I could feel I was in the wrong body and act like a woman, and still be a man in terms of how I identify. It's not the behaviour; it's not the biology; it's a psychological reality that trumps both.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪Hanover


    Defining "man" or "woman" is like the problem of defining "game". Every time you find a characteristic that seems essential, you find a game that doesn't have that characteristic but is still a game. A game is whatever social norms allow us to call a game and so it is with "man" and "woman".

    Edit: Maybe someone has said that already in this discussion. If so, still worth repeating.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪Hanover


    You've maybe struck on the fundamental difference between animals and people. For animals, behaviour is determinative. They are fully identified with and by their behaviour. An animal is just what it does. We, on the other hand, are aware of ourselves as individuals that act, which gives us the ability to act in ways that underdetermine what we are as well as to be that which underdetermines how we act. The gap between behaviour and identity is human freedom.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪Hanover


    I agree it takes a fair degree of thought to work out what's going on.

    I think about it like this:

    Level 1: Biology >> signals gender and social identity.
    Level 2: Psychology >> determines gender identity and signals biological identity.
    Level 3: Society >> determines gender norms, which form the context in which gender identity is broadly interpreted.

    You go from biology (the human/sex) to psychology (the person/gender identity) to the social (the group/gender norms) and you get different answers depending on how you pose the question of definition and at what level you pose it.

    So, biology is relevant to gender but underdetermines it because it underdetermines (necessarily) psychology. It doesn't provide us enough evidence to assign a gender identity to a person, only to a body. This brings us back to where the denialists always end up, either explicitly or implicitly claiming the mind and society are not real and by extension that people are not real, simply because they can't accept this underdetermination and so end up reducing everything to Level 1. Animals are irrelevant because they are always stuck at Level 1, being neither people nor social in the sense we are.

    So, the ground of debate is not here at the level of biology (human/animal) vs psychology (person), rather at the level of the relationship between gender identity (psychology) and gender norms (society). Minds do exist, people do exist ,and some people do identify as a gender that "contradicts" their biological sex.

    Maybe the reason some can't move on from this is they misunderstand the "identity" in "gender identity" as something like preference or choice/behaviour. Language is slippery here because we don't normally need to strongly delineate between identity and preference. "I like dogs" can be phrased, "I am a dog person" {preference=identity} and that's fine. There's a degree of stickiness there. Maybe more than "I like pistachio flavor ice-cream" (as to say "I'm a pistachio-flavor-ice-cream person"{preference=identity} sounds a bit over the top). But when we say "I am a man" or "I am a woman", we're talking an identity that's core. So, it's not just that it's not a choice/behaviour, it's beyond a preference in that there's no coherent preference=identity pair to fall back on. I am a man doesn't mean I like manliness or even I like being a man, it just means that I identify as my understanding of the gender norm "man".

    You can be a homosexual man, for example, who dresses and acts in a feminine way but still identifies as a man. It's not primarily about behaviour, or preference, identity is what it means to that person to be a man or a woman and whether their understanding of themselves can be squared with society in general. Society's job then, in my view, is to be inclusive to the degree that it is rational and practical to so be. And there is nothing irrational or impractical about recognizing the phenomenon of psychological identity as it relates to gender. Just the opposite.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪Pie


    There's a whole spectrum of views from Judith-Butler-type postmodernist takes (forget biology!) to the denialism we've seen on this thread (forget psychology!). I think the extremes fail and the ultimate social consensus will be found somewhere in the middle ground.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪Pie


    I agree. Calling the other side "transphobes" at the drop of the hat isn't necessary or helpful. Better to just make the argument on the basis that psychological identity is real and important.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪Bitter Crank

    "
    Bollocks. It just means the doctor said "That's a male". You can use "recognized" if it makes you happy though. :kiss:
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪NOS4A2


    You're welcome, I guess...
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    Although, if you want to follow your line to its logical conclusion, Trump was never president and is just a large orange blob that makes annoying high pitched noises whenever a camera is pointed at him. I kinda like it tbh.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪NOS4A2


    The mind and society are real NOS. It's not just lumps of galavanting flesh out there. We're proving that right now by talking in a socio-psychological medium.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪NOS4A2


    According to every mainstream dictionary and encyclopedia published within the last year or two, a trans woman can be a biological male, yes. But, don't worry, so can you!
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    You accused me of denying reality, so I just wanted to know which reality I was denying. — NOS4A2

    Oh yes, e.g.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_woman

    "A trans woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth"     — Baden

    Look >> a biological male who is defined as a woman due to being socially recognized as a woman due to psychologically identifying as a woman (at least). Hence, the potential contradiction, issue, debate, what we are here for, etc. Open your eyes.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    Dictionaries, encyclopedias, and rational members of TPF recognize there is an issue concerning biological, social, and psychological definitions for "man" and "woman" — Baden

    If simple human biology has no place in a discussion of reality and gender, I apologize. — NOS4A2

    And again. >> :monkey:
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    No, I don't think a biological male human can produce eggs — Baden

    You could easily point me to one shred of evidence of human males producing eggs — NOS4A2

    Et voila. You have outdone yourself here, sir.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    Dictionaries, encyclopedias, and rational members of TPF recognize there is an issue concerning biological, social, and psychological definitions for "man" and "woman". @NOS4A2 exclusively does this :monkey: If all you have is that, you are denying yourself a chance to be part of the conversation and it's your loss.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪NOS4A2


    No, I don't think a biological male human can produce eggs. But I don't exclusively define a man as a biological male, and neither does the dictionary, so again, this is of no relevance.

    Has this vacuous line of argument ever worked with a real live human being by the way? You've tried it on me twice, once for each sex, and it was the same both times.
  • Wading Into Trans and Gender Issues
    ↪NOS4A2


    He's satrirtizing your silliness. And rightly so. You have no argument except denialism of the issue.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_woman

    "A trans woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth"

    Nos>> :monkey:


    So you don’t associate females with the sex that can give birth to young or produce eggs? — NOS4A2

    1) I don't define a woman as a biological female. That was you, remember?

    Therefore that

    2) I associate biological females with the sex that can etc...

    is of no relevance.

    The issue, again, is the potential contradiction between gender identity and biological identity for which a social solution has not been found. I don't have the definitive answer to where the balance should lie, but I am here to participate in working one out.

    You're not. You're here to do this >> :monkey:

    Open your eyes. Participate.
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