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Supposing you meet a male person who is independently wealthy, doesn't need to work for a living, and lives in an area with numerous cosmetic surgeons experienced in vaginoplasties. The person claims to identify as a woman, but makes it perfectly clear that he has a penis which he has no desire to remove.
In your opinion, is such a person "really" trans?
This is not an armchair hypothetical. Consider the National Transgender Discrimination Survey from 2011, which polled over 6,000 people who describe themselves as transgender or gender non-conforming, of which 3,870 were male. Of these, only a quarter claimed to have undergone a penectomy, while 23% claimed to have undergone a vaginoplasty. 14% said they had no interest in undergoing either procedure (this finding is on the page numbered 79, or page 85 of the PDF). In your opinion, are these 14% "really" women? (The finding is even more striking among trans-identified females, 72% of which report no desire to undergo a phalloplasty.)
For a more recent source, consider the US Trans Survey from 2022, which surveyed over 30,000 trans-identified males. Only 11% had undergone an orchiectomy, and only 9% a vaginoplasty. 21% affirmatively said that they did not want either procedure, while 27% said they were "unsure" if they wanted the former and 25% the latter (pg 48).
One-in-five trans-identified males have not undergone a vaginoplasty and explicitly do not want to, while a further one-in-four have not undergone one and are unsure whether they want to. Someone who's on the fence about whether they want something can hardly be said to "viscerally feel they ought to have it". By the terms you specified, nearly half of all trans-identified males in the US are not women. I'll ask again: if you meet a trans-identified male who has not undergone a vaginoplasty and doesn't want one, do you consider that person a woman?
Well, I think quite a number of trans-identified males hold misogynistic attitudes. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the median autogynephiliac male is more misogynistic than the median cis man.
As I've argued repeatedly before, it sure is interesting that trans activists are so keen on "rigorously disambiguating" different categories of people and using maximally clear terminology
... right up to the point where someone points out that, regardless of how they identify, a male person remains male, with all that implies, at which point these trans activists throw a tantrum and call you a Nazi. Dora Moutot bent over backwards to avoid using language that trans-identified males might find offensive, insisting that women need to be wary of "people with penises", and she still got slapped with a €1,000 fine. Don't dare tell me these trans neologisms are just about maximally unambiguous language. Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.
Yeah, sounds like it.
Nothing, just that I find it annoying, along with many of your verbal tics (including "prexactly"). Even in the comment I'm replying to you used the term "chirurgeon" for no earthly reason I can discern.
Yes, I consider her a woman for any purpose that does not involve her genitals. Gender identity strongly correlates with genitals, which is why the major gender identities are 'man' and 'woman'. If you draw a teal circle around everyone with a penis, an orange circle around everyone with a vagina, and a provisionally non-coloured circle around each of the two gender-identity clusters, one of the colourless circles will mostly, but not entirely, overlap with the orange circle, and the other will mostly, but not entirely, overlap with the teal circle; thus we colour them respectively pink and blue. Anyone in the pink circle is a woman, even if she has no interest in leaving the teal circle, unless you are personally interacting with the parts between her legs.
The implications of which you speak are the objectionable part. I am not disputing the factual accuracy of the statement "A person born with testicules remains a person born with testicules."; I am disputing the claim "Alice having been born with testicules is more salient than any other characteristic, to such a degree that it deserves the one-or-two-syllable terminology.", and the claim "Because Alice was born with testicules, she should be treated as a delusional patient at best and a sex pest at worst.".
The issue as I understand it was not the language used, but the endorsement of the notion that individuals may rightfully be held to account for the misdeeds of those with whom they share features; i. e., discrimination not on the basis of individual conduct but on the basis of group membership.
A town in the Southern United States removing a sign saying "[Anagram of ginger], don't let the sun set on you in ______" with one that says "Persons with greater than x amount of melanin per square inch of skin...." has not absolved itself of racism.
Well, I find it annoying that you persistently refer to trans-women as 'trans-identified males'.
Cool, so your definition of "woman" is actually "a person who identifies as a woman". So all of this rubbish about "viscerally feeling they should have had concave genitalia" was just obfuscatory nonsense. Why not just come out and say "a woman is anyone who says they are a woman"? Why even bother mentioning the "viscerally feeling they should have had concave genitalia" thing if you then turn around and say that males who don't want concave genitalia are still women provided they "identify as" such?
My practical definition, for most, but not all, purposes, is 'a person who identifies as a woman'; all the references to genitals, whether actual or desired, are for the purpose of defining 'identifies as a woman'.
There are a narrow set of purposes for which trans-women are men, and another narrow set for which some trans-women are men and some are women.
The gender identity that is correlated with having been born with concave genitals is also, in those born with convex genitals, correlated with a feeling that those genitals are wrong; that is why I brought up genital dysphoria.
So, in practical terms, your definition of a woman boils down to "anyone who says they are". All of this talk about "visceral feeling that they should have had concave genitals" was just smoke and mirrors designed to distract me from noticing that your definition of the word "woman" is exactly as circular as that I ridiculed in the OP. I will reiterate that spending five or six comments pretending that of course your definition of the word "woman" isn't circular, only to then finally admit that in fact it is circular: this is hardly the most honest and forthright behaviour. Rather than rambling off on digressions which according to you are irrelevant for several hundred words, you could have just as easily said "for medical purposes, a woman is a person with concave genitals; for all other purposes, a woman is anyone who says they are". That's what your "definition" ultimately boils down to, right? Why not just come out and say that? I'm sure it couldn't possibly be because on some level you're aware of how vacuous and incoherent this worldview is, and want to dress it up as something more grounded.
I presume the "narrow set of purposes" to which you refer are those in which anatomy is especially salient e.g. for the purposes of a prostate exam, a trans-identified male is a man, not a woman. For every other purpose, you essentially treat trans-identified males as secular Oracles at Delphi, whose accounts of their inner lives can never be questioned by anyone under any circumstances, no matter how suspicious or laughable. Outside of gender ideology, there are many contexts in which we do not accept any individual's word at face value (e.g. a police officer who pulls someone over for speeding will demand to see their driver's license, even if they're a charity worker, a man of the cloth, or a former President), up to and including claims about one's inner experience (doctors must separate the patients who are legitimately in pain from the addicts seeking opiates). But as far as you're concerned, any male person who announces he's a woman instantly becomes one, no questions asked; no questions permitted to be asked; and anyone who so much as raises an eyebrow, points out the incongruity of this claim, or suggests that the male in question might have ulterior motives for so "identifying" has thereby outed themselves as a fascist Nazi bigot. As far as you're concerned, it is simply impossible for the declarative statements "I am a woman" or "I identify as a woman" to be untruthful or knowingly deceptive. These statements need not be vetted for accuracy: regardless of who speaks them, they are true by definition. I will note, again, that I cannot think of any other statements in the English language (or any language) to which this description applies, although I am open to suggestions. I am curious why gender ideology is so important that it requires us to completely overhaul our entire practice of epistemology, the philosophical assessment of what is true, what is false and how we tell one from another. "Because if we don't, some people will feel sad." Okay.
When this topic has come up in the past, I've asked you for what specific "purposes" treating a trans-identifed male as a woman provides better predictive power than treating them as a male person. I believe your answer was "none of your business". Which was, well, illustrative.
As an aside, you've been expounding on your personal interpretation of gender ideology (at great length) for several months now, and to my eyes it seems, if anything, even more incoherent than it seemed at first brush. I'm curious if anyone who's read any of the comments you've posted has had their mind changed on any sub-facet of this topic. If my experience is typical, it suggests that, regardless of whether you do "lack confidence in your own arguments to persuade people", you shouldn't have much confidence therein.
For practical purposes, if someone tells me that they identify as a woman, I am going to default to the assumption that she is being truthful, unless I have some indication, which does not function as a Fully General Counterargument To The Existence Of Transgender, that they are acting in bad faith.
No, it is an auxiliary point that, while there are counter-examples to the proposition "All womenidentity who are mennatal genitals are womenaspirational genitals", I have not heard of any counter-examples to the proposition "All mennatal genitals who are womenaspirational genitals are womenidentity".
That is an oversimplification. Different medical and biological contexts will see the same trans individual fall on different sides. There are also some cis individuals who, while being one sex in most medical contexts, would be the other in some narrow domain. (E. g. someone with androgen-insensitivity syndrome would be a man for genetic purposes and a woman for all other purposes; someone with Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome would be a man for most purposes, but a woman for the purpose of ovarian or uterine cancer screening. Both of these are often un-diagnosed for a substantial time-span post-birth.)
What might be an example of such an indication? (And why do I have the horrible feeling that it's "I suspect he's pretending to be trans for satiric purposes" and not "he's a convicted rapist"?)
'I suspect he's pretending to be trans for satiric purposes' was merely the first possibility that came to mind. I can't think of any others off-hand, but I do not categorically reject their existence, and I suspect I'd know it when I see it. '[She's] a convicted rapist' is not such an indication because convictions for sexual assault are not the exclusive province of people born with male genitals.
First the definition of the word "woman" depends on the context, and has something to do with either having concave genitals or really wanting them. Then you admit that wanting concave genitals has nothing to do with it and it's all about self-identification. Then you admit that even self-identification has certain arbitrary carve-outs which you are unable to enumerate.
What this means in practice is that, in your framework, the word "woman" is undefined. It has no formalised definition. It is a floating signifier.
Do you understand how you've completely vindicated the effectiveness of the "what is a woman?" gotcha question, when by your own admission you literally cannot define the term under discussion and it ultimately boils down to "you know it when you see it"? Do you understand how frustrating it is to have a debate with you, when you're constantly changing around the definitions of the words you're using, how it makes the act of talking to you feel like a shell game? Do you understand why most people find gender ideology alienating, incoherent and intellectually unserious, when it proposes taking a commonsense word like "woman" with a simple and intuitive definition based on anatomy and replacing it with "idk whatever you want lol but don't ever make fun of us or we'll call for you to be murdered"?
The word "woman", as used by you, means nothing. In future, I will simply disregard any sentence you write which contains the word "woman" or it's derivatives, as I have absolutely no idea what entities you're referring to by the use of said words. By your own admission, neither do you. You literally cannot provide a working definition beyond "I know it when I see it". You cannot define one of the basic terms on which your ideology rests, and yet expect the rest of it to accept it at face value.
Note the elision here. Yes, female people can commit sexual assault (although they commit a tiny, near-negligible proportion of sexual assaults every year). In many jurisdictions (including the UK, Ireland, Queensland and others), rape is defined as forcible or non-consensual penetration with a penis, which female people definitionally cannot commit.
I don't know if your acceptance of people committing the most quintessentially male of all crimes in the category "women" can be attributed to sheer unbridled gullibility, or an outright (but unacknowledged) hatred of women. What's that saying? Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice?
You casually describe others as misogynistic without once stopping yourself to ask if your own attitudes are misogynistic, in practice if not by design. A man using the word "female" is misogynistic. Forcing a woman to share a prison cell with a male person with an intact penis who has used said member to penetrate multiple females without their consent and proudly declared his intent to do so again at the earliest opportunity – progressive.
"Why should I have to share a cell with this rapist?! He's going to rape me too!"
"Well, he's a woman."
"He only started 'identifying' as a woman post-conviction! In what possible sense could be be considered a woman?"
"Eh – you know one when you see one. His raping is so femme-coded. It's like, yass kween."
Is that seriously the argument you would present in this case?
If so, does it seriously not strike you as utterly repulsive and abhorrent?
What the fuck is a female-coded rape with a penis? You ask your victim their star sign in the process?
The fact that you can look at a male person who has forcibly inserted his penis into a female person without her consent, has no desire to remove said appendage and proudly declares his intent to use it for that purpose again – you can look at him and announce "I know a woman when I see one, and boy are you ever one!" – just, honestly. This worldview, to my mind, seems far more misogynistic than those people who want to repeal the 19th amendment. After patiently listening to you expound on this ideology for months, the only reasonable conclusion I can draw is that anyone who endorses this ideology is either ignorant about what it really entails, or has a profoundly deep-seated hatred for female people as a group.
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