You said what they're doing seems like sealioning. Not sure how any of us are supposed to infer that you're not talking about the subject content you're commenting on.
I affirmed the rest of your opinion other than the trendy label you then put on it. Not sure why that makes me a douchebag, but then with me not being American there might be subtleties to the term that I'm not aware of like "calmly suggests you might be misusing a term".
The right wing really capitalized on the left's good faith approach, for a very long time. Now that younger people that grew up on the internet are a much larger component of the left's base, they don't seem to know how to "own us" anymore. We're used to this sea lioning bullshit, and won't put up with it.
He did get owned - but just to put things in perspective, conservatives who saw the video think he owned the kid, saying the ‘kid didn’t know what to say and so just walked away’.
These guys are so deep into their fantasies that they don’t see things the way sensible people do. At all. It’s important to keep in mind when talking to them that they are living in a totally different world.
I've actually used "I'm flattered, but I'm not into guys, sorry." and when immediately he got pissy and insisted he isn't gay and wasn't asking me out, "It's okay, you don't have to hide who you are, I'm simply not interested." and at that point my patience and certainty they wouldnt try to deck me were out the door, along with myself.
A musical theater performance was probably not the best place for the guy to be attempting to ragebait.
10/10 responses, I'd add in "If you have to ask, maybe you should get out more" which I guess is similar to "Makes sense you wouldn't know"
Your first option is best. Insulting comeback that isn't open-ended. It ends it so you can move on. The other options are asking for a response, including the OP one.
I'd say "A slightly less miserable pile of secrets because they are generally more in tune with their emotions" but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue
Personally I think the "woke" definition of a woman (if there even is one) is much more straightforward than the alternative. This idea that the left "can't define a woman" is absurd projection - the very people who ask this question are the ones who can't define it without having to make 100s of exceptions.
Im trans, but this only works if you never rule out outliers, which is something a scientific term like female and its counterpart should be doing. There is a normal or default or whatever word youd prefer
first of all we're not talking about science so it's not really relevant, but....what do you even mean scientific terms should be ruling out outliers? if we do that we have faulty data and harmful medicine.
Because that's the standard procedure for collecting experimental data and defining terms? Because the things that cause those outliers are usually influenced by things other than the thing being defined/observed
The standard human body that biology supposes exists, does not exist.
The perfect human cadaver does not exist, there's no cadaver that follows the models in books. All cadavers have weird shaped organs, in kinda weird spots, not symmetrical, little tumors and tendon issues and muscle issues etc. Same for their neurochemicals including hormones (and fyi people can get adrenal autoimmune disease later in life that can cause changes in sex features). Same for genes. Like especially genetically, we know everyone has different genes because that's how DNA tests work in forensics.
No one is the standard and this is why many medical studies are super shitty and our medicine is so nonspecific. That's why firstline treatment for depression is SSRIs even though they only have a 30% efficacy.
So the idea that "control" groups in medical studies are really made up of some kind of standard body is pure nonsense, unfortunately. They do not even investigate for hormones or other diseases really during these medical studies. If the drug itself will impact sex hormones, the study will describe what tests they ran and will investigate then, but if it's a depression drug or heart drug etc, they just go off whatever the patient thinks. Genuinely. Our studies are so primitive.
Language is an imperfect medium with inherent limitations, intended to convey thoughts from the mind of one person to another. Thus, context is critical. The tragedy of humans not being telepathic.
A large portion of this argument is between two factions trying to have a complex discussion regarding at least four different things using only two words; male and female. The discussion however expands to biology, stereotypes, gender norms, rights, etc.
To me, everyone arguing is a moron for trying to have a discussion without first agreeing on axioms and vocabulary. Male and female are not enough words for a discussion involving this many variables.
It's like, hey, please reconcile general relativity, quantum mechanics, and metaphysics using only X and Y. It just screams absurdity.
In his early work he went hard on this approach, and insisted that "hey philosophy is dumb", just agree on the definitions and then chase through the implications.
In his later work he realised that this is impossible. Words have contextual meaning that is revealed by their usage and you can't nail down full and complete definitions in advance.
What you're talking about absolutely can and will never work. We have tried it and seen it fail.
Yes exactly. "What is a chair?" These semantic boundaries may seem annoying and pedantic to explore at first, but can be pretty interesting once examined especially at a neurolinguistic level.
Yeah, let's spend the next 3 days hashing out all our vocabulary so we could have an argument...
I get the idea and I agree that people who won't come to the same understanding of words and concepts cannot have a discussion about a topic that uses those words and concepts. But if you think anyone is going to sit down and be "First we must get our axioms and vocabularies in sync" you're dreaming.
A practical approach is to assume people have roughly the same understanding of vocabulary so you could start the discussion. When discrepancies present themselves that's when you shift to finding a common understanding of axioms, concepts, words or whatever you want to call them. Morons are the people who refuse compromise on anything they believe in (including axioms and vocabulary).
Whether a person has an XX chromosome or XY has absolutely no bearing on their body form.
Only a fool would gamble that just because a person looks like a woman that wt:thon is probably is XX, or just because a person looks like a man that thon probably is XY,
As such, while you and I may have some idea of what we think a woman is, it's not really something that can be given a concrete definition the way these people seem to think it needs.
The meta of gender is simply the way we see eachother and not something that can be measured. It's felt.
It's a lot like trying to build a concrete definition for intelligence. What is intelligence? How can it be measured? IQ tests are one way, but they're pretty much universally regarded as inaccurate at best.
Whatever intelligence is, these rage baiters don't have it.
I agree. the only thing that we can say scientifically is that someone has a specific amount of traits we have associated with the social label 'woman'. These traits are biologically speaking primarily related to reproduction and which role one would be able to fulfill the most effectively. Which does leave room for being able to fulfill both reproductive roles in some way or another.
Our social needs to mark ourselves and others as one of the two is deeply ingrained, but as it's such a grey area under the hood it would make sense to have a more fluid relationship with the topic.
That's not what the definition has changed to. Women can be women without identifying with that traditional role. A woman is someone who identifies as a woman. I am a woman, and I certainly don't identify with the role of a traditional woman.
I’d quibble slightly and argue that there’s a strong case that gender is also performative so if society generally deems you a woman, you’re also a woman.
External perception should not be a qualifier of gender. Passing shouldn't be required for a trans person to be a member of their gender, much as a feminine presenting man is still a man and a masculine presenting woman is still a woman, unless they say otherwise. Because it's all made up anyways, we can allow the definition to be as flexible as gender itself is.
But yes, gender is often performative, but rather than defining that in the terms of the audience, define it in terms of the cast.
As a trans person this strikes me as not really understanding what transness fully is? Like I know there are non-binary folk who more or less feel that they are beyond gender and feel like they have no internal gender compass - but I can't help but wonder if that is actually part of the cis experience as the more I talk to cis people the more I think the majority of cis people actually don't have a an internal gender. To them it is very much performative as they don't really have any internal reward system.
Gender to a lot of cis people seems a nebulous thing that they may feel attached to the same way they might be a sort of arbitrary team. They might feel praised for performing it "correctly" but that has almost nothing in common with actual gender euphoria. Ask what they think it would be like swapping bodies with a member of the opposite sex and they are usually more concerned with practically or on whether or not they are attractive in their new form. Most binary trans people are less concerned with being attractive as they are with seemlessly passing. It would be better to be an ugly but undeniable flawlessly recognizable member of their gender than the most attractive specimen of their birth sex. Sometimes that is because it is a matter of safety and security because passing means avoiding harassment but moreover it is because we do not care to appease our casual external viewer. The exact comfort is ours to benefit when we are alone because our drives were never externally driven.
Speaking as one who experiences it gender euphoria makes literary no logical sense. It operates entirely outside of logic and is entirely internal. It often comes mixed with guilt because a lot of the time the social conditioning that we should not like the things we do is at war with the truth that we have zero control about how we actually feel. The theory of gender performativity is incomplete and describes a fluidity - an almost liquid nature of internal gender. But gender can also be entirely and mandatorily rigid, enforced by internal triggers which slap and stroke by turns entirely independent of society. It is this rigidity rather than it's liquidity that most cis people seem to have a hard time grasping. Some definitely recognize it and have that same rigidity but it seems comparatively rare.
Being trans I recognize that my euphorias and dysphorias are not based out of performance. Performance is something I utilize as a tool to communicate people to not bring attention to the things that pain me and to make me feel comfortable. The company of people do supply a sort of reflective quality but that is just one way to be conscious of my physical body. If you call me by a pronoun set that references the physical things I hate about my physical experience of living it brings my attention onto those things. I could be naked and alone on a deserted island and the way I feel about my body would be the same. The things which make me feel generally bad are things like the way the weight of my body is distributed and my muscular structures which I can be aware of every time I need to move in a way more physically demanding than sitting or walking. I can hear my own voice and feel it insufficient and ghastly. I can see in any reflection the features of my face or shillohette. These things don't go away when I am alone, in fact oftentimes being alone with them offers less distraction from them.
Abolishing gender often is counter to a lot of the desires of trans people because it holds a language we can adapt to and profit from. Removing the limitations of toxic forms of masculinity and feminity is a universally good thing but removing the distinction entirely undercuts the actual joy to be revelled in embracing and speaking that cultural language.
To me the abolition of gender would be amazingly freeing.
It wouldn’t matter if I chose to wear a dress to work or a suit.
It wouldn’t matter if I chose the pink shirt over the blue shirt.
It wouldn’t matter if I wore makeup and nail polish and be a construction worker.
Yes, I could do all of those things right now, nothing stops me rather than the feeling of being judged by others, hence the ‘external validation’ of gender.
None of those things above are inherently feminine or masculine but a lot of us are taught that they are and judge others on those ‘rules’.
For me, it is hard to fathom how someone who experiences so much suffering from gender dysphoria can then reenforce that same gender expression in society. To me, I’d just rather kids growing up who wear whatever clothes and behave how ever they want to (within reason).
If all people didn’t perceive certain clothes, behaviours and ideas as feminine or masculine then people would just be people.
I won’t hope to imagine your own internal thoughts but I am curious, if you weren’t taught what a ‘woman’ is and what a ‘man’ is do you still think you would have experienced gender dysmorphia?
Also, as far as I know body dysmorphia is different to gender dysmorphia. I.e. I can identify as a man but still want to keep my vagina.
I’m also not claiming you wouldn’t have still had body dysmorphia even if gender was abolished.
In a philosophical sense of the strict definition, you're correct. I see no good reason to use our language like that though, as it would inevitably hurt trans people. I choose to instead use gender as an identifier assigned by each individual, as it's our colloquial definition and less harmful to trans people. In my opinion, if someone identifies as a woman, she is a woman, regardless of external perception.
And yes, I also agree that gender would be better abolished and relegated to a vibes-based, self-identified label for people that want it.
Whether or not the statement is recursive, it is a basis. I see no valid reason to define it more rigorously. I identify as a woman, therefore I am. I identify as bisexual, therefore I am. Those are labels for nebulous social constructs, and don't need to be rigorous definitions. Any basis beyond "because I say so" would be inherently exclusionary. The entire debate over what defines a woman or a man is a pointless affair which harms transgender people and gender nonconforming cisgender people alike. I believe we should be abolishing gender, not trying to establish a basis for what makes someone woman or man enough. It's all made up.
My main point being: Gender is a social construct, and doesn't fit the complex reality of lived human experience. Let people define their gender in their own terms, for those that desire a label, and otherwise abolish it.
You've said a lot which I'm already on board with, and mostly besides the point.
People can define their genders however they want, but a person who identifies as a woman without doing anything else to project that identity is virtually nobody's conception of a woman is.
That's not true, what you're advocating for is gender gatekeeping and it's the same forced gender performance Republicans demand or else they'll examine your genitals before you use the bathroom.
At the end of the day, it isn't up to us to define or understand gender for anyone else. It's up to us to know and respect their pronouns. We don't get to define what being a woman is for everyone.
It's like the myth of sisyphus - what we bring to the journey is what defines that journey, and maybe defines us to some extent. Whether that's joy, singing, boredom, anger, all of the above, etc. What we bring to womanhood, whether thats traditional or not, is up to us and how we interpret it.
Okay, so then why do we have a word for woman? What is the intention of that category? Is it really necessary to define anyway? If not, why does it matter what a woman is except its what she calls herself?
We have a word for woman because it is a useful descriptor. The intention of the category is to presuppose useful information about a person. In some situations it is necessary to define. No need to answer the if not question.
I don't think you mean it's a recursive statement, are you trying to say it's a circular definition? If we instead changed the statement to "A woman is any person who identifies as such," thus only using the word 'woman' once, does this fix your criticism of this definition? Does this mean you no longer need an arbitrary basis to define women?
It's an acceptable definition. A circular definition would be "A woman is a woman." Instead, she's defining a woman as someone who identifies as a woman. That's not circular. You just don't like it for whatever reason (you have yet to define what a woman is yourself despite thinking a different basis can be established).
If we change the definition to "a woman is any person who identifies as such", nothing changes for me.
A circular argument involves multiple steps and loops back to the start. For example "God is infallible > the Bible says so > the bible is written by God > God is infallible"
What I believe is this:
If the definition of a woman is "a person who identifies as a woman", then what that means is "a woman who is a person who identifies as a woman (a person who identifies as a woman (a person who identifies as a woman ...)))
So I feel right to call it a recursive linguistic issue.
It's not recursive, did you read the example I linked? It's more like this:
A person has gone bankrupt when they declare bankruptcy.
This definition is specifically highlighting the condition of declaration being necessary to achieve the word being defined, and who is doing it. The declaration is what makes it existant.
Or
Miss USA is the person who is awarded the Miss USA title by judges.
Again here hilighting that it's an awarded position and who is awarding it.
If you think it can be more specific, go ahead, but you have been unable to give me any kind of satisfactory definition for woman yourself.
A doctor is anyone who is declared a doctor by an educational institution.
Hilights declaration and who is doing it.
A woman is anyone who identifies themselves as a woman.
Hilighting that identifying yourself is the key piece of this definition. A doctor isn't anyone who calls themselves a doctor, right? Not just anyone can be a doctor just because they declare it. But indeed anyone can become a woman and that the entire point of the emphasis of this definition.
I mean, are you worried about definitions that are circular because A depends on B depends on C depends on A? No, you're not. No one has ever complained about this.
People are complaining about it, it's the whole point of this post. If saying "a woman is someone who identifies as a woman" was a sufficient, then we wouldn't be talking about this.
I don't accept the assertion that your definition isn't recursive.
This is like someone who says they believe in God, because their definition of God is 'The Universe'
That's cool, define God however you want. But it's not a very helpful definition when the majority of people are using that word in a very different way.
Remember, language is descriptive, not prescriptive.
There's no real issue with recursive (self referential) arguments in philosophy or math. An example being the Fibonacci Sequence. I'm going to assume your criticism for this is that you, like many conservatives, think this definition is circular.
The following definition is not circular:
A woman is somebody who says they are a woman.
This definition proposes a test, "do they say they are a woman?", to determine if somebody is a woman (according to the given definition). This test can be performed without needing to circularly apply the definition of the term "woman" ─ because we don't need a definition of "woman" to know whether or not somebody says they are a woman.
You may argue it is not a useful definition, because it does not depend on what the person who says "I am a woman" means by the word "woman", only that they use that word to describe themselves. Others will disagree. But the definition itself is not circular.
Perhaps it will help to make an analogy with a similar non-circular definition which was used historically, though is no longer used in modern times, but the definition was not contentious and I am not aware of anybody seriously arguing that the definition was invalid due to circularity.
Before marriages had legal status in modern law, it used to be that a husband and wife became married in a ceremony, in which a religious leader declared "I now pronounce you husband and wife". This pronouncement itself used to be what made two people husband and wife, so if two people had not been married in such a ceremony where such a pronouncement was made, they would not be husband and wife.
So the definition of "husband" and "wife" included that the husband and wife had been pronounced as such, by the power vested in whoever officiated wedding ceremonies. (There were other aspects to the definition as well, but this criterion was required.) Does this mean that until modern times, marriages were meaningless, because being a "husband" or "wife" depended on a pronouncement being made, where the pronouncement itself necessarily included those terms which were defined by the pronouncement?
Of course not. This definition is likewise not circular, because we can apply the definition to determine if two people are husband and wife ─ i.e. has such a pronouncement been made by someone qualified to make it? ─ without having to more deeply investigate the meaning of the words in that pronouncement. The fact of the pronouncement being made, regardless of its meaning, is enough to satisfy the definition.
"Biological female" has always been a construct, not a social construct but a scientific one.
Little known fact is that "gender" was adopted initially into parlance to try and rope off a certain arbitrary binary definition of sex before it was applied to social category. Biologically speaking "man" and "woman" was being shown to be way more vibes based than originally thought. An individuals chromosomes, hormonal balance, reproductive capability, outwardly visible genetalia and secondary sex characteristics were way more variable than a strict binary to the point where sex really was being looked at as more of spectrum. In a last ditch effort to preserve the idea of a sex binary the idea of a sort of model man and woman was derived as "gender" where everyone who didn't fit neatly into those arbitrary boxes was looked at as essentially a deviation from the norm instead of basically just being normal in and of themselves. Basically 2 out of every hundred people are born with some sort of intersex trait and there are likely more since a lot of people learn they have some sort of intersex trait by accident. Like there are "biological" men out there who have uteruses or overies just floating amongst their other organs completely undiscovered until they get some kind of medical imaging done that realizes that it's not just a benign tumour or a wonky bit of intestine.
When people say the the definition is a wobbly gray area they fully include the biological component. Even if you are talking about cis people there is no all encompassing biological archetype which doesn't exclude some cis women.
I suppose it really depends on the culture of the time. But if we're talking about recent western perceptions, then the average person probably wouldn't accept that gender and sex are different.
In my experience it's so they can listen to exactly nothing you say in response and then say "oh you've totally been brainwashed" before refuting points I never even came close to making.
the question was literally "what is a woman" this is matt walsh we're talking about here, not only are lesbian/gay marriages completely irrelevant here, you're giving way too much credit to matt walsh.
the obvious answer here is that matt walsh is the misogynistic and queerphobic one, as he's the one that's asking the question. Peterson was just proposing a way to determine what a women in the modern context would be. There's nothing misogynistic or queerphobic about that. They literally aren't talking about gay marriage or women's rights.
In fact i don't see any way of claiming that the statement "marry one and find out" is either of those things. You're reaching so incredibly hard that if i were to state that i wouldn't marry a women that i must be sexist and misogynistic. Even though you literally have no conceptualization of my sexual/romantic orientation. Let alone how i feel about legally binding agreements. Or even who i am.
you could argue that petersons view of marriage is old and antiquated and that's probably fair game, but at the end of the day, the question was literally in reference to a woman. For all we know, he could could very well be including trans women in that statement, which would make sense considering the construction of that statement.
philosophically and sociologically, it's quite literally the definition of what a woman is. It's the reason why it's changed over time.
yeah, and we aren't talking about men, we're talking about women, which is probably why we're talking about marrying them.
In fact the concept of marriage is entirely unrelated to the two individuals in this specific example, the entire point of including marriage, is to give an example of a specific type of relationship you can have with someone, where this concept would be clearly and unmistakably defined. The whole purpose of including it is so that you don't just overrule the entire hypothetical by saying "yeah but someone from china" or something similarly irrelevant. Which is basically the exact thing you're doing here.
Just a quick breakdown here. The marriage symbolizes interpersonal relationships. The find out part symbolizes how most social definitions are entirely liquid and depend very heavily upon external culture. It's why certain slurs like queer are significantly less, slur-ry now.
The entire statement essentially just says "the definition of any given social aspect of humanity is dependent primarily on the individuals involved, and how well acquainted they are." which while a little broad, gets the point across that the question "what is a woman" is a pretty fucking stupid question.
It's not dissimilar to a chair. What is a chair? Something you can sit on? You can sit on the ground. An object built specifically for seating humans? Dogs can sit on chairs. A seat designed by a human to be used for seating? Well what about a stool or a bench? What about if we take that chair, and then put it somewhere it shouldn't be, like on the ceiling? Is a ceiling chair still a chair? It can't be sat in anymore.
and if we were to hyper analyze the scene that statement was made in, the ultimate definition given by (presumably) matt walsh's wife, is "adult human female" which is weird, because adult is not specifically defined, and human should be fairly obvious that seems entirely redundant. And then we get to female, which runs into the exact same problem as before, what is a female? Presumably they intend for it to be used in a biological sex manner, but as we established, there is no clear definition anywhere in here, aside from the term female being used, which is not very descriptive either.
if you meet someone who says their name is Jack, do you ask for government issue identification? no, them telling you is enough, because that's all you need for social interaction.
same with gender. you don't need to check their genitals. if it looks like they're presenting as a woman, they're most likely a woman.
in fact this is what you do on a daily basis. if you see a woman across the street wearing something ridiculous and turn to your friend and say "look at that woman over there" it's not because you confirmed whether she has a vagina or not, but because she's presenting as a woman. social cues, not biological.
and if you make the wrong assumption when talking to or about someone and they correct you, and you say sorry and refer to them as a woman going forward. really not a problem in real life. just chodes who never have contact with actual women because they're disgusting creepy weirdos.
Yes exactly and this is similar to what I tell older conservatives. It doesn't matter if there's 70 genders or what a woman is or any of that. They don't have to know all that if it's overwhelming. They only need to know what pronouns someone wants to be called. That's it. Respect that, and they don't have to talk about any of that other stuff or worry about it. It's none of their business and that's okay.
Whenever they get all bent out of shape I just redirect them back to that. Because I'm sorry, some of these people are in their seventies. They literally cannot rewire the scaffolding in their brain to delete the gender binary that they constantly referred to during their lives. It would be like breaking your arm and rehealing it at that age. We don't really need them to understand, we just need them to be respectful.
Asking this is like when people debate what is and isn't a sandwich. Everyone knows that a sub and a club are sandwiches right? Bread and filling, straightforward. But it's a big world with many foods. Is a hot dog a sandwich? A pizza? What about a taco? A falafel wrap? It's not exactly clear.
People spend tons of effort trying to come up with simple definitions that conclusively define sandwiches. But these inevitably lead to consequences that just intuitively don't make sense to people. Now a deep dish pizza is a quiche, pop tart is a toast, a burrito is a calzone until you take a bite at which point it becomes a quiche. Your simple definition is just not useful in the real messy world of bready foods.
At the end of the day, you have to accept that sandwich is a loose, vague term that cannot accurately categorize all food ever, and mostly it's whatever people say it is.
I give you a hamburger. Your gender explodes into a million vaginas on a million dicks on a million vaginas on a million dicks into infinity. The vaginas and dicks sing a note, a perfect E flat, and your genders agree. Your dick and vagina take a bite of the hamburger together. A single tear rolls down the vagina and the dick. I give you a hamburger. Your gender is screaming.
First you have to ask what gender is. Gender is a set of behaviors expected of people of a given sex.
Then, you have to ask what it means to belong to a given gender. You don't have to, and can't, meet all the behavioral expectations of a given gender. Those expected behaviors change over time. People of all sexes have interests that cross gendered lines because gender is not perfectly correlated to specific behaviors - instead it is a broad notion of behaviors that are considered to correlate with a given sex.
Additionally, there exist people who are not really male or female due to genetic differences. But, society typically treats them as the gender typically assigned to the sex they most resemble. So, since they do not have the "correct" sex and may not participate in the "correct" behaviors to belong to a given gender, their assigned gender is arbitrarily determined.
Those 3 things establish that gender is: not biological, not behaviorally determined, and somewhat arbitrary.
Since gender isn't biological, woman =/= female person
Since gender isn't behaviorally determined, woman =/= someone who engages in typically feminine behaviors
Since gender is at least partially arbitrary, woman =/= a factual category that can be determined by material features of a person
If women don't have to be female or engage in typically feminine activities and can't be defined by physical or genetic characteristics, then what is left? Someone who identifies as a woman - who wants to be treated as a woman by others.
"But that's circular!!!" It actually isn't. "Woman" as a category confers societal roles and expected behaviors onto a person, "woman" as a person just means someone who belongs to the category "Woman". The only determining factor is being a member of the category. It'd be like asking "what is a boy scout?", getting "a member of the boy scouts" as an answer, and then being upset that there isn't some fundamental universal law being appealed to when classifying people as boy scouts.
An intentionally vague term; we have known that a binary gender system is faulted at least ever since the late 1700s as that is when the term "intersex" was added to the Oxford English dictionary. The concept of intersex Highlights the vagueness of both man and woman. Like most intentionally vague terms, we like to pretend to have a clear grasp of what it is as the admission of the vague nature harms the utility of the word. In most cases, an precis Definition of, e.g. culture or woman, carries less utility than the share vague understanding of the term. In other words, trying to define the word is taking part in an effort that goes against the point of having words, being able to effectively communicate ideas.
Ofc, defining a woman within a conversation or a paper for the sake of clear communication is a good idea in some situations. Just like defining a dice to have 6 sides makes sense in the manual of a game but it doesn't make sense outside of these cases.
It's a fair criticism to be honest. But, I can't think of a reasonable alternative. When I support trans-individuals, usually I argue from the brain-body mapping perspective as 1) It's not based on feelings as we know that there are people whose brain mapping does not correspond with their body mapping, and 2) There's a lot of evidence to support that perspective.
A lot of people aren't just going to get "What it feels like to a man/woman.", and personally, while I identify as a man solely for my parts, I just simply lack what it means not because it supposedly matches me, but because I have no feelings associated with gender. And here's the kicker, I wouldn't understand dysphoria when called the wrong gender either. For example, my mother has always addresses me as a male because I was born with a penis and all that jazz, but recently a few months ago, in a endearing way, she told me that I was like a daughter to her, which I take to mean that I give off that energy to her. Didn't really felt off or anything either.
As a trans person I find myself working backwards to try and figure out what makes a person cis and this experience you've described actually seems to me to be the most common. I theorize that most cis people (though not all) are actually defined by an absent or fluid internal gender.
I theorize that a lot of cis and trans people talking past each other has us trans folks assuming that you, like us, experience gender as something rigid and stratified. Like one of the aspects of my experience is that I have zero ability to feel neutrality about my body's sex characteristics or about the way people culturally react to my body. Every interaction where my physical sex comes into play in how my life is lived is absolutely hard wired. Some make me feel deficient... Generally anxious and depressed because I feel almost indescribably cheated of comfort and invisible to the people whom with I feel an affinity which makes me feel utterly alone and stranded. Dysphoria - a gulf not between just body and mind but between life and something that feels like an opposite. Not death persay but an empty facsimile of existence where I am a non-entity obscured by a series of barriers.
Others make me feel inexplicable joy and connection and vibrantly alive. The random vendor who called me "sir" over a year ago when I was sure I didn't pass isn't just memorable it made my month. Gender euphoria is well named as it is heady and intoxicating. Not simply a respite from dysphoria but a golden shimmering stand out where the memory can be relived vividly.
The stratification of feeling - dysphoria and euphoria is so concrete but neither is at all logical. I believe very firmly that the sexes are equal and being a man is not better or worse than being a woman if you were to look at those things in a purely objective sense... But that doesn't change a damn thing. This isn't a logical thing. I can keep feeding it logic but it will never change the fact that as I go about my day I feel constantly slapped with intense feelings about my body.
But cis people don't seem to feel anything about their gender so their uncertainty is natural. When they are completely non reactive to them the question of "how do you know?" is natural because when you reach down being told that you have an internal sense of gender and don't find one then the natural response is doubt. But I think there is an underlying reason why the satisfaction rate of trans specific gender affirming surgeries is so low... If you are cis a change of physical kit might not actually be terribly alarming because that fluidity might work in your favour. The only risk to transitioning a cis person by accident might just be to fertility which not all people, particularly trans men, actually give up when they surgically transition. Meaning we might just be assuming incredible levels of harm from a population that a) is unlikely to care about sex enough to prioritize physical transition and b) might not be lifeshattering adversely effected and c) if they want to transition back they can. The culture that supports trans people is also nessisary in the rare event someone does want to go back because they will likely be externally still be read as a trans person and would essentially basically require the exact same accomodations.
I see. And what about people with Swyer Syndrome? They can live their entire lives with no one, not even them, suspecting their chromosomes are XY. Men? Should we be genetically testing every woman to make sure she isn’t really a man and doesn’t know it?
A 2017 study estimated that the incidence of Swyer syndrome is approximately 1 in 100,000 females.[22] Fewer than 100 cases have been reported as of 2018. There are extremely rare instances of familial Swyer syndrome.[23][24]
A man is a person of male gender identity, i.e. identifying as a male
A woman is a person of female gender identity, i.e. identifying as a female
That's all there is to it, since the very concept of gender identity revolves around a purely social phenomenon of gender - which many people try to forcefully connect to sex, which is not the same thing and won't ever be.
Hey, if it indeed reduces suicide, fine—even more reason for my indifference in them going for such procedures.
Among the 104 youths (13-20 years) who participated, 63 were transmasculine individuals (60.6%), 27 transfeminine individuals (26%), 10 nonbinary or gender fluid individuals (9.6%), and 4 individuals who didn't know or did not respond to the gender identity question (3.8%).
Why does anyone give a shit what Sylvia Plath, a woman who died before being trans was even legal, thinks about what it means to be a girl?
Also, she committed suicide herself, so I have no idea why you think she's a good person to bring up.
Also, I think it's hilarious you're bringing up genetics in one comment as a definition of a woman and then bringing up a fucking poet as the definer in this one.
She lived in a different time: I'm sure if many of Gen Z lived in her time, a few of them might consider suicide; and my point is the gender dysphoria among girls might be due to sexism that's still in society: hence the cure might not be becoming a boy, but rather reduce the sexism.
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This is going off the rails. Locking.
My personal favorite response to that question is “a person who covers their drink when you enter the room”
I’m stealing both of these.
Also trying to workshop::
Oh they don’t have them on your planet?
I like it, but that's like a 1960s sitcom tier insult. It's too cute to infuriate.
They have 1960s sitcom mentality. Wouldn't hurt to give it a try.
how about, "a person who doesn't want to have sex with you."
That doesn't work. I'm sure plenty of queer men would be too disgusted by them to want to have sex with them either.
What about 'I'll ask your mom what she thinks when I see her tonight'?
Better: "I'll ask your dad what she thinks when I see her tonight."
Thank you flyingSquid. Perfect.
Puerile, but it's well catered to the audience.
"Someone who chooses the bear over you."
I like "Well, I'm a straight male, so anything that turns me on is a woman, ma'am."
Name totally checks out.
Ooooh, that's so subtle and brilliant, they'll be destroyed for life! Added bonus is it zings for all the alphabet.
Seems like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
They're not honestly curiously asking anything.
They tried to do a gotcha. Badly. And got gotcha'ed for it.
One question can't be "sealioning". Sure they aren't curiously looking for an answer, but that's not what sealioning is. Click your own link.
I saw a further video of them doing this type of thing before.
No need to be a douchebag.
You said what they're doing seems like sealioning. Not sure how any of us are supposed to infer that you're not talking about the subject content you're commenting on.
I affirmed the rest of your opinion other than the trendy label you then put on it. Not sure why that makes me a douchebag, but then with me not being American there might be subtleties to the term that I'm not aware of like "calmly suggests you might be misusing a term".
They called you a douchebag because your response was snippy and rude. "Click your own link" sounds condescending and arrogant.
You're probably right. I can see how someone who sees being corrected as hurtful choosing to interpret a simple request that way, I suppose.
I saw this clip. It was amazing the way that kid just dismisses Charlie Kirk with his response and how he just walked away.
Kirk's face was in shock, cuz he got owned so bad. Mofo couldn't think of anything smart to say except something from another right wing grifter. 🤦
The right wing really capitalized on the left's good faith approach, for a very long time. Now that younger people that grew up on the internet are a much larger component of the left's base, they don't seem to know how to "own us" anymore. We're used to this sea lioning bullshit, and won't put up with it.
Thank you for the context. I never know what the youtube bigots look like.
The craziest thing to me was watching that encounter and then seeing Kirk come away thinking he looked good
He did get owned - but just to put things in perspective, conservatives who saw the video think he owned the kid, saying the ‘kid didn’t know what to say and so just walked away’.
These guys are so deep into their fantasies that they don’t see things the way sensible people do. At all. It’s important to keep in mind when talking to them that they are living in a totally different world.
is this a valid response?
Nah. There are plenty of women who do not make my dick hard. To paraphrase Richard Pryor, I wouldn't fuck Melania Trump with your dick.
I have no idea why anyone wanted to see her naked. Bleah.
She used to be much more attractive. Look up the picture of her and Donald with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and you can see it.
I've seen them. Bleah.
Only if you're a himbo on the level of Johnny Bravo.
I can only dream of that.
The ftm equivalent is "What is a man?" And the proper response is "A miserable little pile of secrets".
But enough talk... Have at you!
Alternative responses:
I've actually used "I'm flattered, but I'm not into guys, sorry." and when immediately he got pissy and insisted he isn't gay and wasn't asking me out, "It's okay, you don't have to hide who you are, I'm simply not interested." and at that point my patience and certainty they wouldnt try to deck me were out the door, along with myself.
A musical theater performance was probably not the best place for the guy to be attempting to ragebait.
10/10 responses, I'd add in "If you have to ask, maybe you should get out more" which I guess is similar to "Makes sense you wouldn't know"
Your first option is best. Insulting comeback that isn't open-ended. It ends it so you can move on. The other options are asking for a response, including the OP one.
You could always go jeopardy style of "what is someone who doesn't want to sleep with you"
Is the answer not “A miserable little pile of secrets”?
Then men are no different.
I'd say "A slightly less miserable pile of secrets because they are generally more in tune with their emotions" but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue
I believe that would in fact be a man.
But enough talk. Have at you!
Personally I think the "woke" definition of a woman (if there even is one) is much more straightforward than the alternative. This idea that the left "can't define a woman" is absurd projection - the very people who ask this question are the ones who can't define it without having to make 100s of exceptions.
yep "someone who identifies as a woman" doesn't need to have caveats. every biological argument has to have many.
Im trans, but this only works if you never rule out outliers, which is something a scientific term like female and its counterpart should be doing. There is a normal or default or whatever word youd prefer
first of all we're not talking about science so it's not really relevant, but....what do you even mean scientific terms should be ruling out outliers? if we do that we have faulty data and harmful medicine.
Because that's the standard procedure for collecting experimental data and defining terms? Because the things that cause those outliers are usually influenced by things other than the thing being defined/observed
i don't follow at all
The standard human body that biology supposes exists, does not exist.
The perfect human cadaver does not exist, there's no cadaver that follows the models in books. All cadavers have weird shaped organs, in kinda weird spots, not symmetrical, little tumors and tendon issues and muscle issues etc. Same for their neurochemicals including hormones (and fyi people can get adrenal autoimmune disease later in life that can cause changes in sex features). Same for genes. Like especially genetically, we know everyone has different genes because that's how DNA tests work in forensics.
No one is the standard and this is why many medical studies are super shitty and our medicine is so nonspecific. That's why firstline treatment for depression is SSRIs even though they only have a 30% efficacy.
So the idea that "control" groups in medical studies are really made up of some kind of standard body is pure nonsense, unfortunately. They do not even investigate for hormones or other diseases really during these medical studies. If the drug itself will impact sex hormones, the study will describe what tests they ran and will investigate then, but if it's a depression drug or heart drug etc, they just go off whatever the patient thinks. Genuinely. Our studies are so primitive.
Yes. But imagine the screaming if they hadn't been allowed in.
Okay. I imagined it. It gave me happiness. What next?
Language is an imperfect medium with inherent limitations, intended to convey thoughts from the mind of one person to another. Thus, context is critical. The tragedy of humans not being telepathic.
A large portion of this argument is between two factions trying to have a complex discussion regarding at least four different things using only two words; male and female. The discussion however expands to biology, stereotypes, gender norms, rights, etc.
To me, everyone arguing is a moron for trying to have a discussion without first agreeing on axioms and vocabulary. Male and female are not enough words for a discussion involving this many variables.
It's like, hey, please reconcile general relativity, quantum mechanics, and metaphysics using only X and Y. It just screams absurdity.
You might want to look at Wittgenstein.
In his early work he went hard on this approach, and insisted that "hey philosophy is dumb", just agree on the definitions and then chase through the implications.
In his later work he realised that this is impossible. Words have contextual meaning that is revealed by their usage and you can't nail down full and complete definitions in advance.
What you're talking about absolutely can and will never work. We have tried it and seen it fail.
The general point is that the "what is a woman" question is still word games rather than an honest attempt at finding truth and understanding
Yes exactly. "What is a chair?" These semantic boundaries may seem annoying and pedantic to explore at first, but can be pretty interesting once examined especially at a neurolinguistic level.
Yeah, let's spend the next 3 days hashing out all our vocabulary so we could have an argument...
I get the idea and I agree that people who won't come to the same understanding of words and concepts cannot have a discussion about a topic that uses those words and concepts. But if you think anyone is going to sit down and be "First we must get our axioms and vocabularies in sync" you're dreaming.
A practical approach is to assume people have roughly the same understanding of vocabulary so you could start the discussion. When discrepancies present themselves that's when you shift to finding a common understanding of axioms, concepts, words or whatever you want to call them. Morons are the people who refuse compromise on anything they believe in (including axioms and vocabulary).
It isn't for me to define, and there are more important things in life to focus on.
I used to think 2 x chromosomes. Clearly I was wrong.
What if they have trisomy or monosomy?
What if they have a mutation and they don't have the correct genes in their X and Y Chromosomes?
What if gender (a social construct) and biological sex aren't actually the same thing?
What about just let people be because it's none of your goddamned business how they want to express themselves, who they love, and why?
Did you skip the second and third words and entire second sentence of that comment, or what?
Whether a person has an XX chromosome or XY has absolutely no bearing on their body form.
Only a fool would gamble that just because a person looks like a woman that wt:thon is probably is XX, or just because a person looks like a man that thon probably is XY,
A "woman" is a label. It's a social construct.
As such, while you and I may have some idea of what we think a woman is, it's not really something that can be given a concrete definition the way these people seem to think it needs.
The meta of gender is simply the way we see eachother and not something that can be measured. It's felt.
It's a lot like trying to build a concrete definition for intelligence. What is intelligence? How can it be measured? IQ tests are one way, but they're pretty much universally regarded as inaccurate at best.
Whatever intelligence is, these rage baiters don't have it.
I agree. the only thing that we can say scientifically is that someone has a specific amount of traits we have associated with the social label 'woman'. These traits are biologically speaking primarily related to reproduction and which role one would be able to fulfill the most effectively. Which does leave room for being able to fulfill both reproductive roles in some way or another.
Our social needs to mark ourselves and others as one of the two is deeply ingrained, but as it's such a grey area under the hood it would make sense to have a more fluid relationship with the topic.
Gender helps when the surgeon cuts into the abdomen and wants better than 50/50 odds on what to expect on the other side.
One would expect the surgeon to have actually done their Pre-op. If they don't know what to expect when cutting into someone, they shouldn't be.
Reminds me of this https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/master-debater-both-guy
"master debator" kind of sounds like masturbater
A cunning linguist once said
Here is the answer to that question:
Until recently, a woman was defined as someone who was born a biological female.
Now, as definitions change, a woman is defined as a person who identifies with the role of the previous definition of woman.
Language is descriptive, not prescriptive.
That's not what the definition has changed to. Women can be women without identifying with that traditional role. A woman is someone who identifies as a woman. I am a woman, and I certainly don't identify with the role of a traditional woman.
I’d quibble slightly and argue that there’s a strong case that gender is also performative so if society generally deems you a woman, you’re also a woman.
External perception should not be a qualifier of gender. Passing shouldn't be required for a trans person to be a member of their gender, much as a feminine presenting man is still a man and a masculine presenting woman is still a woman, unless they say otherwise. Because it's all made up anyways, we can allow the definition to be as flexible as gender itself is.
But yes, gender is often performative, but rather than defining that in the terms of the audience, define it in terms of the cast.
Without external validation I’m not sure we can have gender.
Don’t get me wrong here btw, I’m not conservative on this issue, I’m a gender abolitionist.
As a trans person this strikes me as not really understanding what transness fully is? Like I know there are non-binary folk who more or less feel that they are beyond gender and feel like they have no internal gender compass - but I can't help but wonder if that is actually part of the cis experience as the more I talk to cis people the more I think the majority of cis people actually don't have a an internal gender. To them it is very much performative as they don't really have any internal reward system.
Gender to a lot of cis people seems a nebulous thing that they may feel attached to the same way they might be a sort of arbitrary team. They might feel praised for performing it "correctly" but that has almost nothing in common with actual gender euphoria. Ask what they think it would be like swapping bodies with a member of the opposite sex and they are usually more concerned with practically or on whether or not they are attractive in their new form. Most binary trans people are less concerned with being attractive as they are with seemlessly passing. It would be better to be an ugly but undeniable flawlessly recognizable member of their gender than the most attractive specimen of their birth sex. Sometimes that is because it is a matter of safety and security because passing means avoiding harassment but moreover it is because we do not care to appease our casual external viewer. The exact comfort is ours to benefit when we are alone because our drives were never externally driven.
Speaking as one who experiences it gender euphoria makes literary no logical sense. It operates entirely outside of logic and is entirely internal. It often comes mixed with guilt because a lot of the time the social conditioning that we should not like the things we do is at war with the truth that we have zero control about how we actually feel. The theory of gender performativity is incomplete and describes a fluidity - an almost liquid nature of internal gender. But gender can also be entirely and mandatorily rigid, enforced by internal triggers which slap and stroke by turns entirely independent of society. It is this rigidity rather than it's liquidity that most cis people seem to have a hard time grasping. Some definitely recognize it and have that same rigidity but it seems comparatively rare.
Being trans I recognize that my euphorias and dysphorias are not based out of performance. Performance is something I utilize as a tool to communicate people to not bring attention to the things that pain me and to make me feel comfortable. The company of people do supply a sort of reflective quality but that is just one way to be conscious of my physical body. If you call me by a pronoun set that references the physical things I hate about my physical experience of living it brings my attention onto those things. I could be naked and alone on a deserted island and the way I feel about my body would be the same. The things which make me feel generally bad are things like the way the weight of my body is distributed and my muscular structures which I can be aware of every time I need to move in a way more physically demanding than sitting or walking. I can hear my own voice and feel it insufficient and ghastly. I can see in any reflection the features of my face or shillohette. These things don't go away when I am alone, in fact oftentimes being alone with them offers less distraction from them.
Abolishing gender often is counter to a lot of the desires of trans people because it holds a language we can adapt to and profit from. Removing the limitations of toxic forms of masculinity and feminity is a universally good thing but removing the distinction entirely undercuts the actual joy to be revelled in embracing and speaking that cultural language.
I respectfully disagree.
To me the abolition of gender would be amazingly freeing.
It wouldn’t matter if I chose to wear a dress to work or a suit.
It wouldn’t matter if I chose the pink shirt over the blue shirt.
It wouldn’t matter if I wore makeup and nail polish and be a construction worker.
Yes, I could do all of those things right now, nothing stops me rather than the feeling of being judged by others, hence the ‘external validation’ of gender.
None of those things above are inherently feminine or masculine but a lot of us are taught that they are and judge others on those ‘rules’.
For me, it is hard to fathom how someone who experiences so much suffering from gender dysphoria can then reenforce that same gender expression in society. To me, I’d just rather kids growing up who wear whatever clothes and behave how ever they want to (within reason).
If all people didn’t perceive certain clothes, behaviours and ideas as feminine or masculine then people would just be people.
I won’t hope to imagine your own internal thoughts but I am curious, if you weren’t taught what a ‘woman’ is and what a ‘man’ is do you still think you would have experienced gender dysmorphia?
Also, as far as I know body dysmorphia is different to gender dysmorphia. I.e. I can identify as a man but still want to keep my vagina.
I’m also not claiming you wouldn’t have still had body dysmorphia even if gender was abolished.
In a philosophical sense of the strict definition, you're correct. I see no good reason to use our language like that though, as it would inevitably hurt trans people. I choose to instead use gender as an identifier assigned by each individual, as it's our colloquial definition and less harmful to trans people. In my opinion, if someone identifies as a woman, she is a woman, regardless of external perception.
And yes, I also agree that gender would be better abolished and relegated to a vibes-based, self-identified label for people that want it.
This is a recursive statement which gets us nowhere. We need to establish that there is some kind of basis, which is the previous definition.
Whether or not the statement is recursive, it is a basis. I see no valid reason to define it more rigorously. I identify as a woman, therefore I am. I identify as bisexual, therefore I am. Those are labels for nebulous social constructs, and don't need to be rigorous definitions. Any basis beyond "because I say so" would be inherently exclusionary. The entire debate over what defines a woman or a man is a pointless affair which harms transgender people and gender nonconforming cisgender people alike. I believe we should be abolishing gender, not trying to establish a basis for what makes someone woman or man enough. It's all made up.
My main point being: Gender is a social construct, and doesn't fit the complex reality of lived human experience. Let people define their gender in their own terms, for those that desire a label, and otherwise abolish it.
You've said a lot which I'm already on board with, and mostly besides the point.
People can define their genders however they want, but a person who identifies as a woman without doing anything else to project that identity is virtually nobody's conception of a woman is.
That's not true, what you're advocating for is gender gatekeeping and it's the same forced gender performance Republicans demand or else they'll examine your genitals before you use the bathroom.
At the end of the day, it isn't up to us to define or understand gender for anyone else. It's up to us to know and respect their pronouns. We don't get to define what being a woman is for everyone.
It's like the myth of sisyphus - what we bring to the journey is what defines that journey, and maybe defines us to some extent. Whether that's joy, singing, boredom, anger, all of the above, etc. What we bring to womanhood, whether thats traditional or not, is up to us and how we interpret it.
You're being hyperbolic. I'm not discussing pronouns, and I've stated elsewhere that I have no problems addressing people how they'd like to be.
Why do we need to establish a basis if it's all made up anyway? For what purpose?
Because we use words to identify things.
Okay, so then why do we have a word for woman? What is the intention of that category? Is it really necessary to define anyway? If not, why does it matter what a woman is except its what she calls herself?
We have a word for woman because it is a useful descriptor. The intention of the category is to presuppose useful information about a person. In some situations it is necessary to define. No need to answer the if not question.
Yes, and in your opinion, what specifically is that information?
I don't think you mean it's a recursive statement, are you trying to say it's a circular definition? If we instead changed the statement to "A woman is any person who identifies as such," thus only using the word 'woman' once, does this fix your criticism of this definition? Does this mean you no longer need an arbitrary basis to define women?
It's an acceptable definition. A circular definition would be "A woman is a woman." Instead, she's defining a woman as someone who identifies as a woman. That's not circular. You just don't like it for whatever reason (you have yet to define what a woman is yourself despite thinking a different basis can be established).
If we change the definition to "a woman is any person who identifies as such", nothing changes for me.
A circular argument involves multiple steps and loops back to the start. For example "God is infallible > the Bible says so > the bible is written by God > God is infallible"
What I believe is this:
If the definition of a woman is "a person who identifies as a woman", then what that means is "a woman who is a person who identifies as a woman (a person who identifies as a woman (a person who identifies as a woman ...)))
So I feel right to call it a recursive linguistic issue.
It's not recursive, did you read the example I linked? It's more like this:
A person has gone bankrupt when they declare bankruptcy.
This definition is specifically highlighting the condition of declaration being necessary to achieve the word being defined, and who is doing it. The declaration is what makes it existant.
Or
Miss USA is the person who is awarded the Miss USA title by judges.
Again here hilighting that it's an awarded position and who is awarding it.
If you think it can be more specific, go ahead, but you have been unable to give me any kind of satisfactory definition for woman yourself.
Hilights declaration and who is doing it.
Hilighting that identifying yourself is the key piece of this definition. A doctor isn't anyone who calls themselves a doctor, right? Not just anyone can be a doctor just because they declare it. But indeed anyone can become a woman and that the entire point of the emphasis of this definition.
This isn't a programming class, dude.
I mean, are you worried about definitions that are circular because A depends on B depends on C depends on A? No, you're not. No one has ever complained about this.
People are complaining about it, it's the whole point of this post. If saying "a woman is someone who identifies as a woman" was a sufficient, then we wouldn't be talking about this.
It is sufficient.
It's not recursive.
No one complains about wider circles: A -> B -> C -> A.
This is a made up problem.
I don't accept the assertion that your definition isn't recursive.
This is like someone who says they believe in God, because their definition of God is 'The Universe'
That's cool, define God however you want. But it's not a very helpful definition when the majority of people are using that word in a very different way.
Remember, language is descriptive, not prescriptive.
Let's try an experiment, hm.
"I am not a woman."
Using the definition "a woman is someone who identifies as a woman," would you call me a woman.
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/98474/is-this-a-fallacy-a-woman-is-an-adult-who-identifies-as-female-in-gender
There's no real issue with recursive (self referential) arguments in philosophy or math. An example being the Fibonacci Sequence. I'm going to assume your criticism for this is that you, like many conservatives, think this definition is circular.
"Biological female" has always been a construct, not a social construct but a scientific one.
Little known fact is that "gender" was adopted initially into parlance to try and rope off a certain arbitrary binary definition of sex before it was applied to social category. Biologically speaking "man" and "woman" was being shown to be way more vibes based than originally thought. An individuals chromosomes, hormonal balance, reproductive capability, outwardly visible genetalia and secondary sex characteristics were way more variable than a strict binary to the point where sex really was being looked at as more of spectrum. In a last ditch effort to preserve the idea of a sex binary the idea of a sort of model man and woman was derived as "gender" where everyone who didn't fit neatly into those arbitrary boxes was looked at as essentially a deviation from the norm instead of basically just being normal in and of themselves. Basically 2 out of every hundred people are born with some sort of intersex trait and there are likely more since a lot of people learn they have some sort of intersex trait by accident. Like there are "biological" men out there who have uteruses or overies just floating amongst their other organs completely undiscovered until they get some kind of medical imaging done that realizes that it's not just a benign tumour or a wonky bit of intestine.
When people say the the definition is a wobbly gray area they fully include the biological component. Even if you are talking about cis people there is no all encompassing biological archetype which doesn't exclude some cis women.
So what is the present definition of a woman?
A person who identifies with the role of someone who is historically a biological female
What about biological females in history who identified as, or at least presented as, male?
I suppose it really depends on the culture of the time. But if we're talking about recent western perceptions, then the average person probably wouldn't accept that gender and sex are different.
because in most cases it isn't.
Right.
"I'll take someone who wouldn't talk to you if they were trapped in an elevator with you for $500 Alex."
In my experience it's so they can listen to exactly nothing you say in response and then say "oh you've totally been brainwashed" before refuting points I never even came close to making.
"Someone you've never had consensual sex with."
jordan petersons response, is literally perfect. "marry one and find out"
Unfortunately most of his braincells seem to no longer exist, but he has short second winds from time to time i suppose.
Literally perfect? Because you can't marry a man? Only lesbian marriages are valid?
the question was literally "what is a woman" this is matt walsh we're talking about here, not only are lesbian/gay marriages completely irrelevant here, you're giving way too much credit to matt walsh.
Yeah, and the response "marry one and find out" is both misogynistic and queerphobic, so what's your point?
the obvious answer here is that matt walsh is the misogynistic and queerphobic one, as he's the one that's asking the question. Peterson was just proposing a way to determine what a women in the modern context would be. There's nothing misogynistic or queerphobic about that. They literally aren't talking about gay marriage or women's rights.
In fact i don't see any way of claiming that the statement "marry one and find out" is either of those things. You're reaching so incredibly hard that if i were to state that i wouldn't marry a women that i must be sexist and misogynistic. Even though you literally have no conceptualization of my sexual/romantic orientation. Let alone how i feel about legally binding agreements. Or even who i am.
you could argue that petersons view of marriage is old and antiquated and that's probably fair game, but at the end of the day, the question was literally in reference to a woman. For all we know, he could could very well be including trans women in that statement, which would make sense considering the construction of that statement.
philosophically and sociologically, it's quite literally the definition of what a woman is. It's the reason why it's changed over time.
Your every paragraph includes a literally. Might want to hone it down a notch as it has a degrading effect on the content.
Again: You can marry a man. Even if you're a man.
yeah, and we aren't talking about men, we're talking about women, which is probably why we're talking about marrying them.
In fact the concept of marriage is entirely unrelated to the two individuals in this specific example, the entire point of including marriage, is to give an example of a specific type of relationship you can have with someone, where this concept would be clearly and unmistakably defined. The whole purpose of including it is so that you don't just overrule the entire hypothetical by saying "yeah but someone from china" or something similarly irrelevant. Which is basically the exact thing you're doing here.
Just a quick breakdown here. The marriage symbolizes interpersonal relationships. The find out part symbolizes how most social definitions are entirely liquid and depend very heavily upon external culture. It's why certain slurs like queer are significantly less, slur-ry now.
The entire statement essentially just says "the definition of any given social aspect of humanity is dependent primarily on the individuals involved, and how well acquainted they are." which while a little broad, gets the point across that the question "what is a woman" is a pretty fucking stupid question.
It's not dissimilar to a chair. What is a chair? Something you can sit on? You can sit on the ground. An object built specifically for seating humans? Dogs can sit on chairs. A seat designed by a human to be used for seating? Well what about a stool or a bench? What about if we take that chair, and then put it somewhere it shouldn't be, like on the ceiling? Is a ceiling chair still a chair? It can't be sat in anymore.
and if we were to hyper analyze the scene that statement was made in, the ultimate definition given by (presumably) matt walsh's wife, is "adult human female" which is weird, because adult is not specifically defined, and human should be fairly obvious that seems entirely redundant. And then we get to female, which runs into the exact same problem as before, what is a female? Presumably they intend for it to be used in a biological sex manner, but as we established, there is no clear definition anywhere in here, aside from the term female being used, which is not very descriptive either.
so perhaps i should ask you. What is a chair?
The proper response to Charlie Kirk saying,'I'm married to a woman' is 'How long did the Koch's make her agree to it?'
What do you guys think a woman is?
Like a dude, but a chick.
The real answer is always in the comments.
it's someone who identifies as a woman.
if you meet someone who says their name is Jack, do you ask for government issue identification? no, them telling you is enough, because that's all you need for social interaction.
same with gender. you don't need to check their genitals. if it looks like they're presenting as a woman, they're most likely a woman.
in fact this is what you do on a daily basis. if you see a woman across the street wearing something ridiculous and turn to your friend and say "look at that woman over there" it's not because you confirmed whether she has a vagina or not, but because she's presenting as a woman. social cues, not biological.
and if you make the wrong assumption when talking to or about someone and they correct you, and you say sorry and refer to them as a woman going forward. really not a problem in real life. just chodes who never have contact with actual women because they're disgusting creepy weirdos.
Yes exactly and this is similar to what I tell older conservatives. It doesn't matter if there's 70 genders or what a woman is or any of that. They don't have to know all that if it's overwhelming. They only need to know what pronouns someone wants to be called. That's it. Respect that, and they don't have to talk about any of that other stuff or worry about it. It's none of their business and that's okay.
Whenever they get all bent out of shape I just redirect them back to that. Because I'm sorry, some of these people are in their seventies. They literally cannot rewire the scaffolding in their brain to delete the gender binary that they constantly referred to during their lives. It would be like breaking your arm and rehealing it at that age. We don't really need them to understand, we just need them to be respectful.
Asking this is like when people debate what is and isn't a sandwich. Everyone knows that a sub and a club are sandwiches right? Bread and filling, straightforward. But it's a big world with many foods. Is a hot dog a sandwich? A pizza? What about a taco? A falafel wrap? It's not exactly clear.
People spend tons of effort trying to come up with simple definitions that conclusively define sandwiches. But these inevitably lead to consequences that just intuitively don't make sense to people. Now a deep dish pizza is a quiche, pop tart is a toast, a burrito is a calzone until you take a bite at which point it becomes a quiche. Your simple definition is just not useful in the real messy world of bready foods.
At the end of the day, you have to accept that sandwich is a loose, vague term that cannot accurately categorize all food ever, and mostly it's whatever people say it is.
The point is, gender and sex are like sandwiches.
Sex is like a sandwich, in that they're both appealing and I'm occasionally ravenous for one of them.
Gender is just some arbitrary noise to me. I can take it or leave it.
I give you a hamburger. Your gender explodes into a million vaginas on a million dicks on a million vaginas on a million dicks into infinity. The vaginas and dicks sing a note, a perfect E flat, and your genders agree. Your dick and vagina take a bite of the hamburger together. A single tear rolls down the vagina and the dick. I give you a hamburger. Your gender is screaming.
https://youtu.be/nfdEdE96En0?si=5xBg9El4wj-CF7DS
Classic vid that discusses your point:
https://youtu.be/O9ak89FwYeI
First you have to ask what gender is. Gender is a set of behaviors expected of people of a given sex.
Then, you have to ask what it means to belong to a given gender. You don't have to, and can't, meet all the behavioral expectations of a given gender. Those expected behaviors change over time. People of all sexes have interests that cross gendered lines because gender is not perfectly correlated to specific behaviors - instead it is a broad notion of behaviors that are considered to correlate with a given sex.
Additionally, there exist people who are not really male or female due to genetic differences. But, society typically treats them as the gender typically assigned to the sex they most resemble. So, since they do not have the "correct" sex and may not participate in the "correct" behaviors to belong to a given gender, their assigned gender is arbitrarily determined.
Those 3 things establish that gender is: not biological, not behaviorally determined, and somewhat arbitrary.
Since gender isn't biological, woman =/= female person
Since gender isn't behaviorally determined, woman =/= someone who engages in typically feminine behaviors
Since gender is at least partially arbitrary, woman =/= a factual category that can be determined by material features of a person
If women don't have to be female or engage in typically feminine activities and can't be defined by physical or genetic characteristics, then what is left? Someone who identifies as a woman - who wants to be treated as a woman by others.
"But that's circular!!!" It actually isn't. "Woman" as a category confers societal roles and expected behaviors onto a person, "woman" as a person just means someone who belongs to the category "Woman". The only determining factor is being a member of the category. It'd be like asking "what is a boy scout?", getting "a member of the boy scouts" as an answer, and then being upset that there isn't some fundamental universal law being appealed to when classifying people as boy scouts.
This, so much this. Id probably opt for different semantics for woman as person and woman as category, but holy shit someone gets it
An intentionally vague term; we have known that a binary gender system is faulted at least ever since the late 1700s as that is when the term "intersex" was added to the Oxford English dictionary. The concept of intersex Highlights the vagueness of both man and woman. Like most intentionally vague terms, we like to pretend to have a clear grasp of what it is as the admission of the vague nature harms the utility of the word. In most cases, an precis Definition of, e.g. culture or woman, carries less utility than the share vague understanding of the term. In other words, trying to define the word is taking part in an effort that goes against the point of having words, being able to effectively communicate ideas.
Ofc, defining a woman within a conversation or a paper for the sake of clear communication is a good idea in some situations. Just like defining a dice to have 6 sides makes sense in the manual of a game but it doesn't make sense outside of these cases.
Like a man but wo
another clump of cells
An unnecessarily complicated chore.
Also watch if someone asks you what theft is. (Stupid taxation is theft with no good faith in sight.)
It's not going to win any bad faith arguments, but then again not much does.
also the white circle represents the value you get from living in a society supported by the taxes you pay
When a Conservative doesn't pay their fair share of tax and uses loopholes and malicious tactics to ensure they don't pay their fair share of taxes
I haven't encountered that one yet, but it doesn't shock me that they try it.
What is a woman? A fuzzy type.
Same as many many many many other categories previously thought crisp. Simple example: "living thing".
Beat the right with fuzzy facts and fuzzy logic.
And then the bullies kick your ass.
I do not have to have human rights? 😢
"Metaphysics of gender." Ppfffff hahahaha haha hahahaha. XD
What exactly would you call a philosophical discussion on the topic of what a gender means if not the metaphysics of gender?
It's a fair criticism to be honest. But, I can't think of a reasonable alternative. When I support trans-individuals, usually I argue from the brain-body mapping perspective as 1) It's not based on feelings as we know that there are people whose brain mapping does not correspond with their body mapping, and 2) There's a lot of evidence to support that perspective.
A lot of people aren't just going to get "What it feels like to a man/woman.", and personally, while I identify as a man solely for my parts, I just simply lack what it means not because it supposedly matches me, but because I have no feelings associated with gender. And here's the kicker, I wouldn't understand dysphoria when called the wrong gender either. For example, my mother has always addresses me as a male because I was born with a penis and all that jazz, but recently a few months ago, in a endearing way, she told me that I was like a daughter to her, which I take to mean that I give off that energy to her. Didn't really felt off or anything either.
As a trans person I find myself working backwards to try and figure out what makes a person cis and this experience you've described actually seems to me to be the most common. I theorize that most cis people (though not all) are actually defined by an absent or fluid internal gender.
I theorize that a lot of cis and trans people talking past each other has us trans folks assuming that you, like us, experience gender as something rigid and stratified. Like one of the aspects of my experience is that I have zero ability to feel neutrality about my body's sex characteristics or about the way people culturally react to my body. Every interaction where my physical sex comes into play in how my life is lived is absolutely hard wired. Some make me feel deficient... Generally anxious and depressed because I feel almost indescribably cheated of comfort and invisible to the people whom with I feel an affinity which makes me feel utterly alone and stranded. Dysphoria - a gulf not between just body and mind but between life and something that feels like an opposite. Not death persay but an empty facsimile of existence where I am a non-entity obscured by a series of barriers.
Others make me feel inexplicable joy and connection and vibrantly alive. The random vendor who called me "sir" over a year ago when I was sure I didn't pass isn't just memorable it made my month. Gender euphoria is well named as it is heady and intoxicating. Not simply a respite from dysphoria but a golden shimmering stand out where the memory can be relived vividly.
The stratification of feeling - dysphoria and euphoria is so concrete but neither is at all logical. I believe very firmly that the sexes are equal and being a man is not better or worse than being a woman if you were to look at those things in a purely objective sense... But that doesn't change a damn thing. This isn't a logical thing. I can keep feeding it logic but it will never change the fact that as I go about my day I feel constantly slapped with intense feelings about my body.
But cis people don't seem to feel anything about their gender so their uncertainty is natural. When they are completely non reactive to them the question of "how do you know?" is natural because when you reach down being told that you have an internal sense of gender and don't find one then the natural response is doubt. But I think there is an underlying reason why the satisfaction rate of trans specific gender affirming surgeries is so low... If you are cis a change of physical kit might not actually be terribly alarming because that fluidity might work in your favour. The only risk to transitioning a cis person by accident might just be to fertility which not all people, particularly trans men, actually give up when they surgically transition. Meaning we might just be assuming incredible levels of harm from a population that a) is unlikely to care about sex enough to prioritize physical transition and b) might not be lifeshattering adversely effected and c) if they want to transition back they can. The culture that supports trans people is also nessisary in the rare event someone does want to go back because they will likely be externally still be read as a trans person and would essentially basically require the exact same accomodations.
I would just say "concept of gender".
Charlie Kirk is married to a woman. Epic own, buddy 😂
Go ahead and define a woman for us then. Since you seem to know the definition.
"A woman is someone with XY chromosomes..."
off to a good start
Haha 😂😂 My bad on the typo y'all
I see, so this person is not a woman:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30799415/
They got pregnant, but their chromosomes are XXY.
So what are they?
Cool. Thanks for your queerphobic take.
Disagreement with the politically correct about transgender is necessarily transphobic.
Do tell me where you studied genetics at a graduate level to make the determination you just made.
Otherwise yeah, you're being a queerphobe.
I see. And what about people with Swyer Syndrome? They can live their entire lives with no one, not even them, suspecting their chromosomes are XY. Men? Should we be genetically testing every woman to make sure she isn’t really a man and doesn’t know it?
Such a person can compete in womens sports FAIC.
wp:Swyer syndrome
You are defining 'woman' by whether or not sports officials decide they can compete with other women? And then you try to use science afterward?
Seems like if you have to make exceptions for your definition to work, it's not a very good definition.
A man is a person of male gender identity, i.e. identifying as a male
A woman is a person of female gender identity, i.e. identifying as a female
That's all there is to it, since the very concept of gender identity revolves around a purely social phenomenon of gender - which many people try to forcefully connect to sex, which is not the same thing and won't ever be.
Oh look, an ignorant person who thinks trans 12-year-olds regularly get surgery rather than puberty blockers and maybe hormones.
But your not caring about children committing suicide is noted.
Hey, if it indeed reduces suicide, fine—even more reason for my indifference in them going for such procedures.
60.6% transgirls?
Sylvia Plath on being a girl: https://youtu.be/1pTPuoGjQsI?t=982 (cued)
Why does anyone give a shit what Sylvia Plath, a woman who died before being trans was even legal, thinks about what it means to be a girl?
Also, she committed suicide herself, so I have no idea why you think she's a good person to bring up.
Also, I think it's hilarious you're bringing up genetics in one comment as a definition of a woman and then bringing up a fucking poet as the definer in this one.
She lived in a different time: I'm sure if many of Gen Z lived in her time, a few of them might consider suicide; and my point is the gender dysphoria among girls might be due to sexism that's still in society: hence the cure might not be becoming a boy, but rather reduce the sexism.
And the scientific basis of your hypothesis is what Sylvia Plath once said?
She said being a girl, or female, can be restraining, particularly over 50 years ago.
You claimed to know how to "cure" transgender people (it's not an illness, you're being a bigot). What is the science you are using?
No.
I'm presuming that we have sexism in our society and it's affecting girls at least somewhat, but hey, what do I know?
Yes, sexism like yours does affect trans girls. It's good of you to recognize it.
Gender is performative. Race is not.
Which is why we celebrate Jenner and we scorn Dolezal.