as I said in my re-stack, the problem is more fundamental to this.
No subjectivity can know what it's like to be another subjectivity. And if the feeling of being a gender is stuck within that subjectivity, then it's literally impossible to feel like a thing which you cannot have access to. A person just feels like themselves, and if they think there is a mismatch between that and their body, it is a category error.
Honestly, I don't care if adults don't like their body and want to change it. But this idea of a gender identity is nonsensical from the start, and I'm tired of being called a bigot for being able to think.
I agree entirely with this analysis. It is not only impossible for a man to feel like a woman because he’s only ever experienced being a man, he literally cannot know what it’s like to feel like any other person. This means that when say they “feel like a woman,” they are saying, “I like the external cultural manifestations of women applied to me,” which isn’t a claim that provides any justification for pursuing contested rights claims.
yes, precisely. Any attempt at this must point to external cultural/societal stereotypes, norms, etc to be meaningful, which blows up the whole project of trying to get rid of gender norms.
Yes, this aspect of it all has always struck me as illogical. As a woman, I have no access to the interior subjective experience of a man. When I first heard of transgenderism, i assumed it was reality-based, as in "I feel more comfortable adopting the usual social role and behavior of men, please do me the courtesy of pretending I am a man". Instead the claim is more essential- "I feel like a man, so I am a man".
If I said "I feel like a man" -- which one? There are 4+ billion men on earth. Surely if they have any universal shared "male" quality, it would have to orginate in their actual physical bodies.
Otherwise you'd have to believe in a gendered soul, a sort of free-floating spiritual "maleness". And how would it end up in the not-male body? Is there some kind of giant soul dispensary in the sky with a significant error rate? Dropping pink or blue souls into little baby bodies and occasionally saying "whoops!" ?
This is perhaps the most apt (and funniest) description of the implied beliefs of those in the religious denomination "Gendertarians". I have been genuinely frustrated by these obviously nonsensical beliefs, especially when those who hold them cite medical and academic institutions as a means of warranting these beliefs. At least Christians and other religious people are aware that their religious claims are metaphysical in nature and cannot be asserted as "truth" in the same way we would say, "horses have four legs." Unfortunately, instituational and media capture have resulted in nonsense articles--for example, in Scientific American purporting to prove that "sex is a spectrum", when it does no such thing. The most surprising thing is the credulity with which people on the left have accepted these obviously flawed arguments. I mean, if you want to believe in a giant pink-and-blue soul dispensary in the sky (or its equivalent), I'd be the last person to stand in your way. But to claim that this is "true," and that to disagree with it is a form of oppressive violence, requires a level of credulity and wishful thinking that is hard for me to wrap my head around. It has harmed my own family in a way that has literally reduced me to tears recently. When the people you are arguing with have the certainty of a faith and the rabidness of a cult, there's nothing you can do but hope that reason will eventually bring the world back to order.
And wait, if Scientific American is claiming "sex is a spectrum", are they linking that interior sense of gender to physical variation in how sex is expressed (or incompletely expressed due to chromosomal variation) in the phenotype? If so, wouldn't that refute the idea that gender identity can be self-declared based on subjective reality? Isn't it then truly all about the body?
As Whitman said, "if the body is not the soul, then what is the soul?"
Okay, say more about that. It’s my impression (as a former parish minister, Harvard Divinity, ‘95) that most religious people know the difference between religious/metaphysical claims (“The God of Abraham exists,” e.g., and statements of fact, “That dog has brown fur and brown eyes” and conduct themselves in the public square accordingly. There are certainly exceptions (sometimes entire denominations of exceptions), but I don’t think most religious people in the West think that we should (for example) enshrine Mosaic law legislatively. That’s certainly mostly true in the West, probably slightly less true in the US than in Western Europe. Most religious people, I think, understand that metaphysical/religious statements don’t hold the same weight in public discourse as physical/non-religious statements do. The only reason this is relevant is that I’m making the argument that gender identitarians don’t know that their metaphysical claims should also not hold the same weight as physical/reality-based claims.
The “soul dispensary” descriptor is spot on. We are told that, as a matter of (evidence free) fact, all humans have a gendered essence which can be accidentally decanted into the wrong body. On its face, one of the most ridiculous concepts I’ve ever heard. Yet this nonsense has somehow captured academia, medicine, law and the MSM.
Absolutely correct. If you look at the vast sums spent on this attack on truth , you may understand why it has reached such dangerous levels and why anyone with any decency is virulently attacked as can be seen on this feed. The trans cult feels threatened by truth and like anyone threatened , they attack like crazed idiots. Sometimes even with physical attacks.
I came to the same conclusion sometime back, and then my thinking changed slightly and I understood the entirety of the underlying system, why this arose.
Humans share many behaviors with animals: pair-bonding, altruism. They also share antisocial behaviors, cheating, lying.
Sex mimicry is a form of cheating/lying which occurs with regularity on all major animal groups - fish, birds, cuttlefish, insects, birds, mammals and reptiles.
It is a behavior which evolved to cheat in high sex-competition populations, by lying about the sex of the animal. The males avoid sexual competition and enter female enclaves, and avoid male aggression.
In humans it works the same as all animals - generally men evade male competition and aggression by mimicking females. Many people accept the imitation at face value, both women and men.
Empirically the strategy has measurable effect congruent to observations in all animals. Male sex mimics die of male violence at half the rate of other men. Male sex mimics commit sex crimes at 2x -3x the rate of other males. Thus, they measurable avoid male aggression, and measurably bypass sex competition, the behavior foundation, by cheating and lying.
Hiding the real sex is the point of the mimicry, and humans have complex behavior systems which support hiding sex. Grooming as the opposite sex, wearing clothing which hides genitals and body shape, and insisting in communication that they are the opposite sex. Women in estrus are “hidden” in that their ovulation is not reflected in detected pheromones.
“Gender” is one of an array of communication tools which evolved to hide sex. There are three genders linguistically (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and two sexes (male, female). Males and females can have behavioral traits which are more or less common in the opposite sex - masculine women and feminine men, which have no relationship to sex or sexuality.
Using “gender” simply hides sex linguistically, in communications. Humans don’t have a gender, they have a sex, and they have behaviors. Gender began to be used by psychologists and “transgender” activists (notably Virgina Prince) to refer to the mimicry target. So, a male sexual mimic became a feminine-gendered man, which became a “transgender woman”.
Use of the word gender; gender identify; gendered behavior; transgender; gender “nonconforming”; are all intended simply to hide sex, fabricated by sex mimics to sign their mimicry without admitting sex.
The sex mimic would detest being called a man, admitting male sex, but logically could never admit that they were of the male sex which wills be obviously true, so they were of the female gender.
It is from this that gender has immaterial fiction state similar to ghost, leprechaun, pixie, or titan. One could speak of these beings, assign them behaviors, play them on stage, but they are not real.
A person can mimic the opposite sex, but they are no more the opposite sex than the actor in “The Ghost and Mrs Muir” is a ghost.
So to make sure I understand, that would mean that saying to a trans woman "I don't believe in transgender identity" is like saying to a believer "I don't think that god exist", right ? The argument is on the concept itself (of god, of gender identify), the person making that kind of statement doesn't question who the believer is or claim to be, correct ?
That would be different if a person would say "I don't believe you are a believer", right ? Because that would mean this person would be trying to define what the other person is or is not. Which is what allowed the Inquisition and its consequences for example.
I really enjoy conceptual conversations, my issue is, especially with "gender identity", that it has very much non-conceptual consequences, like murder for example.
Another question could be : does gender in itself pass the conceptual validity ?There are a bunch of beliefs attached to what being a man and being a woman is and means, which also have very concrete consequences, for example women being paid roughly 20% less than men for the same job.
Detaching concepts from real materialistic consequences is nice.... When you're/we're not the one(s) enduring the consequences.
In the end, I guess I whish we could be above and beyond gender. And maybe, just maybe, the trans community making people reflect on what is a "man", a "woman", starting with gender identify is a step in that direction.
Some people are very much attached to that piece if their identify, whether cis or trans. So be it. It doesn't take anything away from anyone. But it gives to some better life conditions. And by better I mean less difficult, not in a send of "more".
Thanks for your reply. One of the primary differences between the implicit philosophies behind this argument (empiricism vs. postmodernism, for lack of better labels) regards the view that truth or falsity exists entirely separately from the people who hold the belief or the implications for them. The empiricist (which I am) believes that concepts are true or false only insofar as they correspond to reality, and that any implications (material, emotional, or otherwise) on any believer are entirely beside the point. If the truth hurts my feelings, it is my perspective that should be adjusted to accommodate the truth. In this view, it is never to anyone's advantage to deny reality, as that can rarely be beneficial to anyone in the long run. To a postmodernist, reality is socially constructed. It has no conditioning external referent, which is why the common claim "sex and gender are different!" in these conversations is predicated on the postmodern position and entirely begs the question. However, it's essential to recognize that both of these are philosophical positions with numerous adherents, and much of the conversation these days (particularly online) assumes the postmodern position — as if empiricism is a discredited, outdated notion, rather than the de facto philosophical position of over 90% of humanity.
So, to address your specific examples: If people are murdered because of some belief, the problem is with the murder (and the murderer) and not the belief. Suppose the social consequences of being a woman are disadvantageous. In that case, we need to advocate for changing those circumstances based on fairness, not "queer the binary" between men and women to merely pretend the differences don't exist. There are differences, but insofar as the implications are social and unfair, it makes more sense to address the reality of these implications, rather than erasing the reality of being male or female.
I am very much in favor of detaching any social requirements of being from a person's sex. I want people to be able to dress as they wish, act as they wish, and so on. After all, I grew up in the era I consider the "great androgyny", where our musicians (David Bowie, Annie Lennox, Adam Ant, Grace Jones, Duran Duran) blurred a lot of gender expectations--but what made them sexy was that they were still men and women, but had the confidence to play with the social signifiers. But once someone makes a claim about reality, such as "I am a man/woman and I insist you agree with this statement of fact," they involve others in a discussion of their claims. At that point, we move from the private (I believe my inner essence is female and wish to act as if I am a woman) to the public/social (I want you to agree that my inner essence is female in a way that the word "woman" applies to me).
In a liberal society, the burden of persuasion is always on the person requesting agreement, not the person who has not been persuaded. And the argument "But my life would be better if you agreed with me" is never persuasive (by itself) to an empiricist. Almost everyone who holds false beliefs would be happier if we'd agree with them. However, there is no ethical principle that requires (or even privileges) agreeing with people who hold beliefs that they haven't sufficiently proven, based merely on their personal happiness.
There may be things a person doesn't feel sufficiently strongly about to make a social concession (using preferred pronouns, for example, or not arguing the point when someone makes a declarative religious statement that seems to assume agreement...in this way, using preferred prounouns is the difference between, when someone tells you, "God loves you!", saying "I don't beleive in God, what are you on about," and mentally rolling your eyes and saying "thank you." But just because one values the social cohesion enough not to make it a point of contention doesn't imply a concession to the existence of God.
I see what you mean, and thanks for taking the time to answer my comment. I guess I'm "one (who) values the social cohesion enough not to make it a point of contention" : if a trans woman say "I'm a woman", and someone else dosn't believe that to be true, they could say "sure", and move on.
You mention a key point though about "truth" and "reality". What is truth ? What is reality ?
If one believe that concept are true "in the ether" so to speak, ie, on their own, without considering their impact on how they afftect our perception of reality, and, the other way around, ie how our perception of reality affect how we engage with concepts, it feels there is potential for huge blind spots. The exemple I'm thinking about might not be the most relevant one but think about light : before we had more sophisticated machines, we didn't know the whole electromagnetic frequencies, above and beyond infra red and ultra violet. Because of our human nature, our eyes could only perceive certain aspect of "reality", certain aspect of light, therefore of "truth." And what I may call "truth" might be in fact... not true.
Now, I'm thinking : would you be more enclined to make a difference between male/female and men/women ? There would still be a challenge with intersex people though, and that there is in fact no strict scientific definitions valid 100% of the time to define these things, but still, that would encompass quite a lot of being. That could be slightly challenging for some to consider female/men, or male/women, but... why not ? I mean, before white western chritians conolonization, those "concepts" were not an issue in some places. People were having different experiences of reality, and although my experience might not be the same (and as you mentionned, it can never be) I can have enough humility to say "I know that I don't know". Are the empirist the ones in Plato's cave, or are the "post modernists" those looking at the shadows projected on the wall ?
I guess this is a fear of mine, when some claim to know the Truth (usually with a capital T), or that even Truth can be known, once and for all. This is what leads to dogmantism. And there is to me as much dogmatism on one side or the other : some say "the issue lies with individuals" (not adjusting their perception to (what me, myself and I call) "reality"), others say "the issue is with systems" (which people more positively affected by the system and whose reality and experience is obviously different, can't or won't necessarily see and accept as true as well).
To a degree, it seems it boils down to the chiken and egg metaphore (and yes, I know I'm streching things a bit).
“I am very much in favor of detaching any social requirements of being from a person's sex. I want people to be able to dress as they wish, act as they wish, and so on.”
I’m pretty sure you do not literally mean this. The “act as they wish” part in particular.
Otherwise you are saying you thinking males should be free to participate in women’s sports.
Clearly, in this context, that is not what I mean. I mean, "people should be able to act as they wish as long as they don't trample the rights of others." If a man wants to wear a dress, fine. A woman wants to wear a suit — no problem. If adults want to take cross-sex hormones because they have been diagnosed with gender/body dysphoria--who am I to judge? But that doesn't mean they *are* the sex they want to be/imagine that they are, and it doesn't mean they get to invade the rights of the opposite sex. And this is why they object. What the TRAs want is for us to pretend they really are what they imagine themselves to be. We must insist that reality is the primary factor in allocating rights.
But your second sentence I quoted is almost verbatim how the activists/advocates would frame *their* position.
*They* want to be able to “act as they wish”.
The fact that it infringes on the rights of others being immaterial to them (being charitable) or part of the point (being less charitable to those of them who are woke oppressor-oppressed ideologues).
I agree with much of this, actually. You have to separate the project of postmodernist feminism/deconstruction (e.g., conceiving of gender as a linguistic/aesthetic signifier) from the biomedical concept of sex (e.g, female or male or intersex with corresponding chromosomes and genitals). Trying to biomedicalize transness was always an incoherent project for this reason: “gender dysphoria” is impossible if gender has no inherent characteristics. I don’t think trans people have done OURselves any favors turning to psychiatry to define us—often using the rhetoric that corrective medicine and hormones will “save our lives.”
I differ from you in that I am a Constructionist. I don’t believe that my femaleness has most of the inherent characteristics people ascribe to female, and I don’t believe that necessarily makes me dysphoric. I am a butch lesbian; pretty androgynous, homosexual, and I’ve even considered taking exogenous cross-sex hormones. I accept that linguistically and socially, this makes me fit many people’s definition of “transgender,” just as being female makes me fit many people’s definition of “woman.” That’s why I accept any third-person pronouns others choose for me.
The “gender critical” brigade needs to accept that people are going to use the available language to describe themselves and androgynous/homosexual/gender-non-conforming people in 2025 are going to use the words and concepts of trans and nonbinary, regardless of whether that makes sense to you or not.
"The “gender critical” brigade needs to accept that people are going to use the available language to describe themselves and androgynous/homosexual/gender-non-conforming people in 2025 are going to use the words and concepts of trans and nonbinary, regardless of whether that makes sense to you or not."
But this is exactly my argument. Language is intended to communicate, and words get their meaning from use, meanings from usefulness. You can call yourself anything you want, but if you are using language in a way that is incoherent to your interlocutors, all you're doing is confusing them and calling attention to yourself (the goal of much of the "trans" community). The sentence "I am a woman" has always meant, from time immemorial and in all languages, "I'm an adult human female". It refers to empirical biological reality, not internal experience. The fact that people have convinced themselves that it's okay not to use language the way it's always been used will only disadvantage them, not the rest of the world, which continues as always. If "non-binary" has no empirical referent —only a sense of whether one "feels" like other people seem to appear to be—a sense of whether one "feels" like a man or a woman is of almost no use to anyone.
OK, I'll take a shot. First of all, when the gender concept was invented, it had nothing to do with trans, it was a cis feminist idea, that sex and gender are different. It was noticed, that biological sex does not determine those socially constructed gender roles like who has long hair, who wears make-up, who cooks dinner. It is possible to be a long-haired man who likes to cook.
So the trans stuff is taking it one step further. That it is possible to be a biological sex man and yet a social gender woman, by basically adopting all the elements of the social woman gender, like long hair, make-up, skirts.
So no we do not have two categories, woman and man, but four: bioman, socioman, biowoman, sociowoman. Plus all the intermediate like NB cases.
It is also possible to do body modification, this is where the terminology gets a little strange, taking pills to grow breast is certainly a biological process, but does not change the biological sex, so it is considered part of the social gender. I admit this is confusing, but as a philosopher you should notice that reality come first and words come second, sometimes a new thing happens and we do not have the correct terminology for it. Taking pills to grow breasts, in my words, would be a biologically-induced accessory to a social gender. Maybe this is not the best terminology.
The terminology is not clear yet, because biological things like taking hormone pills exist, and yet they do not change biological sex. So we categorize this as social gender, but this might be a primitive, early, categorization that will change in the future. We might introduce 4-5 future categories. A third category, presentation is already there. I admit that confuses me too. This clearly needs more work in the future.
I am deep down a Buddhist, so in the deep sense I do not believe in any kind of identity, there is no real self, everything about us constantly changes, so it is pointless to talk what what is the real essence of the real self, the identity. Basically all identities are made up, but the point is that trans identities are no more made up than the usual kinds of identities, cis, biological sex, nationality, race, religion etc.
Another way to look at it is that identity is plain simply just group membership. You choose your team. You can identify as a Catholic today and a Protestant tomorrow. But team membership has conditions. The Protestant or Catholic team will not accept atheists for example. Similarly, Bob can be born a man and then identify as a woman, that is, join the woman team. But this has conditions, like, taking pills to grow breasts.
Thank you for taking the time to respond, but I don't think you quite got my point.
The question we want to answer is this: Does a person's internal sense of "gender identity," which some people claim to have, provide *any* conceptual justification for ignoring biological sex (or even considering "gender identity") in disputed rights claims?
First, the separation of sex and gender is an overvalued idea. The fact that people aren't socially deterministic concerning sex is true but trivial. Thus, because social roles are not binary, there's no justification for your truth table regarding social roles. Biological sex is overwhelmingly binary, but social roles are, in fact, highly variable along many different axes: likes to cook? 1-10 scale. Likes to wear dresses? 1-10 scale. So we don't get the 4 classifications you suggest, we get infinite classifications, and none of them speak to the question of "being a woman," only liking certain things that have traditionally been associated with activities done by people who are of the female sex. So *all* of this requires biological sex to make any sense at all.
So the idea of "gender" just doesn't stand up under any consistent criticism. Gender is either:
1) Social roles, but they aren't special because we have lots of social roles that don't *make* us anything but people who gravitate toward certain things.
2) An internal sense of a sexed soul, which is really the topic of my article, and which doesn't go anywhere because of its conceptual problems from an epistemological and social sciences methodology perspective.
3) The quality of being masculine or feminine, which again requires an association with sexed people as its background fact.
4) A psychological construction that is embedded in one's psyche as the result of how one is treated in society.
None of these provides us any reason for imagining that we should prefer (or even consider) "gender" over sex for the arbitration of contested rights claims. Those rights claims range from the right to privacy (I" don't want men in the ladies") or safety and fairness ("men shouldn't play in the same sports leagues with women"), to more social/etiquette-related questions ("I don't believe your claim to be a woman, so I should have the right to use the prounouns that are consonant with my freedom of conscience"). They are not trivial questions and they are very much determined by how we think about what "man" and "woman" mean.
Finally, the example of picking a religion is different to choosing an "identity" with a material component. The word "Christian" means "a person who believes in the religion of (or about) Jesus of Nazareth". The only requirement of the common usage of the word is a certain kind of belief. When people (99.9% of the people worldwide and historically) use the words "man" and "woman," (or their cognates, which every language has: homem e mulher, hombre y mujer, homme et femme, Mann und Frau, uomo e donna, мужчина и женщина, άνδρας και γυναίκα, erkek ve kadın) they *don't* mean "people who play the social roles associated with people who have male or female sex" or "people who perform gendered activities", they instead mean "people who materially manifest reporductively as male or females as adult humans". Where people got this crazy idea that sometime around 2014, something happened and the meanings of two of the most stable words in every language changed, I have no idea. Did Judith Butler throw a switch in her Berkeley apartment that destabilized meanings and the way words are used? Of course not...that's crazy. So, the point here is that we mean things when we use words, and when we use the words "man" and "woman", we do not mean "people who think they are men/women" or "people who would like to be men/women" or "people who identify as men/women". So it is essentially different from using a religious descriptor, which has (often) only a belief as the necessary and sufficient conditions for usage.
This whole thing is semantical nonsense. Also, the constant need to "prove" you are not a "bigot" is telling. Let's say I agree with you, for argument, what is the prescription? Is it any difference than the people who are bigots, and proudly so, want to carry out? You will find plenty of people online who will agree with you on this and say the same thing about any other queer identity. They would also like to overturn Obergefell and keep Roe V Wade overturned. What is the point of all this needless hand wringing and word defining? Wouldn't it be so much easier to simply come out and say "I hate this group of people and I would like the government to stamp them out". It would be a lot more honest
One of the more infuriating aspects of trans rights extremists is their absolute certainty that if you don't agree with them, you hate them and (according to them) favor trans genocide. No heartfelt denial or expressions of support seem to dissuade you all from thinking that because we don't agree that thinking you're a woman doesn't make you a woman means we hate you. I'm not sure how that logic even gets into your head.
I'm not sure what "semantical" means, but I think you're not actually listening to what people like me and JK Rowling are saying. What you call someone is not purely semantic because it has real-world implications for how we adjudicate contested rights claims. The reason that the T is fundementally different to the LG and B is because the difference between "I love people of the same sex and deserve all the rights to employment, housing, and family formation as people who love the opposite sex" and "Because I feel that my "gender identity" doesn't match my physical body, I deserve to be treated in the real world as if I was the sex that matches with my internal identity" is vast. If Ts were merely asking for rights to employment, housing, and marriage (which they generally already have, with exceptions), I and 95% of the gender sceptics would agree wholeheartedly that they shouldn't be denied equal rights because they think their body doesn't match their souls. But that's not what's being demanded. They are asking to be included in the category that matches their gender identity, which is either purely subjective or entirely ficitive. The difference between "I love people of the same sex" and "I am a member of the opposite sex" is plain to anyone with a modicum of logical analysis skills. Those who claim to be the same are being willfully blind to its implications.
Yes, there are people who would like to can Obergefell and keep Roe overturned, and yes, some of those people don't think we should give extra rights to trans people. That's entirely beside the point, though. We debate issues based on facts, evidence, and logic, rather than who holds those beliefs or what other beliefs they may have. There's a name for focusing on the person and not the argument: it's the ad hominem fallacy. Now, the philosophical grounding of queer theory and trans theory (etc.), Critical Theory is generally what would happen if you created a philosophy entirely out of the ad hominem fallacy. However, for those who still hold the values of logic and evidence as the foundational characteristics of belief, it is understood that one cannot judge an idea based on who holds it. The Nazis were snappy dressers and thought the trains should run on time, but even though they were as evil as people could be, that doesn't mean we should reject sartorial excellence and timely mass transit.
1. I really don't care what JK Rowling has to say about anything. I would only ask for her advice if I wanted to name a character in a comically racist way or create a comically racist depiction of different minorities
2. You can hate it all you want, you stand side by side with Trump, Nigel Farage, Matt Walsh, Nick Fuentes, and other great leader of fascist thought. If that makes you mad you can decide to not stand next to them and start saying things that arent indistinguishable from their vitriolic rhetoric.
3. There is a difference between agreeing with the Nazis for their taste in fashion (I disagree but that's subjective I guess) and the timeliness of their trains (their trains did not run on time btw, that was propaganda that you fell for, it seems to be a pattern) and agreeing with them on their views of different groups of people. In case you were unaware, the first books the third Reich started burning were some of the first research done on trans people. I'm sure you would have been right there warming yourself at that fire, and wouldn't start speaking up until they started bringing other books.
4. I guess the main problem I have with your original argument is that it can be applied broadly to other groups, you just don't. There's nothing "objective" about being gay, and if you wanted to, using your logic, you could make an argument that it's not biologically normal or rooted in reality (something the right loves to do). You could also use your logic to dismiss a wide array of mental illness because there is no "empirical" way to determine how a person really "feels". The problem is, if you were to take that logic to its conclusion you really would sound no different from the right you claim you are so different from. I'm just asking you to be intellectually honest, stop pretending like you're above the theocrats and the nationalists, you employ the exact same rhetoric as them and only disagree when it applies to a group you see as "valid"
And this, friends, is why people should take logic, critical thinking, and research methods, and not critical theory.
All you've done here is repeat yourself with more inflammatory language. You haven't addressed any of the substantive points I made, and you're simply reiterating that you're right. I'm not impressed. I would have failed you in my intro to critical thinking course.
This is pointless, I have a habit of getting into such arguments. I'm going to log off. I did address your points but it's whatever, this is obviously going to be fruitless. I will continue to protect my trans friends and you will continue to come after them. I really wish you could see you are at best aiding and abetting fascism, because it is what you are substantially doing.
You seriously don’t see the essential logical difference between “I love people of the same sex and there is no justification for denying me universal human rights on that basis” and “I believe I literally *am* a member of the opposite sex and thus deserve the rights of that class based on a material counterfactual”? You confuse yourself with talk about who believes things and get distracted with facts about Nazis, but miss the essence of what I’m saying. If you can’t see the difference between “I love” and “I am,” you lack the analytical skills to have this discussion.
James, I wonder if our views of transsexuality are following in the path of our views of homosexuality. Homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness until it was dropped from the DSM in the 1970s. Evidence from neurology and genetics backed up the claim that homosexuality is a natural occurrence in humans and other animals. Might we discover someday the solid medical evidence that transsexuality is also a natural variation in humans? I, for one, would like such medical studies to be pursued.
Stephen, I see where you are coming from, but I think there are entirely different trajectories of the rights claims of LGB people and trans people. I know that there is one study with an N=24 that suggests that some trans women have brains that trend more toward female than typical male brains. That doesn't warrant the claims of trans radical activists, however. The problem with the trans rights argument as currently constituted is that previous civil rights movements made the following claim: there is no reason to deny the same rights that (white, male, straight) people have to (black/brown, female, gay/lesbian/bisexual) people with regard to employment, housing, and (ultimately) marriage. The argument was that denying rights to these protections could by no means be justified by a person's skin color, sex, or sexuality, and these are very convincing arguments. They are based on shared humanity and common expectations of rights.
This is very much *not* what trans radical activists are saying. Instead, they are saying that their ineffable, interior sense of "gender identity" should give them the rights of people with that sex. It's not an argument about shared humanity and shared rights, but of mystical transubstantiation of the physical by means of the mental/spiritual. They are not, as previous civil rights movements have asked, to be treated like every other person and given the right to equal treatment in employment, housing, and marriage. To the degree that people are arguing for that, no one on the "gender identity sceptical" side would oppose those rights for adults. I know I certainly don't. I suspect there are people on the right wing who are arguing against such rights, and insofar as that's true, I would stand with trans people every day of the week.
But TRAs are instead insisting on being treated as something (the opposite sex), for which there is no empirical evidence. They are asking to self-identify into the civil rights of a group they don't belong to based on the fiction that their gendered soul justifies this.
So, even if we were to be able to prove something biological (like the brain studies) that made them somewhat more like the opposite sex, it would still not make them the opposite sex in a way that would justify the rights claims they are insisting on. Only *actually* being that sex would do that, which is exactly the problem we are faced with.
Thanks for your detailed response, James. Forgive me if you've addressed these issues elsewhere, as I just discovered and subscribed to your Substack. What are your thoughts on the fraught issues surrounding trans people, in particular, use of restrooms, participation in sports, and imprisonment? If you've already written on these issues, please point me to that writing.
I always have questions about Intersex individuals when I happen upon critical discourse about whether “gender identity” exists or not.
Intersex as defined as: Conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either “male” or “female.”
They are a small part of the population in the US
{roughly 0.018% or 2 out of every 10,000 births} but nonetheless an existing part of the population, whose biology is inconsistent with or cannot be categorized as “male” or “female.”
So if at the biological level these folks are inconsistent with or cannot be categorized as “female” or “male,” what are they then?
They might? But those are judgments that say "does my inner self feel like people in group (X) or group (y) seem to feel/appear to feel." First, you can never know that, regardless. We can only know our own experience and the phenomenon of other people's experience. Second, it has no metaphysical grounding. Gender identity ultimately resolves to statements about whether one relates to the cultural manifestation of one's sex. That is just a social issue, not one of meaning, linguistics, or metaphysics. Playing with Barbies doesn't make one a woman. Finally, even if we were to say, "in this particular case, we are going to let this person pick how they want to be seen in the world," that would have no real implications. If we treat the person at the insane asylum as if he really *is* Napoliean, it doesn't make him any more Napoleon than he was before we started treating him that way.
Can't you make that same argument about identity (self-concept)? Aren't all identity categories free floating and self-authenticating? Isn't that the idea?
Am I funny? The concept completely lacks validity. It cannot be shown to measure what it claims to because what it claims to measure is an unverifiable metaphysical assertion—a subjective sense of being funny. It's like trying to operationalize the concept of a "ghost" by asking people if they believe in ghosts. Their belief is real, but the idea of the ghost remains without a valid empirical referent.
Gender Identity doesn't need a empirical referent because it's a quality/property, right? How much a person exhibits, enacts, internalizes manness or womanness.
This is why I wish people actually took philosophy and logic rather than critical theory. Did you actually try to understand what I was saying, or were you just trying to come up with a sophistic counterargument?
It's simple. The question we are trying to answer is this: Is "feeling" like a woman a sufficient condition for inclusion in the set "women"? Is the proposition Fx -> Wx where F=="Feels like a woman" and W=="Is a woman" true? Of course not. Nor does how much a person "exhibits, enacts, or internalizes" "manness or womanness" (whatever is meant by that circularity). What determines whether an individual is included in the set of "woman" or "man" is a matter of material reality, not internal desire or feeling.
Just like "feeling" funny isn't sufficient for inclusion in the set of "funny people". You actually have to be funny. Wishing yourself to be funny is not only not a sufficient condition for being funny, it's not even a necessary condition. That's the whole point of this entire argument. Critical Theory seeks to complicate this further, but that only serves to obscure a truth we are all aware of: truth is a function of correspondence to material reality, regardless of occasional edge cases where it's difficult to determine with certainty.
Remember that huge part of global human diversity that got whiped out during the colonial genocides, those declared nonhuman since not baptised, go ask them, then enjoy diving into some extensive nonbiased antropological research of yr own, as suggested earlier ...
The Ukit people of Borneo have gender roles every bit as much as the west does. They are not as hierarchical, but that’s entirely beside the point. I didn't say there aren't less hierarchical societies, I said every society has gender roles. It amuses me how the people who are so sure they are the good people are the first ones to start calling names and putting down the people who disagree with them. Once you start impugning someone’s character just because they disagree with you—you’ve lost the argument.
Sad you see conversations as arguments to win or lose, utter waste of communicative potential, while ya seem to miss just how condescending yr overall attitude gets because of it, animist societies practice fluidity without gendernormification, takes stepping out to see ...
From condescending to slightly pathetic yet still condescending, while staying stuck in viewing communication as a conflict zone, sad to see, I never asked for belief, neither does Life, try for a narrative without ennemies, it ‘s more fun as well as funktional …
This is one of the most spectacular examples (such as I can decode it) of the self-sealing fallacy. "If there's no evidence for this claim, it's because it was all wiped (!) out, so that just proves that the claim is true!" So, this is a thing that you believe because you believe it, not because there is compelling evidence in favor of it.
Yr selfassigned superiority in all things intellectual is the only selfsealing fallacy at play here, as said twice before, do yr own antropological research if it actually interests ya more than as a little hill to shout from, start with Redmond O'Hanlon's experiences with the headhunters of Borneo, & rest assured, yr high horse is treadbare & starving, time to dismount ...
What bugs the discussion in my experience is an inherent reliance on an idea of gender that is then put to question, similar to how an “antifacist” claim of identity needs “fascism” as a supporting idea, regardless of attitude of selfascribed “superiority” which often sits on both sides, as such it puzzles me why “trans” is boxed in as “swapping gendernorms” rather than a transcendance of any normativity when it comes to personal experience, indeed the androginous stance is more of a liberating statement than trying to challenge normativity by laying claim to it, in many tribal animist societies the concept of gender is absent & fluidity of expression along with physical experience & partnering is natural …
While I suspect your claim of the absence of gender norms among tribal societies might be falling prey to the "noble savage" archetype (gender norms are a pretty universal part of human experience, though the expression of those norms varies greatly), I entirely agree that we should be preaching liberation from gender norms rather than reasoning that because one doesn't adhere or "identify" with those norms, that this has some kind of metaphysical implications. I often say that my people (early GenX) were peak androgynous. We had a lot of gender-bending in both directions. And what's more...it was hot. Much of the "nonbinary" culture seems to border on Maoist-enforced neutrality rather than a playful engagement of gender expression. David Bowie and Annie Lennox never thought they were anything but what they were: smoking hot humans who knew that playing with the norms is fun. Thinking that somehow Bowie was a woman or Annie was a man because he wore a dress and she wore a suit makes my soul hurt.
Gendernorms are anything but universal, that 's a colonising projection under the assumption that judgemental minds hold the monopoly on culture, & a sad one at that, similar to noble savage constructs that evade the longstanding traumas still resonating inda west since naturebased matriarchic cultures were overrun by the highly leadpoisoned, & as such void of empathic ability, romans, laying claim to all them stole & calling it peace when evry chance of free culture was eradicated. The idea of nobility in western society has been overshadowed by the ease of snobbery, yet that doesn't imply other cultures have no sense of ethics, morality, actual compassion as in sharing the passions of Life, ... Plenty anthropological experiences to go through if you care for the subject ...
Basically, “ gender identity” is based on a lie that people can change their sex, that people can be “ born in the wrong body “ a ridiculous assertion , that infants are” assigned “ their sex ( conflated wit gender) at birth. Everything in this ideology goes against all that is real and truthful. The gender ideology is a dangerous concept that is trying to destroy civilization.
This is why any criticism of their beliefs is met with such extreme hostility: “ You are a transphobe who doesn’t want us to exist!” “You are Nazi scum!”
Language has been made up by them to confer power , as all authoritarians know.
This dangerous ideology must be stopped before it destroys all decency and all truth.
I don't disagree with you; these people are putting a terrible strain on and/or pressure on civil society by insisting on being treated in a way that is contrary to material reality. What you seem to imply is that the burden of "kindness and decency" falls upon the person who privileges material reality over internal whim, rather than upon the person who is insisting that *everyone* who comes in contact with them either agrees with their weird epistemology or lies about it to them. (Even worse, in the case of pronoun declarations, they require that person to lie to *everyone else*, as well). There are plenty of things we don't do just because it would make someone happy, if it's pragmatically detrimental or counter to reality. Why shouldn't we insist that "trans" people should be kind and decent to the people around them by learning to live in the real world with the rest of us?
But there's a middle way that was historically very workable in the LGB(T) community. The issue isn't asking to be *treated* as a woman, it's the insistence that one *is* a woman (or the opposite, or neither). The problem is the metaphysical insistence that one's intuition *makes* one a woman (etc). We always treated transexuals with a fair amount of deference insofar as they called themselves by a different name, used opposite-sex pronouns, etc. The problem is with the declaration that "I *am* a woman!" (clearly false in any fact-based epistemology) or "I *demand* you use the opposite sex pronouns!". Real transexualism is a rare disorder (a term I use advisedly). I think most people would be glad to call Bob "Becky" or Sheila "Seamus" if it weren't dressed up as an ideological demand, a lifestyle choice, and/or a demand for compliance in the rest of one's interactions (with pronouns). A healthy person doesn't worry about what pronouns others use when speaking about them. As I've often heard it said, what other people think of us is none of our business. To place a significant contingency on one's happiness on how other people think of you is unbalanced.
So, no, I reject your framing. It is kinder and more decent to insist that most people who are not suffering from an extreme pathology live in the real world, live their lives in line with material reality, and, if that requires some work on that front, that's okay. A lot of people have mental illnesses that they need to work their way through. It's not unkind to insist that they do so rather than making the rest of the world participate in their delusion. And for the people who are suffering thus, that should be very few people, and there would be no question that everyone is acting *as if*; their belief in their "gender identity" is not normative.
Certainly not. It's the default epistemology of empiricism and science. I was hoping someone might take up this line of thinking, because it's egregiously naive in its understanding of the philosophy at question.
1) It's not that subjective self-report isn't helpful or informative; it's that the metaphysical claim made about gender identity isn't supported by it. If you claim, "I'm depressed," you are claiming a subjective state, not a metaphysical claim. When we talk about personality, we are saying, "we can measure some aspects of personality because they have consistent, measurable meaning over time." We are not making a metaphysical claim about personalities. It's the move from "claim about internal state" to "claim about metaphysical reality" that is precisely at question here, and which is not supported. And, at the risk of sounding dismissive, there is no "cross-cultural, historical consistency of gender dysphoria". There are cross-cultural and historical examples of gender nonconformity, but in none of these cases has the claim been made that the subjects of such nonconformity are literally the opposite sex, or that there was such a thing as gender identity.
2) As for your comment about psychology, it makes phenomenal predications based on evidence, all of which are very much contingent.. It's taken decades of research to establish any predictive value to the big-5 personality traits, and psychologists make no metaphysical statements about the reality of those traits. But there's been *no* equivalent research on gender identity. Seriously, that's part of what I'm saying. It seems like the idea of gender identity sprang in full bloom in the fevered minds of teenagers on Tumblr, and we've seen vanishingly little actual empirical research on it in the decade since (at least partially because anyone who tried would lose their jobs if they didn't come up with the right answer. Just ask Laura Lippman.
3) This is nothing but the appeal to authority fallacy. All of these (or their equivalent) organizations thought that homosexuality was a disease, that lobotomies were good first-line treatment for depression, and that opiates weren't addictive if prescribed for real pain. These organizations have developed these ideas ideologically, without valid research, because the research does not exist. I keep hoping someone will point me toward an article that says gender identity exists. The only thing I've ever seen has an N=24 study that suggests that some trans women's brains tend toward looking more like women's brains than non-trans men's brains. This is not a science that has reached a consensus; this is a case of ideological capture, and it's not the first time it has happened.
4) So you are saying that identity is beyond the questioning of epistemology? Should anyone be able to claim any identity that they want? Because I believe that is your opinion. My brother's 10-year-old has two classmates who claim to have fox identities. I'm not lying. This is where this epistemology leads.
But you are wrong about the further implications of "applied consistently". The application I'm referring to involves shifting from claims about internal states to claims about metaphysical reality, that is all. This doesn't undermine claims about consciousness because we can measure consciousness and make predictions based on an understanding of it. If you reread my article, I'm saying only two things: 1) The idea of "gender identity" is insufficiently defined to be the object in empricial study and 2) Because of this, it cannot be operationalized and it can make no measurements or predictions. Therefore, it is not a well-constructed category. This may explain why so little actual research has been done about it.
Finally, philosophical positions are not metaphysical entities, so I'm wondering if you misunderstood the entire issue here.
> “On metaphysical vs. subjective claims: What makes claiming "I am a woman" metaphysical, while claiming "I am depressed" is merely subjective?”
>
I feel like you’re not trying here. One says “I feel X” and the other says “I am X”. One is a subjective category that we can’t really question (except by virtue of coherence testing), the other is a statement of reality that can be tested by looking to the real world.
"Both involve the relationship between internal experience and external categories. You note personality traits have "measurable meaning over time," but don't longitudinal studies show gender identity also demonstrates consistency over time? Why is temporal consistency evidence for personality but not gender identity?"
No, as I pointed out, the research on gender identity is almost entirely absent. Gender identity has only been a topic for (most reasonably) 10 years and perhaps (if we really push the definition) 30 years. However, there’s almost no real research due to the methodological problems I pointed out in my original post.
"On historical evidence: You claim no historical cultures asserted people were "literally the opposite sex," but aren't you applying modern biological frameworks anachronistically?"
You are engaging in exactly the kind of theoretical colonialism you are trying to accuse me of. By putting modern (postmodern) “trans” labels on people who were merely gender-nonconforming, you are trying to fit what other peoples were doing into a Butlerian framework.
> "How do you account for cultures with recognized third/fourth gender categories (hijra, fa'afafine, Two-Spirit) that clearly weren't merely about nonconformity but involved distinct social and spiritual identities?"
>
Again with the postmodern gender colonialism. This is ex post facto reasoning, trying desperately to prove that somehow Butler, et al, or the term “trans” describes gender-nonconformity in other cultures. However, this is exactly the problem I pointed out in my original post. “Gender identity” isn’t a meaningful concept because it doesn’t measure, and it doesn’t predict. Because it is so poorly defined, you can try to claim that somehow other cultures have 3rd/4th gender identities, but this is a case of beginning the question. These cultures didn’t conceptualize them as anything but men and women who play different social roles. My whole point is that playing a different social role has no import. These cultures didn’t consider themselves differently sexed, so to do so is to assume the very thing you are trying to prove. And it all goes back to the lack of rigor in the concept of “gender identity”. The whole point is that I reject Butler’s ideas about “performativity” because it’s not an empirically or linguistically supportable perspective (and I think even she would agree because that’s not her goal).
“On institutional authority: Here you make the classic unfalsifiable move: any evidence contradicting your position must result from "ideological capture." But if major medical institutions can be dismissed when they reach conclusions you disagree with, how do we distinguish genuine scientific consensus from ideological capture? Ironically, you mention these institutions once endorsed lobotomies and pathologized homosexuality. Isn't the fact they changed positions based on evolving evidence an argument for their epistemic reliability? You invoke "empiricism and science" while dismissing the empirical work of actual scientists and clinicians. If institutional science can always be dismissed as "ideologically captured," aren't you claiming only your interpretation of empiricism counts?”
These would be reasonable objections if the positions of these organizations were based on peer-reviewed research. They are not. I have read every paper anyone has ever pointed me toward that claimed to support the idea of gender identity. Not one of them has done anything like what was claimed for it. There really is a shocking lack of research on these ideas. Moreover, every meta-study that has examined the claims of applied gender ideology has shown them to be more or less useless in supporting those claims. It’s not transphobia that caused the governments of the UK, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands to commission systematic reviews of pediatric gender medicine, for example, and to find that none of the claims made for those approaches had any evidence to speak of. This is why I say these organizations are in the midst of ideological capture. In the lack of evidence, they have instead made these recommendations that are consistently shown not to be true. However, instead of asking themselves, “geez, maybe we should rethink this whole gender identity thing,” the gender ideologues have engaged in character assassination, doxxing, threats, and the like. The whole reaction to the Cass report, for example, should be a case study in what happens when people are more concerned with ideology than evidence, and what happens when organizations become ideologically captured. I expect that, as you point out, there will be a process of walking back all of the claims of gender ideology over the next 10 years or so. We’re seeing it already with the first wave of detransitioners. I don’t think we’re going to need to wait long for the correction to happen.
“On consciousness being "measurable": You claim consciousness can be measured and predicted but how is this different from gender dysphoria, which also shows measurable neural correlates, behavioral patterns, and predictive treatment outcomes? Your "fox identity" example suggests a slippery slope, but this avoids engaging with the substantial clinical literature on gender dysphoria as a distinct phenomenon. Isn't your epistemology becoming self-defeating when it must dismiss all contradicting institutional evidence as ideological?”
You are claiming so much more for the evidence than is warranted. I have to imagine that you are trying to prove a point and not arrive at the truth. Just for a moment, I want to put myself in the shoes of a disinterested skeptic. Instead of trying desperately to prove that gender identity is real and people can be “born into the wrong body,” start from the position that nothing that hasn’t been conclusively proved should be believed anything more than provisionally. Then, take every single study you think proves gender identity and try to knock methodological holes in it, because that’s what good scientists do. You will find that the science for gender identity is *dismal*. It doesn’t do what you are claiming for it. Even the most charitable readings of the research (real, empirical research, not postmodern qualitative “research”) lead to the fact that there are some brain structures that, in a small study, yielded some vaguely directional findings. That’s it. There’s not this decades-long emergent consensus based on methodologically sound research. There’s a small number of papers, written (generally) by demonstrable ideologues, that don’t warrant the broad claims made by the gender identity movement.
Finally, and I mean this sincerely: I started looking into this issue because someone I love claims to be non-binary. I assumed that she knew something I didn’t know, or that I just had to look into this, and I’d understand. I *wanted to* understand. I wanted to be able to go, “Oh, okay, that makes sense. They/them it is.” I was motivated to be charitable. And I continue to hope that I will be proved wrong because it would make my life so much easier if I thought gender identity was anything but a chimera.
But I can’t. I’m an empiricist and a sceptic because I have studied logic and philosophy for 50 years, and I taught critical thinking for a decade. The entire “gender identity” movement is based on the philosophical ideas of postmodernism and critical theory, and those are directly contrary to my left-liberal, enlightenment, reason-and-evidence-based worldview. I wish I expected someone to discover solid evidence for the claims of gender identity. But so far, for the reasons I’ve enumerated here and in my original post, I consider it unproven, and everything I’ve seen from the science, as well as from the supporters of gender identity, suggests it will remain that way.
“On historical evidence: You claim no historical cultures asserted people were "literally the opposite sex" but aren't you applying modern biological frameworks anachronistically? How do you account for cultures with recognized third/fourth gender categories (hijra, fa'afafine, Two-Spirit) that clearly weren't merely about nonconformity but involved distinct social and spiritual identities?”
The term “two-spirit” was invented by an activist in 1990 to distinguish native gay people from non-native gay people. Cultures with “third genders” almost universally are finding a way to call effeminate gay men something other than men, while understanding that their being swishy and preferring to gossip with the gals does not actually make them women. Some cultures assigned special social functions to these people but so? It’s both more regressive (gay men can’t be men) and more reality-based (but they also aren’t women) than western gender identity ideology. Effeminacy in gay males seems to have a strong biological component, which is why it’s observed across cultures, but these cultures and the people who occupy these gender roles do not understand their male bodies as being anything other than male. If they had a “different biological framework” than we do, they would be wrong, because there are two sexes. However, they do not. These cultures know what male and female are and that there are no other options and that you cannot turn one into the other. There is plenty of research on this. These people do not believe themselves to be the opposite sex, nor have they historically exhibited symptoms of “gender dysphoria” (e.g. discomfort with their sexed bodies), although this is changing lately as they come into contact with western ideas about it.
The closest anyone ever gets to defining true trans—that is, transgender being something with a biological referent, something you could theoretically identify and test for, inevitably what is being described is just a very gender non-conforming homosexual. We know about them. They’re everywhere. And most of them are not the least bit confused about their sex. Our society has simply decided to deliberately manufacture confusion in this population, and then let perverts use them as a Trojan horse to “self-identify” into whatever space they want to jerk off in. There is absolutely no reason to think that this is an organic biological phenomenon. It’s a cultural idiom and it ought not to be allowed to muddy the waters of verifiable reality.
as I said in my re-stack, the problem is more fundamental to this.
No subjectivity can know what it's like to be another subjectivity. And if the feeling of being a gender is stuck within that subjectivity, then it's literally impossible to feel like a thing which you cannot have access to. A person just feels like themselves, and if they think there is a mismatch between that and their body, it is a category error.
Honestly, I don't care if adults don't like their body and want to change it. But this idea of a gender identity is nonsensical from the start, and I'm tired of being called a bigot for being able to think.
I agree entirely with this analysis. It is not only impossible for a man to feel like a woman because he’s only ever experienced being a man, he literally cannot know what it’s like to feel like any other person. This means that when say they “feel like a woman,” they are saying, “I like the external cultural manifestations of women applied to me,” which isn’t a claim that provides any justification for pursuing contested rights claims.
yes, precisely. Any attempt at this must point to external cultural/societal stereotypes, norms, etc to be meaningful, which blows up the whole project of trying to get rid of gender norms.
Yes, this aspect of it all has always struck me as illogical. As a woman, I have no access to the interior subjective experience of a man. When I first heard of transgenderism, i assumed it was reality-based, as in "I feel more comfortable adopting the usual social role and behavior of men, please do me the courtesy of pretending I am a man". Instead the claim is more essential- "I feel like a man, so I am a man".
If I said "I feel like a man" -- which one? There are 4+ billion men on earth. Surely if they have any universal shared "male" quality, it would have to orginate in their actual physical bodies.
Otherwise you'd have to believe in a gendered soul, a sort of free-floating spiritual "maleness". And how would it end up in the not-male body? Is there some kind of giant soul dispensary in the sky with a significant error rate? Dropping pink or blue souls into little baby bodies and occasionally saying "whoops!" ?
This is perhaps the most apt (and funniest) description of the implied beliefs of those in the religious denomination "Gendertarians". I have been genuinely frustrated by these obviously nonsensical beliefs, especially when those who hold them cite medical and academic institutions as a means of warranting these beliefs. At least Christians and other religious people are aware that their religious claims are metaphysical in nature and cannot be asserted as "truth" in the same way we would say, "horses have four legs." Unfortunately, instituational and media capture have resulted in nonsense articles--for example, in Scientific American purporting to prove that "sex is a spectrum", when it does no such thing. The most surprising thing is the credulity with which people on the left have accepted these obviously flawed arguments. I mean, if you want to believe in a giant pink-and-blue soul dispensary in the sky (or its equivalent), I'd be the last person to stand in your way. But to claim that this is "true," and that to disagree with it is a form of oppressive violence, requires a level of credulity and wishful thinking that is hard for me to wrap my head around. It has harmed my own family in a way that has literally reduced me to tears recently. When the people you are arguing with have the certainty of a faith and the rabidness of a cult, there's nothing you can do but hope that reason will eventually bring the world back to order.
And wait, if Scientific American is claiming "sex is a spectrum", are they linking that interior sense of gender to physical variation in how sex is expressed (or incompletely expressed due to chromosomal variation) in the phenotype? If so, wouldn't that refute the idea that gender identity can be self-declared based on subjective reality? Isn't it then truly all about the body?
As Whitman said, "if the body is not the soul, then what is the soul?"
Glad I amused you in what sounds like a really tough situation! I am sorry the trans madness has affected your family.
The claim that Christians and other religious groups don't assert their theological claims to be true, is a wild stretch.
Okay, say more about that. It’s my impression (as a former parish minister, Harvard Divinity, ‘95) that most religious people know the difference between religious/metaphysical claims (“The God of Abraham exists,” e.g., and statements of fact, “That dog has brown fur and brown eyes” and conduct themselves in the public square accordingly. There are certainly exceptions (sometimes entire denominations of exceptions), but I don’t think most religious people in the West think that we should (for example) enshrine Mosaic law legislatively. That’s certainly mostly true in the West, probably slightly less true in the US than in Western Europe. Most religious people, I think, understand that metaphysical/religious statements don’t hold the same weight in public discourse as physical/non-religious statements do. The only reason this is relevant is that I’m making the argument that gender identitarians don’t know that their metaphysical claims should also not hold the same weight as physical/reality-based claims.
The “soul dispensary” descriptor is spot on. We are told that, as a matter of (evidence free) fact, all humans have a gendered essence which can be accidentally decanted into the wrong body. On its face, one of the most ridiculous concepts I’ve ever heard. Yet this nonsense has somehow captured academia, medicine, law and the MSM.
Absolutely correct. If you look at the vast sums spent on this attack on truth , you may understand why it has reached such dangerous levels and why anyone with any decency is virulently attacked as can be seen on this feed. The trans cult feels threatened by truth and like anyone threatened , they attack like crazed idiots. Sometimes even with physical attacks.
You are a bigot for saying you are tired of being called a bigot.
You are just another evil straight white cisheteronormative male Christian (or Jewish) capitalist patriarchal oppressor.
You have no valid lived experience from which to comment truthfully and correctly about anything.
You and your kind are responsible for all evil - and little good - in our zero-sum power based world.
Hmmph - you’re so evil you probably don’t even support Hamas…
Is this sarcasm?
What?!?
I would NEVER engage in sarcasm.
Anyone who doesn’t fully support Hamas in their kidnapping, raping and torturing of civilians to ensure the success of their cause is obviously evil.
You demonstrate your unserious lack of moral virtue by even asking the question.
You are a bigot for writing this piece and for denying that you are a bigot.
You are just another evil straight white cisheteronormative male Christian (or Jewish) capitalist patriarchal oppressor.
You have no valid lived experience from which to comment truthfully and correctly about anything.
You and your kind are responsible for all evil - and little good - in our zero-sum power based world.
Hmmph - you’re so evil you probably don’t even support Hamas…
Well written, first.
I came to the same conclusion sometime back, and then my thinking changed slightly and I understood the entirety of the underlying system, why this arose.
Humans share many behaviors with animals: pair-bonding, altruism. They also share antisocial behaviors, cheating, lying.
Sex mimicry is a form of cheating/lying which occurs with regularity on all major animal groups - fish, birds, cuttlefish, insects, birds, mammals and reptiles.
It is a behavior which evolved to cheat in high sex-competition populations, by lying about the sex of the animal. The males avoid sexual competition and enter female enclaves, and avoid male aggression.
In humans it works the same as all animals - generally men evade male competition and aggression by mimicking females. Many people accept the imitation at face value, both women and men.
Empirically the strategy has measurable effect congruent to observations in all animals. Male sex mimics die of male violence at half the rate of other men. Male sex mimics commit sex crimes at 2x -3x the rate of other males. Thus, they measurable avoid male aggression, and measurably bypass sex competition, the behavior foundation, by cheating and lying.
Hiding the real sex is the point of the mimicry, and humans have complex behavior systems which support hiding sex. Grooming as the opposite sex, wearing clothing which hides genitals and body shape, and insisting in communication that they are the opposite sex. Women in estrus are “hidden” in that their ovulation is not reflected in detected pheromones.
“Gender” is one of an array of communication tools which evolved to hide sex. There are three genders linguistically (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and two sexes (male, female). Males and females can have behavioral traits which are more or less common in the opposite sex - masculine women and feminine men, which have no relationship to sex or sexuality.
Using “gender” simply hides sex linguistically, in communications. Humans don’t have a gender, they have a sex, and they have behaviors. Gender began to be used by psychologists and “transgender” activists (notably Virgina Prince) to refer to the mimicry target. So, a male sexual mimic became a feminine-gendered man, which became a “transgender woman”.
Use of the word gender; gender identify; gendered behavior; transgender; gender “nonconforming”; are all intended simply to hide sex, fabricated by sex mimics to sign their mimicry without admitting sex.
The sex mimic would detest being called a man, admitting male sex, but logically could never admit that they were of the male sex which wills be obviously true, so they were of the female gender.
It is from this that gender has immaterial fiction state similar to ghost, leprechaun, pixie, or titan. One could speak of these beings, assign them behaviors, play them on stage, but they are not real.
A person can mimic the opposite sex, but they are no more the opposite sex than the actor in “The Ghost and Mrs Muir” is a ghost.
I collected my thoughts recently.
https://open.substack.com/pub/sufeitzy/p/mimesexuality-1-incipendum?r=o79yv&utm_medium=ios
https://open.substack.com/pub/sufeitzy/p/mimesexuality-2-videor-ergo-sum?r=o79yv&utm_medium=ios
https://open.substack.com/pub/sufeitzy/p/mimesexuality-3-scutum-mimesis?r=o79yv&utm_medium=ios
https://open.substack.com/pub/sufeitzy/p/mimesexuality-4-subdolus-fornicator?r=o79yv&utm_medium=ios
https://open.substack.com/pub/sufeitzy/p/mimesexuality-6-sagitta-recta?r=o79yv&utm_medium=ios
https://open.substack.com/pub/sufeitzy/p/mimesexuality-7-ludus-incognitus?r=o79yv&utm_medium=ios
https://open.substack.com/pub/sufeitzy/p/mimesexuality-8-tempus-fugit?r=o79yv&utm_medium=ios
https://open.substack.com/pub/sufeitzy/p/mimesexuality-9-terra-dubia?r=o79yv&utm_medium=ios
https://open.substack.com/pub/sufeitzy/p/mimesexuality-10-apparentia-inexorabilis?r=o79yv&utm_medium=ios
https://open.substack.com/pub/sufeitzy/p/mimesexuality-11-ad-finem?r=o79yv&utm_medium=ios
So to make sure I understand, that would mean that saying to a trans woman "I don't believe in transgender identity" is like saying to a believer "I don't think that god exist", right ? The argument is on the concept itself (of god, of gender identify), the person making that kind of statement doesn't question who the believer is or claim to be, correct ?
That would be different if a person would say "I don't believe you are a believer", right ? Because that would mean this person would be trying to define what the other person is or is not. Which is what allowed the Inquisition and its consequences for example.
I really enjoy conceptual conversations, my issue is, especially with "gender identity", that it has very much non-conceptual consequences, like murder for example.
Another question could be : does gender in itself pass the conceptual validity ?There are a bunch of beliefs attached to what being a man and being a woman is and means, which also have very concrete consequences, for example women being paid roughly 20% less than men for the same job.
Detaching concepts from real materialistic consequences is nice.... When you're/we're not the one(s) enduring the consequences.
In the end, I guess I whish we could be above and beyond gender. And maybe, just maybe, the trans community making people reflect on what is a "man", a "woman", starting with gender identify is a step in that direction.
Some people are very much attached to that piece if their identify, whether cis or trans. So be it. It doesn't take anything away from anyone. But it gives to some better life conditions. And by better I mean less difficult, not in a send of "more".
Thanks for your reply. One of the primary differences between the implicit philosophies behind this argument (empiricism vs. postmodernism, for lack of better labels) regards the view that truth or falsity exists entirely separately from the people who hold the belief or the implications for them. The empiricist (which I am) believes that concepts are true or false only insofar as they correspond to reality, and that any implications (material, emotional, or otherwise) on any believer are entirely beside the point. If the truth hurts my feelings, it is my perspective that should be adjusted to accommodate the truth. In this view, it is never to anyone's advantage to deny reality, as that can rarely be beneficial to anyone in the long run. To a postmodernist, reality is socially constructed. It has no conditioning external referent, which is why the common claim "sex and gender are different!" in these conversations is predicated on the postmodern position and entirely begs the question. However, it's essential to recognize that both of these are philosophical positions with numerous adherents, and much of the conversation these days (particularly online) assumes the postmodern position — as if empiricism is a discredited, outdated notion, rather than the de facto philosophical position of over 90% of humanity.
So, to address your specific examples: If people are murdered because of some belief, the problem is with the murder (and the murderer) and not the belief. Suppose the social consequences of being a woman are disadvantageous. In that case, we need to advocate for changing those circumstances based on fairness, not "queer the binary" between men and women to merely pretend the differences don't exist. There are differences, but insofar as the implications are social and unfair, it makes more sense to address the reality of these implications, rather than erasing the reality of being male or female.
I am very much in favor of detaching any social requirements of being from a person's sex. I want people to be able to dress as they wish, act as they wish, and so on. After all, I grew up in the era I consider the "great androgyny", where our musicians (David Bowie, Annie Lennox, Adam Ant, Grace Jones, Duran Duran) blurred a lot of gender expectations--but what made them sexy was that they were still men and women, but had the confidence to play with the social signifiers. But once someone makes a claim about reality, such as "I am a man/woman and I insist you agree with this statement of fact," they involve others in a discussion of their claims. At that point, we move from the private (I believe my inner essence is female and wish to act as if I am a woman) to the public/social (I want you to agree that my inner essence is female in a way that the word "woman" applies to me).
In a liberal society, the burden of persuasion is always on the person requesting agreement, not the person who has not been persuaded. And the argument "But my life would be better if you agreed with me" is never persuasive (by itself) to an empiricist. Almost everyone who holds false beliefs would be happier if we'd agree with them. However, there is no ethical principle that requires (or even privileges) agreeing with people who hold beliefs that they haven't sufficiently proven, based merely on their personal happiness.
There may be things a person doesn't feel sufficiently strongly about to make a social concession (using preferred pronouns, for example, or not arguing the point when someone makes a declarative religious statement that seems to assume agreement...in this way, using preferred prounouns is the difference between, when someone tells you, "God loves you!", saying "I don't beleive in God, what are you on about," and mentally rolling your eyes and saying "thank you." But just because one values the social cohesion enough not to make it a point of contention doesn't imply a concession to the existence of God.
I see what you mean, and thanks for taking the time to answer my comment. I guess I'm "one (who) values the social cohesion enough not to make it a point of contention" : if a trans woman say "I'm a woman", and someone else dosn't believe that to be true, they could say "sure", and move on.
You mention a key point though about "truth" and "reality". What is truth ? What is reality ?
If one believe that concept are true "in the ether" so to speak, ie, on their own, without considering their impact on how they afftect our perception of reality, and, the other way around, ie how our perception of reality affect how we engage with concepts, it feels there is potential for huge blind spots. The exemple I'm thinking about might not be the most relevant one but think about light : before we had more sophisticated machines, we didn't know the whole electromagnetic frequencies, above and beyond infra red and ultra violet. Because of our human nature, our eyes could only perceive certain aspect of "reality", certain aspect of light, therefore of "truth." And what I may call "truth" might be in fact... not true.
Now, I'm thinking : would you be more enclined to make a difference between male/female and men/women ? There would still be a challenge with intersex people though, and that there is in fact no strict scientific definitions valid 100% of the time to define these things, but still, that would encompass quite a lot of being. That could be slightly challenging for some to consider female/men, or male/women, but... why not ? I mean, before white western chritians conolonization, those "concepts" were not an issue in some places. People were having different experiences of reality, and although my experience might not be the same (and as you mentionned, it can never be) I can have enough humility to say "I know that I don't know". Are the empirist the ones in Plato's cave, or are the "post modernists" those looking at the shadows projected on the wall ?
I guess this is a fear of mine, when some claim to know the Truth (usually with a capital T), or that even Truth can be known, once and for all. This is what leads to dogmantism. And there is to me as much dogmatism on one side or the other : some say "the issue lies with individuals" (not adjusting their perception to (what me, myself and I call) "reality"), others say "the issue is with systems" (which people more positively affected by the system and whose reality and experience is obviously different, can't or won't necessarily see and accept as true as well).
To a degree, it seems it boils down to the chiken and egg metaphore (and yes, I know I'm streching things a bit).
“I am very much in favor of detaching any social requirements of being from a person's sex. I want people to be able to dress as they wish, act as they wish, and so on.”
I’m pretty sure you do not literally mean this. The “act as they wish” part in particular.
Otherwise you are saying you thinking males should be free to participate in women’s sports.
Clearly, in this context, that is not what I mean. I mean, "people should be able to act as they wish as long as they don't trample the rights of others." If a man wants to wear a dress, fine. A woman wants to wear a suit — no problem. If adults want to take cross-sex hormones because they have been diagnosed with gender/body dysphoria--who am I to judge? But that doesn't mean they *are* the sex they want to be/imagine that they are, and it doesn't mean they get to invade the rights of the opposite sex. And this is why they object. What the TRAs want is for us to pretend they really are what they imagine themselves to be. We must insist that reality is the primary factor in allocating rights.
I did indeed understand what you likely meant.
But your second sentence I quoted is almost verbatim how the activists/advocates would frame *their* position.
*They* want to be able to “act as they wish”.
The fact that it infringes on the rights of others being immaterial to them (being charitable) or part of the point (being less charitable to those of them who are woke oppressor-oppressed ideologues).
I agree with much of this, actually. You have to separate the project of postmodernist feminism/deconstruction (e.g., conceiving of gender as a linguistic/aesthetic signifier) from the biomedical concept of sex (e.g, female or male or intersex with corresponding chromosomes and genitals). Trying to biomedicalize transness was always an incoherent project for this reason: “gender dysphoria” is impossible if gender has no inherent characteristics. I don’t think trans people have done OURselves any favors turning to psychiatry to define us—often using the rhetoric that corrective medicine and hormones will “save our lives.”
I differ from you in that I am a Constructionist. I don’t believe that my femaleness has most of the inherent characteristics people ascribe to female, and I don’t believe that necessarily makes me dysphoric. I am a butch lesbian; pretty androgynous, homosexual, and I’ve even considered taking exogenous cross-sex hormones. I accept that linguistically and socially, this makes me fit many people’s definition of “transgender,” just as being female makes me fit many people’s definition of “woman.” That’s why I accept any third-person pronouns others choose for me.
The “gender critical” brigade needs to accept that people are going to use the available language to describe themselves and androgynous/homosexual/gender-non-conforming people in 2025 are going to use the words and concepts of trans and nonbinary, regardless of whether that makes sense to you or not.
"The “gender critical” brigade needs to accept that people are going to use the available language to describe themselves and androgynous/homosexual/gender-non-conforming people in 2025 are going to use the words and concepts of trans and nonbinary, regardless of whether that makes sense to you or not."
But this is exactly my argument. Language is intended to communicate, and words get their meaning from use, meanings from usefulness. You can call yourself anything you want, but if you are using language in a way that is incoherent to your interlocutors, all you're doing is confusing them and calling attention to yourself (the goal of much of the "trans" community). The sentence "I am a woman" has always meant, from time immemorial and in all languages, "I'm an adult human female". It refers to empirical biological reality, not internal experience. The fact that people have convinced themselves that it's okay not to use language the way it's always been used will only disadvantage them, not the rest of the world, which continues as always. If "non-binary" has no empirical referent —only a sense of whether one "feels" like other people seem to appear to be—a sense of whether one "feels" like a man or a woman is of almost no use to anyone.
OK, I'll take a shot. First of all, when the gender concept was invented, it had nothing to do with trans, it was a cis feminist idea, that sex and gender are different. It was noticed, that biological sex does not determine those socially constructed gender roles like who has long hair, who wears make-up, who cooks dinner. It is possible to be a long-haired man who likes to cook.
So the trans stuff is taking it one step further. That it is possible to be a biological sex man and yet a social gender woman, by basically adopting all the elements of the social woman gender, like long hair, make-up, skirts.
So no we do not have two categories, woman and man, but four: bioman, socioman, biowoman, sociowoman. Plus all the intermediate like NB cases.
It is also possible to do body modification, this is where the terminology gets a little strange, taking pills to grow breast is certainly a biological process, but does not change the biological sex, so it is considered part of the social gender. I admit this is confusing, but as a philosopher you should notice that reality come first and words come second, sometimes a new thing happens and we do not have the correct terminology for it. Taking pills to grow breasts, in my words, would be a biologically-induced accessory to a social gender. Maybe this is not the best terminology.
The terminology is not clear yet, because biological things like taking hormone pills exist, and yet they do not change biological sex. So we categorize this as social gender, but this might be a primitive, early, categorization that will change in the future. We might introduce 4-5 future categories. A third category, presentation is already there. I admit that confuses me too. This clearly needs more work in the future.
I am deep down a Buddhist, so in the deep sense I do not believe in any kind of identity, there is no real self, everything about us constantly changes, so it is pointless to talk what what is the real essence of the real self, the identity. Basically all identities are made up, but the point is that trans identities are no more made up than the usual kinds of identities, cis, biological sex, nationality, race, religion etc.
Another way to look at it is that identity is plain simply just group membership. You choose your team. You can identify as a Catholic today and a Protestant tomorrow. But team membership has conditions. The Protestant or Catholic team will not accept atheists for example. Similarly, Bob can be born a man and then identify as a woman, that is, join the woman team. But this has conditions, like, taking pills to grow breasts.
Thank you for taking the time to respond, but I don't think you quite got my point.
The question we want to answer is this: Does a person's internal sense of "gender identity," which some people claim to have, provide *any* conceptual justification for ignoring biological sex (or even considering "gender identity") in disputed rights claims?
First, the separation of sex and gender is an overvalued idea. The fact that people aren't socially deterministic concerning sex is true but trivial. Thus, because social roles are not binary, there's no justification for your truth table regarding social roles. Biological sex is overwhelmingly binary, but social roles are, in fact, highly variable along many different axes: likes to cook? 1-10 scale. Likes to wear dresses? 1-10 scale. So we don't get the 4 classifications you suggest, we get infinite classifications, and none of them speak to the question of "being a woman," only liking certain things that have traditionally been associated with activities done by people who are of the female sex. So *all* of this requires biological sex to make any sense at all.
So the idea of "gender" just doesn't stand up under any consistent criticism. Gender is either:
1) Social roles, but they aren't special because we have lots of social roles that don't *make* us anything but people who gravitate toward certain things.
2) An internal sense of a sexed soul, which is really the topic of my article, and which doesn't go anywhere because of its conceptual problems from an epistemological and social sciences methodology perspective.
3) The quality of being masculine or feminine, which again requires an association with sexed people as its background fact.
4) A psychological construction that is embedded in one's psyche as the result of how one is treated in society.
None of these provides us any reason for imagining that we should prefer (or even consider) "gender" over sex for the arbitration of contested rights claims. Those rights claims range from the right to privacy (I" don't want men in the ladies") or safety and fairness ("men shouldn't play in the same sports leagues with women"), to more social/etiquette-related questions ("I don't believe your claim to be a woman, so I should have the right to use the prounouns that are consonant with my freedom of conscience"). They are not trivial questions and they are very much determined by how we think about what "man" and "woman" mean.
Finally, the example of picking a religion is different to choosing an "identity" with a material component. The word "Christian" means "a person who believes in the religion of (or about) Jesus of Nazareth". The only requirement of the common usage of the word is a certain kind of belief. When people (99.9% of the people worldwide and historically) use the words "man" and "woman," (or their cognates, which every language has: homem e mulher, hombre y mujer, homme et femme, Mann und Frau, uomo e donna, мужчина и женщина, άνδρας και γυναίκα, erkek ve kadın) they *don't* mean "people who play the social roles associated with people who have male or female sex" or "people who perform gendered activities", they instead mean "people who materially manifest reporductively as male or females as adult humans". Where people got this crazy idea that sometime around 2014, something happened and the meanings of two of the most stable words in every language changed, I have no idea. Did Judith Butler throw a switch in her Berkeley apartment that destabilized meanings and the way words are used? Of course not...that's crazy. So, the point here is that we mean things when we use words, and when we use the words "man" and "woman", we do not mean "people who think they are men/women" or "people who would like to be men/women" or "people who identify as men/women". So it is essentially different from using a religious descriptor, which has (often) only a belief as the necessary and sufficient conditions for usage.
This whole thing is semantical nonsense. Also, the constant need to "prove" you are not a "bigot" is telling. Let's say I agree with you, for argument, what is the prescription? Is it any difference than the people who are bigots, and proudly so, want to carry out? You will find plenty of people online who will agree with you on this and say the same thing about any other queer identity. They would also like to overturn Obergefell and keep Roe V Wade overturned. What is the point of all this needless hand wringing and word defining? Wouldn't it be so much easier to simply come out and say "I hate this group of people and I would like the government to stamp them out". It would be a lot more honest
One of the more infuriating aspects of trans rights extremists is their absolute certainty that if you don't agree with them, you hate them and (according to them) favor trans genocide. No heartfelt denial or expressions of support seem to dissuade you all from thinking that because we don't agree that thinking you're a woman doesn't make you a woman means we hate you. I'm not sure how that logic even gets into your head.
I'm not sure what "semantical" means, but I think you're not actually listening to what people like me and JK Rowling are saying. What you call someone is not purely semantic because it has real-world implications for how we adjudicate contested rights claims. The reason that the T is fundementally different to the LG and B is because the difference between "I love people of the same sex and deserve all the rights to employment, housing, and family formation as people who love the opposite sex" and "Because I feel that my "gender identity" doesn't match my physical body, I deserve to be treated in the real world as if I was the sex that matches with my internal identity" is vast. If Ts were merely asking for rights to employment, housing, and marriage (which they generally already have, with exceptions), I and 95% of the gender sceptics would agree wholeheartedly that they shouldn't be denied equal rights because they think their body doesn't match their souls. But that's not what's being demanded. They are asking to be included in the category that matches their gender identity, which is either purely subjective or entirely ficitive. The difference between "I love people of the same sex" and "I am a member of the opposite sex" is plain to anyone with a modicum of logical analysis skills. Those who claim to be the same are being willfully blind to its implications.
Yes, there are people who would like to can Obergefell and keep Roe overturned, and yes, some of those people don't think we should give extra rights to trans people. That's entirely beside the point, though. We debate issues based on facts, evidence, and logic, rather than who holds those beliefs or what other beliefs they may have. There's a name for focusing on the person and not the argument: it's the ad hominem fallacy. Now, the philosophical grounding of queer theory and trans theory (etc.), Critical Theory is generally what would happen if you created a philosophy entirely out of the ad hominem fallacy. However, for those who still hold the values of logic and evidence as the foundational characteristics of belief, it is understood that one cannot judge an idea based on who holds it. The Nazis were snappy dressers and thought the trains should run on time, but even though they were as evil as people could be, that doesn't mean we should reject sartorial excellence and timely mass transit.
1. I really don't care what JK Rowling has to say about anything. I would only ask for her advice if I wanted to name a character in a comically racist way or create a comically racist depiction of different minorities
2. You can hate it all you want, you stand side by side with Trump, Nigel Farage, Matt Walsh, Nick Fuentes, and other great leader of fascist thought. If that makes you mad you can decide to not stand next to them and start saying things that arent indistinguishable from their vitriolic rhetoric.
3. There is a difference between agreeing with the Nazis for their taste in fashion (I disagree but that's subjective I guess) and the timeliness of their trains (their trains did not run on time btw, that was propaganda that you fell for, it seems to be a pattern) and agreeing with them on their views of different groups of people. In case you were unaware, the first books the third Reich started burning were some of the first research done on trans people. I'm sure you would have been right there warming yourself at that fire, and wouldn't start speaking up until they started bringing other books.
4. I guess the main problem I have with your original argument is that it can be applied broadly to other groups, you just don't. There's nothing "objective" about being gay, and if you wanted to, using your logic, you could make an argument that it's not biologically normal or rooted in reality (something the right loves to do). You could also use your logic to dismiss a wide array of mental illness because there is no "empirical" way to determine how a person really "feels". The problem is, if you were to take that logic to its conclusion you really would sound no different from the right you claim you are so different from. I'm just asking you to be intellectually honest, stop pretending like you're above the theocrats and the nationalists, you employ the exact same rhetoric as them and only disagree when it applies to a group you see as "valid"
And this, friends, is why people should take logic, critical thinking, and research methods, and not critical theory.
All you've done here is repeat yourself with more inflammatory language. You haven't addressed any of the substantive points I made, and you're simply reiterating that you're right. I'm not impressed. I would have failed you in my intro to critical thinking course.
This is pointless, I have a habit of getting into such arguments. I'm going to log off. I did address your points but it's whatever, this is obviously going to be fruitless. I will continue to protect my trans friends and you will continue to come after them. I really wish you could see you are at best aiding and abetting fascism, because it is what you are substantially doing.
You seriously don’t see the essential logical difference between “I love people of the same sex and there is no justification for denying me universal human rights on that basis” and “I believe I literally *am* a member of the opposite sex and thus deserve the rights of that class based on a material counterfactual”? You confuse yourself with talk about who believes things and get distracted with facts about Nazis, but miss the essence of what I’m saying. If you can’t see the difference between “I love” and “I am,” you lack the analytical skills to have this discussion.
James, I wonder if our views of transsexuality are following in the path of our views of homosexuality. Homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness until it was dropped from the DSM in the 1970s. Evidence from neurology and genetics backed up the claim that homosexuality is a natural occurrence in humans and other animals. Might we discover someday the solid medical evidence that transsexuality is also a natural variation in humans? I, for one, would like such medical studies to be pursued.
Stephen, I see where you are coming from, but I think there are entirely different trajectories of the rights claims of LGB people and trans people. I know that there is one study with an N=24 that suggests that some trans women have brains that trend more toward female than typical male brains. That doesn't warrant the claims of trans radical activists, however. The problem with the trans rights argument as currently constituted is that previous civil rights movements made the following claim: there is no reason to deny the same rights that (white, male, straight) people have to (black/brown, female, gay/lesbian/bisexual) people with regard to employment, housing, and (ultimately) marriage. The argument was that denying rights to these protections could by no means be justified by a person's skin color, sex, or sexuality, and these are very convincing arguments. They are based on shared humanity and common expectations of rights.
This is very much *not* what trans radical activists are saying. Instead, they are saying that their ineffable, interior sense of "gender identity" should give them the rights of people with that sex. It's not an argument about shared humanity and shared rights, but of mystical transubstantiation of the physical by means of the mental/spiritual. They are not, as previous civil rights movements have asked, to be treated like every other person and given the right to equal treatment in employment, housing, and marriage. To the degree that people are arguing for that, no one on the "gender identity sceptical" side would oppose those rights for adults. I know I certainly don't. I suspect there are people on the right wing who are arguing against such rights, and insofar as that's true, I would stand with trans people every day of the week.
But TRAs are instead insisting on being treated as something (the opposite sex), for which there is no empirical evidence. They are asking to self-identify into the civil rights of a group they don't belong to based on the fiction that their gendered soul justifies this.
So, even if we were to be able to prove something biological (like the brain studies) that made them somewhat more like the opposite sex, it would still not make them the opposite sex in a way that would justify the rights claims they are insisting on. Only *actually* being that sex would do that, which is exactly the problem we are faced with.
Thanks for your detailed response, James. Forgive me if you've addressed these issues elsewhere, as I just discovered and subscribed to your Substack. What are your thoughts on the fraught issues surrounding trans people, in particular, use of restrooms, participation in sports, and imprisonment? If you've already written on these issues, please point me to that writing.
I always have questions about Intersex individuals when I happen upon critical discourse about whether “gender identity” exists or not.
Intersex as defined as: Conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either “male” or “female.”
They are a small part of the population in the US
{roughly 0.018% or 2 out of every 10,000 births} but nonetheless an existing part of the population, whose biology is inconsistent with or cannot be categorized as “male” or “female.”
So if at the biological level these folks are inconsistent with or cannot be categorized as “female” or “male,” what are they then?
Would they not have a supposed “gender identity?”
Or likewise, what-gender-they-feel-most-like?
They might? But those are judgments that say "does my inner self feel like people in group (X) or group (y) seem to feel/appear to feel." First, you can never know that, regardless. We can only know our own experience and the phenomenon of other people's experience. Second, it has no metaphysical grounding. Gender identity ultimately resolves to statements about whether one relates to the cultural manifestation of one's sex. That is just a social issue, not one of meaning, linguistics, or metaphysics. Playing with Barbies doesn't make one a woman. Finally, even if we were to say, "in this particular case, we are going to let this person pick how they want to be seen in the world," that would have no real implications. If we treat the person at the insane asylum as if he really *is* Napoliean, it doesn't make him any more Napoleon than he was before we started treating him that way.
Can't you make that same argument about identity (self-concept)? Aren't all identity categories free floating and self-authenticating? Isn't that the idea?
Am I funny? The concept completely lacks validity. It cannot be shown to measure what it claims to because what it claims to measure is an unverifiable metaphysical assertion—a subjective sense of being funny. It's like trying to operationalize the concept of a "ghost" by asking people if they believe in ghosts. Their belief is real, but the idea of the ghost remains without a valid empirical referent.
Gender Identity doesn't need a empirical referent because it's a quality/property, right? How much a person exhibits, enacts, internalizes manness or womanness.
This is why I wish people actually took philosophy and logic rather than critical theory. Did you actually try to understand what I was saying, or were you just trying to come up with a sophistic counterargument?
It's simple. The question we are trying to answer is this: Is "feeling" like a woman a sufficient condition for inclusion in the set "women"? Is the proposition Fx -> Wx where F=="Feels like a woman" and W=="Is a woman" true? Of course not. Nor does how much a person "exhibits, enacts, or internalizes" "manness or womanness" (whatever is meant by that circularity). What determines whether an individual is included in the set of "woman" or "man" is a matter of material reality, not internal desire or feeling.
Just like "feeling" funny isn't sufficient for inclusion in the set of "funny people". You actually have to be funny. Wishing yourself to be funny is not only not a sufficient condition for being funny, it's not even a necessary condition. That's the whole point of this entire argument. Critical Theory seeks to complicate this further, but that only serves to obscure a truth we are all aware of: truth is a function of correspondence to material reality, regardless of occasional edge cases where it's difficult to determine with certainty.
Remember that huge part of global human diversity that got whiped out during the colonial genocides, those declared nonhuman since not baptised, go ask them, then enjoy diving into some extensive nonbiased antropological research of yr own, as suggested earlier ...
The Ukit people of Borneo have gender roles every bit as much as the west does. They are not as hierarchical, but that’s entirely beside the point. I didn't say there aren't less hierarchical societies, I said every society has gender roles. It amuses me how the people who are so sure they are the good people are the first ones to start calling names and putting down the people who disagree with them. Once you start impugning someone’s character just because they disagree with you—you’ve lost the argument.
Sad you see conversations as arguments to win or lose, utter waste of communicative potential, while ya seem to miss just how condescending yr overall attitude gets because of it, animist societies practice fluidity without gendernormification, takes stepping out to see ...
So..."Do your own research. It's not my job to convince you with my argument...you just gotta believe me". Gotcha.
From condescending to slightly pathetic yet still condescending, while staying stuck in viewing communication as a conflict zone, sad to see, I never asked for belief, neither does Life, try for a narrative without ennemies, it ‘s more fun as well as funktional …
This is one of the most spectacular examples (such as I can decode it) of the self-sealing fallacy. "If there's no evidence for this claim, it's because it was all wiped (!) out, so that just proves that the claim is true!" So, this is a thing that you believe because you believe it, not because there is compelling evidence in favor of it.
Yr selfassigned superiority in all things intellectual is the only selfsealing fallacy at play here, as said twice before, do yr own antropological research if it actually interests ya more than as a little hill to shout from, start with Redmond O'Hanlon's experiences with the headhunters of Borneo, & rest assured, yr high horse is treadbare & starving, time to dismount ...
What bugs the discussion in my experience is an inherent reliance on an idea of gender that is then put to question, similar to how an “antifacist” claim of identity needs “fascism” as a supporting idea, regardless of attitude of selfascribed “superiority” which often sits on both sides, as such it puzzles me why “trans” is boxed in as “swapping gendernorms” rather than a transcendance of any normativity when it comes to personal experience, indeed the androginous stance is more of a liberating statement than trying to challenge normativity by laying claim to it, in many tribal animist societies the concept of gender is absent & fluidity of expression along with physical experience & partnering is natural …
While I suspect your claim of the absence of gender norms among tribal societies might be falling prey to the "noble savage" archetype (gender norms are a pretty universal part of human experience, though the expression of those norms varies greatly), I entirely agree that we should be preaching liberation from gender norms rather than reasoning that because one doesn't adhere or "identify" with those norms, that this has some kind of metaphysical implications. I often say that my people (early GenX) were peak androgynous. We had a lot of gender-bending in both directions. And what's more...it was hot. Much of the "nonbinary" culture seems to border on Maoist-enforced neutrality rather than a playful engagement of gender expression. David Bowie and Annie Lennox never thought they were anything but what they were: smoking hot humans who knew that playing with the norms is fun. Thinking that somehow Bowie was a woman or Annie was a man because he wore a dress and she wore a suit makes my soul hurt.
Gendernorms are anything but universal, that 's a colonising projection under the assumption that judgemental minds hold the monopoly on culture, & a sad one at that, similar to noble savage constructs that evade the longstanding traumas still resonating inda west since naturebased matriarchic cultures were overrun by the highly leadpoisoned, & as such void of empathic ability, romans, laying claim to all them stole & calling it peace when evry chance of free culture was eradicated. The idea of nobility in western society has been overshadowed by the ease of snobbery, yet that doesn't imply other cultures have no sense of ethics, morality, actual compassion as in sharing the passions of Life, ... Plenty anthropological experiences to go through if you care for the subject ...
Which culture doesn't have gender norms?
Basically, “ gender identity” is based on a lie that people can change their sex, that people can be “ born in the wrong body “ a ridiculous assertion , that infants are” assigned “ their sex ( conflated wit gender) at birth. Everything in this ideology goes against all that is real and truthful. The gender ideology is a dangerous concept that is trying to destroy civilization.
This is why any criticism of their beliefs is met with such extreme hostility: “ You are a transphobe who doesn’t want us to exist!” “You are Nazi scum!”
Language has been made up by them to confer power , as all authoritarians know.
This dangerous ideology must be stopped before it destroys all decency and all truth.
I don't disagree with you; these people are putting a terrible strain on and/or pressure on civil society by insisting on being treated in a way that is contrary to material reality. What you seem to imply is that the burden of "kindness and decency" falls upon the person who privileges material reality over internal whim, rather than upon the person who is insisting that *everyone* who comes in contact with them either agrees with their weird epistemology or lies about it to them. (Even worse, in the case of pronoun declarations, they require that person to lie to *everyone else*, as well). There are plenty of things we don't do just because it would make someone happy, if it's pragmatically detrimental or counter to reality. Why shouldn't we insist that "trans" people should be kind and decent to the people around them by learning to live in the real world with the rest of us?
But there's a middle way that was historically very workable in the LGB(T) community. The issue isn't asking to be *treated* as a woman, it's the insistence that one *is* a woman (or the opposite, or neither). The problem is the metaphysical insistence that one's intuition *makes* one a woman (etc). We always treated transexuals with a fair amount of deference insofar as they called themselves by a different name, used opposite-sex pronouns, etc. The problem is with the declaration that "I *am* a woman!" (clearly false in any fact-based epistemology) or "I *demand* you use the opposite sex pronouns!". Real transexualism is a rare disorder (a term I use advisedly). I think most people would be glad to call Bob "Becky" or Sheila "Seamus" if it weren't dressed up as an ideological demand, a lifestyle choice, and/or a demand for compliance in the rest of one's interactions (with pronouns). A healthy person doesn't worry about what pronouns others use when speaking about them. As I've often heard it said, what other people think of us is none of our business. To place a significant contingency on one's happiness on how other people think of you is unbalanced.
So, no, I reject your framing. It is kinder and more decent to insist that most people who are not suffering from an extreme pathology live in the real world, live their lives in line with material reality, and, if that requires some work on that front, that's okay. A lot of people have mental illnesses that they need to work their way through. It's not unkind to insist that they do so rather than making the rest of the world participate in their delusion. And for the people who are suffering thus, that should be very few people, and there would be no question that everyone is acting *as if*; their belief in their "gender identity" is not normative.
Certainly not. It's the default epistemology of empiricism and science. I was hoping someone might take up this line of thinking, because it's egregiously naive in its understanding of the philosophy at question.
1) It's not that subjective self-report isn't helpful or informative; it's that the metaphysical claim made about gender identity isn't supported by it. If you claim, "I'm depressed," you are claiming a subjective state, not a metaphysical claim. When we talk about personality, we are saying, "we can measure some aspects of personality because they have consistent, measurable meaning over time." We are not making a metaphysical claim about personalities. It's the move from "claim about internal state" to "claim about metaphysical reality" that is precisely at question here, and which is not supported. And, at the risk of sounding dismissive, there is no "cross-cultural, historical consistency of gender dysphoria". There are cross-cultural and historical examples of gender nonconformity, but in none of these cases has the claim been made that the subjects of such nonconformity are literally the opposite sex, or that there was such a thing as gender identity.
2) As for your comment about psychology, it makes phenomenal predications based on evidence, all of which are very much contingent.. It's taken decades of research to establish any predictive value to the big-5 personality traits, and psychologists make no metaphysical statements about the reality of those traits. But there's been *no* equivalent research on gender identity. Seriously, that's part of what I'm saying. It seems like the idea of gender identity sprang in full bloom in the fevered minds of teenagers on Tumblr, and we've seen vanishingly little actual empirical research on it in the decade since (at least partially because anyone who tried would lose their jobs if they didn't come up with the right answer. Just ask Laura Lippman.
3) This is nothing but the appeal to authority fallacy. All of these (or their equivalent) organizations thought that homosexuality was a disease, that lobotomies were good first-line treatment for depression, and that opiates weren't addictive if prescribed for real pain. These organizations have developed these ideas ideologically, without valid research, because the research does not exist. I keep hoping someone will point me toward an article that says gender identity exists. The only thing I've ever seen has an N=24 study that suggests that some trans women's brains tend toward looking more like women's brains than non-trans men's brains. This is not a science that has reached a consensus; this is a case of ideological capture, and it's not the first time it has happened.
4) So you are saying that identity is beyond the questioning of epistemology? Should anyone be able to claim any identity that they want? Because I believe that is your opinion. My brother's 10-year-old has two classmates who claim to have fox identities. I'm not lying. This is where this epistemology leads.
But you are wrong about the further implications of "applied consistently". The application I'm referring to involves shifting from claims about internal states to claims about metaphysical reality, that is all. This doesn't undermine claims about consciousness because we can measure consciousness and make predictions based on an understanding of it. If you reread my article, I'm saying only two things: 1) The idea of "gender identity" is insufficiently defined to be the object in empricial study and 2) Because of this, it cannot be operationalized and it can make no measurements or predictions. Therefore, it is not a well-constructed category. This may explain why so little actual research has been done about it.
Finally, philosophical positions are not metaphysical entities, so I'm wondering if you misunderstood the entire issue here.
> “On metaphysical vs. subjective claims: What makes claiming "I am a woman" metaphysical, while claiming "I am depressed" is merely subjective?”
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I feel like you’re not trying here. One says “I feel X” and the other says “I am X”. One is a subjective category that we can’t really question (except by virtue of coherence testing), the other is a statement of reality that can be tested by looking to the real world.
"Both involve the relationship between internal experience and external categories. You note personality traits have "measurable meaning over time," but don't longitudinal studies show gender identity also demonstrates consistency over time? Why is temporal consistency evidence for personality but not gender identity?"
No, as I pointed out, the research on gender identity is almost entirely absent. Gender identity has only been a topic for (most reasonably) 10 years and perhaps (if we really push the definition) 30 years. However, there’s almost no real research due to the methodological problems I pointed out in my original post.
"On historical evidence: You claim no historical cultures asserted people were "literally the opposite sex," but aren't you applying modern biological frameworks anachronistically?"
You are engaging in exactly the kind of theoretical colonialism you are trying to accuse me of. By putting modern (postmodern) “trans” labels on people who were merely gender-nonconforming, you are trying to fit what other peoples were doing into a Butlerian framework.
> "How do you account for cultures with recognized third/fourth gender categories (hijra, fa'afafine, Two-Spirit) that clearly weren't merely about nonconformity but involved distinct social and spiritual identities?"
>
Again with the postmodern gender colonialism. This is ex post facto reasoning, trying desperately to prove that somehow Butler, et al, or the term “trans” describes gender-nonconformity in other cultures. However, this is exactly the problem I pointed out in my original post. “Gender identity” isn’t a meaningful concept because it doesn’t measure, and it doesn’t predict. Because it is so poorly defined, you can try to claim that somehow other cultures have 3rd/4th gender identities, but this is a case of beginning the question. These cultures didn’t conceptualize them as anything but men and women who play different social roles. My whole point is that playing a different social role has no import. These cultures didn’t consider themselves differently sexed, so to do so is to assume the very thing you are trying to prove. And it all goes back to the lack of rigor in the concept of “gender identity”. The whole point is that I reject Butler’s ideas about “performativity” because it’s not an empirically or linguistically supportable perspective (and I think even she would agree because that’s not her goal).
“On institutional authority: Here you make the classic unfalsifiable move: any evidence contradicting your position must result from "ideological capture." But if major medical institutions can be dismissed when they reach conclusions you disagree with, how do we distinguish genuine scientific consensus from ideological capture? Ironically, you mention these institutions once endorsed lobotomies and pathologized homosexuality. Isn't the fact they changed positions based on evolving evidence an argument for their epistemic reliability? You invoke "empiricism and science" while dismissing the empirical work of actual scientists and clinicians. If institutional science can always be dismissed as "ideologically captured," aren't you claiming only your interpretation of empiricism counts?”
These would be reasonable objections if the positions of these organizations were based on peer-reviewed research. They are not. I have read every paper anyone has ever pointed me toward that claimed to support the idea of gender identity. Not one of them has done anything like what was claimed for it. There really is a shocking lack of research on these ideas. Moreover, every meta-study that has examined the claims of applied gender ideology has shown them to be more or less useless in supporting those claims. It’s not transphobia that caused the governments of the UK, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands to commission systematic reviews of pediatric gender medicine, for example, and to find that none of the claims made for those approaches had any evidence to speak of. This is why I say these organizations are in the midst of ideological capture. In the lack of evidence, they have instead made these recommendations that are consistently shown not to be true. However, instead of asking themselves, “geez, maybe we should rethink this whole gender identity thing,” the gender ideologues have engaged in character assassination, doxxing, threats, and the like. The whole reaction to the Cass report, for example, should be a case study in what happens when people are more concerned with ideology than evidence, and what happens when organizations become ideologically captured. I expect that, as you point out, there will be a process of walking back all of the claims of gender ideology over the next 10 years or so. We’re seeing it already with the first wave of detransitioners. I don’t think we’re going to need to wait long for the correction to happen.
“On consciousness being "measurable": You claim consciousness can be measured and predicted but how is this different from gender dysphoria, which also shows measurable neural correlates, behavioral patterns, and predictive treatment outcomes? Your "fox identity" example suggests a slippery slope, but this avoids engaging with the substantial clinical literature on gender dysphoria as a distinct phenomenon. Isn't your epistemology becoming self-defeating when it must dismiss all contradicting institutional evidence as ideological?”
You are claiming so much more for the evidence than is warranted. I have to imagine that you are trying to prove a point and not arrive at the truth. Just for a moment, I want to put myself in the shoes of a disinterested skeptic. Instead of trying desperately to prove that gender identity is real and people can be “born into the wrong body,” start from the position that nothing that hasn’t been conclusively proved should be believed anything more than provisionally. Then, take every single study you think proves gender identity and try to knock methodological holes in it, because that’s what good scientists do. You will find that the science for gender identity is *dismal*. It doesn’t do what you are claiming for it. Even the most charitable readings of the research (real, empirical research, not postmodern qualitative “research”) lead to the fact that there are some brain structures that, in a small study, yielded some vaguely directional findings. That’s it. There’s not this decades-long emergent consensus based on methodologically sound research. There’s a small number of papers, written (generally) by demonstrable ideologues, that don’t warrant the broad claims made by the gender identity movement.
Finally, and I mean this sincerely: I started looking into this issue because someone I love claims to be non-binary. I assumed that she knew something I didn’t know, or that I just had to look into this, and I’d understand. I *wanted to* understand. I wanted to be able to go, “Oh, okay, that makes sense. They/them it is.” I was motivated to be charitable. And I continue to hope that I will be proved wrong because it would make my life so much easier if I thought gender identity was anything but a chimera.
But I can’t. I’m an empiricist and a sceptic because I have studied logic and philosophy for 50 years, and I taught critical thinking for a decade. The entire “gender identity” movement is based on the philosophical ideas of postmodernism and critical theory, and those are directly contrary to my left-liberal, enlightenment, reason-and-evidence-based worldview. I wish I expected someone to discover solid evidence for the claims of gender identity. But so far, for the reasons I’ve enumerated here and in my original post, I consider it unproven, and everything I’ve seen from the science, as well as from the supporters of gender identity, suggests it will remain that way.
“On historical evidence: You claim no historical cultures asserted people were "literally the opposite sex" but aren't you applying modern biological frameworks anachronistically? How do you account for cultures with recognized third/fourth gender categories (hijra, fa'afafine, Two-Spirit) that clearly weren't merely about nonconformity but involved distinct social and spiritual identities?”
The term “two-spirit” was invented by an activist in 1990 to distinguish native gay people from non-native gay people. Cultures with “third genders” almost universally are finding a way to call effeminate gay men something other than men, while understanding that their being swishy and preferring to gossip with the gals does not actually make them women. Some cultures assigned special social functions to these people but so? It’s both more regressive (gay men can’t be men) and more reality-based (but they also aren’t women) than western gender identity ideology. Effeminacy in gay males seems to have a strong biological component, which is why it’s observed across cultures, but these cultures and the people who occupy these gender roles do not understand their male bodies as being anything other than male. If they had a “different biological framework” than we do, they would be wrong, because there are two sexes. However, they do not. These cultures know what male and female are and that there are no other options and that you cannot turn one into the other. There is plenty of research on this. These people do not believe themselves to be the opposite sex, nor have they historically exhibited symptoms of “gender dysphoria” (e.g. discomfort with their sexed bodies), although this is changing lately as they come into contact with western ideas about it.
The closest anyone ever gets to defining true trans—that is, transgender being something with a biological referent, something you could theoretically identify and test for, inevitably what is being described is just a very gender non-conforming homosexual. We know about them. They’re everywhere. And most of them are not the least bit confused about their sex. Our society has simply decided to deliberately manufacture confusion in this population, and then let perverts use them as a Trojan horse to “self-identify” into whatever space they want to jerk off in. There is absolutely no reason to think that this is an organic biological phenomenon. It’s a cultural idiom and it ought not to be allowed to muddy the waters of verifiable reality.
You seem nice.
Some people have no good answers so they resort to insults.. which shows weakness.