This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Yes, and that's almost certainly the definition that you operate on, and that Marsha Blackburn operates on, and that Ketanji Brown Jackson operates on, despite her insistence that she doesn't operate on any definition besides perhaps a legal one. We can talk definitions until the end of time, but in the real world, when we have to make a decision whether to call someone sir or ma'am, we aren't asking to see their genitals or for chromosomal testing results and instead make a snap judgment based on their appearance.
No, I wouldn't say that's the definition I operate from. I'm not sure exactly how I would phrase my definition of "woman" (as definitions are notoriously hard to nail down), but it more or less comes down to "an adult who was born with female reproductive organs". The adoption of gender norms you speak of is a proxy that I use to determine if someone is a woman (since one can't, after all, go checking everyone's pants to see what bits they have), but it is a proxy measurement only and not the actual definition I use.
More options
Context Copy link
I need to come back to this again. If I'm reading you correctly, if I think a person is a woman, or if a person looks like a woman, then they are a woman. There is no objective state of fact: "woman" is defined solely by looking like, by resembling, by observation. It has absolutely nothing to do with objective factual questions like "what kind of organs does this person have?" or "can this person bear children?"
Your definition implies that a person who has never been observed by someone else cannot be a woman!
Literally: if a female person falls over in the woods and there's nobody around to observe them, is that person a woman?
Maybe I sound a bit facetious, but trans activists have been scoffing at me for years for attempting to define "man" and "woman" based on biology because umm that's like gender essentialism?? and the idea of two sexes is a Western construct?? and also intersex people exist and you're like totally erasing them??
But the ostensibly common-sense definition(s) you're proposing seem far more insane and incoherent than "does this person ever have the organs associated with the production of large gametes?", a simple binary question that delineates the categories with significantly greater than 99% accuracy.
More options
Context Copy link
No, it isn't. A woman is an adult female human i.e. a person born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes, even if faulty. Owing to sexual dimorphism, it's usually possible to tell this at a glance, although errors can and do occur. A person being mistaken for a woman does not make them a woman, any more than people mistaking me for a German makes me German.
This is a map-territory confusion. If I mistakenly assume that a male person is female, that reflects a failure in my model of the universe (I have failed to take into account that some male people have androgynous appearances, unusually narrow shoulders, unusually wide hips, whatever). It does not reflect anything about the universe itself.
A person demanding that I "treat them as" a woman (whatever that means) does not make them a woman, any more than Rachel Dolezal demanding that people treat her as a black person makes her a black person.
You literally moved the goalposts from one end of your comment to the other! A moment ago you asserted that the practical definition of "woman" that I and everyone else is operating on is "someone... who made it clear that they wished to be treated as such, whether explicitly or by adopting conventional gender norms". Now you're saying that a woman is anyone who looks as we'd expect a female person to look.
Which one is it? Is a woman a person who looks female, or a person who demands that I treat them as such, regardless of their appearance?
In either case, both definitions are incoherent, which is obvious when applied to literally anything else. A person does not become African-American just because they've expressed a desire to be treated as such. "A turtle is an entity who has made it clear that it wishes to be treated as a turtle" is a circular definition that tells you literally nothing about what a "turtle" is. The circle on the left does not "become" smaller than the circle on the right just because it looks like it's smaller than the circle on the right: both circles are the same size.
The thing about expressing a desire to be treated as such was more to account for people with an unintentionally androgynous appearance who are women under anyone's definition but for whom you wouldn't necessarily know it unless you were told. I wasn't referring to trans people who make no effort to appear as women. But when someone has a stereotypically feminine appearance, one generally assumes they are female and treats them as a woman, no? I know you probably think you can spot trannies a mile away, but I've known enough women who have a mannish appearance that I'm hesitant to start making assumptions about the shape of their genitalia. I'm guessing that for north of 99% of the women you actually deal with you don't give the matter a second thought.
Yes, but this is a heuristic, not a definition.
Definition: A woman is an adult female human; that is, a person born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes (even if faulty).
Heuristic: You can usually identify a woman by sight on the basis of her height relative to men and various secondary sexual characteristics (narrow shoulders, wide hips, breasts, vocal pitch etc.).
A heuristic is a useful guide to identifying something, or to distinguishing X from Y, but every heuristic is prone to error to a greater or lesser extent (tall women and short men exist, as do women with deep voices or flat chests). A definition, by contrast, is supposed to be, well, definitive, clearly delineating the members of the set X from the members of the set Y with zero room for ambiguity. If you mistake a member of set X for a member of set Y, then this demonstrates a limitation of the heuristic: it does not necessarily imply any limitation of the definition.
More options
Context Copy link
FtMs have a vastly easier time passing as male far more than MtFs can female. That being said, FtMs still have certain features that distinguish them from real men. In my experience, trans-identifying men stick out like a sore thumb, but people are polite enough to not bring it up, or at least not in front of them.
Correct. Which brings up a good point, that if one has to assert that they are a woman, they probably aren't. A real woman almost never has to clarify that she is a woman. She simply is.
One thing I find interesting is that basically every trans-identified female I know moves in nerdy circles (D&D, board games *etc *). In these circles, you're much less likely to clock a TiF, because plenty of the actual males are short with narrow shoulders and reedy, nasal voices.
More options
Context Copy link
Well at a minimum, there are a lot of people out there who are very obviously trans-identifying men. Possibly there is also some significant number of trans-identifying men who can pass as women, but I would guess it's rather unusual. Millions of years of evolution have made people very good at distinguishing men from women.
Yeah, my sense is that one of the biggest grievances of trans-identifying men is that peoples' subconscious sex-distinguisher mechanisms frequently output "male" for them, regardless of how they dress or groom.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link