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The crux of my argument without getting too far into the weeds about politicization of the sciences and "expert consensus" is that "the most advanced technological society in history, with the deepest understanding of the physical universe to-date" has delivered us a significant population of elites and voters who cannot define what a woman is.
Epistemic collapse is my threat model.
Genuinely, I am here to get into the weeds so I would love to hear the line drawn between "cannot define what a woman is" and "epistemic collapse", and the threat that "epistemic collapse" poses, especially since throughout scientific history we've updated words to better match the scientific consensus of the model of our universe and our existence within it. I do assume you have more evidence for epistemic collapse beyond the "definition of a woman"?
I, too, have deep antipathy towards the perverse incentives within current academic institutions, and the actors who exploit those perverse incentives. Maybe you and I actually have some common ground there?
Isn't the line, in this case, a dot? The entire point being that epistemology has collapsed to the point that the world's top experts in the field of gender can no longer define a commonly used word?
We're not talking about the definition changing, let alone changing to be more in line with any kind of science (or even scientific consensus), we are talking about the definition becoming incoherent, and experts outright refusing to give an answer about what they mean by the term.
I was hoping a response would be more about the threat of epistemic collapse, rather than the certain evidence of it. But I'll bite.
The whole "what is a woman" thing is just a "gotcha" that abuses the fact that words have different meanings in different contexts. Very few words evoke a singular meaning in our minds. It's like asking "what is water"? Well, are you asking about the thing I can drink? The thing I can swim in? The chemical composition? My take is that if you asked people before the concept was politicized, very few people would spit out the answer "someone with a vagina". They would probably describe quite a few gender-coded concepts, thinking that you were asking something that had more philosophical depth than the most obvious answer. Just like when you ask me "what is water" I don't immediately go "H20, dumbass." Matt Walsh is a hack and this paragraph sums up his entire strategy.
More importantly, within our legal documents the word "water" takes many different meanings as well! Why not "woman"?
I disagree, there's no gotcha. This is literally a case where the group that refuses to give a non-circular definition does so, because they don't want to constrain the category. They will not give a biological definition, because they want to allow for transition, but they will not give a social definition either, because that means being a woman requires imposing a certain set of social expectations and that would contradict their ideology as well.
Their only option is to not give a definition at all, which is what they're doing. I think your explanation is incapable of explaining this behavior, so I don't think it's correct.
I don't think so, but even if you're right, that's a strictly superior situation to the one we're in right now.
Well, I'd say it's pretty obvious. If you can't tell the difference between your dog and your chair, you might sit on your dog, and take your chair out for a walk, which is exactly what we're seeing with things like male rapists being sent to women's prisons.
See that's the line I'm interested in. How do we go from "gender and sex are different concepts, and woman is attached to gender, not sex" to "Whoops I sat on my dog because I can't tell the difference between a chair and a dog?" That's the bailey and:
this is the motte. It's a real problem that I can't argue against. Why can't we update our institutions to be sensitive to the rights of inmates in general? Why does it take a "male rapist" being sent to a "women's prison" for us to give a shit?
No, it's not. We're not going from "gender and sex are different concepts, and woman is attached to gender, not sex", we're going from "I refuse to give you any definition of 'woman' that will constrain the category in any meaningful way (beyond, perhaps, it applying to humans, but even that is not certain)". How we arrive from there to treating men as though they were women because you're not able to define either, analogously to the dog & chair example I gave, should be clear and obvious.
It's not the motte. It's a supporting example for why my interpretation on what's happening with the definition of the word "woman" is correct, and your's is incorrect.
I'll note this is a complete change of subject, but I'll answer anyway.
We do give a shit, and not sending male rapists to women's prison is an example of that. The disproportion of strength between men and women is so massive, that basically every society came up with sex-segregation in contexts where it wanted to maximize the safety of women. If you're asking why we can't provide safety for all inmates, it's because we don't live in a perfect world, and we will never live in one. Unless you put the prisoners under total surveillance under all times (a violation of their rights) or into solitary confinement (a violation of their rights) you will never keep them completely safe. We opted for an arrangement where prisoners are sorted by how much danger they pose to each other, and I doubt you'd be able to come up with something better.
Regarding the trans-women-in-prison thing, I came up with a counterargument the last time this came up. Curious how you'd answer it. Some trans woman prisoners may try to rape biologically female inmates if put in women's prisons; but won't male inmates be even likelier to try to rape the trans woman if she's sent to the men's prison? If we assume that not all trans women are rapists, but all male prisons contain at least one rapist willing to rape a trans woman, it seems like sending trans women to female prisons will prevent more rapes than it will enable.
(By the way, this is unrelated, but AI could allow us to cut the Gordian knot on constant surveillance pretty soon. A 'dumb' AI can be constantly monitoring prisoners on video feeds human wardens can't access, and if it observes what appears to be rape, it rings an alarm. Slightly ahead of current technology, but IMO clearly achievable using the kind of tech that goes into self-driving cars. It wouldn't need to be foolproof, either, few positives have minimal cost.)
Arguing that female inmates just need to submit to more danger because you've mathed out that it would be "worse" for trans women to be endangered sounds like you're practically making the TERF argument for them: that trans activists consider the feelings and safety of men to always be more important than those of women. "Well, sure, some trans women might be predatory sex offenders who will rape the female inmates they are housed with, but what if one of them was raped by a man? Wouldn't that be so much more horrible?"
I don't think this is quite the trolley problem you think it is. Trans women can be put in protective segregation in a men's prison.
And prison rape isn't actually a problem of not being able to prevent it. Other countries don't have the same problems US prisons do. We don't want to prevent it, because our prison system is dysfunctional in general, and also we have somehow adopted a cultural norm that getting raped in prison (or at least having that be an ever-present threat) is just part of the punishment.
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