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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29306 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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I just came across a word that I feel could be very useful in the trans debate: signalment. Specifically, I'm inspired by the way the term is used in verterinary medicine.

Signalment is a complete description of the patient including species, breed, age and date of birth, sex and reproductive status, whether the animal is neutered or intact.

I feel like this term captures an important point I've seen brought up in a few contexts - that a person's status as transgender might matter to their doctor, and their sexual partners, but it doesn't matter much to their social interactions in ~90% of cases. "Signalment" seems to capture the idea of "medically necessary information needed by a physician to narrow down their search space and provide quality care." Just as it might be important to know that dalmations are more prone to bladder stones than other breeds, it might be important to know that a patient is "Female, with a hysterectomy, and on testosterone for the last 3 years" because that might provide unique medical information that could be useful to the proper treatment of a patient.

I think it also bypasses some of the issues people take with terms like "biological sex" or "gametic sex."

Instead of saying, "Your biological sex is still male though", to a transwoman, you could instead say, "Your sex signalment is 'male, orchiectomy, testosterone blockers and estrogen for 5 years.'"

Then we could have the following distinction:

  • Signalment: All the medically relevant information about a patient.

  • Courtesy title (honorific), personal pronouns and gender identity: All of the social information that will make interacting with the patient easier.

So a patient might be Miss Tiffany Lewis [she/her, woman], with a sex signalment of "male, orchiectomy, testosterone blockers and estrogen for 5 years."

Anything that attempts to revise the age-old definition of man and woman is going to be unacceptable to many. The words man and woman are important because mating is what so much of socializing is about, directly or indirectly, and we need words to refer to the only two divisions of mammalian life that can create a new living being. Because so much is downstream of mating, the distinction between man and woman is integrally important and obvious. There are also significant differences between the normative male and female personalities.

If an FTM claims to be a man, it comes with none of man’s significance: FTM can’t create a child with a woman, if I get into a heated altercation with them I don’t have to worry about violence, and if I make a joke about their appearance I might have to worry about someone crying or being upset for a month.

I would be worried about violence if I got into an altercation with Buck Angel.

Is there a name for this fallacy? If not I propose the name "Appeal to Outlier Fallacy".

A 10th percentile man could beat a 90th percentile woman in a fight. This is very meaningful. But it doesn't mean that all men can defeat all women.

It's tiresome to insist that, in order to be meaningful, a statement about a group must be universally true for all members of a group. It makes it nearly impossible to talk about groups at all, which I think might be the intention of people who appeal to outliers.

"It's not true that cheetahs are faster than humans. There are some old sick cheetahs who can't run anymore and would lose to a human sprinter.".

Cherry picking

Yeah, but this is the Motte so I have to write a thousand words about it. Was hoping for some Latin to spice it up even more.

Tertium non datur maybe? From memory that means an all or nothing proposition.

They're older now, 60 years of age, and 5' 9" in height which is average height for American men. So if you're younger, taller, and maybe stronger, and/or you know how to fight, then you needn't worry about getting into a fist-fight with them.

Look at her next to men. She only passes as a huge jacked guy in staged photos.

https://www.agefotostock.fr/age/fr/Stock-Images/buck-angel.html

That picture is slightly misleading, since the left two MTFs are wearing high heels (you'd think you'd not to want to make yourself look huger when you're already well above the average height of the sex you're trying to impersonate, but I digress) while Buck isn't. According to google Laverne Cox (the black MTF on the left side of the pictures) is 5'11" while Buck Angel is 5'9" (which is the average bio-male height in the US). Assuming Buck is only doing the standard male one or two inches of lying, that's still not enough to put her firmly in the manlet realm. I wager if Buck walked past the average person who knew nothing about her and didn't say anything, nobody would pick her out as female.

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