The Republican War on Transgender People, Drag Queens, and Queerness in General

[mixed_biscuits]

So non-binary sex cells determine non-binary biological sexed qualities. You still can't say all cismen have entirely male bodies. All biological types are varieties, they involve members that differ from individual to individual. So sex is not an essence, but rather a plurality of different qualities that vary from one individual to the next, and an individual can have sexed qualities from a sex different from their own, e.g. a cisman can have female sexed qualities.

Sex cells define the sexes. Obviously overall there is a lot of overlap between men and women but your argument galvanises the distinction as much as it undermines it because you're picking out characteristics in one sex while saying those characteristics are axiomatically of the other sex to make your point. What is missing is a human that produces both sperm and eggs.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

False. I would still say the gynecomastic patient was a man, because he identifies as a man. The only objective criterion I propose is that if a person identifies as a member of a particular gender, I will accept them as a member of this gender. As far as I can tell, only transphobes disagree with my criterion. In my pro-queer view, only the individual person identifying as, in this case, a man, has any say in my identifying him as a man. Science lacks any authority in a person's gender identifications. Science does have the authority to assign a sex to a person, but as we've seen, a person's sexed qualities can differ from their assigned sex.

Furthermore, science invented gender reassignment surgery, which shows that even the sex assigned to a person at birth can change, and is far from immutable, as a certain rageaholic claimed earlier in a manner quite contrary to his avowed anti-essentialism.

Meanwhile, I'll continue affirming anti-essentialism about biological sex.

You were doing so well too. It's not that your position rejects scientific authority it's that it pretends to reject this authority having laid waste to any shot at scientific credibility...a bit like becoming a republican after the Queen blanks your handshake at a garden party.

In this thread I posed a number of logical questions that nobody has been able to answer because the logic around this topic is so bad. Maybe you could have a go at this one: a man tells you on Monday that he identifies as a woman but the following day says that he now believes that he was a man yesterday...what was he on Monday?

Eschew objectivity at your peril!

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Caveat: as I've said, I think the phenomenon makes sense from a dualist reincarnatory perspective; most of the illogic is introduced by people trying to shoehorn it into a restrictive materialist framework.

 

[malelesbian]

You were doing so well too. It's not that your position rejects scientific authority it's that it pretends to reject this authority having laid waste to any shot at scientific credibility...a bit like becoming a republican after the Queen blanks your handshake at a garden party.

I'm a culture theorist. I don't do natural science. I study culture. I talk about books and appearances, it's a thing, look it up. There is no need for an individual's gender identifications to appeal to natural scientific authority, because gender is a matter of culture. Sex is a matter of the natural sciences. But you refuse to acknowledge that even natural sex defies binary essentialism.

In this thread I posed a number of logical questions that nobody has been able to answer because the logic around this topic is so bad. Maybe you could have a go at this one: a man tells you on Monday that he identifies as a woman but the following day says that he now believes that he was a man yesterday...what was he on Monday?

The man was a man on Monday. He was simply mistaken about his It may seem implausible because it happens so rarely, but it can happen. Consider a transwoman who identifies a man before she undergoes transition, e.g. Contrapoints. She was really a woman all along, atleast as far as we know right now. It's true that we only know a person's specific authentic gender because we know that this person identifies as that gender right now. Gender is historical and it can change at any time. In the past, the transwoman thought she was a man, but she was mistaken, and now identifies as a woman. She might identify as a man in the future, in which case we would know at that point that she was really a man all along and we would start calling her by male pronouns. But this would be a very rare case.

Take me for example: I used to think I was a masculine man, but in 2020 I learned I was a feminine man. Suddenly, a lot of stuff in my life-history made sense: particularly the way I alternated between masculine and feminine behaviors. But I do know know now that I am a gender-queer, gender-nonconformist. So I was wrong to think I could ever act like a traditional man, especially because I never really wanted to.

So the only person who can get their gender wrong is the individual identifying as this specific gender.

Furthermore, and even worse for you: gender-fluid people exist. A person can literally identify as a woman in the past, identify as a man a man now and claim that they were a woman in the past. And it will be true that he used to be a man before and is a woman now. And in the futue, he can become a woman again.

 

[malelesbian]

Sex cells define the sexes. Obviously overall there is a lot of overlap between men and women but your argument galvanises the distinction as much as it undermines it because you're picking out characteristics in one sex while saying those characteristics are axiomatically of the other sex to make your point. What is missing is a human that produces both sperm and eggs.

Even if sex is binary in this way, why should I care? Transwomen are women, and a post-op transwoman's body counts as a woman's body at the level of sex. Even if you want to split hairs and claim that the post-op transwoman's body is, from a scientific perspective, it still doesn't show how that natural scientific fact is relevant to cultural politics. The fact that natural science might consider a post-op transwoman's body as a male body because she was born a male simply doesn't matter to feminism nor identity politics except in areas like reproductive rights and sports (sports are so irrelevant to politics!) Try giving examples of ways that fact is relevant to politics, other than in the ways previously stated, I dare you.

Face it: a post-op transwoman has a female sex and should be treated as such in all relevant areas of cultural politics other than the exceptions.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I'm a culture theorist. I don't do natural science. I study culture.

Yes, that's the problem.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

The man was a man on Monday. He was simply mistaken about his It may seem implausible because it happens so rarely, but it can happen.

So you think that people can be mistaken in their identification...that is the hole in the hull that makes the ship sink from your point of view.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

@malelesbian people are either sexed male or female but they may through their soul memory identify more with/remember the experience of being the opposite sex. 'Gender' is the secularised soul but, having been secularised, is not a coherent concept. The person's identification can be further affected by the body, hormones etc. and by surrounding culture.

You need this dualist frame to give credence to these identifications because the debate in the non-dualist frame is being lost e.g. this MIT philosophy professor has just completely dismantled your cultural theorists' ideas (because he's trained in logical reasoning unlike the cultural theorists) but his arguments are premised on a restricted metaphysics:

 

[mixed_biscuits]

@malelesbian identifying with something doesn't entail that you are that thing...this is why I am sympathetic to the stance of the majority otherkinphobes on this thread who refused to accept me as a guinea pig even though I have taken to eating vegetables recently. Some of them have been posting pictures of skinned guineakin roasting on spits. I've tried to identify out of this predicament as a cat but there are even more otherkinsquaredphobes than otherkinphobes!

 

[mixed_biscuits]

@malelesbian you have to actually learn some science and produce some sort of integrated theory; you can't just pick whichever paradigm would suit your argument.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

@malelesbian would you accept a man's identification as a woman despite exhibiting only what you take to be stereotypically masculine behaviours and characteristics? I can't help thinking that some of these 'progressives' have some seriously constricted views on what masculinity and femininity involve, not least as a major theorist like Jung perceived a constant element of the opposite sex in one's psyche in the form of the anima or animus. He might consider your experience of what you take to be feminine traits to be a manifestation of your anima - and one which generally doesn't undermine your status as a male. I think Jung said that the anima or animus could on occasion gain too much influence but in those instances the major sexed part of the psyche is meant to try to tamp it down a bit; they're meant to be in a yin and yang oppositional equilibrium.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

@malelesbian there are cases of people feeling that they are the wrong ethnicity and identifying strongly with another ethnicity; do you accept their identification(?), especially given the greater commonality between ethnicities than between sexes, scientifically speaking.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

@malelesbian This is your opposition; it doesn't look like they're losing the battle of ideas, does it? BUT her arguments take severe damage if one introduces a dualist premise.

 

[WashYourHands]

 

[malelesbian]

Yes, that's the problem.

Yes, and your problem is scientism, but who's counting?

'Gender' is the secularised soul but, having been secularised, is not a coherent concept.

Why is it incoherent? I'll add that it is completely unclear why it you think it necessary to affirm dualism.

The person's identification can be further affected by the body, hormones etc. and by surrounding culture.

Well no one ever denied this! Certainly not Butler or I. The whole social constructionist framework accepts that culture influences one's identifications.

identifying with something doesn't entail that you are that thing...

Of course it doesn't. No one said that it did. All I said was that if a person identifies as a particular gender, I will accept them as a member of tht gender, and do refuse to accept them as such is transphobia. I perform this pro-queer practice for the sake of morals, not to describe some ontological fact.

this is why I am sympathetic to the stance of the majority otherkinphobes on this thread who refused to accept me as a guinea pig

Again, I refuse to count "guinea pig" or any other kind of non-human animal as a gender identity category. So you can't identify as a guinea pig and expect me to accept you as one. You do need to be born a guinea pig. You don't need to be born a woman or any other gender.

would you accept a man's identification as a woman despite exhibiting only what you take to be stereotypically masculine behaviours and characteristics?

Yes. No one knows that person's identity better than she does.

Jung perceived a constant element of the opposite sex in one's psyche in the form of the anima or animus. He might consider your experience of what you take to be feminine traits to be a manifestation of your anima - and one which generally doesn't undermine your status as a male.

Well yes, Jung would say that, and I agree with him. Every individual has masculine, feminine and gender-neutral traits. They just choose to identify as a particular gender, and we should respect them and accept their gender identification. But I never said my femininity undermines my status as a male, quite the opposite: I identified as a feminine male, A man who persists as a man despite his feminine qualities. So I don't know what your point is here.

there are cases of people feeling that they are the wrong ethnicity and identifying strongly with another ethnicity; do you accept their identification(?),

No I don't because you do have to be born a member of a particular ethnicity. Gender identity categories differ from other identity categories, e.g. ethnicities, and my claims about gender apply only to gender, not to race or ethnicity.

 

[thirdform]

@malelesbian people are either sexed male or female but they may through their soul memory identify more with/remember the experience of being the opposite sex. 'Gender' is the secularised soul but, having been secularised, is not a coherent concept. The person's identification can be further affected by the body, hormones etc. and by surrounding culture.

You need this dualist frame to give credence to these identifications because the debate in the non-dualist frame is being lost e.g. this MIT philosophy professor has just completely dismantled your cultural theorists' ideas (because he's trained in logical reasoning unlike the cultural theorists) but his arguments are premised on a restricted metaphysics:

View attachment 17500

this is incredible, as you've basically argued against yourself. The univocity of being necessitates that pursued to its logical conclusion, you deny souls.

hats off to you.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Why is it incoherent? I'll add that it is completely unclear why it you think it necessary to affirm dualism.

Gender is a concept that is inextricably parasitic on biological sex. If you try to disentangle it from sex, then it has no criterion for existence and vanishes, hence the logical final step in the secular extreme trans activist argument being the dissolution of gender per se concomitant with the deprecation of biological sex. If you remove gender, sex remains; if you remove sex, gender vanishes.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Of course it doesn't. No one said that it did. All I said was that if a person identifies as a particular gender, I will accept them as a member of tht gender, and do refuse to accept them as such is transphobia. I perform this pro-queer practice for the sake of morals, not to describe some ontological fact.

Your practice is then as poorly founded as the decision to throw salt over your left shoulder rather than your right shoulder, and you have no right to take issue with anyone who disagrees with your practice given its arbitrary and ultimately meaningless foundations; it would be like being annoyed with someone because they didn't greet a magpie and asked them how their wife was.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Again, I refuse to count "guinea pig" or any other kind of non-human animal as a gender identity category. So you can't identify as a guinea pig and expect me to accept you as one. You do need to be born a guinea pig. You don't need to be born a woman or any other gender.

In this case you would be a transphobe by your own lights because the exception you're trying to make doesn't work.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Yes. No one knows that person's identity better than she does.

...unless they're wrong about it, which you said is entirely possible.

The other problem is that you say that you're an anti-essentialist while deriving an essence from their identification...this makes you even more of an essentialist because you're insisting on essences that are obscured; you're an obscurantist essentialist.