Tweeting politics and science.

[mishkin]

At best, this is something people say out of concern for trans people's feelings, but very few actually believe it.

Take for example the miniscule percentage of heterosexuals who would consider dating a trans person.

yes, most of us heterosexual men still have to rid ourselves of many prejudices. that does not mean at all that a trans woman is not a woman.

That said, I'm pretty sure most people consider it wrong to discriminate against those with mental health issues except when there is a legitimate reason to do so. For example, not hiring someone with narcolepsy to be a bus driver. I'd say there are legitimate concerns about trans women competing against biological women, especially in contact sports. Consequently, accusing people of not believing trans women are real women isn't a substitute for an argument.

Here you are, again associating trans people with mental illness.

[Cope]

At best, this is something people say out of concern for trans people's feelings, but very few actually believe it.

Take for example the miniscule percentage of heterosexuals who would consider dating a trans person:

Even in those cases, it isn't certain those individuals really consider the trans person to be the opposite sex, maybe just close enough for attraction in some cases. Dictionaries still define a woman as "an adult female person" (see here and here). I'm sure activists who feel a desperate need to control everyone's speech will eventually get that changed, but there's obviously a limit to how much gaslighting actually works (see above).

That said, I'm pretty sure most people consider it wrong to discriminate against those with mental health issues except when there is a legitimate reason to do so. For example, not hiring someone with narcolepsy to be a bus driver. I'd say there are legitimate concerns about trans women competing against biological women, especially in contact sports. Consequently, accusing people of not believing trans women are real women isn't a substitute for an argument.

Activists wouldn’t feel the need to repeat the claim ad nauseum if most people actually believed it. It’s crude propagandizing designed to create an illusion of truth. The phrase isn’t even arguably true in a physiological context (such as being discussed here).

[athanaric]

yes, most of us heterosexual men still have to rid ourselves of many prejudices. that does not mean at all that a trans woman is not a woman.

I'm curious to know how many of the valiant trans activists in this thread would be willing to walk the walk and actually date, and possibly marry, a "trans woman" themselves. I suspect it's all just hot air and virtue signalling.

Here you are, again associating trans people with mental illness.

Oh, so now mental illness is bad? How bigoted of you.

[Cyclops]

At best, this is something people say out of concern for trans people's feelings, but very few actually believe it.

Take for example the miniscule percentage of heterosexuals who would consider dating a trans person:



Even in those cases, it isn't certain those individuals really consider the trans person to be the opposite sex, maybe just close enough for attraction in some cases. Dictionaries still define a woman as "an adult female person" (see here and here). I'm sure activists who feel a desperate need to control everyone's speech will eventually get that changed, but there's obviously a limit to how much gaslighting actually works (see above).

That said, I'm pretty sure most people consider it wrong to discriminate against those with mental health issues except when there is a legitimate reason to do so. For example, not hiring someone with narcolepsy to be a bus driver. I'd say there are legitimate concerns about trans women competing against biological women, especially in contact sports. Consequently, accusing people of not believing trans women are real women isn't a substitute for an argument.

Yep there's loads of grandstanding in this arena as well as really strong real world consequences, I've got no answers, sensible or otherwise. Thx for injecting data, I mean the emotion is actually important too but it helps to have some bones to articulate the debate.

I find the TERF stuff very disturbing, but I can see some of the perspective of someone who has spent a lifetime trying to carve a space for women out of a fairly patriarchal society seeing those positions eroded by someone they see as a man.

While I sympathise I also see the impact on trans family and friends. This is a category of people who are killing themselves at a higher rate than most, so if there's concrete measures to address that I want to see them. Unfortunately its more likely that turf and culture wars will swallow the sensible debate.

The point about trans women wrecking people in sport is one we've failed to address. Currently trans women are being bullied out of access unless they are weak. Iskar's sensible suggestion about "lifetime T levels" and so on has failed to be applied for my favourite sport because it didn't work to exclude the worrying trans woman. Its a festering sore to me.

Just on the narcolepsy point, my grandfather had narcolepsy and he had a job as a truck driver. Luckily he was in the army supplying the Northern Territory in WWII. He'd wake up some times ploughing through [undifferentiated red desert terrain] and all he had to do was follow the tracks back to the "road" (which was just the bit of desert lined with glass and metal from discarded beer containers, more or less the shortest route from Adelaide to Darwin) to get back on track. Of course your point still stands, just mentioning it because some employers will overlook health issues. I'm no suggesting the Army ha slower standards or anything (dumb ****s that they are ;-))

The bit about segregation is another hot point. I know of separatist men and women and I find them bizarre. I see humans as communal and plural, the idea of a "one sex" or "one gender" community is weird to me. Partial segregation can be productive, finding a sub community is great coz it helps build individual identity and provide tailored support. I feel like some of the separatist tendencies in say second wave feminism have contributed to this strong hostility to trans women. I dunno how to address it all. Other aspects of Second Wave feminism have worked well.

Apartheid is evil, right? We have a very articulated apartheid system in Australia though, as the indigenous nations experience such disadvantage it'd be close to genocide not to pump money into health and education there. In the end the aboriginal groups get "less" overall because they don't have access to political influence, so "on he books" handouts are meant to make up for the lack of backdoor/soft power/old boys network etc...leading to aboriginal people rightly claiming they are still excluded from power and poisoned by western society (which is right) and others saying they get more for being of a certain "race" (which is what happens), literally apartheid (=separate development), or if you like, racial discrimination.

I need several whiskys/whiskeys now. I'll have the answer shortly after that.

[Iskar]

The issue creating the most divisions here seems to be the mixing of several actually separate questions:
Q1) Is gender biologically determined or culturally ascribed?
Q2) How far go the necessary (not just contingent) physiological differences between people classified as men and women?
Q3) Is the separation of men and women for sports a sensible means to create fair competition?

Traditionally the answers to the questions were
A1) the former
A2) very far, in particular regarding physical prowess, because see A1)
A3) yes, see A2)

As soon as a society starts regarding gender as a social construct correlated to but separate from sex this results in a giant cluster of the aforementioned issues: A1 breaks down, casting doubt in A2 and causing the breakdown of A3. As a consequence the new answer to Q3 becomes a proxy war about the answer to Q1, which explains why people can get so unreasonably upset about trans-people competing in the sports categories of their gender and not their (supposed) sex or about others denying trans-people said participation. Very few of those engaged in this kind of argument will actually be interested in Q3 itself (how to categorise people to ensure fair competition) and much more in what it means in reverse for Q1.
As such, the smartest thing to do, in my opinion, would be to first decouple the questions. Q3 is one about measurable predisposition for physical prowess. We already use that kind of classification for boxing. There is actually no sensible reason to not use analogues of weight classes for other sports instead of the men/women separation (hard contact sports may need an update to the rules to protect boobs just as genitals are already protected, but that's just equality).
Q2 is one for the anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists to determine by hard data (as provided by sumskilz here e.g.) and careful sorting out of feedback effects, external variables, etc.
Q1 is finally the actual societal question that we have to answer, and at least in my opinion the easiest way to resolve that issue is to recognise that sexual self-identification and preferences are probably not clear 0/1-issues, but questions of degrees on a scale. Most of the population lives close to either end of these scales, but distributions generally have tails so you'll find every combination and degree of "identifying as..." and "liking...". In particular, if you recognise that the differences are gradual, it saves us from opening up a new "drawer" for the latest variation of sexual identification and preferences every other week (bi-curious meta-cis non-binary what have you).

I've probably upset either camp in this societal question by now, but so be it...

[mishkin]

As soon as a society starts regarding gender as a social construct correlated to but separate from sex this results in a giant cluster .

Gender is a social construct. A person can be biologically a man, a woman (or intersexual) and not be satisfied with the gender that is assumed for them in a specific society. That this brings many headaches for some (it should only be a problem for those who live in a society that does not accept their real gender) does not mean that it is not true.

[Sir Adrian]

Gender is not a social construct. The differences between a man and a woman are far deeper than just different reproductive parts. We are a dimorphic species which evolved to have two complementary genders. Not equal, not superior, not inferior, complementary as in neither can function without the other.

In every society that allows for maximum attainable equality of opportunity between men and women both naturally gravitate towards traditional gender roles.

If gender was social construct it would onle ever be present in a few cultures. Yet we find the exact same roles and the exact same ideas in each and every culture, from east asia, to europe to the newly discovered tribes from the darkest and dankest corners of the amazon forest.

[Iskar]

You're mixing sexus and genus there.

[mishkin]

If gender was social construct it would onle ever be present in a few cultures. Yet we find the exact same roles and the exact same ideas in each and every culture, from east asia, to europe to the newly discovered tribes from the darkest and dankest corners of the amazon forest.

There are three genders in some cultures, (very few cases) and what is expected of a man or a woman (their gender) has varied throughout history and varies geographically/according to society.

I have been thinking about how even today we classify men in the continuum "very masculine - little masculine" and how we can directly deny somebodys manhood. (same for women: very femenine - tomboy - not feminine at all). The male and female gender/sex have never been a solid rocks precisely, right? You could always be a very effeminate man after all.


On a side note, this phenomenon was highly publicized ten or fifteen years ago.

“Sworn virgins” (burrneshas in Albanian) are Albanian women who decide to ignore their female identity and live as men in the Balkans. Photographer Jill Peters traveled to Northern Albania to meet and photograph these women. The decision to live as men is more related to gender roles in the Albanian culture rather than a statement of sexuality; these women live their lives appearing as men.

Sworn virgins have existed for centuries. According to tradition dating back to the 15th century developed out of the Kanun, a tribal code of law, tribal clans from the Balkans considered families without a male presence as pariahs. When blood feuds decimated all the men in a family, the only way to salvage their honor was for a woman to become the patriarch of the clan and start acting like a man.

Also, I believe that if we all investigate in the past around us we will find a story of a woman, economically independent, taking the male gender. (A woman from around here even married her girlfriend, the movie will be in theaters soon).

[Iskar]

Hatshepsut comes to mind.

[mishkin]

shoot me Iskar, I did not know who (or what) Hatshepsut was AND I thought it was german.

[Iskar]

You didn't know the great pharaoh Hatshepsut? The insolence of it.
Pray to Bastet and Hathor for forgiveness that we may not feed you to the crocodiles of the upper and lower nile (or was it the upper and lower crocodiles of the nile? Do crocos stack?), anyhow... where was I?

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Or Margarete of Denmark, who ruled as 'right master' Denmark, Norway and Sweden. As only person.

[mishkin]

"Pope Joan (Ioannes Anglicus, 855–857) was, according to legend, a woman who reigned as pope for a couple of years during the Middle Ages. Her story first appeared in chronicles in the 13th century and subsequently spread throughout Europe. The story was widely believed for centuries, but most modern scholars regard it as fictional". Damn! I suppose it is also part of the legend that the popes were previously tested to determine their sex. and I wonder to what anti-Catholic influences I have been exposed all my life to know these "legends".

[Iskar]

The salient point about Hatshepsut is, that she was considered a man for all societal purposes up to being inaugurated as king, not as queen, and being depicted as a man in wall paintings and busts, which is an interesting point towards gender as a social construct.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Margarete:

In Denmark Margaret was called "sovereign lady and lord and guardian of the entire kingdom of Denmark" (Norway and Sweden later bestowed on her similar titles). This special, double-gendered title bestowed upon the holder the power and authority of a man (lord), of a woman (sovereign lady) and of the gender-neutral guardian. Later, when Erik was elected King of Norway in 1392, she renounced this title in Norway, and in 1396, when he was crowned as King of Denmark and Sweden, she stopped the use of this title altogether, although she continued as Regent.<sup>[53]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_I_of_Denmark</sup>

[mishkin]

The salient point about Hatshepsut is, that she was considered a man for all societal purposes up to being inaugurated as king, not as queen, and being depicted as a man in wall paintings and busts, which is an interesting point towards gender as a social construct.

Yes I think it can be concluded that humans we are basically simple, but also really ing complicated.

[athanaric]

Yes I think it can be concluded that humans we are basically simple, but also really ing complicated.

Or maybe all of these cases posted here (especially the Albanian one) are examples of internalized patriarchy and have nothing to do with genderbending and transsexuality. Also, when can we expect those who proclaim that "transwomen are women" to date a transwoman?

[Iskar]

Regardless of the reason for assuming gender roles differing from the biological sex, the examples show that differentiation between biological sex and social gender is not an exclusively post-modern thing.
As for dating trans-women, does one date every woman one meets? Why should one date trans-women (or -men) just because they are women (or men)? The only valid reason for dating someone in my book is finding them physically and mentally attractive, which is a purely individual decision, not a categorial one.

[Sir Adrian]

Hatshepsut comes to mind.

People like Hatshepsut, Wu Zetian, Catherine of Russia are considered great because they are singular individuals who did what 99,9999% percent of women could not. They're proof of gender being innate rather than proof of it being cultural.

There are three genders in some cultures, (very few cases) and what is expected of a man or a woman (their gender) has varied throughout history and varies geographically/according to society.

I have been thinking about how even today we classify men in the continuum "very masculine - little masculine" and how we can directly deny somebodys manhood. (same for women: very femenine - tomboy - not feminine at all). The male and female gender/sex have never been a solid rocks precisely, right? You could always be a very effeminate man after all.

What you are talking about is indeed generally defined by culture but what clothes you wear and how you talk is not what gender is. Gender is the common sub-conscious traits and methods of approaching problems shared by all men / all women. A man will always try to take a problem apart and solve it logically. A woman will always look at a problem as a whole and solve it intuitively. A man will always be more interested in things than a woman. A woman will always be more interested in people than a man. A man will always be more aggressive and take more risks. A man will always break out of the norms more than a woman, etc, etc.

There are specific innate patterns of behavior that purely evolutionary and common across all men thought time, respectively all women throughout time. That is what gender is. We, as a species, literally evolved to perform different tasks. For example men have a much smaller field of vision than women specifically because women used to be the gatherers and so needed to be able to detect predators that would approach from behind. On the other hand, men, as hunters, can see farther and in greater detail than women because it was needed to spot prey. This has also affected behaviour. Men tend to focus more on specific details in the long term whereas women will always try to the big picture now and don't worry about the long term as much as men.

Or another example. Women are more interested in people because as gatherers women had to stick together and watch each other's back as women who gathered alone would generally be eaten by predators.