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Notes -
I gave the following definition: "Being a man/woman means sincerely wanting to be (EDIT: mostly) male/female" (this is a definition of gender identity, because man/woman refers to gender identity under gender theory)
I am aware of that problem, which is why I made sure my definition references sex ("male/female"), which is already defined.
But they are trying to make the definitions more inclusive of trans people. You are literally just described the mechanism by which they make things more inclusive - by trying to blur people's mental categories. In practice, this often does include lies / inconsistencies, but the blurring can be done without having to lie (e.g. via my construction of gender identity)
Sure, and in practice many activists do switch the meanings. But I'm saying that we can still have gender theory (and the various policy implications) without having to be inconsistent.
From the start, I made it clear that I was just providing a consistent framework for gender that could be used in theory. An easy way to use preferred pronouns without lying.
But since you've asked my personal stance, and have brought up specific things I've said, it has made me second-guess whether I'm personally consistent and not the young-earth guy with this stuff, and whether I actually know what I mean when I say things all the time (regarding gender)
My personal policy is to be okay with both systems. And to use the gender system myself (but when speaking to an unsympathetic audience, make it clear what I mean, e.g. by stressing "cis") - but be willing to listen to and understand others when they are clearly using the old system (and I can use the old system when defining gender theory)
So, actually, I have failed to follow my (until now unwritten) policy, and I don't think it is workable in practice (I will eventually forgot to do the substitutions, in a few months when this conversation fades from memory) - I'll go back to the old system (on the Motte) as default, and mark clearly where I am using the gender system (i.e. what most people do)
But moving away from my own personal failing/refusal to adhere to the theory, the theory is still consistent!
It is the state of wanting to be a female in most regards (which in gender theory is still the normal thing - an XX-haver), you misquoted me.
Just using normal language - surely it makes sense for a man to say "I want to be a woman", right? And the definitions of gender theory flow from trying to accomodate this desire ("dysphoria") - we change the meaning of woman to mean "wanting to be a woman", where the second "woman" is the old kind of woman (and leave the synonym, now semantically distinct, "female" as the original concept)
It bottoms out at sex, after just one step: "[gender] = wanting to be (mostly) [sex]"
I don't see what is confusing about inventing a concept to refer to the state of "wanting to be (mostly) [opposite sex]", in order to help make people with that desire feel happier.
It causes concept blurring and just generally makes it harder to reason about things you care about (this is by design, because most people care about the difference between male/female) - in fact, as your callout on my old comments show, it very difficult to talk this way over a long time without slipping up.
But it is possible to adhere to this ideology without being inconsistent or lying. It doesn't require you to think false things, just to avoid thinking/saying certain true things. If you want to use a boo-word, I think "censorship" is more appropriate.
It's not a single belief system, because there is no central authority. Lots of people can make theories (like the one I gave), that roughly overlap in spirit and conclusions (e.g. "trans X are X" must somehow arise from the theory), but will contradict eachother (and in some cases, contradict themselves) - it's like how Catholics and Protestants are both Christian, but contract eachother on some stuff.
I tried to provide a consistent theory, to prove most of the demands of the movement can be made in a logically consistent way. To challenge the general anti-woke liberal attack on the grounds of pure logic without making value judgements about lifestyles being "wrong".
This was quite rambly. So I will repeat my main points:
Yeah, this is the big part of why some of us are confused by your view. It's not that I think you're inconsistent, it's that you seem to have had a major change of heart on this issue, but you're solely describing it in terms of logical consistency as a frame of the world. The gap isn't in logic, it's in personal experience.
Especially when you say this:
That's a pretty big change, to go from "non-binaries are actually just women or gay men" to "gender self-id is logically consistent with the facts of the world and I choose it as a policy"! I feel like there's a whole part of the story that's missing, where you met a transgender person, or you read some stories, or you yourself dealt with gender identity issues... I feel like what we're getting is the rider's logical post-change ideas, not the elephant's emotional journey.
I actually went through a similar change of heart -- though obviously not as extreme -- and my earlier reply to you was in part a way for me to express that.
One of my key values, in terms of communication and persuasion, is that the most persuasive argument for any position is the reason why you, personally, believe it. If you try to craft a persuasive argument independent from your own reasons, you're simply going to construct a worse argument for your position... if it were a better argument than your own reasoning, it would become the reason you believe it! That's why a lot of my posts are emotive, and personal (perhaps more than they ought to be): I don't know how to argue for something where my head and my heart aren't both in it.
I think very few people, even in rationalist-lite spaces, are really all that interested in logical consistency. They're interested in living in a compelling narrative, or having some reason for their values that gets their whole self aflame. Obviously, as you see, this particular issue gets people immensely emotionally invested.
You obviously have some reasons for your change of heart, from dismissive comments about elements of the gender self-id movement, to a logical case for gender theory as a frame on the world, which you've used several comments to justify. What I'd like to hear, if you want to argue for it, or resolve your feelings of personal inconsistency, is what changed in you or your life that made you look at things a different way.
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