Law of noncontradiction and is a woman a woman?

[aeon]

Something I just thought about—a newborn is assigned female or male at birth. And that assignment process is sometimes challenged by what nature presents, whether for reasons of physicality and/or genetics.

So if we have a legal basis upon which female and male are assigned by someone else, should it not be valid for that assignment to be later affirmed or corrected by the individual themself?

Cheers,
Ian

 

[skippy64]

Aha! It seems that and the topic of "what makes a woman?" are on its own their own threads.

OK OK, you got me. I was trying to make this thread about two things: In a sense, what makes a woman? And, what do you think about the laws of logic? I was influenced to post something because I was watching this conservative show by Matt Walsh. Now maybe none of you here like what he would have to say on this topic, but I really like the presentation of this trailer. Just go to whatisawoman.com

 

[Matty]

You see, I’m a conservative and it’s been a big thing these days to question “what is a woman?” And while many people don’t want to answer the question, I thought of a question epistemological one myself. Now a progressive leftist might agree that a woman is a woman. Now I’d like to follow that up with “permanently?” Now I don’t know but maybe I’d get some kind of response like “not if they don’t want to be.” The point is this, a woman can’t be a woman and not a woman at the same time. It’s nonsense.

I guess people can feel like any gender they wish, and I can see them as any gender I wish.

My "gender constructs" are almost entirely physically and not mentally/psychologically derived. So I'll see female bodies as female, and male bodies as male.

 

[skippy64]

So what I understand progressives to say about the question, what is a woman?—the unofficial definition: is somebody who identifies as a woman. Now I want to push back just a little and follow up that question with, is a woman always a woman? If the answer is yes, I would have to assume there is more to it than that, as it must also be how consistent somebody is in regards to their expression of self. I mean, what if you had a scenario of a woman who for two years identified as a man, but came to realize it wasn’t for her, so she moved on from that and maybe called it a phase. If we say gender is not permanent, then do we miss the point of the person in this scenario? She wouldn’t want to be viewed as someone who was a man for two years, because she learned her lesson and it wasn’t for her.


I realize some of you think logic only tells us so little, but we’re talking about gender theory; this theory should be examined by logic. It is to be considered the tool of all science. Aristotle said it is also necessary for us to be able to speak to one another in an intelligible way. Aristotle did not create logic, or any man for that matter, he was simply trying to define rules of thought that were already built into rationality, into creatures like us.

 

[John K]

@skippy64 Some more thinking around this topic.

I honestly don't think that logic is directly relevant to how this issue is unfolding - it's got far more to do with the rationale of feeling than thinking in MBTI terminology. I don't think there can ever be a definition of a man or a woman that could be agreed by everyone and used as the starting point for a pure logical chain to build on.

There is a whole spectrum between female and male and people can be anywhere along that spectrum. In fact it's not a simple spectrum because there are really two of them. There is the biophysical spectrum with people in the middle having some biological characteristics of both sexes in varying proportions, and maybe the genes of neither. Then there are the people who are born with all the biophysical characteristics of one or the other, but whose psyche is oriented somewhere along a soul spectrum between them, or even centred on the opposite sex - these are the men trapped in a woman's body or the women trapped in a man's body. It seems to me that particularly with this second spectrum, people may not be able to see clearly who they are in terms of their gender without trying on the clothes. It means really trying it too because otherwise the experiment isn't real. I can well imagine that a person who lies away from either end may have no clear idea of one or the other - after trying it, they may decide to go onwards or to go back. It isn't just whether the trial feels it's going in the right direction for them - there is a lot of heartache and grief in making a full transition and lots of pain and risk for some, and I can well imagine people turning back out of fear of the costs in these terms.

I don't think the hype over this issue is helping. There are only a minority of folks who have these problems and I don't see it needs to cost society much to help them work things out. There are some big consequences in certain cases such as your mother deciding that she's a man when you are only 5 years old, but I think these can be worked through if people always put true love of others at the centre of their decision making processes.

I can't help feeling that common sense easily gets lost in dealing with this issue. Like most other people, I was taught to distinguish male from female before I could talk and I do it instinctively without any conscious analysis. If I look at what I'm doing, I'm basing my assessment of your gender from what you look and sound like, how you behave, how you express yourself. Quite honestly, I couldn't care less if someone who comes across to me as female is actually a biological male, or v.v. - I'll take them at their face value. On the other hand, if the gender they say they are is inconsistent with these things then I feel a discord - and I have to put some effort into working out just what their identity is. This is the same really as many other ambiguous situations when people say one thing with their mouths and another with their body language, and I become suspicious of what their motives are. Certainly, I will have problems if a 15 stone committed rugby player with a thick beard and a beer belly tells me in all seriousness that they identify as a woman - I don't think I could treat them as one just off the top, and call them her instead of him in my mind's eye. Of course if they said that they were about to go into a gender reassignment program then I would have a much more accepting view of them than if they just claimed it without any behavioural and biological alterations in sight. I exaggerate to make the point here - real life is usually going to be more nuanced than this of course.

People are strange - and long may we be so. One of the greatest things is for each of us to find out who we really are as our life's goal, and for some this means gender reassignment.

 

[Matty]

This whole topic (in the general sense, not this thread) seems so alien from how I see male and female, that it's entirely unrelatable to me.

Without any pejorative sense intended towards others, it makes me feel creeped out and like people are using sophistry to force people to say and think strange things they don't believe. I can imagine similar arguments and pressure being applied to people in cults, to manipulate them into accepting that whatever the cult leader says, no matter how arbitrary, must be true.

 

[skippy64]

@John K I’m speaking around the subject? [proceeds to tell me there isn’t really a problem; just need to stop making a big deal of it and if you don’t, you’ll just make things worse (even though there isn’t really a problem] Got it!

Look, the alternative to man creating logic is not logic creating man. We all know that. Instead, it points to something bigger—namely, a Creator. I’m not attempting to tie this into MBTI terminology, sorry.

If all we need to do is have each others backs and not step on anyones toes and just accept the spectrum, then sure, I’m just skippy! But if things point in another direction, maybe it’s really that a Creator God makes us a little uncomfortable to deal with. After all, the natural follow up to that is: are we held accountable to God? Are we held to our own subjective standard of morality, or is God Holy?

The Bible tells us that a heart issue does exist and the heart of it is sin. It also tells us lying, blasphemy, adultery, thieving and murder is a sin, even when it is not carried out but is in our hearts. So if it seems unfair God levels us and puts all of us in our place showing that His Law demands perfect obedience which none of us are capable of, but He is. The Ten Commandments were written in stone by God himself, on two stone tablets. Yes that’s in the Old Testament and Jesus came to fulfill the Law not abolish it and He said, whoever loves God keeps my commandments (see Jn 14:15). So what if we don’t keep His commandments? According to that standard, it means we are deserving of the eternal punishment in hell. Is that too much a punishment? You might ask. The Bible tells us that His Law reveals this alienation from Him. It may seem unfair to us but it is out of love that God warns us of our eternal dilemma. Now I don’t agree with YouTubers and bloggers that try to preach fear that we are all deceived because of some conspiracy, and therefore we must repent and put our trust in Christ (I have seen this circulated on the internet once). No, this is different because if we just teach the Word of God naturally then let fear do its work so that we might see our need of the Savior.

Why we can’t just try to shape up our life

Why won’t God accept me by my own terms? Great question, I’m glad you asked. It’s for the simple reason that God does not grade us on a curve, 10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. 11 For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law (James 2:10,11). God is so just that He will not let us go on our own merit. We are all bent on sin and have turned our backs to God, so He must change us. This is the free gift of grace, but it came at a cost— His Son. What we must do is admit our wrong, confess our sins to Him and know that we do deserve His punishment. What the cross shows us is that the wrath of God is not only for the sin or crime against Him but the wrath abides on the sinner. Sin leads to death, which is what Jesus endured three days in burial (though He was not a sinner). Jesus’ work of salvation is shown by pardoning the sinner, taking the punishment we deserve, and offers us new life by His authority as shown in His rising from the dead. His call to us is simple, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matt 3:2; 4:17) It is not that we are unable to understand it; it is a heart issue and the problem is sin. We need a Savior from sin as much as we need a Savior from hell.

What we all need is a new identity and that's true for the drunkard or adulterer or porn addict or the misgendered or fornicating cisgender and transgender. We cannot call this a mere resolution; we are called to repent and put our trust in Christ. He lived the perfect life for us, took the punishment we deserve, died on the cross and rose again.

Does that mean we repent perfectly? No. But we need to put off our former way of living, such that our former identity doesn't control us. It is not by the measure of our faith for Jesus said, "truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matt 17:20) No one is a mature believer the moment they put their faith in Christ. But, those who are His own follow Him, and His righteousness tops anyone's self identity.

 

[Dan Philosophy]

Howdy, I'm a cis-het white dude, but I'm also 1) an INTP, 2) with a background in philosophy, who 3) has been thinking about this topic for a while. Unfortunately, that's a recipe for Wall of Text(TM), but hopefully I'll be interesting, informative, and thoughtful enough to make up for it? And hopefully I won't make too many mistakes - feel free to call me out on any, I'm here to learn.

You see, I’m a conservative and it’s been a big thing these days to question “what is a woman?” And while many people don’t want to answer the question, I thought of a question epistemological one myself. Now a progressive leftist might agree that a woman is a woman. Now I’d like to follow that up with “permanently?” Now I don’t know but maybe I’d get some kind of response like “not if they don’t want to be.” The point is this, a woman can’t be a woman and not a woman at the same time. It’s nonsense.

Let's deal with the logic first:

"When you're up you're up, and when you're down you're down you're down, but when you're only halfway up, you're neither up nor down."

All the Law of Contradiction says is that an object can't be both p and not-p at the same time. I agree that a person can't be a woman and not-woman at the same time, so long as we hold the definition our definition of 'woman' constant across the argument and we're not equivocating on the term. But logic itself doesn't demand that a person can't be both a man or a woman at the same time, or that a person has to be either a man or a woman at a given point in time. And it certainly doesn't require that a person's gender identity can't change over time. You might be able to use logic as a tool to arrive at those conclusions, for some value of 'possible,' but you'd need a conceptual analysis of our concepts of 'person,' 'woman,' and 'man' to get there.

Secondly, we have more concepts in play here than just 'man' and 'woman.' There's also people with non-binary genders and people who are gender-fluid.

To the best of my knowledge, people who are non-binary are a mix of 'woman,' 'not woman,' 'man,' and 'not man.' I'll put it that way because I'm not sure if there's a single spectrum of gender, so that anything that makes you less feminine will make you more masculine, and vice versa. Or if there's separate spectrums of masculinity and femininity that are at some kind of angle to each other. (If they are at an angle, they're probably not completely orthogonal, but what do I know?) To the best of knowledge, nobody has discovered some third flavor of gender that's neither masculine, nor feminine, not a mix of the presence or absence of those two flavors of gender. But I am The Straightest Person You Know (as several gay friends have informed me) so it could take some time for news of any such discovery to reach me. For now, let's say that a working hypothesis is that a person with a non-binary gender is somebody of a gender that is some mix of the presence or absence of masculinity and femininity. Beyond that, all I can report is that a slogan I've seen is "non-binary people do not owe you androgynity."

People who are gender-fluid have gender identities that can vary from day to day and over the course of the day. I have seen posts on this thread that said things to the effect of "your gender is whatever you choose it to be." I suspect this isn't true, even of people who are gender-fluid. One definition of "pansexual" is that people who are pansexual are attracted to all genders, but I don't think that means they are attracted every single human being. It probably means that for each gender, there is at least one member of that gender they are attracted to, or more likely that gender doesn't play a role in who they are attracted to. That doesn't mean that pansexuals "choose" who they are attracted to any more than people who are monosexual (like me) can choose who we are attracted to. I would think gender-fluidity would be more like a mood. You can't choose to be happy or depressed. The most you can do is to change your environment in ways that will hopefully change your mood. To use a fictional example, Tedd over on El Goonish Shive feels most comfortable cooking when they're doing so as a woman. So if they wanted or needed to be a woman for some reason, they might pre-heat the oven and start going through the cabinets for ingredients.

According to some stuff on Wikipedia, one difference between people who are trans and people who are non-binary and/or gender-fluid is that people who are trans experience gender dysphoria when being mis-gendered, and people who are non-binary and/or gender-fluid don't. I would suggest treating that as an empirical observation and not as a definitional criteria: If we come across somebody who identifies as non-binary and/or gender-fluid and who is suffering from gender dysphoria, we should probably update our textbooks instead of informing this person that they're wrong about their own goddamn gender identity.

Oh, and I'm using "non-binary and/or gender-fluid" because I'm not exactly sure about how the Venn Diagrams of those two categories work out. I'm fairly sure there's some people who are non-binary but not gender-fluid, who have a non-binary gender identity that's fairly stable over time. But I'm not sure where the line gets drawn between the two categories, and I suspect those two communities are still defining the boundaries for themselves.

To get back to the OP's question, somebody who is gender-fluid isn't going to have a stable gender-identity, and I would fully expect them to be a man one day, a woman the next, and maybe something in between on Thursdays.

But because of that "gender dysphoria" angle, I would expect the gender identity of somebody who is trans to remain fairly stable over time once they've begun the transition process. I only throw in the "after" bit because one of the symptoms of trans-ness is that people with gender dysphoria generally know that something isn't right about how they're gendering, so they try throw themselves even harder into the role to try to make up for it. That probably has something to do with why Chelsea Manning went into the military and why Caitlin Jenner went into sports. A small minority, like a single-digit percentage, of trans folks de-transition after starting the process. But my personal read on that isn't that they were wrong about their trans identity. I suspect a bigger factor is that they decide that the pain that comes with being mis-gendered is less than the pain that comes with being out as trans in our current society. I could be wrong about that, but that's the way I'd bet.

I have a lot more to say, but I'm going to go ahead and post this so that 1) I can see if there is a Door Dashing slot open, 2) I can give my phone-typing finger a rest, 3) I can let other people get a word in edge-wise, 4) so that this particular Wall of Text doesn't get too long, and 5) so I can go back and, um, read the rest of this thread. Sorry, it was already at three pages when I got here, and I had plenty to say from reading just the first page alone. So sue me

 

[Dan Philosophy]

Right, but one makes a basic and profound mistake thinking that which is human can be constrained by logic.

Logic is a tool created by humans, not the other way ’round.

Logic does not tell us how to love, how to dream, how to be, or who we are. What logic describes is but a very thin slice of what it is to be human.

Well, philosophers and mathematicians take it as an article of faith that you cannot have a true logical contradiction out there in the world. What is common and do exist are paradoxes. As some author put it (in an alt-history where New Orleans remained a colony of the First French Republic, and that rational Republic never collapsed into Napleonism), a paradox is not a contradiction (since a contradiction cannot exist). Instead, a paradox is the intersection of two roads that you didn't know we're there.

Paradoxes are of great interest to philosophers, since we can learn a lot from them. A contradiction just means there's something seriously broken in our logic.

In theory, I suppose logic, combined with our beliefs and values, should be able to tell us who we should love, rationally speaking. But humans are seldom rational, and it would be irrational to expect them to believe.

 

[Dan Philosophy]

If you can't clearly define what a woman is then being or not being a woman is just meaningless semantics. At that point call yourself whatever you like and change your mind as often as you like.

<Facepalm> Um, semantics is literally the study of the literal meanings of sentences. Coming up with a clear definition of a term like "woman" is LITERALLY WHAT SEMANTICS DOES!!!!!

Sorry, it's been a moment since someone pushed that particular Beserk Button. I had thought that particular misuse of 'semantics' had finally died out pop-culture and I wasn't pleased to see it resurrected.

 

[Reason]

<Facepalm> Um, semantics is literally the study of the literal meanings of sentences. Coming up with a clear definition of a term like "woman" is LITERALLY WHAT SEMANTICS DOES!!!!!

Sorry, it's been a moment since someone pushed that particular Beserk Button. I had thought that particular misuse of 'semantics' had finally died out pop-culture and I wasn't pleased to see it resurrected.

K

 

[Dan Philosophy]

Okay, I think I've read the entire thread. And I spotted a post I can reply to so I can begin to provide my definition of "woman." But there's a couple of things I want to say about conceptual analysis in general first, since I think they're relevant.

First, what philosophers try to do when they analyze a concept is they try to discover its outer boundaries, by specifying a set of criteria which are jointly sufficient for a candidate to exemplify the concept and are jointly necessary. But the way actual humans use concept and terms is more of a "bundle" approach. For a given concept, there's a bundle of central paradigm examples that everybody who shares that same concept agree exemplify that concept. But things can get vague and fuzzy out on the boundaries where philosophers like to work.

So long as everybody's intuitions agree about what examples are 'concept' and which are 'not-concept,' we can use conceptual analysis to discover and describe this shared concept people are carrying around in their heads. But sometimes, people start disagreeing about what their intuitions are. At that point, we can't do conceptual analysis anymore. Sometimes, we still need a definition that is even more precise than what conceptual analysis can provide us. But to go beyond conceptual analysis, we're no longer discovering a definition. We're specifying one. That act of specification is going to be somewhat arbitrary from the standpoint of the natural language speakers and their native understanding of the term that expresses that concept. But the specification will hopefully be rationally guided by whatever "legislative" need that is requiring that extremely precise definition. The term, so defined, will no longer be a natural language term that we've discovered, but a term of art we have created.

Second point: I'm told that Plato once said that the goal of metaphysics is "to carve nature at the joints." But a slogan of mine is that "there are no joints in the absence in the absence of butchers." In other words, our values can, will, and should help determine where we decide to carve nature up with our concepts. Not all rational beings will agree with how we've chunked up the world, since their values might differ from ours. And that's okay.

Admittedly, when scientists create the conceptual languages that they use to express their theories in, they are trying to capture the law-like regularities they see in the world. But this desire to capture these law-like regularities is itself a desire. It's presumably a desire that would be shared by any possible finite intelligence. But I would say that God wouldn't carry that much about law-like regularities. A finite intelligence wouldn't need to carve up nature into concepts and categories, and could understand all of nature in terms of concrete individuals, down to the subatomic particles. God doesn't need a language. Us finite intelligences do, so it's likely that we would all want to find law-like regularities, and use languages that capture them.

But what I mean by my slogan is that particular commonality among finite intelligences might be the exception, not the rule. We might disagree a lot about which law-like regularities we want to capture might differ a lot between different intelligences.

I can give two examples from China. 'Jade' actually refers to two different minerals. The artisans in China we're aware of the differences, but both minerals did what they wanted them to, so they didn't bother to come up with separate terms/concepts for them. The two minerals have different chemical formulas and form in different ways. So the difference is very important to geologists, who eventually developed different terms/concepts for them. But the difference isn't important to artisans, so they just call both minerals 'jade' unless they want to show off their leet science knowledge.

Second example, Mandarin uses the same word for "goat" and "sheep." I know this because I was born in '79, the Year of the Goat-Sheep. Makes sense, since the two kinds of critters both provide milk, meat, wool, both eat about the same thing. So in a lot of contexts, you don't really need to distinguish between them. If Mandarin speaker does need to distinguish, they can add an adjective: "mountain goat-sheep" (goat)" or "wool goat-sheep" (sheep).

So, one way to talk about the way conservatives and progressives are disagreeing about our concepts of "woman" is to say that we agree on a lot of paradigm cases of things that are women and things that are not women. We are disagreeing about certain cases that are closer to the outer boundaries of the concept.

There's at least two things we can do about this. One thing we could do is to use various rhetorical tricks to bring about greater unanimity in how we apply this concept. The other thing we could do is think very hard about what we want to do with this concept. If we could figure that out, then we might go ahead and specify a term of art that captures the paradigm cases and whatever edge cases we want to bring in. This calculation would also help if we go the intuitions route, since that would tell us what way we want to rhetorically push people's intuitions.

Ideally, we could use conceptual analysis to discover a definition of 'woman' that all English speakers would unanimously agree with, that would match their linguistics intuitions. Barring that, the next best thing would be a kind of specified linguistic treaty, a compromise that nobody is happy with, but at least captures the paradigm cases, everybody is equally unhappy with, and everybody can live with.

I use that last phrase advisedly, since misgendering trans folks demonstrably increases their suicide rates, and gender affirming care saves lives.

For practice, here's a use-case where a lot of people think the politicians need to create a definition of 'woman' that is more precise and operazationalizable than the standard way we English speakers throw the term around in everyday speech: Women's Sports. One 'progressive' approach is to say that if somebody identifies as a woman, then they're a woman. One 'conservative' approach is to come up with a list of physical criteria, wait for somebody to accuse somebody of being trans, put the kid or adult in front of an official official so the official can oggle the accused's nekkid body and see if things match up with the official check list.

As a bit of five-second foreshadowing, I'm going to say both of these approaches are wrong, and I'll point out that nobody seems to care if trans men and boys get to play on the men's teams or not.

My line is that asking how we should separate men and women from each other in this context is asking the wrong question. A better question: Why do we even have separate women's leagues in the first place?

Back in the day, feminists didn't want a League of Their Own. They just wanted to play sports! It was men who weren't comfortable sharing the field with women!

I have slowly worked out for myself that separation always implies inequality, which sucks since division of labor really does make a society more efficient. Sports apartheid was never in the interests of women from Day One. Exhibit A: the outrageous pay gap between the USWNST and the men's national soccer team. Now our society is finally admitting that not everybody fits neatly into pink and blue boxes. Not just trans folk, but also people who are non-binary, gender-fluid, intersex. So what used to be an unjust but somewhat workable compromise has become impossible to maintain.

Yes, there are physical differences between the typical women and the typical man, and some of those differences become important on a given sports field. But so what? Back in WWII, the Air Corps tried to design cockpits for just typical men. They quickly learned that the typical man doesn't actually exist out here in reality. They could save costs by not letting men at the ends of the various bell curves, but they had to make the cockpit arrangements adjustable. Designing for the typical human simply doesn't work. You're doing good if you can manage "one size fits most."

There are physical differences between the typical man and the typical woman. So what? There are also physical differences between Michael Phelps and the typical man, and those differences do help explain why he is such an amazing swimmer. Putting him and me in the same pool wouldn't be remotely fair, even though we are both men and I was in the Swim Team back in high school.

Asking how we should separate men from women in sports is simply asking the wrong question. Relying on athletes to be honest about their gender identities might work as a stopgap measure, but it's unfair to women, both cis and trans, as a whole, and it still leaves the non-binary and the gender-fluid out in the cold.

A better question would be: How can we change sports so that both men and women could play on the same shared field, and still have that field be reasonably fair and the competition exciting to watch? Physical differences do matter, but those physical differences could, I think, be specified in gender neutral terms.

I can provide two models for leveling the playing field in response to physical differences between athletes: Weight classes in wrestling; the ability score system they use in wheelchair rugby (aka murder all). Neither of these systems are perfect, and the athletes game the hell out of them. But that's part of the fun, isn't it? It's going to take a lot of skull-sweat to come up with versions of sports that are gender neutral, so I suggest we get cracking.

And I think it would be fun in itself. For example, imagine a basketball league where the average height of the players on the court has to be equal or less to the average height of human adults. You could still have gonks who could dunk, but you'd need skilled shorties to balance them out. Wouldn't that make for a game that more people could relate to? "I'm 5 nothing, but I could have been a contender!"

I'm my next post, I will propose a definition of 'woman' that I think will handle the most important use-cases. It won't handle them all, and I'll address one use case in the post after that.

I hope that y'all are enjoying this discussion, and that I passed the audition.

 

[Dan Philosophy]

Ugh. Have to wake up an hour and half early in the morning, so of course I can't sleep. Might as well work on this post for a while.

The way you have phrased the question seems very social constructionist. If you are not looking at it from this perspective it would simply be chromosomes and reproductive organs that provides a definition.

Hrm. You're assuming that (pure) Social Constructivism and Biological Essentialism are the only games in town when it comes to gender. From where I sit, I would say both theories are wrong.

Disconfirming Biological Essentialism is fairly easy. All you have to do is throw intersex cases at it. "XX and you're a girl, XY and you're a guy" is mostly true, in the same way that the solar system model of the atom is mostly true. But both are false enough that they fall into the "Lies Told To Children" bin.

To give just two examples: Example 1. There's one intersex syndrome, I forget the name, the people involved have an XY set of chromosomes, but their bodies interpret testosterone as estrogen. These people present as women, are socialized as women. In fact, they present as hyper-feminine in response to all the "estrogen" that's flowing through their bodies. The only difference between these women and more typical women is that 1) they have XY chromosomes instead of XX chromosomes, 2) on average, they are more physically attractive than the typical woman, and 3) they have testicles in the same places where most women have ovaries. The syndrome usually goes undetected until they go to a fertility clinic to see why they aren't having kids.

I would say that these women are, in fact, women, despite the fact that they have XY chromosomes and testicles instead of ovaries. What would y'all say?

Example 2: I learned on Twitter that there are no female moles. There's only male moles and moles that are intersex but are female enough that they can conceive and bring babies to term, nurse them, etc. Digging through dirt requires a lot of strength, so even "female" moles have a lot of testosterone in them. For most of the year, if you look at the organs of "female" moles, they don't look like how most female mammals look. They look intersex, ambiguous genitalia, etc. During mating season, they tone down the testosterone and get enough estrogen going that they can do the job of "true" females. But they're still intersex, relative to other mammals.

Basically, gender is weird, and even biological sex is a weird. You take a biological essentialist account of gender to an actual biologist, they're going to laugh themselves sick at you.

Social Constructivism is closer to the mark, I think. My understanding is that it claims that masculinity and femininity are "just" performances. If so, then any adult human should be able to perform a masculine role and be a man, or perform a feminine role and be a woman.

Problem with that approach is that the existence of gender dysphoria strongly suggests that social construction can't be the whole story. Trans people experience gender dysphoria when they're being mis-gendered and are attempting to perform the "wrong" gender role. The same is almost certainly true of most cis folk, it's just that most cis folk don't have much experience with being mis-gendered. Non-binary people and gender-fluid people seem to be able to mix-and-match gender roles without experiencing gender dysphoria, but they seem to be in the minority.

The existence of gender dysphoria strongly suggests that there is a neurological/psychological component to gender. Which means we should be able to use gender dysphoria to develop a definition of gender, of masculinity and femininity.

Let's say that we researched all of the stimuli that can trigger gender dysphoria. Could be a bit difficult to do ethically, since gender dysphoria is essentially a disease state, co-morbid with increased rates of depression and suicide. But I imagine it could be done.

Let's say we have a list of things that cause trans (and presumably most cis) men to experience gender dysphoria, but which fail to cause gender dysphoria in trans (and presumably most cis) women.

Seems to me that such a list would be a pretty good indicator of how femininity feels from the inside, what it means to perform the gender role of a woman. This definition probably wouldn't be a hard binary, more like a list of weighted symptoms of femininity that people could score higher or lower on. It would provide a definition of one kind of gender concept. I call this concept "agent gender," how playing the role of a gender feels like from the inside.

I've been reading up on Aristotle's virtue ethics, so I'll borrow some conceptual tools from him. If you're currently acting in a way that conforms with the feminine agent gender, then you're at least acting like a woman. If you're doing so voluntarily, and not accidentally or because you're being coerced into doing so, then you're currently being a woman. If you're in the habit of being a woman, and you don't just practice feminity as an out-of-character fling, then you are a woman.

I don't insist on this Aristotelian schema, but it has a certain compactness to it.

I propose this account of feminine agent gender as one possible account of our concept of 'women.' When people say that trans women are women, I would say one way of interpreting that is that they're saying that we should construct our society in such a way that people's agent gender (how they experience their gender internally) and their social gender (how society treats them, pronouns, clothing, bathrooms, sports teams, etc.) are brought into alignment.

And I would say that this concept of "woman" is the one we should apply in the most important use cases.

One use case where "trans men just are men; trans women just are women" might partially break down would be the doctor's office. A trans person of gender x is sufficiently different from cis people of both genders x and y from a medical standpoint that they need to be placed in a separate category, one that is also separate trans people of gender y. And there needs to be a fifth "misc." category for the various intersex syndromes, since people with those syndromes have health needs that are different from the other four gender categories.

But at least that complication is compatible with the claim that trans women just are women. It just means that in the medical context, there's enough differences between trans women and other women (namely, cis women and intersex people with feminine genders) that it becomes necessary to distinguish them into a sub-category within the larger category of "women."

In my next post, I'll address another problematic use-case that a couple of other people in this thread have already identified.

 

[skippy64]

God doesn't need a language. Us finite intelligences do, so it's likely that we would all want to find law-like regularities, and use languages that capture them.

Unless of course “the Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14) then God is not an impersonal Being.

Disconfirming Biological Essentialism is fairly easy. All you have to do is throw intersex cases at it. "XX and you're a girl, XY and you're a guy" is mostly true, in the same way that the solar system model of the atom is mostly true. But both are false enough that they fall into the "Lies Told To Children" bin.

No, there is just male and female; intersex is a deformity that in most cases can be dealt with surgically but still other cases require more careful attention.

There is something I think I’ve learned after starting this thread topic, and that’s that I can only go so far arguing that gender is binary. It just may start to seem like I’m talking in circles before long, and really, what would it matter in the end if I convince any of you that I’m right? No, but the most important thing you get right is the gospel if your life depends on it. So for any of you reading my post, I have a video I’d like to share on just that.

But don’t take my word on it; the Bible says gender is binary.

 

[Dan Philosophy]

Unless of course “the Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14) then God is not an impersonal Being.

You calling Jesus a finite intelligence?

No, there is just male and female; intersex is a deformity that in most cases can be dealt with surgically but still other cases require more careful attention.

That's what the doctors thought back in the day. And they "fixed" the "problem" without even checking in with the parents first or even letting the parents know that there was a "problem." These days, the docs have learned that unless there's an actual health problem, leave it alone. Let the kid figure out what to do when they're old enough to make decisions for themselves for anything that isn't an actual risk to their health.

Intersex folks are certainly atypical, but atypical isn't the same as unhealthy. I would say that in order for something to amount to a disease state, there has to be some kind of dysfunction, that is, "painful function" going on.

While we're on the subject of conceptual analysis, how would you go about defining "deformity"? Preferably in a way that wouldn't alienate the Deaf and Little People communities?

Hint: Do you believe beauty is objective, or is it in the eye of the beholder?

There is something I think I’ve learned after starting this thread topic, and that’s that I can only go so far arguing that gender is binary. It just may start to seem like I’m talking in circles before long,

That's a defeatist attitude. If you want to convince an audience, logic does help, but you need to start with premises that your audience already accepts. And the audience's belief in the conjunction of the premises needs to outweigh their disbelief in the conclusion.

and really, what would it matter in the end if I convince any of you that I’m right?

Well, I'm in favor of me believing true things and acting in a way that is morally correct. I'm in favor of the people around me believing true things and acting in ways that are morally correct. I would like to think philosophical argumentation will help achieve those aims.

No, but the most important thing you get right is the gospel if your life depends on it.

Why?

And what is "the gospel"? I found this Jack Chick tract, is it the gospel? Here's a Koran, is it the gospel? Here's a Book of Mormon, is it the gospel?

But don’t take my word on it; the Bible says gender is binary.

That is technically compatible with the claim that trans men are men, and trans women are women. If gender is binary, that would only rule out the existence of the non-binary and the gender-fluid. It would also suggest that God knows what gender each intersex individual is.

So does this book of yours give you any way of determining what the gender of a person is? If so, how would you apply it to that woman I mentioned back in Case 1?

How do you define 'woman'?

 

[Dan Philosophy]

I can only say that a biological woman has a different aesthetic to me than a trans woman. But I have no desire to intellectualize this nor do I think that I would find any satisfying answer. It's a purely spiritual matter.

My "gender constructs" are almost entirely physically and not mentally/psychologically derived. So I'll see female bodies as female, and male bodies as male.

I believe both of these posts touch on that problematic use-case I mentioned above. To review, I provided a definition of 'woman' based on a gender concept I called 'agent gender' - how your gender feels from the inside. I also said that one plausible way to translate "trans women are women" is that people who say that mean to say that social gender (how society as a whole treats you, pronouns, bathrooms, clothing, sports teams, etc.) should be brought into alignment with people's agent genders.

One problem with this approach is that there is a third gender concept that may become relevant in some contexts: what I call 'object gender,' the gender the rest of society perceives you as being. And the gender society treats you as being and the gender society perceives you as being might not always align.

Specifically, I'm talking about the gender that monosexuals - people who identify as being attracted to one gender and only one gender - perceive you as being, in terms of sexual attraction or the lack thereof. It's is relatively easy for us as a society to bring your social gender into alignment with your agent gender, since we are able to decide how we treat you. But since we do not choose our sexualities anymore than we choose our genders, we cannot bring a person's object gender into alignment with their agent gender through an act of will. The good news is that a person's object gender can be brought at least partially into alignment with their agent gender via medical intervention on that person's body, as a side effect of intervening on that person's body in order to relieve their gender dysmorphia. The bad news (or additional bad news) is that this fact is not an unmixed blessing.

Let me back up a bit. Being an INTP, I have considered this issue. I bounced my ideas off a IRL INFJ friend of mine. He advised me that it would probably be best if I kept my thoughts to myself, and not bring them up in public. But since two people in this INFJ forum have already touched on the topic, and I believe my thoughts on the matter are more... developed than theirs so far, I believe it would probably be a good idea for me to set them straight as best as I can before all three of us get Cancelled.

As far as I can tell, getting Cancelled means guaranteed op-eds in The New York Times and free publicity for an apology tour, so it actually sounds like a good gig if you're into that sort of thing. But since all three of us are introverts, we probably wouldn't enjoy stepping into the spotlight, so it actually would be in our best interests to not get Cancelled. So, on with the show.

I do identify as a monosexual, specifically, as a cis gender heterosexual man who is attracted to women. To the best of my knowledge, I have never been attracted to any trans woman. But I have been attracted to at least two trans men. Nothing serious, just on the level of causally checking out a co-worker with no serious interest in actually dating them. My attraction to these trans men does seem to be sensitive to how far they have progressed in the transition process, specifically, non-surgical Hormone Replacement Therapy. I would like to think that the change in pheromones was responsible for the change in my level of attraction, since that seems less shallow than me saying that it was the change in visual cues that were responsible. But I am willing to grant that the change in visual cues was at least partially responsible for the change in my level of attraction, even though it embarrasses me to admit this.

Sidis, you say that "a biological woman has a different aesthetic to me than a trans woman." So I'm guessing that your empirical observations on this topic match with my own. You also said that you didn't want to intellectualize on this topic, but I hope you don't mind if I do, since intellectualizing everything is my nature as an INTP. I hope the conclusions I reach will satisfy you.

Sometimes Yeah, you say that your "'gender constructs' are almost entirely physically and not mentally/psychologically derived." I interpret this to mean that you largely base your gender constructs on what I'm calling object gender. I can see why you do this, but I hope I can convince you that agent and social genders are of greater importance in most contexts. My argument: Social gender is going to be important in most contexts, like the workplace or when meeting with causal acquaintances. I hope I have argued convincingly why social gender should track agent gender (suicide and depression rates increase in response to misgendering). A person's object gender should only matter, only be overtly recognized and made salient, if 1) you are attracted to a person and you are willing to act on that attraction, or 2) you are not attracted to a person, and circumstances force you to admit that lack of attraction as politely as you can.

For your sake, I hope those two conditions apply only rarely, in proportion to the entire human race and your interactions with mere causal acquaintances. In absolute terms, I hope they happen as often as you wish. I do hope that they don't happen every time you come into contact with a member of the human race, not because I want to slut-shame you, but because romance and sex are friggin' exhausting, and it would probably be best if you kept that sort of thing down to the low double digits over the course of a month, out of the hundreds or thousands of people you meet over the course of that month.

But in that context, object gender does matter, and it might fail to align with agent and social gender. And this lack of alignment may have implications for somebody's overall gender. If us people who identify as monosexuals who are attracted to women are also attracted to trans men, that leaves us with two options. 1) We are not actually monosexuals, or 2) Trans men are not "real" men. I will argue for the first option.

But I'm hungry now, it's 1 in the afternoon and I still haven't eaten lunch, so I'm going to post this and go get something to eat.

 

[Dan Philosophy]

Okay, had lunch, helped my parents with some housework, took the dog for a walk, did some laundry, and I have 2 hours until D&D night with an INFP, an INFJ, an INTJ, and two people of unknown MBTIs. Back to this.

Let's review the standard taxonomy of sexualities, as was explained to me by a fairly authoritative website on the subject. You have pansexuals, who are attracted to all gender categories. You have bisexuals, who are attracted to at least two gender categories. And you have monosexuals, who are attracted to one gender category.

Monosexuals are usually divided into hetero- and homosexuals. That's somewhat problematic in general, since it marks out homosexuals as a minority. Whether that's a problem or not depends on what you're trying to do. It could be helpful to mark out homosexuals as a minority if you're wanting to create pan-queer solidarity. But lumping people who like women and people who like men together might help make society less heteronormative and more inclusive. At any rate, in this discussion, it's the gender of the person doing the attracting and not the gender of the person being attracted that's the topic, so "homo-" and "heterosexual" would be very clunky terms to use for this discussion. Let's talk instead about femisexuals and virisexuals instead, and temporarily define those terms as "people who are attracted to women" and "people who are attracted to men." I'll propose modifications to those initial definitions as we go.

(Ugh. "Doing the attracted," "being attracted." Implies that the attractive person is the one taking action, and the person being attracted is the passive one. In reality, being attracted is, if not an action, then at least a disposition towards action, and being attractive is not even that. But I can't think of a better way to phrase it off the top of my head.)

Another problem with this taxonomy is that "-sexual" seems to imply that we are attracted to sexes, not genders. But the asexual and aromantic communities have also adopted this phrasing, and it is useful to distinguish between sexual and romantic attraction. So I think we're stuck with it.

'Bisexual' is problematic, because it was coined at a time that many/most people thought there were only two genders. 'Plurisexual' might be a better way of putting it, if we want to capture "attracted to at least two genders, might or might not be pansexual." So let's temporarily define 'plurisexual' as somebody who is attracted to both men and women.

Now we actually need to take a closer look at what we mean by "x is attracted to y," or "y's are attractive to xs." When somebody says "I'm attracted to women," it is highly unlikely that they mean they are or would be attracted or to every woman in the world, and every possible woman that could ever exist. A better option for translating this sentence is with generic quantification. When philosophers, logicians, and some mathematicians quantify things, we use explicit adjectives like 'all,' 'some' (at least one), or 'none.' But when humans in general say sentences of the form "Xs are Y," we generally mean something subtly different.

According to the theory, generic quantification has several criteria, and if any one of those criteria are satisfied, then the generic quantification is held to be true. The problem is that once we have accepted a generic quantification as true, we humans are likely to conclude that the other criteria are also satisfied, when, in reality, they are not.

For example, only a very small minority, less than 1% of sharks, have the dangerous property of eating humans. Because man-eating is such a dangerous property, a lot of humans accept the generic quantification "sharks eat people" as true. This is despite the fact that only a small minority of sharks have this property, and none have that property "naturally" -- sharks only bite a limb off people when they confuse us for seals, and are disappointed because we don't have much blubber. ("Hey, where's the cream filling?") But they've already bitten it off, and it's physically impossible for them to spit it out, so they have to swallow the limb, and then swim off, leaving a survivor to tell the tale. But because "sharks eat people," a lot of people want to kill all sharks on sight.

In the context of sexuality and object gender, the criteria for generic quantification that is probably most relevant goes something like "Xs are Y" is true if there is a subset of X that has Y, in either the sense that a majority of that subset of has Y or that subset as a whole has Y as a "natural" property, and there is no other subset within an alternative property that is psychologically positive in either of those two senses of 'has.'

"Psychologically positive" roughly means "noticeable to humans," while "psychologically negative" roughly means not immediately noticeable. The classic example of a psychologically negative trait is "the curious thing the dog did at midnight," i.e., not bark at the intruder (because the dog knew who the intruder was). A dog barking at midnight is psychologically positive, a dog not barking at midnight is psychologically negative.

You being attracted to somebody or repulsed by them are psychologically positive traits that the person 'has,' relative to you. You being merely indifferent towards somebody is a psychologically negative trait that the person 'has,' relative to you.

Being repulsed is psychologically positive, even 'dangerous,' but I think being actively repulsed by someone sexually could indicate that part of your brain actually is attracted to them, but the rest of your brain is shouting "No!!!!!" The "latent homo- or bisexuality" theory of homophobia. For the rest of this discussion, I'll assume that nobody is strongly repulsed by anybody else, and the farthest our sexual disinterest in any other adult human goes is "indifference." If you are actively repulsed by someone sexually, you might want to talk to your therapist about it

If a femisexual does not find trans women attractive, that is not strong evidence that the femisexual is not attracted to women or that trans women lack a feminine object gender. That's because indifference is not a psychologically positive trait that the trans women 'have,' relative to the single femisexual.

And there are pragmatic reasons why we shouldn't think people aren't "real" women if they aren't attractive to a given femisexual. It would be a logically self-consistent position to take, but... um. Okay, if you want to be the one to tell a person who identifies as a woman, who has two X-chromosomes, a vagina, enlarged mammaries, but, uh, how do I put this delicately? a "butter face," that she isn't a "real" woman because you, personally, aren't attracted to her, well... It's a free country, but could you let me loan her my stun-pen and pepper-spray first? I want to watch, and possibly provide her with some back-up. She might need some help and eye-witnesses if she wants to Cancel you in response to your act of Free Speech.

A femisexual being attracted to a trans man is more disruptive to our taxonomy, since being attractive is a psychologically positive trait the trans man 'has,' relative to the femisexual, and because, so far, we are assuming that femisexuality is a subset of monosexuality. Being attracted to both women in general and at least one trans man (who is not a woman, but a man) is proof positive that you are attracted to more than one gender.

If we operate according to the standard taxonomy of sexualities, being attracted to women and at least one trans man would place you in the category of "bisexual," since you are attracted to people from at least two genders. I fall into this category, but I'm not exactly in a hurry to submit my application to the Bisexual Cabal, and I'm not sure how willing they would be to accept my application on these grounds. I think accepting that I'm bisexual and requiring "other" bisexuals to accept that I'm one of them would be a better alternative than me insisting on misgendering trans men I happen to be attracted to. But it's still not an attractive option.

What I suggest we do instead is to redefine what we mean by "femisexual," "virisexual," and "bi-" or "plurisexual," and throw out our concept of "monosexual" entirely.

What we could do is redefine "femisexual" to use 'femme' not to exclusively mean 'woman,' but in a more expanded way that at least one queer activist uses 'femme.' The way that activist uses 'femme' is centered on cis women, but it only excludes cishet men. She expliciltly intended it to include gay men, gender non-binary, gender-fluid, and both (main) categories of trans folk. Given, um, certain terms gay men use to refer to each other, and which I do not have the privileges to use myself, I think gay (cis) men might be okay with using 'femme' in this extended sense, but, um, cis men in general are not objects of attraction for this particular femisexual. I'm not sure how trans men would feel about it. But there is a certain blunt honesty about it, since when a femisexual is attracted to a trans man, it is likely that at least some of what is attracting us is his remaining feminine traits.

Same thing with the "vir-" in "virisexual." Centered on cis men, but excluding only cis women. Again, not sure how well a trans woman would take to being described as "virile," but there's still that same blunt honesty at work.

[ETA: And we could adjust our definition of "bi-" or "plurisexual" to means somebody who is attracted to at least cis men and women. That would mean that it would still be an open question of whether a plurisexual person is also a pansexual, just as it was with the original taxonomy.]

I'm not sure how well this alternative measures up relative to me coming out as "bisexual," since I'm not the only one whose needs matter. But acknowledging that object gender might not always line up with agent and social gender might be important when it comes to convincing society to accept trans people.

A limit on propaganda is that it cannot contradict the audience's lived experience. Philosophical argumentation is a form of propaganda that aims at also at getting at the truth. A political slogan might be true, but if it runs counter to the audience's lived experience, they are still not going to accept it unless you can explain the apparent contradiction.

When trans advocates say "trans men are men, trans women are women," I think what they are saying is "social gender should be brought into alignment with agent gender." But I'm afraid what a lot of the audience, particularly cishet men like myself, hear when somebody says "trans women are women" is "if you're a femisexual, then you should be attracted to trans women." That second interpretation runs counter to the lived experience of at least one, possibly three, probably most cishet men, so I'm afraid that if cishet mean interpret that slogan in that way, they are going to reject it. And something similar holds for cishet women and "trans men are men." But that's as not as politically important, since women's sexuality still doesn't carry as much weight as men's sexuality.

Okay, that's a good breaking point. So I'm going to post it and see if it gets me Cancelled. If it doesn't, I still have a few things to say about how trans folks themselves are painfully aware that their object gender might not always align with their agent gender, and the implications the fact that object gender is sensitive to medical intervention might have in long-term relationships.

 

[Wyote]

'Bisexual' is problematic

Actually it's not. What's problematic is people's misunderstanding of the original intent of the word. Look it up.

 

[skippy64]

That is technically compatible with the claim that trans men are men, and trans women are women. If gender is binary, that would only rule out the existence of the non-binary and the gender-fluid. It would also suggest that God knows what gender each intersex individual is.

If Gender is binary, then it eliminates the need for a spectrum. A trans-woman is merely a biological man being effeminate and a trans-man is a biological woman being butch. If you say trans is its own gender, you no longer have two genders do you?

[/QUOTE]How do you define 'woman’?[/QUOTE]

Glad you asked! It is an adult female human being. That’s the standard definition. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

[/QUOTE]That's a defeatist attitude. If you want to convince an audience, logic does help[/QUOTE]

Okay, I’ll do my best. The first part was easy. Now on to the theological questions:

You calling Jesus a finite intelligence?

Not at all. The Bible tells us that Jesus lowered Himself to take on human flesh. This does not mean that He detracted from His deity. It means that He added to Himself a human nature. There is a theological term used to describe this very thing, it’s called the hypostatic union or the ontological nature of Jesus Christ.

[/QUOTE]Do you believe beauty is objective, or is it in the eye of the beholder?[/QUOTE]

Courtesy of Ligonier ministry, a devotional:

“Historically, Christian thinkers have evaluated art according to four criteria: proportion, harmony, simplicity, and complexity. Such criteria reflect the criteria of God and the world as He originally made it, a complex creation reflecting proportion and harmony.”

In other words, the subject of arts does not disprove that truth is objective.

A deformity is an abnormally formed part of the body.

[/QUOTE]And what is "the gospel"? I found this Jack Chick tract, is it the gospel?[/QUOTE]

Following quote is from GotQuestions website (What are Chick tracks?):

“Theologically, Chick tracts have the gospel right. They present faith in Jesus Christ as the sole means of salvation, and the warnings against sin and hell are biblical. However, Chick Publications is staunchly KJV-only, and some of their tracts are nothing more than diatribes against other, “non-inspired” translations.”

Finally, I’d like to mention this booklet I read and how you or anyone here can read it. It’s where I came across this term about the law of noncontradiction.

https://www.ligonier.org/store/how-should-i-think-epub

P.S. About your last post, it was very long. Try to explain it more simply. I’ll leave you with this quote from Einstein—If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

 

[Dan Philosophy]

Actually it's not. What's problematic is people's misunderstanding of the original intent of the word. Look it up.

I did look it up, friend, I did. I will admit that the very authoritative website I consulted several months ago was not specific as to the etymology of the term. It merely purported to give a "modern" definition of it. I suppose I could look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary on my phone, but I'm not sure what that would accomplish. Is there a more specific point you think I got wrong? I am here to learn, and the brain droppings in my last post could probably use a sanity check.