Which gender are you?

[Agent Orange Cooper]

I am appreciating your POV, guruilla. The reaction to your POV is pretty standard when it comes to this topic. I would contribute more but I don't have a lot of time, and these discussions do take a lot out of me.

Your point about the lack of discussion of the ideology behind transgenderism is spot on. That is the most important part—if you aren't addressing the ideology, then the conversation inevitably becomes just about placating people's feelings. I wonder if the people saying "you should go talk to a trans person" have done so themselves.

As an example, here's a perspective you won't read about on Everyday Feminism./

[slomo]

Then so must being human be seen as a constructed concept. Or the idea that you exist. It's relativism taken to the level of gobbledygook. Everything we have a word for is a constructed concept, if you want to go that route.

Quite a slippery slope. If some things are constructed, all things are beyond comprehension? Logos necessarily implies hard rules about what men and women are? The onus is on you to tease out that Rube Goldberg-reasoning.

Nannyism is in the eye of the beholder.

As is "delusion." You're entitled to your opinion. Keep it out of the diagnosis criteria and we can agree to disagree. I prefer to err on the side of trusting people to make their own choices.

Where did I use "delusion"?

I may be wrong, but it seems like you've done the thing you suggest I'm doing, here, by saying the onus is on me to disprove your own wild statement that male and female is merely a constructed concept. I practiced benefit of doubt by extending it further outward rather than shutting it down, because, sure, all we know for certain is that we are awareness perceiving something. So if you want to go there, by all means, let's ohm together.

What's being lost at this thread IMO (or hasn't been found, or even acknowledged) is the deep context; the idea that all that's being explored here is whether people have the right to make decisions they think will make them happy (which itself is based on a very dodgy ideology called the Pursuit of Happiness) is nonsensical at a board which is professedly all about deep background. Personal is political. Trusting people is one thing; assuming that they, or any of us, are free to make our own choices is another. If it were the case, there'd be nothing much to discuss at this forum, would there? We'd all just go live the dream.

My point is that so far there's been little or no discussion about the ideological constructs behind transgenderism (or transhumanism), even while throwing out the idea that biology itself is a conceptual construct. Isn't that a species of doublethink?

Anyway, I've made a load of ignored points at this thread so it's likely that my POV isn't being appreciated. In which case, I better conserve my energy.

It can be shown empirically that male/female dichotomy is not a constructed concept, but rather at least partially founded in biology. I deeply disagree with the tabula rasa model of gender, and all that it entails, and I (like you, I guess) begin to suspect the motives of the individuals who are pushing the most extreme versions thereof.

What is lost, in almost every discussion (including this one) is the statistical nature of the problem. One "side" asserts a strict male/female dichotomy, while the other trots out counterexamples that are easy to find (as a male homosexual, I'm one, BTW) but nevertheless not representative of the population modes. The fact that there is a large degree of variation does not contradict the biological basis of gender.

Because ideologically I think it's important to protect the interests of minorities (it's an ideology, and it could be open to questioning) I think it's also important to assert the rights of those individuals who believe they are transgender, up to the point that they do not interfere with the rights of others. There is some disagreement here, and elsewhere, where the boundaries should lie. It has been my observation, mostly anecdotal, that a large number of transgendered individuals like to push the boundary as far as it possibly can go (BTW this tendency is taken to a hiliarous extreme, to great comic effect, by the South Park episide "Cissy"). However, I have also met a few transgendered individuals who were wonderful people who caused absolutely zero inconvenience to the people around them. So there is wide variation along the sociopathy scale even among transgendered folks (go figure).

[slomo]

Also, because I have not seen it discussed in this thread, and because I am a horrible male (made more horrible by the fact that I prefer the sexual company of other horrible males over the members of the uniformly wise, beautiful, peace-loving, and universally benevolent female gender), I'd like to ask what might be some of the motivations of male-to-female transgendered individuals? If women are so uniformly oppressed by Patriarchy, what (other than perhaps mental illness) would cause a privileged male to identify with this oppressed class, to the degree that they are willing to remove body parts?

Might it instead be the case that women in fact enjoy perks in society that men do not, and (for whatever reason) these MtFs might want to experience some of those perks? I mean, it's not like we haven't seen case after case of hypersexualized, tarted-up, tits-to-the-max MtFs. Why would anyone want to willingly be subjected to all the resulting degradations of sexual objectification, being treated like a piece of meat!? (Oh the horrors!). Might it perhaps be that the male gaze comes with some tangible rewards (not the least of which is free drinks from the age of 18 to about 35)? Might it be that women wield a great deal of power over heterosexual men, in the form of sex (which is one of the most powerful motivators of just about any human endeavor, as we tirelessly learn in some of the other threads on this forum)?

This is not to deny that women experience disadvantages in other spheres of life, or that a particular individual born with a penis may have a great many psychological traits that cluster in the "female" mode of the distribution, and might therefore wish to be recognized as female in the social sphere. I'm merely pointing out what should be obvious to most men who have ever wanted sex, and a great many women who were in a position to offer sex. As un-PC as it might be to point it out.

I'm sorry to have to go all Milo Yiannopoulos on y'all.

[guruilla]

thanks AC, slomo.

Here's some data re: the transgender/transhumanism overlap, which maybe some folk here aren't aware of:

Martine Aliana Rothblatt

is an American lawyer, author, and entrepreneur. Rothblatt graduated from University of California, Los Angeles with a combined law and MBA degree in 1981, then began work in Washington, D.C., first in the field of communications satellite law, and eventually in life sciences projects like the Human Genome Project. She is the founder and Chief executive officer of United Therapeutics and the highest-paid female executive in the United States.[5] She is also the creator of GeoStar and Sirius Radio.[6]
...
In 1994, at age 40, she came out as transgender[18] and changed her name to Martine Aliana Rothblatt. She has since become a vocal a vocal advocate for transgender rights.

In 2004, Rothblatt launched the Terasem Movement, a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, and the prospect of technological immortality via mind uploading and geoethical nanotechnology. Through a charitable foundation, leaders of this school convene publicly accessible symposia, publish explanatory analyses, conduct demonstration projects, issue grants, and encourage public awareness and adherence to Terasem values and goals. The movement maintains a "Terasem Island" on the Internet-based virtual world Second Life, which is currently composed of two sims,[19] which was constructed by the E-Spaces company.

Through her blog Mindfiles, Mindware and Mindclones, she writes about “the coming age of our own cyberconsciousness and techno-immortality“ and started a vlog together with Ulrike Reinhard on the same topic.

Rothblatt contributed $258,000 to SpacePAC, a super PAC that supported her son, Gabriel, who was running as a Democrat in Florida's 8th congressional district[20] but lost.[21] Gabriel is a pastor for the Terasem Movement.

[edit, ps i have not watched this video; it might be dodgy presentation; edit 2, yeah was pretty bad; sorry about that, have replaced with interview only]

[Joao]

I'll seek to return to this thread when time permits.

In the meantime, it occurs to me that the discourse is likely hindered by a lack of clarity about terms. This often gets my goat in political discussion about right and left, liberals and conservatives, proletariat and bourgeoisie, etc., and it often seems that discussants have home-brewed definitions and end up talking past each other. While I'm reasonably versed in the jargon of that subject matter, I admit that the subtler nuances implicit in sex, gender, male and female vs. man and woman, etc. are not something I'm well-schooled in.

Perhaps someone could propose definitions or point to them. I'm not a believer in dictionaries or other documentation as the ultimate arbiters of truth, but it would surely be helpful for us to try and get on the same page.

[minime]

Babylon sisters shake it.

[slomo]

The links between transgenderism and transhumanism seem readily apparent to me, at least in principle if not in actuality. So thanks for some evidence of an actual link.

Both ultimately deny a physical/biological basis for personality, and both seek liberation from limits imposed by biology. The latter is not a problem per se (it warms the cockles of my gnostic heart) but I worry that those who fully buy into these philosophies will find themselves worse off than before.

Transgendered individuals, by altering their bodies, reinforce some of the very dichotomies that trap them, ending up physically mutilated and therefore limited in the ability to take advantage of the perks of either gender (the vast majority of heterosexual men, heterosexual women, homosexual men, and lesbian women do not want romantic or sexual involvement with someone having those alterations, so transgendered individuals end up with a limited pool of relationship opportunities unless they started out with a supportive partner). Most MtF's cannot pass. Even the FtM's I've met who've passed my initial gender radar still end up stimulating at least one of my uncanny valley neurons.

I've offered my thoughts on transhumanism before, but suffice to say that if it were possible to upload a software version of ones consciousness, one would become eternally condemned to the whims of the demiurge who runs the server.

[slomo]

I'll seek to return to this thread when time permits.

In the meantime, it occurs to me that the discourse is likely hindered by a lack of clarity about terms. This often gets my goat in political discussion about right and left, liberals and conservatives, proletariat and bourgeoisie, etc., and it often seems that discussants have home-brewed definitions and end up talking past each other. While I'm reasonably versed in the jargon of that subject matter, I admit that the subtler nuances implicit in sex, gender, male and female vs. man and woman, etc. are not something I'm well-schooled in.

Perhaps someone could propose definitions or point to them. I'm not a believer in dictionaries or other documentation as the ultimate arbiters of truth, but it would surely be helpful for us to try and get on the same page.

I don't think you're going to find any universal agreement about gender definitions beyond the biological definitions generally considered "sex" (e.g. XX vs. XY). I personally think it's useful to think about gender as a psychological/social phenomenon being defined by a multivariate distribution of traits across the human popluation, with two modes, each of which are driven and reinforced by a combination of hormonal factors, social incentives, and structural properties of social dynamics. The "bell" around one mode could be called "female", the bell around the other mode could be called "male", but good luck setting a boundary between them.

The "gender is totally socially constructed" camp ignores the bimodality of this distribution, as well as the dynamical processes that reinforce the bimodality. And it is my opinion that they do this not because they are stupid or ignorant, but because it serves a wider political agenda. But that's just my tinfoil hat talkin'.

[Joao]

What I have in mind is something like this:

What is the difference between sex and gender?

Sex = male and female
Gender = masculine and feminine

So in essence:
Sex refers to biological differences; chromosomes, hormonal profiles, internal and external sex organs.
Gender describes the characteristics that a society or culture delineates as masculine or feminine.

So while your sex as male or female is a biological fact that is the same in any culture, what that sex means in terms of your gender role as a 'man' or a 'woman' in society can be quite different cross culturally. These 'gender roles' have an impact on the health of the individual.

In sociological terms 'gender role' refers to the characteristics and behaviours that different cultures attribute to the sexes. What it means to be a 'real man' in any culture requires male sex plus what our various cultures define as masculine characteristics and behaviours, likewise a 'real woman' needs female sex and feminine characteristics. To summarise:

'man' = male sex+ masculine social role (a 'real man', 'masculine' or 'manly')
'woman' = female sex + feminine social role (a 'real woman', 'feminine' or 'womanly')

Basic, yes, and if it's really so simple then great. The question is: Are those definitions reasonable and sufficiently comprehensive, or do they carry baggage and/or omit important items? Anything can be nitpicked but since my head has nearly exploded form the recent use of "liberal" on this board to mean "left", I think it bears taking time to agree on fundamentals around such a similarly divisive subject.

This topic is much more interesting than my employment and social obligations, but I'm under the Man's thumb. Save a pitchfork to impale me on after the moral "mental illness" police have rounded up all the trans-people for reeducation.

[slomo]

For the record, I don't believe that all or even most transgendered individuals are mentally ill, but in one of my last posts I wanted to point out that there are larger cultural forces involved in this phenomenon. Not the least of which is hatred of masculinity among the gentry class.

[Project Willow]

I would advise anyone who is against transgender people to talk to some of them.

We cannot compare Rachel Dolezal to Chelsea Manning. Transracialism and other deceptions are exploitative imposterism while transgenderism is an identity that permanently marks one as a non-binary person forever at risk of violence and persecution. This isn't a Romany Rye. You cannot cross the DNA floor, as Katharine Quarmby says.

I am fully anti-transhumanist but supportive of rights for trans people. I don't see or understand the connection.

There's a big difference between supporting human rights for people dealing with sexual dysphoria, autogynephilia, or gender non-conforming behavior, and being critical of mainstream trans politics and ideology.

In mainstream trans politics there is most definitely an exploitative deception at play that is a one to one correlative to Dolezar, and it is currently robbing women of a number of hard fought rights, including the right to maintain sex segregated safe spaces, and to compete on physiologically equal playing fields (title IX), just to mention two. Trans women are not content to be perceived as trans women, but wish to hold every right that women born women have, and to be categorized as women without qualification. This is a fundamental erasure of reality, and of the struggles that women face simply as a result of their anatomy. To ignore this is to position the needs of one perceived oppressed group above the needs of another. This should be viewed as the antithesis to liberalism. Alas, because the trans community is largely made up of male socialized male humans, their desires and wishes will prevail, and so the reality of the experience of women is being systematically erased.

There are two main forces driving this trend, one is the capitalist, big pharma solution to any problem, take a pill, feel better, don't examine any problem in any way that might interfere with profit making, and misogyny, pure and simple. If you can't win, join 'em. If men are better at being "women" through the trans experience (of course this is defined solely through referencing patriarchal sex roles), well then, feminism is completely neutralized.

I do not lack compassion for people who experience dysphoria, I am simply unwilling to give up my own human rights in deference to theirs.

[tapitsbo]

I think that part of the thread running through this thread is that the goalposts are being moved all the time.

Some might think Joao's neat distinction pasted above is either a betrayal of traditions OR an erasure of biology, others might think a "sex" category of any kind is problematic and we should only think about "gender". There are other possibilities too.

Lots of trends going on with this stuff are worth inquiry, in my opinion, but sometimes asking questions has achieved taboo status, especially in certain societies and environments.

I'm not so sure there is an outright, total hatred of masculinity among the "gentry" however you'd like to define it. There is however a lot very tense, volatile anxiety about sexuality and gender though, both among this group and certainly in other ones.

The fight for segregated spaces raises all kinds of questions - men's groups and trans exclusive women's groups both have received rather extreme sanctions lately. I can't say I have a lot invested in either personally but it is fascinating

[slomo]

I think that part of the thread running through this thread is that the goalposts are being moved all the time.

Some might think Joao's neat distinction pasted above is either a betrayal of traditions or an erasure of biology, others might think a "sex" category of any kind is problematic and we should only think about "gender". There are other possibilities too.

I'm not so sure there is an outright, total hatred of masculinity among the "gentry" however you'd like to define it. There is however a lot very tense, volatile anxiety about sexuality and gender though, both among this group and certainly in other ones.

The fight for segregated spaces raises all kinds of questions - men's groups and trans exclusive women's groups both have received rather extreme sanctions lately. I can't say I have a lot invested in either personally but it is fascinating

See my post on the Schadenfreude thread re: what I mean by "gentry" as a (mostly American-relevant) social class. Roughly corresponds to upper-middle-class, but complicated by social networks. If you read the whole essay I cited, you'll see that the two other main classes, Labor and Elite, do not participate in the erasure of gender.

[Project Willow]

Oh, FFS, can we at least agree on one thing, and that is there is a war between the sexes over mate selection, and that this war exists within practically every species on this planet and is central to survival? Or am I am in thrawl to "scientism", heaven forbid. The war over which sex exercises the greater control in mate selection lies at the heart of the age old war between the sexes in human societies. Humans sit about half way along a scale between pair bonded and tournament species, and we are constantly battling. I am a feminist because I believe it is for the greater good of this species that women exercise greater control in mate selection, and in a number of other areas for that matter, considering that patriarchal driven systems are currently wiping out our ecology. There it is, have at it.

[slomo]

Also, I agree that it's fascinating. In particular, that RadFems and traditionalist MRAs seem to agree on one issue, the distrust of MtF transgenders.

And I do pop into MRA discussions from time to time, I might as well out myself as leaning towards MRA beliefs (the ones you would find if you actually bothered to read r/mensrights, and not just accept what others claim that MRAs believe). In particular, there are some very real issues that men face in English speaking countries, namely Kafka-esque and punitive family court system, and various double-binds in the career and dating marketplaces. Note that I do not deny some structural challenges that women still face (but many fewer than 50 years ago), but there is a great deal of open conversation about these issues, while there is a general hostility towards any attempt at making men's lives better. I actually think this is a class issue, perhaps even a conscious attempt by Elite classes (defined by the same model I cite in the Schadenfreude thread) to create obstacles within the Gentry class. Erasure of gender distinctions is potentially part of this.

No, I don't hate women. No, I'm not a member of the KKK. Sorry.