I see. That wasn’t exactly my intention, although I did think that to some extent. It’s obvious to me that access to ID can be manipulated to discriminate against some voters/citizens, but I underestimated the extent to which it can/does happen. I am probably biased also by how easy it is sometimes in other countries, and forgetting that a lot of this is state managed in the US.
In some other countries there are also laws making it illegal not to be registered to vote. The advantage of those laws is that the govt is somewhat obliged to go out of their way to make it accessible.
I had no idea. The concerns seem a lot more valid now.
It seems like (today with all the ICE stuff) there’s a good opportunity to help those citizens since there’s now a point of government contact and the current administration could point to procedures that solve the problem for US citizens. (But I haven’t heard about something like this)
The govt could also proactively advertise to those people and run special programs or whatever. (This might be expensive but it’s a problem that needs to be solved at some point)
My (implicit) point was that when parties complain about something, and are then in power but don’t solve it, then that’s an indication of dishonesty, incompetence, or that an issue isn’t really that bad. I can see how the US federal-state dynamic makes it much more complex though (which I didn’t really consider before).
Yeah, that’s a good point that I hadn’t considered. (I think there are also social pressures too that might push people to cope in certain ways that are deemed acceptable, which kind of clouds the issue from an outside perspective.)
Ahh yeah. I am aware of this (and believe it) but didn’t consider it in this case, since the person in question hasn’t shown any indication of knowing about these ideas (or no indication that I have picked up, at least).
Most/all of the conversation about AI in this community is about LLMs and generative AI, and since they haven’t specified otherwise, I assumed that kind of AI is what they meant.
Lots of people are confused about how LLMs work and about the differences between AIs and AGIs. These confusions are widespread and normal. Looking at AI issues from a more Popperian point of view can be misleading for understanding what others are thinking since it’s an atypical viewpoint.
Re reasoning for bringing it up: yes in part. I also went over my draft post a few times and expanded on it, so there’s excess info.
We don’t need to get side tracked on the origin of transness if you don’t think it’s relevant. I don’t think it matters for discussing #2.
It doesn’t solve the discussion around #2. I was responding to the introduction of chromosomes and providing what I think is the reasonable way to go about determining sex/gender in anomalous cases. AFAIK it works for most intersex cases and all non-intersex cases, so it’s a more powerful explanation than chromosomes. Also, you said as part of your demonstration:
The gamete point was important insofar as I disagree with your conclusion. The inference of them being a woman (female) is correct because their biology is organized around large gametes (breasts, vagina). If it matters, I don’t think simulations of organs are organs – bottom surgery cannot give women penises or give men vulvas/vaginas.
WRT your main points around #2, I think there’s a communication issue so I wanted to take more time to map out the discussion and answer. Maybe my middle section above progresses that discussion but I’m not sure yet. I might not get the chance to finish my answer this session. Just wanted to flag that since I’m responding to some tangential things first.
Maybe you know more biology than I do. My understanding of what “biology organized around large gametes” means is that it refers to production of eggs. Is that mistaken? If that is not mistaken, then “(breasts, vagina)” is an odd choice of focus. Well, I don’t actually think it’s odd, I think I know why you said it, but it doesn’t seem internally consistent with your claim to care about gametes.
You could see someone with breasts and a vagina that does not have any capacity to produce eggs. I think this is a widely known uncontroversial claim, so if you disagree with it please say so. To be clear, this is a true uncontroversial biological claim even if we disregard “simulations of organs” entirely. But on that note…
It matters in the sense that it is useful for you to tell me that you have this belief. However, I have some issues with it.
As a reminder, the main claim I am disputing right now is this:
Your claim has to do with our ability to trivially and reliably assess one’s biological sex, or what gender critical people might say is one’s real gender. Which you say is determined by gametes, but your focus thus far has been on sex characteristics (breasts, vagina).
So if a “simulation” of an organ could fool you, wouldn’t that interfere with your ability to trivially and reliably assess if someone is a man or a woman, by your own definition? You might not believe the simulated vagina is a real vagina, but if your sense organs all believe it is… what then?
This is sort of like people who say vegan meats or cheeses are not real, and it is easy to tell them apart from real meat and cheese. Which is not really true, at this point in time some vegan meats and cheeses can fool people pretty reliably. But even if it was currently true, we can easily foresee a time when the vegan tech is good enough to do so… there’s no reason to assume such a thing is impossible. So asserting that vegan cheese must not call itself “cheese” would be pretty silly, IMO.
Just to confirm… this means you believe there is a nonzero population of humans who are currently alive and walking around who do not have hearts, right?
Also, burn/acid victims who have had their faces surgically reconstructed do not actually have faces, right?
And if we develop cybernetic eyes or hands, we should not properly be calling them eyes or hands. Because even if they fulfill the functions of eyes or hands, they are simulations. Right?
These are all expressions of your belief, as far as I can tell. Do you agree?
I think this belief is pretty silly. I think an artificial heart or eye or hand or nose that performs the desired functions of the respective organ/appendage should rightly be called by the name for that organ/appendage. Even if some aspects of functionality are a bit different, e.g. people with artificial hearts do not have pulses because the artificial heart pumps blood as a continuous stream.
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Feel free to skip this last part. It is theorizing on your mental state rather than directly arguing with your claims.
I think you, like most people who care deeply about “trans ideology”, are actually more concerned with sex characteristics than you are with gametes. But gender critical (Edit: I should have said “anti-trans” here instead of “gender critical” — the gamete focus appears in e.g. a Trump Executive Order trying to discriminate against trans people. I don’t think Trump or other anti-trans conservatives could reasonably called “gender critical” though) people have retreated to focusing on gametes after losing arguments on sex characteristics and chromosomes. Then they typically smuggle sex characteristics back in because the term is “organized around” gametes, so would include associated traits. But by pretending to focus on gametes, you can discount sex characteristics that don’t have corresponding gametes.
This does mean that some intersex people still must be totally ignored… again, a “biological male” with complete androgen insensitivity will naturally develop a vulva and develop breasts during puberty… but they have no ovaries, no womb, and they have a prostate and undescended testicles. So I think that means their gametes are male, but they pretty much always exist in society as females.
But it is seen as a fairly effective way to attack trans people from a scientific-sounding position.
Note: this is slightly out of date given you’ve replied to my earlier post. I’ll update the discussion tree and things but it’s a bit hard for me to reply synchronously atm. I’ll reply briefly to your quesitons/points about gametes at the end.
I mapped out the parts of the discussion I thought were relevant for figuring out whether #2 is true or false.
Also, in mapping out the discussion I can see that I’ve said a lot of stuff that isn’t directly relevant to our discussion about whether #2 is true or not. Sorry about that.
In the diagram, the lighter colors are for existing points, and the darker colors are for the new points I’ll make here. I thought they were good to add while making the discussion tree. I also added an implicit node on the left that might be useful.
Besides the next section, every section corresponds to a dark red box in the diagram.
I’ve attached the excalidraw file so you can edit it if you like.
I think yes, but also I did not do a good job of understanding you to begin with. It’s useful for some other related disagreements we have, like you seem to think that I’d see a woman without a womb/ovaries as male. Hopefully the discussion tree helps demonstrate why I don’t see it like that (even internal testes wouldn’t be enough for me to consider them male, since the dominant biological organization (e.g., breasts, wider hips, etc) would still be around large gamete production).
I agree that those kind of characteristic actions make it harder to infer whether someone is male or female (i.e., dominant gamete organization). By characteristic action, I mean things like HRT, surgery, dress, mannerisms, etc that are associated with trans/nonbinary/etc people for whom it is difficult to infer their biological sex. Notably these actions are largely absent outside of those communities.
That kind of deliberate action has two relevant consequences for this discussion, IMO:
De-correlates proxies for gender from gender (like many of the social / psychological traits we’ve talked about here).
It is an expected exception to what I said earlier because that is the point of doing it.
The “what I said earlier” for reference:
The reason it is typically trivial is because typically people don’t try and change it. Once people start trying to change it, it becomes much harder, and some proxies that used to work no longer work.
I agree. Some examples:
incomplete/partial information (but otherwise accurate)
‘red herrings’ (dude wearing a wig, someone with a feminine frame in drag, other deliberate obfuscation)
deliberate interference with what the otherwise natural biological development would be (hormones, surgery including cosmetic)
bad signals (someone’s gate is different due to an injury, misleading silhouette, etc)
acting
Re: some of the examples you brought up.
While these might be misleading in some contexts, I think they’re actually pretty minor factors in guessing someone’s gender. I’ve met nice male nurses who are caring and nurturing, and I’ve seen plenty of guys with feminine long hair or stuff like nail polish. I’ve seen trans women with beards (or maybe they were nonbinary, I didn’t ask specifically). I’ve met plenty of combative women (and trans women).
Arguably, the push to make these kinds of factors (social and psychological) less associated with gender has done exactly that. Since psychological and social cues are less associated with gender now and thus not useful in this regard, it only makes sense to ‘fall back’ (as such) to biology/phenotypes to guess someone’s gender. “Falling back” in this case isn’t meant to imply that the examples were good proxies or decisive criteria, just that they were proxies some of the time.
One other thing that might be worth mentioning is that I think we have different definitions of what ‘man’ and ‘woman’ mean. I am using them as direct synonyms for ‘male’ and ‘female’.
I hope we agree that ‘male’ and ‘female’ refer exclusively to biological sex.
Maybe this question is directly related and will help this branch of the discussion:
Why does the correspondence matter? I agree there’s a correspondence but I think it has been diminished somewhat and continues to be diminished. If anything, it feels like the trans movement wants to increase this correspondence because the legitimacy of their claims depends somewhat on gender roles being a proxy for gender (which I think is kind of sexist (I got this from the gender critical PoV I think)).
(edit: moving replies to most recent post to a new post to make it easier to navigate and keep the discord post links more accurate)
Kind of / maybe. Actual egg production isn’t required (because lots of things can go wrong, and someone doesn’t stop being a woman because they have their ovaries removed due to e.g., overian cancer or something).
I tried to use the same examples as you. There are lots of others like I’d naively include glands for breast milk production since I think males typically don’t have those (though I think taking hormones can cause secretions of some kind, I don’t know the specifics) [Edit: this was incorrect, men have all the biological stuff for milk production but need hormones for breast growth and lactation]. Wider hips is another example that I could make for a similar reason but haven’t (there are some more differences with pelvises too, like the way femurs attach is a bit different, and is AFAIK the origin of why men and women tend to walk differently).
Yes. Hopefully it’s clear that I don’t think this disqualifies someone from being female.
Briefly re organs: for something like an artificial heart I think it’s fine to colloquially call it a heart but technically those people don’t have a heart organ, they have a machine that fills the role of a heart.
Skin is an organ but a face isn’t. I haven’t thought too much about it but I’d say a face is a collection of features so an artificial face can still be a face.
One of the big differences with things like an artificial heart and sex organs is that sex organs have multiple purposes. They’re not just for sex, so the fact bottom surgery only partially replaces the function of these organs means I consider them a worse simulation than an artificial heart which AFAIK performs all the important functions (besides longevity perhaps if we can call that a function). I think whether the artificial organ partially or fully replicates the natural organ’s function is important.
Is a dildo a penis?
I’m not sure there’s too much point going down this discussion branch unless you want to.
If you do, my approximate take would be that if that’s all one (and their partner) cares about, whatever. But no one else should be forced to call an artificial hole a vagina (regardless of how convincing it is at first glance) and no one should be deemed to be attacking trans people for calling it how it is.
I do agree that as technology improves there are questions that aren’t currently answered that will need to be. Perhaps we’ll end up with like a transhuman post-gender gender and those people will effectively be cyborgs or something.
Some of your other comments are interesting and I’d like to reply to them but will do so in a separate post.
The point around smuggling back in sex characteristics seems like a reasonable point to me and worth discussing, but maybe it’s not directly relevant to figuring out if #2 is true or false.
Also hopefully you have more of an idea about how my view isn’t problematic for most intersex people. I can explain more if not.
I think I might have forgotten to include this question from the discussion tree.
Q: Why does the correspondence of terms to other things matter? We have other ways of talking
about roles, expression, and appearances; but not for biological sex.
I made a little chart to help explain how I see the gamete organization idea.
I did some research to find examples and check them.
One error I made earlier was about breasts – really they shouldn’t be counted. Men or trans women who take HRT can grow breast tissue, and if the right hormones are given they can produce breast milk which is nutritious enough to sustain a baby. I have no idea if the baby gets the immune and IQ benefits though. (Breastfeeding is associated with better immune systems in kids and around +4 IQ points compared to formula feeding. I haven’t fact checked that but my source is a midwife.)
Edit: also “true hermaphroditism” is apparently an outdated term and Ovotesticular DSD is preferred.
One could make the argument that some of the associated phenotypes only occur naturally in one sex (e.g., breast growth during puberty), but I think it’s probably easier and better to separate those out since HRT can affect them. Hormone systems/cycles themselves are a sex phenotype, though, which is why HRT is needed for trans people in the first place.
This is a bit off topic and not a good argument IMO. But it is somewhat useful for the discussion to look at my objections I think.
I have a bad gut reaction to all the fake meat I’ve tried, so whether I can taste the difference or not, I definitely end up knowing there is a difference.
Also some people (Kripparian comes to mind) are vegan for nutrition/health reasons, so they’d also definitely know the difference too.
That leads into a good point about technology. Does lab grown meat count as vegan? From an ethical point of view, I’d say yes (because there’s no animal cruelty), but for Kripp it definitely isn’t vegan.
With regards to the analogy to trans procedures and bottom surgery, I’d say the trans side is “yes”, and the gender critical side is “no”. (The trans community are arguing from ethics, and the gender critical community are arguing from reality, to put it crudely.)
Similarly, to follow the analogy, it doesn’t matter how good fake penises and vaginas/labias/etc get, if not all the roles of the original are fulfilled (including sexual reproduction), then what are they but glorified sex toys? (That is somewhat reductive and would probably be seen by trans people as quite a rude statement, but if we’re being honest I don’t really see how it’s more than that for most cases. It does seem like some trans people really are happier and healthier after bottom surgery, but AFAIK recent research does not support the idea that bottom surgery is a good long term solution, and for detransitioners it’s really really awful.)
Going back to the vegan food thing: do you think that non-dairy ice cream simulant that’s mostly seed oils should be called ice cream? To me (and I’m sure many lefties) that’s a symptom of corporatism and lobbying, or late-stage capitalism, or enshitification, or whatever. At the very least it’d be nice to have some standards so that the faux ice cream is not allowed to masquerade as real ice cream without consequences.
Granted, people are not desserts, so I don’t think my logic above should be applied to trans people, but hopefully you can see why I strongly disagree with dropping the “vegan” in “vegan cheese”. (And why I think the analogy is bad)
I do want to make one actual on-topic point: it seems like you are saying that provided you can use fake penises or vaginas for sex of some kind, then it’s as good as the real thing. My main response to that is that there is more to gender than fucking.
It is actually still unclear to me how you would think about such people.
I also think it is unclear to you. I think you have an intuitive and not fully formed idea that it would be clearcut enough that you would just do so, trivially/easily. I used XY people with total androgen insensitivity earlier because they are a relatively clearcut case. And I do think you could find it easy in other clearcut cases, e.g. an XX non-intersex person who had their ovaries and womb surgically removed.
But many intersex people have conflicting expressions of biology that are less clear than those examples. I don’t have confidence your guidelines would work well for them. I don’t think you have truly coherent rational guidelines for reliably and easily identifying men and women, and I think the gamete terminology is a similar smokescreen here as when it is used by mainstream anti-trans people. I think your guidelines are actually based primarily on intuition.
To be clear, intuition can be quite effective. That is what most people use to identify men and women, and it works okay most of the time. But I think it is dangerous to have an intuitive guideline while believing you have a concrete rational guideline. Especially if you use that guideline to start making lots of strong judgments on other people for e.g. the sin of confounding your intuition. Or if you get scared of or angry about gender ideology because gender ideology disagrees with your intuitive preferences. And then, because of that fear/anger, you support government discrimination against gender nonconforming people because of their aforementioned sin.
I don’t know if you are doing all of those things, but they’re all very common parts of the anti-trans worldview, so maybe they are worth mentioning.
I completely disagree that these actions are absent outside those communities. Many of these actions have occurred across a wide variety of subcultures throughout much of human history.
Hormones and surgery make such actions more extreme and effective. That is broadly true when applied to any relevant area, not just gender. In the modern day, hormones and surgery can often be deployed to dramatically increase the effectiveness of various behaviors humans already engaged in before the hormones or surgery were available.
I can explain what I mean here in greater detail if you like.
I don’t really see how it is an expected exception to what you said. They are a contradiction to what you said. That contradiction was approximately my entire reason for initially replying to you.
Are you saying you were already aware of this contradiction to your claim, therefore you can ignore it as an exception without modifying your claim? I’m not really sure it works like that…
But if you like I can accept this as a concession on the original point I made and move on to other issues. Let’s go back and check. Here is the thing you said that I argued with:
I will try to rephrase your claim here to indicate that I understand it:
Your claim: The idea that “we can reliably tell men from women by their biological, psychological, and social traits” is correct, not incorrect. The only way it would be incorrect would be if we define “man” and “woman” as someone’s “genfeelia”, because who the heck knows what they identify as. But if “man” and “woman” mean “male” and “female,” then it is typically trivially easy to identify everyone as one or the other.
My point was: No, it isn’t. Because trans people exist, you might identify someone as a man, a male, but actually you would be incorrect by your own definitions. They are biologically female, but you identified them as male due to their biological/social/psychological traits.
With that recap, and in light of what we’ve said since, it seems like you agree with my original objection. Trans people make it more difficult to reliably identify who is male or female, therefore it is not trivial to identify who is male or female.
Right?
–
Since it seems like that original issue is maybe settled, I’ll engage a bit more and give some more thoughts for future points of contention.
In isolation, sure, but I wrote that as a list (with a few options) of traits you could see on a single person that might lead you to identify that person as a woman. I did not write each one as a decisive trait alone.
Also, which traits are likely to be decisive is contextual and dependent on culture and society. Some very minor gendered traits in western modern society could have been very decisive in another time and place.
Okay. Yes, many of those traits are not decisive. But also, many many cis-gendered people have stories of being mistaken for the other gender due to such traits. It happens a lot. It happens especially often with children, but it also happens to adults a lot. Are you unfamiliar with this type of thing?
In many cases the confounding traits are incidental, such as voice timbre or build. But in other cases they may have intentionality, such as hair length or grooming style. Such decisions are a bit like being trans in some sense — intentional violation of gender norms that confounds external observers’ ability to correctly gender them.
Why?
What purpose is being served here? It sort of seems like the logic goes something like this:
We use XYZ traits to identify men and women
Some people want to be identified as men or women but we currently identify them the opposite way due to XYZ traits, so they are changing their traits to match
We want to keep identifying them against their wishes, so we will change which of XYZ traits we say really mater so that we can continue to identify them opposite from their wishes.
Like, if social/psychological behaviors are the benchmark, they’ll change those. But then we can say sex characteristics are the benchmark, so they will change those. But now it’s the gamete expression that is the benchmark, so we can continue to not identify them the way they want. If we get sufficient technology to change the gamete expression (e.g. to give an AMAB person ovaries), then we can pivot to something else, like some futuristic gene scan that tells us what their gamete expression was at birth. Then we know they aren’t real women.
Yes, I know that you are trying to do that. I think I have explicitly pointed out ways where your choice to do that is part of what I am arguing with, no?
Exclusively? I dunno. Usually, sure.
It matters as much as any consideration of “man” and “woman” matters. You added a thought below so I will bring it back in here:
Sure we do, you literally just pointed out that we have “male & female” in addition to “man & woman”.
Even if you conceded man & woman to include trans people you could till hold out on male & female.
Yeah that’s a standard gender critical line but it doesn’t make much sense.
The concepts of man and woman exist in society and intersect with thousands or millions of related ideas. Even with our society being more egalitarian than in the past, we are nowhere near a true egalitarian state. There are, again, thousands or millions of ways being a man or a woman can have significant impacts on your life and how you exist in your society.
A huge number of these are not purely dependent on biology. If you socially or psychologically behave as one gender or another, that has consequences. Of the instances where biology is relevant, another large subset of them are contingent on mutable sex characteristics that can be impacted by hormones/surgery/etc.
The number of cases in society where a man/woman distinction exists and it is exclusively the biology of gametes that matters are comparatively small.
Trans people are not trying to change society to be less egalitarian. They are trying to exist and be happy. If society was more egalitarian and the distinctions between men/women were fewer, that would not make things in any way harder or worse for trans people. Why would it?
Trans people don’t need cis people to conform to more gender roles. I don’t think that’s ever been a main trans ideology goal or talking point, either. If anything, most objection to “trans ideology” is the opposite — it erodes gender norms and roles. But I am aware some gender critical radfems try this line of attack.
BTW, just a good illustration of how trans people do not actually have these massive implications for cis people… earlier you said:
This is silly. “I’m attracted to women” does not mean “I’m attracted to all women.” There are sub categories of women. You might not be attracted to fat women, or old women, or young women, or smart women, or opinionated women, or hairy women, or tall women. You are attracted to some subset of women. Trans women could be women and all of the above would remain the same. And they might be a subset that often got excluded by many people who say they are attracted to women. That would be fine. It would not require redefining sexual attraction or anything.
Technically when most guys say “I’m attracted to women” they mean “I’m attracted to women who meet X specific beauty standards”. Also, despite many of their best efforts, such men typically are attracted to trans women who meet those beauty standards. One of the main demographics of people who date trans women are straight men. One of the main demographics of people who date trans men are straight women.
It’s a penis made out of silicone or whatever, sure. But also, that seems off topic.
Since I think you conceded my original point I am happy to jot down a few other branches and see which one makes sense to pursue further.
Nobody is forcing you to do anything. But it is kinda funny that you attack trans people in the same sentence where you say nobody should be deemed to be attacking trans people.
I don’t think the attack is necessarily intentional, I think you’ve spent some time steeped in extremely hateful gender critical spaces and you’ve internalized their bigoted attitudes and language.
For example: “(regardless of how convincing it is at first glance)” is a attacking comment, intended to signal that it isn’t really convincing. Trans women don’t have real vaginas and nobody will be fooled long term, sooner or later their partner will realize it is just an artificial hole. You’ll never pass, tranny, you’ll always be a man in a dress.
I don’t necessarily think that’s how you feel, but the language evokes that sentiment.
You know who might also find this rude and reductive?
AFAB women who have had hysterectomies. Edit: Or gone through menopause!
If not all the roles of the original are fulfilled (including sexual reproduction), then what is such a woman’s vagina but a glorified sex toy?
You try to use the “organized around gametes” idea to try to escape this comparison, but the moment you forget to use that phrasing, you immediately fall into using terminology that applies perfectly 1:1 to sterile AFAB women.
In this analogy, you aren’t arguing for keeping the “vegan” descriptor and I am not arguing that we should drop it. You are arguing that it should not be called “cheese.”
Vegan cheese is a subset of cheese and goes in the cheese section. Trans women are a subset of women and go in the woman section. That’s the analogy.
Trans people agree, that’s why e.g. trans women say they are women if they live as women in society, even if they never get bottom surgery (as very very few of them ever do).
It’s okay. I think it’s good to discuss even if it’s not directly related to the truth of point #2.
I moved this to the top so it’s visible. (It’s the only proper on-topic part)
Yeah that doesn’t surprise me (I don’t know too much about what Trump particularly has done besides disallowing trans women in women’s sports – which I agree with and I don’t think counts as being anti-trans).
How is this retreat different from improving an explanation in response to criticism in the usual way? Just that it’s bad faith? (If so, what about the people who aren’t making the argument in bad faith?)
I’ll be honest: yes, at least a bit. Well, no in that the actual facts of the matter are important to me, but I do care about sex characteristics too. I care more about the truth but I’m biased and flawed, too.
Here’s a bit of a brain dump, maybe TMI but you’ll get more of a sense for my mental state:
brain dump mental state
I think I am somewhat transphobic in a technical sense. I don’t outwardly show disgust (especially around trans people), but I don’t like transness, I don’t think it’s good for the individual, society, or the future of society / civilization and that worries me. I also believe strongly in individual autonomy though and the right for people to live their life how they want, even if that means doing horrible things to themselves. I feel deeply sad for detrationsitioners that regret transitioning, especially when it involved the more irreversible stuff (like bottom surgery). I wish there were more safeguards in the way.
I also think I have valid points against TRAs. I think pushing trans stuff on kids is objectively wrong and I don’t think that’s transphobic. I don’t think it’s transphobic to advocate for alternate reversible treatments first like therapy that is not affirmation based. I think there’s a lot of medical malpractice going on, and people suffering from gender dysphoria (regardless of whether it’s learnt, induced, or whatever) are pushed into things way too fast and not given proper medical advice, and are treated really badly whichever way they go. I think it’s connected to bigger societal issues. I think people on the left often become trans because it’s a way to fit in – being ‘normal’ isn’t ‘normal’ anymore – and that’s bad.
I also like feminine women, and like women to be feminine.
Maybe that’s internalized patriarchy or misogyny, I’m not really sure. Probably a bit of both (I’m less sure about the misogyny though).
I regret some of what I thought and how I acted when I was younger because I think it wasted precious time (mostly of the women I dated). I don’t like that I contributed to a culture that I think is uncooperative when it comes to long term relationships. I don’t like that I sometimes treated women badly, but I also don’t like that sometimes I was treated badly. I feel like I wasted a lot of time focusing on having sex instead of focusing on trying to find a good long term relationship. I want kids and I am afraid I’ll miss out on having the kind of life I want (incl. a family) because I didn’t take things seriously when I was younger. I’m envious of friends who do have that or are well on the way to it but also glad for them. I feel sad for friends that are half way there and might not make it because life starts so late, now. I think all this is related and maybe being somewhat anti-trans is an outlet for that frustration.
So yeah you’re probably half right. But I also think you’re half wrong.
I don’t like that I’m probably a bit transphobic, but I also don’t like the behavior of TRAs.
I don’t like the violence from the left or how they seem to escalate everything to either being an ally or somehow wanting them dead. I also don’t like that trans people feel like other people don’t see them as people. I think it’s all round a pretty bad situation and is getting worse.
I get the feeling some people definitely want that and use whatever arguments work to further that. They want to men to be manly and strong and a moral authority, and women to be feminine and thin and demure and all that.
But I think there are actual gender critical people who aren’t serving a patriarchal agenda, too.
I think I’m probably a mix of both.
I also think the same kind of thing is happening on the other side: there are ‘trans’ fetishists that get off from exposing themselves in women’s changing rooms or from other people referring to them as women, and there are people actually suffering from gender dysphoria who have terrible anxiety every time they need to use a public bathroom because there are no good options. I have some sympathy for the second group.
Sorry if the volume I’ve posted these last few hours is a bit overwhelming. I promise I’m updating the discussion tree and will post that soon. Then we (or maybe just I) can get back on topic. Feel free to respond to whatever you want to and think is most important. (Maybe some of these posts can be separated out into their own threads, too. Maybe this is a good post for that.)
So I managed to download this, go to the excalidraw website, import it, select all, change to a normal computer font, and figure out basic navigation (try: cmd-scroll, shift-scroll, cmd-drag). But I see you can just share links to trees so isn’t that better?
I used to have mild antipathy for transness. It seemed anti-egalitarian to me. I do think that in a theoretical (utopian?) pure egalitarian society, where the only meaning of man & woman had to do with strict biological processes with zero cultural baggage, assumptions, roles, etc… I am not sure what being trans would mean in that system. Though given how far we are from that, it’s plausible to me that by the time we reach such an egalitarian society, technology would allow them to fully change biologically in every relevant way, so maybe that’s all it would entail. If we ever reach such a society at all.
But in the real world, we are nowhere near that egalitarian. Being a man or a woman means a lot of things beyond biology. Trans people today are trying to exist in the real world. It isn’t anti-egalitarian to try to exist in the world and be comfortable. It isn’t anti-egalitarian to try to discard gender roles that cause you pain and adopt gender roles that feel more appropriate to you. The choice of “just don’t adopt any gender roles, stupid” is not realistic for most people. Including e.g. you, as evidenced by some of the thoughts you shared.
If they can develop normally (as normal as such a development can be) then basically how they look. Even if they need hormone supplements, probably still how they look. I don’t know for sure unless we cover specific cases.
Well yeah you’re right at some point. I never specifically claimed that these cases would be trivial or easy though. We’re talking about less than 0.1% or 0.05% of the population, and there are phenotypical people in that range that are ambiguous walking past them on the street.
What I did claim is that a typical case is trivial. I’d still include many trans people in that ‘typical’ basket, but if they go out of their way to make it harder then it’s going to be harder.
Hmm maybe I’m doing a bit of a motte and bailey type thing. Going to take a bit more time before replying more. (I’ve read ahead from where I’ve quoted).
I might update the tree first and then pick the important bits to reply to.
Maybe, I was working offline a bit earlier and I’m not sure how the links work (I don’t want live updating or a collaborative mode, though maybe a collaborative mode would be good). I also think it’s valuable to have images (though I’m going to try svg in future so text is hopefully selectable).
Also in general links will rely on the service being up which I don’t like. Excalidraw supports self-hosted instances so even if the main site is down there are probably 3rd party ones that are free to use.
Because it is not a coherent argument. The only use cases for it are bad faith, or people who got duped into believing it in good faith and don’t understand it.
It is a fuzzy concept intentionally to give wiggle room to dance away from arguments without really countering them. What does “organized around” actually mean?
If it was actually about the gametes alone, the criteria was just “can produce sperm/eggs” then that has a clear objective definition. But it excludes lots of cis people so it’s kinda untenable and makes you look like a jerk and an idiot — basically saying “if you are sterile, you’re no longer a man/woman.”
I think some far right christian conservatives actually bite the bullet on this, and just say “if you can’t have kids that makes you less of a woman,” so I have mild respect their (evil) principled position.
But most people know how bad that looks and won’t commit to that. So then you end up in this goofy “organized around” weasel space. But as far as I can tell it is just a proxy for sex characteristics, with a layer of deniability so that if trans people manage to jump the hoops and change their sex characteristics you can say “no you still don’t count.”
You yourself have betrayed this in our discussion, e.g.
if not all the roles of the original are fulfilled (including sexual reproduction), then what are they but glorified sex toys?
Looking pretty bad for sterile people.
I think any specific argument you put forth using this gametes idea will fall on one side or the other… either it will be an argument that focuses on reproduction and also excludes sterile people, or it will be an argument that focuses on sex characteristics and so includes trans people who sufficiently change their sex characteristics.
So the gametes idea isn’t good. The arguments don’t really work, they just create a sort of interchangeable motte-and-bailey where either side (reproduction/sex characteristics) can serve as the motte or the bailey in any given situation.
So for intersex people, you judge them based on how they look. But for trans people, you’d rather inspect their genitals or give them some medical scans? Why not just go based on how they look?
I would agree many trans people go in your typica/trivial basket, except backwards. You will intuitively and trivially make a judgement and get it “wrong” (by your lights), by gendering them the way they are presenting rather than by correctly guessing at their chromosomes (or gametes.)
I’m reconsidering a lot and soon won’t be able to make a post for a while (I’m also getting quite tired and have lots a bit of motivation to update the tree because I’ll be able to do so more effectively tomorrow). I will respond to some choice points that seem most important for progressing the discussion. Particularly, the mindset I’m in at the moment could be described as like ‘self-cynical’ or something similar. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to discuss all this, thank you.
Yeah, I have a problem with being too judgmental. I’ve read a bit of Rand recently (like the last year or two) and I think that has made some of it worse. Particularly I have a habit of trying to control how other people think (which I didn’t realize till it was pointed out to me).
Anyway, that is to say I’m somewhat aware and trying to be cautious about it.
I don’t think I’m as bad as what you’re imagining but you’re probably not far off in some important ways.
One thing that is a problem with my takes currently is that I’m aware that in a more transhumanist future they won’t work (e.g., we can use stem cells to grow a full set of female reproductive organs and implant them into someone born male). Maybe that’s because I want to hold on to how things used to be. This is kind of stupid though for some of the reasons you pointed out about being attracted to only a subset of women anyway. Like, I am only really interested in entering into new romantic relationships if it could lead to kids. This already excludes trans women so why should I care whether they’re in the women category or not.
If I modify my original statement so that it tries to cover 100% of people, then yeah I concede it doesn’t work and there’s a contradiction. (The reason for modifying it being to remove the “typical” wiggle room. It’s not trivial.)
Yes… maybe. I’m not 100% there yet but I think I see what you mean now.
I’m familiar with it. I’ve seen it with children. While no examples come to mind for adults, the fact that some women probably have a harder time because people are trying to develop a trans-dar and mistake them for trans has occurred to me independently and I have sympathy for these women. It’s actually one of the reasons I’m a bit anti-trans. I’m not sure how to resolve that except by doing the thing I’m fighting against which is just treat people based on one’s best guess for how they want to be treated (gender-wise). I think that’s what is wanted, at least.
One thing I don’t know how to resolve is the parts of trans culture I think are bad for other reasons. Like people basically pretending to be trans to get off and/or do things I’d consider to be sexually assaulting women (e.g., exposing male genitals in female changing rooms). I still think that’s bad but I also don’t think it’s right to demonize a group of people because of a few bad actors (that’s one issue I have with the way the left treats the right, for example).
I also don’t like the compelled speech aspect of treating misgendering as hate speech. I don’t know the extent to which current laws in various western nations do that, but there are a lot of worrying things like speech laws in the UK and Germany.
Yeah that sounds like hell.
Part of the reason I’m clinging to men and women = male and female is because 10-15 years ago it was common for a bit to refer to women/girls as females and I didn’t like it. It felt objectifying and also weird to use an adjective as a noun. I made a conscious effort not to do that and use women/girls appropriately instead.
Yeah this is a good point. I’m attracted to a very small subset of women as it happens. (mostly because of some breakpoint around intelligence I have, the crude way of putting it is that stupidity is a turn off, but it’s even more extreme than that implies. combine that with some other criteria like age (partially due to the desire for multiple kids) and weight and it’s a pretty small proportion of the population.)
I have some unresolved feelings and thoughts here but not enough time to figure out how to put them into words now.
It didn’t occur to me that this was an attack when I wrote it, but I see what you mean.
Part of my motivation is the kids thing, which I should probably just treat as a preference rather than some basis for how I want categories of people to formed.
I have a strong negative reaction to the last sentence, but no defense to the observation that I kind of am saying that in more words. (Which is why I kept it in)
Yeah, you’re right.
Well, no I wouldn’t, but without complete information I don’t really know how I’d reliably apply the gamete test. (So I concede it doesn’t work)
The purpose was so that I could justify keeping people in biological buckets.
I still have reservations about some things like bathrooms. I think unisex bathrooms might actually be better in some ways because comfort for women and girls needs to be built in.
Also stuff like Giggle (see Tickle v Giggle)
Essentially I think there will always be bad actors and we shouldn’t throw cis women under the bus for the sake of trans women.
Also women’s sports I feel like is kind of pointless if there are no biological gates.
I don’t know how to reconcile these things besides not changing my mind on them.
That’s a major motivation for my earlier views.
