That is something more people are realizing. It's ok to be a butch woman. It's ok to be a feminine guy. — frank

It's not off topic. It is perfectly consistent to accept both of these:

1. Gender and sex are distinct
2. Bathrooms ought be separated by sex, not gender — Michael

The problem, however, is that intersex people exist, and so how do we maintain (2)? — Michael

Jesus, this is a absurd.

You sound like Mike Johnson: — Michael

Trans activists wanted to say that gender is about roles people play in society. A biological male can dress and behave in a typically feminine way. Therefore, people can transition if they want to.

Is that not clear to you? — frank

I'm addressing the relevant issue.

You say that an intersex person can use whichever bathroom they are most comfortable using. Why not allow a non-intersex person to use whichever bathroom they are most comfortable using? — Michael

I think the point trans activists were making was that gender and biological sex are not necessarily the same the thing. There's no reason we couldn't separate them. — frank

Why?

Why not: the men's bathroom is exclusively for any biological man who identifies as a man, biological woman who identifies as a man, or intersex person who identifies as man and the women's bathroom is exclusively for any biological woman who identifies as a woman, biological man who identifies as a woman, or intersex person who identifies as a woman? — Michael

I thought you disagreed with this view? — Michael

The men's bathroom is exclusively for men and intersex people. Women's bathrooms are for women and intersex people. I'm not sure how trans-people, which have nothing to do with sex, fits in here. — Harry Hindu

So why is it acceptable for intersex people to use whichever bathroom they want but not trans people? In allowing intersex people in men's bathrooms and intersex people in women's bathrooms you've already accepted that men's bathrooms are not exclusively for biological males and women's bathrooms not exclusively for biological females. — Michael

Yes, because people like you are claiming that only biological men should use the men's bathrooms and only biological women should use the women's bathrooms. You are the one saying that bathrooms should be divided by biological sex, so I want to know what you think we should about people who are biologically intersex. — Michael

Yes, if by "human" you mean "homo sapiens".

Homo sapiens evolved from homo antecessor, but there was never some single generation where someone who was unambiguously homo antecessor gave birth to someone who was unambiguously homo sapiens.

It was a gradual development from one to the other, with generations of ambiguity in between. — Michael

Just one counterexample is sufficient to disprove your claim that every single human without exception is either (unambiguously) biologically male or (unambiguously) biologically female. — Michael

Is there ambiguity in being a human? — Harry Hindu

Malcolm Parry and AmadeusD are claiming that every single human without exception is either (unambiguously) biologically male or (unambiguously) biologically female.

My question to them (and to which you respond) was an attempt to have them try to understand that human biology is not so black and white. — Michael

I'm responding to frank's claim that someone is biologically male if and only if they (only) have an XY karyotype and biologically female if and only if they (only) have an XX karyotype.

He's the one trying to define "biologically male" and "biologically female" according to a singular trait, not me. — Michael

Because there are people who do not fit within this binary classification.

Therefore either a) these people are neither biologically male nor biologically female or b) your attempt at defining what it means to be a biological male or a biological female is wrong. — Michael

You say this like you have not been doing the same thing this whole argument. You have been cherry-picking sources, just as you have been claiming the same views as various experts on the subject, despite the issue still being unresolved. Cherry-picking sources is fine, that's how evidence works, but why is it ok for you to do but not others? — Wolfy48

Yes, but does this not also refute your own point? The current scientific and psychological community very much disagrees on the subject of what defines gender, so quoting what some scientists say, or taking an expert's word at law to try and prove that Sex == Gender, or that Male == Violent, is Appeal to Authority. — Wolfy48

The dictionary definition of woman has no mention of a vagina or female sexual reproductive organs. So no, having a vagina does not make you a woman. Choosing to comport and express yourself as a woman is what makes you a woman. You could argue that Sex Assigned At Birth is what makes you a woman, but a large amount of people would disagree with you on that, so why hold so tightly to opinion that does nothing but offend, hurt, and de-validate others? There is no scientific proof as to how you have to interpret the word "woman", so it is a matter of opinion. — Wolfy48

Woman: 1 a: an adult female person
Female: 1 a: of, relating to, or being the sex that typically has the capacity to bear young or produce eggs — Merriam-Webster.com

So, which is it? Is gender a feeling or a social construct?" -- ↪Harry Hindu
It's both. The idea of what a gender should act or look like is based on how society sees that gender. But the actual decision of which gender the individual wishes to express themselves as is up to them. — Wolfy48

I see no good reason to disbelieve the DSM and ICD in favour of your bare assertion that gender incongruence is a psychosis. — Michael

A review of the current literature demonstrates comorbidity between gender dysphoria and psychosis, including cases of gender dysphoria with schizophrenia and the occurrence of gender dysphoria symptoms during manic or psychotic episodes. The existing literature has yet to specifically examine gender dysphoria amongst individuals with schizoaffective disorder. — National Library of Medicine

What is the appeal to authority fallacy?
The appeal to authority fallacy is the logical fallacy of saying a claim is true simply because an authority figure made it. This authority figure could be anyone: an instructor, a politician, a well-known academic, an author, or even an individual with experience related to the claim’s subject. — Grammarly

Description: Insisting that a claim is true simply because a valid authority or expert on the issue said it was true, without any other supporting evidence offered. — Logically Fallacious

Argument from Authority
You might be tempted to cite someone with more knowledge than you to support your opinion. For instance, "Dan's been in college for three years, and he says it's not what it's cracked up to be." You might use this as evidence that college isn't fun, but you would be committing an argument from authority. Instead of citing evidence for your opinion, you cite someone with more authority who shares that opinion. — Vaia

Appeal to Authority
You appeal to authority if you back up your reasoning by saying that it is supported by what some authority says on the subject. Most reasoning of this kind is not fallacious, and much of our knowledge properly comes from listening to authorities. However, appealing to authority as a reason to believe something is fallacious whenever the authority appealed to is not really an authority in this particular subject, when the authority cannot be trusted to tell the truth, when authorities disagree on this subject (except for the occasional lone wolf), when the reasoner misquotes the authority, and so forth. Although spotting a fallacious appeal to authority often requires some background knowledge about the subject matter and the who is claimed to be the authority, in brief it can be said we are reasoning fallacious if we accept the words of a supposed authority when we should be suspicious of the authority’s words. — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Here you seem to misunderstand that you can have a coarse biological classification scheme and yet still not use that for legal or public policy. — substantivalism

Most of your replies felt like a critique of any form of anti-realism. "If it's socially constructed then it can be undone, anything can go, and it makes following it pointless because there is no grounding. How can you say what you say because according to you I can invent whatever I want in a contrary fashion." — substantivalism

You appear to be equivocating.

Here are two plausible interpretations of your claim:

1. They believe they are biologically male when they are biologically female. That is the delusion.
2. They believe they are non-biologically male when they are biologically female. That is the delusion.

If you mean (1) then your claim is false because they do not believe that they are biologically male.

If you mean (2) then your conclusion is a non sequitur. — Michael

It's not a logical fallacy to defer to what mathematicians say about mathematics, to what physicists say about physics, or to what psychiatrists say about psychiatry.

Psychiatrists do not classify gender incongruence as a psychosis. Unless you have studied psychiatry you are not qualified to have an informed opinion. — Michael

It is nonsense to discuss and figure out how male and female overlap, without discussing and figuring out how male and female cannot overlap first. — Fire Ologist

Ideas are often considered abstract objects. — NOS4A2

It's not clear to me what delusion you believe they have. We've already established that trans men don't believe that they were born with a penis or XY chromosomes, so it can't be that.

And neither the DSM nor the ICD classify gender dysphoria/incongruence as a type of psychosis, and unless you're a qualified psychiatrist you're in no position to question the professionals – or at the very least I have no good reason to believe you over them. — Michael

Never understood where the leap came for gender to describe societal differences between the sexes to people wanting society to validate their right to pick a gender. Very dismissive of women and their status in society. Women fought long and hard to get the rights and respect they now have. — Malcolm Parry

Harry Hindu celebrates this. . . and then he adds nothing to replace it or advocate for an improvement of it's material. Perhaps I'm wrong but he hasn't been rather vocal on this topic matter and seems to just burn all bridges thinking its better we just swim. — substantivalism

The first update is that someone long ago pointed out that there can be orientations and bearings ("gender" in the psychological sense, as in the OP) regarding sex and gender (in the sociological sense) separately, so there's not just sex (biological), gender (sociological), orientation and bearing (both psychological), there's sex, sexual orientation, sexual bearing, gender, gender orientation, and gender bearing -- six different things that may correlate but can come apart from each other, for each of which you can have a position on a two-dimensional spectrum of masculinity X femininity. — Pfhorrest

I’m focused on actual people trying to live their actual lives. Trans people aren’t just some philosophical hypothetical. They exist and they often need to use public bathrooms. The studies show that it is safer to let trans men use men’s bathrooms and trans women use women’s bathrooms, so any law that tries to prevent this ought not be passed.

If you don’t understand trans people then fine. You don’t need to. Them going to the toilet has nothing to do with you - or anyone else. — Michael

Try applying this logic to other questions. Does Iraq really have or not have WMD, or does it depend on what is useful to us? Are there truly substances, things, or does the existence of any thing at all (even the human person) merely depend on our goals? How can we have goals if our existence is itself a question of usefulness? — Count Timothy von Icarus

The problem though, is that the old issue of the One and the Many rears its head here. If everything is a process, in virtue of what is anything also a discrete thing? How is anything any thing at all? Process metaphysics tends towards a singular universal monoprocess. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Here is the problem with trying to ground epistemology in "usefulness:" either there are facts about what is useful or there aren't. If nothing is "truly useful," but instead is "useful because we feel it is so," then we have relativism. For the fundamentalist, it is useful to deny evolution for instance. In 1984, it is useful for both citizens and the Party to live by "whatever Big Brother says is true is true." — Count Timothy von Icarus

In the scientific context, the term substance refers to pure matter alone, consisting of only one type of atom or one type of molecule.
— Harry Hindu

That's the point of the OP - that using the term 'substance' mistakenly equates 'being' with 'stuff'. And in the current scientific context, there is no real material ultimate in the sense of a material atom. Atoms are nowadays understood as excitations in fields, the primitive idea of the atom as 'indivisible particle' (that's what the word means, 'not divisible') is long dead, in the age of wave-particle duality.
— Wayfarer
Where in the scientific explanation was the word, "stuff" used, or what makes you believe that "stuff" was implied when "substance" is used? It seems you are projecting a strawman into the description that isn't there.

You solve your own problem by incorporating other scientific knowledge that there is no real material ultimate in the sense of the material atom. If science also says that atoms are excitations in fields then it is not saying that substance is stuff. So your explanation only works if you compartmentalize scientific knowledge, like you just did. But as I said before, the conclusion in one domain of knowledge (or one field of science) should not contradict the conclusions reached in another. All knowledge must be integrated. — Harry Hindu

I addressed the relevant issue. Trans people are at a greater risk when they use the bathroom according to their biological sex and cis women are not at a greater risk when trans women are allowed to use the women’s bathroom.

So if your concern is people’s safety then trans men ought use men’s bathrooms and trans women ought use women’s bathrooms. — Michael

Whether or not it "makes sense" to you is irrelevant. Your intuition – or whatever it is – is wrong. — Michael

At times, theoretical work needs to take a more philosophical look at what is mean by change and motion, and so "process." — Count Timothy von Icarus

The soul is just the form by which living things are the sort of self-organizing, self-determining, self-generating proper wholes that they are. Some (philosophical) conceptions of science do away with any real distinction between living and non-living things (e.g. "everything is just collocations of atoms"), but most do not. "Soul" is broadly consistent with those that do not, and include some sort of principle of life. — Count Timothy von Icarus

‘Soul’ was one term used to translate the Greek ‘psuche’ which lives on as ‘psyche’. ‘Spirit’ originally comes from ‘pneuma’, meaning ‘breath’, or ‘animating principle’. Those terms belong to an earlier world of discourse, but the realities they denote are still real enough. Again, the point of the original post is that through Descartes ‘res cogitans’, ‘mind’ comes to be represented as ‘thinking thing’ or ‘thinking substance’ which I say is an incoherent concept. — Wayfarer

How about trans-men? Is it OK for trans-men to use the men's bathroom or must they use the women's bathroom? — EricH

“However, research shows that transgender people are the ones who face harm from others in these spaces,

So trans women ought to suffer using men's bathrooms, risking being abused, because cis men might pretend to be trans women to use women's bathrooms? That seems unfair. — Michael

presume that philosofical talk has not much to do with details, but everything with the big picture. — Jan