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Yeah, I picked up on you setting up the "core" group with the biological definition, but we were discussing the edge cases, and I specifically asked what would they be identifying with. You didn't say they're identifying with female physical attributes, or even female psychological traits, you said they'd be identifying with their "gender identity". I even asked about the burly lumberjack scenario, so we could discuss a specific instance, and make sure this isn't just a misunderstanding or a question of poor phrasing, and your answer indicated that literally none of these things are required, only "gender identity" is. This is pretty "turtles all the way down" as far as I can tell, and puts into question whether the "core" group is even necessary for the definition.
That's what pedophile rights advocates say as well.
Uh sure, someone explicitly stating "I have been acting in bad faith this entire time!" while villainously twirling their mustache does seem like a reliable indicator of bad faith, I'm frankly surprised even with that you set your confidence at only 95%. It seems like in any realistic scenario, where they don't loudly declare their intentions, the bad faith actor will be given free rein.
I don't know specifically what gender identity means more specifically, because I do not personally experience it. If I woke up tomorrow in a body with the opposite plumbing, I would consider myself to be a different gender from what I had previously been; other individuals would experience acute dysphoria and be strongly motivated to reverse the change.
That was something I forgot to mention; not only are most people with a certain mental aspect born with 🌮, but a sizable number of the remainder have a strong sense that they should have been, and mutatis mutandis for the other common type of that aspect and 🍆.
That is why we call those types 'man' and 'woman' instead of 'veeblefetzer' and 'wakalix'.
So now we have the question of "Are the transgender activists more like the former, or the latter?". I believe that the relevant distinction is "Does this thing hurt anyone?"; to borrow a phrase from Thomas Jefferson, "Does it pick my pocket or break my leg?". A legalisation of the sexual abuse of children would be harmful; the abolition of slavery was not harmful; a more nuanced understanding of gender is not harmful.
A minimum of 95%.
I do not support allowing either a genuine trans-woman or a cis-man pretending to be a trans-woman to do anything from which we forbid a cis-woman. On the other hand, if Mr Burly Lumberjack claims to be a trans-woman in order to go into the women's room, do his business, wash his hands, and leave without bothering anyone, I would prefer him to the Karen insisting on inspecting between the legs of any woman she thinks is insufficiently feminine (many of whom are cis-women).
It's a bit weird then to define "man" or "woman" by it. For all you know no such thing exists. Even if it does, we have no way of telling whether the "gender identity" possessed by trans women actually matches that of actual women, or whether it's just a man's idea of how a woman feels.
I believe that convincing adolescent autists to block their own puberty, pump themselves full of exogenous hormones, and surgically remove healthy body parts, does actually hurt them quite a lot.
None of the drama is related to trans women being allowed to do what cis women aren't, so this seems irrelevant.
Mr Burly Lumberjack entering a women's boxing tournament, demanding a Brazilian wax, or demanding to be put into a women's prison seems plenty problematic to me, whether he's "pretending" to be trans, or actually is. Even the toilet thing obviously causes discomfort, or else the issue wouldn't be so controversial.
Somehow we managed to achieve sex segregation all these years without resorting to that, so I don't see why we would need to start now. I also haven't seen Karens demanding it.
Other people's reported experiences point to it existing.
Yes, there is a possibility that they are all lying; there is also a possibility that everyone is lying about the existence of Finland.
I assign an extremely low probability (P < 0.001) to both.
Other than using the toilet without being given the third degree regarding what ought to be no one else's business.EDIT: misread aboveYou stated that Mr B-L had not received, nor did they desire, hormone treatments. If (amount of testosterone in Mr B-L's bloodstream) ÷ (amount of estrogen in Mr B-L's bloodstream) yields a number greater than that observed in any cis woman, then Mr B-L may be categorised with men for the purposes of women's sports.
You stated that Mr B-L did not have surgery. If Ms Below-the-Waist Cosmetologist removes hair from vulvae, but not from scrota, she is justified in categorising Mr B-L with men for the purpose of genital waxing.
Put him/her with other trans-women. He/she won't be able to get to cis-women, cis-men won't be able to get to him/her.
That proves too much; letting Black people use the same water fountains as everyone else caused discomfort too.
We don't need to. If someone isn't harassing or assaulting other restroom-users, the rest of us can mind our own business.
Does that mean that it isn't happening? Because I haven't seen anyone pretending to be trans in order to prey on people in public restrooms.
But the people reporting it's existence aren't any better at defining or describing it than you are.
Isn't that forbidding trans women from what we allow cis women to do, rather than forbidding cis women from what we allow trans women to do?
And if you meant the former, didn't you just say you would exclude them from sports, prisons, etc.?
Your original definition made no mention of hormone levels, nor did you say it's context dependent. At this point your approach is just more complicated and confusing, while offering no benefits.
But trans activists want to keep the segregation, thus agreeing the discomfort is valid (or if they have other reasons for maintaining it, I haven't heard them).
The whole situation is more like if the Civil Rights movement wasn't about equality, but about maintaining segregation, while positing a class of people who should be considered white, despite their dark skin, ans African ancestry.
Then argue for the abolition of segregation entirely rather than for forcing all of society to redefine one if the most basic words in usage.
Yes. I can link you articles about bathroom sexual assaults. You can argue these cases aren't representative of trans people as a whole, but you can't argue they don't happen. I, on the other hand, have literally never even heard of Karens demanding genital checks. The idea is a pro-trans shibboleth.
Well, they're closer to it, so they have a better view, and their statements are the best data I have.
I reread your comment, and I apparently mis-interpreted it. I apologise for the error.
Then whence the concern about a man claiming to be a trans-woman 'being given free rein', if he is not doing anything wrong with the acceptance given to him?
We don't, or at least shouldn't, tolerate cis-women harassing other cis-women in the restroom; thus, if trans-women aren't allowed to do anything cis-women aren't, then trans-women, or cis-men claiming to be such, are not being given 'free rein' to harm anyone.
Those are circumstances under which I would compromise from the pro-trans maximalist position. That is not the same thing as endorsement of the anti-trans maximalist position.
"For most purposes" means that some contexts might call for a different definition.
Other than being fairer to certain people who, to be honest, are having a terrible enough time of it already.
("Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?")
Are there trans activists who have rejected offers of 'gender-neutral bathrooms for everybody, as long as the wash their hands'?
I don't know how else one would enforce the bathroom bills being proposed in the red states, given the overlap between, at a minimum, the most female-presenting quintile of trans-women and the least female-presenting quintile of cis-women.
That just means the best data you have to support the existence of gender identity roughly rivals the data we have to support astral projection. It's not skin off my nose if you want to believe in it, but if you're demanding a sweeping reform of society, I think you need to back your demands with something better.
I just meant that he'd be allowed to take advantage of any benefits stemming from "identifying as a woman". If you don't see anything wrong with that, what exactly has Mr. Mustache Twirling Villain done wrong in the exact same situation?
a) Telling someone they're supposed to use the other bathroom is not harassment.
b) I don't recall phrasing "free rein" in terms of harm. I just meant there'd be no barriers to entering into women's spaces.
If it's a compromise then it's not a definition. The point of a definition is to communicate a concept between different people, so that they can reason about it and debate it. It sounds like rather than trying to do that, you are first trying to reach a specific goal, and are tailoring the "definition" to how far you think you can get.
Oh, fair enough, the conversation is going long enough that I forgot that.
I don't think it would make it fairer to them in any way, or how that they're having a terrible time when all of society is not forced to buy into their belief system.
No one I ever talked about responded with "oh, that sounds lovely, actually" when I made that argument, and I'd say that the burden is on the trans activists to initiate the conversation with that demand, if they want to use the "civil rights" argument.
a) I notice you're showing any examples of Karens demanding genital checks, or denying my point that no Karen has ever actually done so, in any way, thus proving this is a pro-trans shibboleth.
b) An honor system + resolving corner cases with government ID's with sex-based markers, sounds like more than enough to me.
If society were built to tell anyone who believed themself capable of astral projection, constantly, day-in, day-out, "You aren't really capable of astral projection, that isn't a thing, you are Delusional and Wrong.", and never let the matter rest, I think that that would justify 'demanding a sweeping reform of society'.
If you, as a result of some preternatural phenomenon, woke up to-morrow in a body of the opposite biological sex, how motivated would you be to reverse the change?
Precisely what benefits are those, and why ought we not extend them to identity!men?
That depends on whether he is harming anyone with the latitude given him.
Either he is, in which case recognising the wrongness of his actions does not depend on a rejection of his claimed gender identity, or he isn't, in which case he hasn't done anything wrong.
I was referring to the oft-invoked spectre of 'cis-man claims to be trans-woman, goes into women's toilet, does Harvey Weinstein impression', which is equally bad if the perpetrator is a cis-woman.
And? If they aren't harming anyone....
It's not a definition.
There are multiple pairs of categories into which human beings can be divided
These categories are strongly correlated, such that the members of one category will have a >90%/<10% distribution of any other pair; thus we refer to all the categories in column A as 'woman', and all those in column B as 'man'.
The pro-trans maximalist position is that the 'gender identity' category ought be used for all purposes, and none of the other categories should be acknowledged under any circumstance.
The anti-trans maximalist position is that the only categories that are relevant are those which do not change, and that any category which places trans individuals with their identified gender ought be ignored.
What I am offering as a compromise is "Default to using gender identity, use others if you have a Very Good Reason, 'we've always done it this way' doesn't count.".
...and yet demands that they buy into its beliefs.
Alice, and a mostly left-leaning coalition, believe that Alice is a woman. A mostly right-leaning coalition believes that Alice is a man.
I see no reason why it is more justified for the latter group to demand assent to their beliefs by the former than vice versa; 'it's always been this way' strikes me as a very flimsy premise, given how many times it has been used to support things which are now widely considered indefensible.
That would last about five minutes before a woman with PCOS or endometriosis and a Maine or Minnesota driver license tries to take a leak at the same time as a TERF with an opinion and a mood disorder.
a) I don't see how. People are perfectly within their rights to tell anyone day-in, day-out that they are delusional and wrong. Christians, vax-skeptics, climate change deniers, opponents of Critical Race Theory, and indeed people with gender critical views... take your pick, people are being told their beliefs are delusional and wrong, and as far as I can tell, that's exactly the way things should be.
b) Please do go on and tell me how the people who're draping entire cities in their flags, inserting mastectomy scars into marketing materials and children's cartoons, adding genderwang into school curricula, get people fired from jobs, and terrorize venues into cancelling events, are that one's being followed around, and who just want to let the matter rest.
Not at all.
The benefits vary, anything from an earlier retirement age, lower physical test requirements, scholarships, carveouts for seats on various boards. Rather than extending them to men, I'd be in favor of removing them from women.
Another benefit is safety from people of the male sex, who are disproportionately more dangerous. You can't extend that to men, because we've found no way to as easily and accurately corral the individuals, as separating males from females does.
He'd be doing the exact same thing your examplary trans woman would be doing, except twirling his mustache villainously as he does so.
Yeah, but females are far less likely to engage in that sort of behavior, which is one of the reasons we give them their own spaces.
The only way this argument makes sense is if you are arguing for abolishing segregation. It makes no sense in the context of keeping segregation, but allowing "trans women" in. And if you're in favor of desegregation, then there's no need to modify the definition of "woman" to begin with.
Don't you mean it's not the definition? Either way, it's not a definition either, and that's my point. Like I said, the point of definitions is communicate concepts between people, not to pre-define the kind of categorization schemas you'd prefer for people to use. Your categorization schema may be better than mine, but you have to provide an argument for it being so, and to do that, we need some definitions for the basic concepts we are discussing. Trying to tell me we should use your categorization schema without defining these concepts is absurd.
And who is demanding assent to their beliefs? Go ahead and believe in "gender identity". If you want to change the definition of "woman", I can step over that and use another word, like "female" for the concept I'm referring to. You're free to believe what you want, and I'm still making the argument I wanted to.
The possibility space for different ways of doing things is nearly infinite, so if you want to change things, you need to show how your way is better than all the other possible ways. On the other hand "it's been working fine all this time" is a perfectly valid reason for keeping things the way they are, because change requires energy, and that energy could be spent on more important things.
...which is why I explicitly postulated a sex-based marker.
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