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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33058 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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Given the modern distinction between sex and gender, would it be appropriate to label a cis male/female individual, who engages in a feminine/masculine gender role, as a ""woman"/"man" even if they personally do not identify as such?

So take for example, a cis female with a career as a military soldier who is tall/strong and has a personality that is assertive, aggressive, and "thing-oriented". Let's say there is even a consensus among their peers that they are very masculine. Should they be referred to as a "man" according to modern sex/gender language norms? (Note: if you disagree with my sample masculine gender role description, just insert your own as you understand it to answer the question.)

Obviously, I suspect the answer is no, but then it seems like self identification is all that matters and all the discussion around gender roles is just window dressing.

Also, please do not take offense, my intention is not to troll here, I am just trying to better understand the modern gender theory perspective.

No, because that obscures more than it reveals. Using a description of "a masculine woman" provides a more useful and accurate description than "man", especially if "man" also now includes masculine women.

Modern gender theory is inconsistent, contradictory and circular. Trying to reason with it is pointless. It by turns enforces then conflates distinctions between sex and gender and within sex and gender to suit its ends. Under this theory your question of whether it's appropriate to label a person a man can only be answered by whether that person wants to be labelled a man or not, which ignores that by advancing this theory the label has become an empty signifier that reduces to "is this person a person with person-like qualities". There is no there there.

I think the point about 'useful and accurate' is underappreciated- there's just less information in a broad label and no one should insist on someone ceding their valid empirical view of reality.

Empirical reality is cool but the point is that putting it to one side and taking modern/woke/trans gender theory on its own merits can demonstrate that either their logic fails by its own standard or their logic doesn't have any standards to fail by.

Either there will always be some asymptotic essence of otherness that upholds the delineation between man and woman with their respective qualities and qualifiers and renders the idea of switching from one to the other impossible, or there's no difference to functionally separate the two meaning there's no other to contrast against and so no position to move away from or towards. At that point the only thing left is a subjectivity of aesthetics, which amounts to the label-claiming we observe where we might see a woman who feels like the kind of woman who has a penis and wants to have sex with women but doesn't feel like the kind of woman who might get pregnant by having sex with a man (pronouns: yak/sax).

This is without touching on the unwelcome and unintended implications of these theories, such as how they would account for people who over-identify with their gender (boob jobs and steroids, trans rights are cis rights), male/female neurotypology that would necessarily disqualify otherwise typical men and women from belonging to their pre-existing category, and the plain old basic feminist argument that women are capable of more than housekeeping and looking pretty.

Taking it seriously leads to the conclusion that it's unserious, and by extension that it shouldn't be taken seriously. The regressive absurdity of it would be tragic if it wasn't so funny [reverse according to personal taste].

So what do we call a masculine woman? Call her a masculine woman. There's nothing to be gained by doing otherwise, and much to be lost. Whether we redefine reality or redefine words it necessitates the loss of the prior definition.

I think I agree with you but I'm not entirely following your thread and would like to. I agree something entirely subjective can't provide a stable social category and will lead to contradictions- I view this as gender ideology necessarily being dependent on sex to obtain meaning but also undermining sex at the same time. (Ie a parasitic relationship)

Is this the equivalent to what you're pointing to?

I think so.

In short: Assuming I subscribe to this variety of gender theory, what am I looking at when I see a pregnant person decorating a cupcake?

Yes, I think I see, thanks.

Obviously, I suspect the answer is no, but then it seems like self identification is all that matters and all the discussion around gender roles is just window dressing

You hit the nail on the head here. As noted downthread, the point of gender ideology isn’t to better understand gender, and we know this because its proponents have a strong revealed preference for not understanding gender. Witness the fit thrown over the question ‘what is a woman?’

Instead the point of gender theory is to not ever have to tell a trans person they’re wrong. This is itself kind of a feat because, well, transgenderism by definition leads to ridiculous and wrongheaded ideas like ‘men can get pregnant’, and so if accommodating ridiculous and self-serving narratives about gender because you don’t have a coherent theory is the price to pay for it, well, they bit that bullet when they decided transwomen needed menstrual products.

I think the underlying problem with taking ideas and playing with them like this is that you are not focusing on the purpose behind the idea or the reality it inhabits.

To give an example from an area that can and has been greatly damaged by people losing sight of the ball, so to speak: if we are using currency printed by the Federal Reserve, why don't we just print more of it? It's free money, right? Well, everyone can see that this is not a good idea since it would lead to 'bad outcome'. You can play with the idea of money all you want, but to anyone keeping an eye on the ball the games you are playing are obviously pointless.

The goal of trans or gender anything isn't to create a novel and sophisticated categorization mechanism that functionally encompasses the human condition. For transpeople the goal is to be able to be whatever they want to be. Trans rights are a physical thing. If they want to go into the womens bathroom then that's what 'gender ideology' will have to facilitate. If they want to be a woman by setting up a webcam and masturbate their dicks into their own mouths then so be it.

If you want to take 'gender ideology' and play with it where it will lead to 'bad outcome' then you don't understand 'gender ideology' just like a person who thinks printing infinite money is a fun idea doesn't understand 'economics'. Worse than that, you are not even engaging with the true absurdity of it.

We can have a lot of people with a lot of bird ideas about what gender is or what trans is or whatever else, just like we can have a lot of people with a lot of bird ideas about what the economy is or how much money we should be printing. But it doesn't matter. What matters is what those with power want or what the ruling ideology says. And whilst you could argue that there is no obvious 'Federal Reserve' type body behind 'gender ideology', there is an obvious goal behind it. Just like there is a goal behind the Federal Reserve or whatever else. In short: more trans rights = good. Less trans rights = bad. Making fun or light of the means by which we get more trans rights can therefor only be at best childishly silly and at worst cynically transphobic.

The only way to escape this is by going full heterodox. Becoming a libertarian/nazi that believes central banking is a scheme cooked up by the Rothschilds/jews to enslave the taxpayer/goyim or by becoming a transphobic dissident right winger/nazi. For everything else you're just a bird in a cage.

Well, we used to call girls who behaved in a masculine manner "tomboys" and men who behaved in a feminine manner "women" as a form of mockery, though in the former case the term was eventually reclaimed as one of endearment, so it seems to me like you have just gone in a loop back to old-fashioned gender roles. If that is the inevitable consequence of trans ideology then I certainly can't fault anyone for being a TERF.

Given the modern distinction between sex and gender, would it be appropriate to label a cis male/female individual, who engages in a feminine/masculine gender role, as a ""woman"/"man" even if they personally do not identify as such?

"Appropriate" is a two-place word. It does not make sense to talk about whether some action is "appropriate" in some universal global sense, only whether it is appropriate in context.

If you are working with trans person and you're trying to accomplish something in the real world that is not related to their gender identity? It would be "appropriate" in that situation to go with however they identify themselves so you can get on with doing the actual thing you care about, unless that's something you're not philosophically capable of doing (but in that case, why even ask?)

If you are a judge deciding the sentencing for a sexual assault case, and the defendant suddenly decided they were trans after it became clear that the verdict was not going to be in their favor and now they are arguing that they should go to a women's prison, "what is the more appropriate place to send them" is in fact the relevant question to ask.

If you're talking to a modern-day gender theorist, I have to ask what you're hoping to get out of the conversation, because that will inform the answer.

Would it be reasonable? IMO, yes. It's funny to imagine a world where bodybuilders are free to call overweight males women, and mothers are free to call old-maid females men. (See also this recent comment regarding the past use of the masculine grammatical gender for powerful women in the French language.)

Would it be appropriate? At the moment, I doubt it.

The modern distinction between sex and gender was invented by a pervert "doctor" named John Money. Look up what he did to David Reimer and Reimer's brother and tell me it's not child sexual abuse; it astounds me how much has been built upon Money's ideas.

The thing thing to note about gender identity theory is that it is actually a mish-mash of different ideas that are inconsistent with each other. There's the traditional transexual 'born in the wrong body' narrative (really conceived as a Cartesian soul), but increasingly layers of queer theory where sex/gender is a performance which you can transgress, in which people can create or choose their gender. This has seamlessly merged into the modern liberal idea of 'lifestyle option', where you can explore your gender, try out being another gender.

When you unpack all this you realise it's actually an incoherent mess. It's actually one of the biggest signs that this is a social contagion.

Modern gender theory is nonsense.

Men are men, women are women, don’t make it complicated.

More effort than this, please.

("I refute it thus" is an interesting and perhaps even directly relevant sort of argument in this case, but you still need to put more effort into it.)

I say this as someone who probably agrees with you: This site is for a deeper analysis than "the opposing side is wrong". Tell us why modern gender theory is nonsense in a way that has even the thinnest sliver of a chance of persuading someone.

Modern gender theory is nonsense.

As opposed to traditional gender theory?

Men are men, women are women, don’t make it complicated.

Sure. What's a man? What's a woman?

What’s a man?

A miserable little pile of secrets.

What’s a woman?

The same, with the addition of an extra syllable.

Don't make me call Richter on your ass, Dracula.

Your words are as empty as your soul. Mankind ill needs a saviour such as you!

So… men and women are the same?

Entire worlds can be contained in a syllable.

As opposed to traditional gender theory?

"Modern" was superfluous but not inaccurate.

Sure. What's a man? What's a woman?

Adult human male/female. What's your definition?

This neuters the entire concept.

You can't start with "A man is an Adult human Male and a woman is an adult human Female"

And derive the conclusion

"Adult human Males should be pressured not to wear dresses, take HRT, move to California and become FAANG programmers."

You have taken what was a sacred set of associations and shredded it until all that is left is a dictionary blurb.

And if you try to add all those sacred associations back in as a second premise-

Well, now you have a problem, because the thing most gender theory is actually attacking, isn't the definition of man and woman, its actually attacking the premise that this set of sacred associations holds in the tail end, and the premise that it should be maintained in general.

And once you start fighting those, I suspect you're going to find at the end of the line, that your final crux is aesthetic.

I mean, if every pragmatic issue were resolved with artificial wombs, better transition, etc, would you really concede that HRT is fine and as dumb to mock as getting a tattoo? Or that splitting sports by gender is dumb because what really matters is position in the bimodal distribution?

You can't start with "A man is an Adult human Male and a woman is an adult human Female"

And derive the conclusion

"Adult human Males should be pressured not to wear dresses, take HRT, move to California and become FAANG programmers."

But that's not what I'm doing. From "A man is an Adult human Male and a woman is an adult human Female" I am only deriving "You cannot force people to use opposite-sex or neopronouns, you cannot force single sex spaces to accept opposite-sex trans people, and you cannot make them chant 'Trans women are women!'". My other positions regarding trans issues are derived from other principles.

You're not even doing that much. Your definition says nothing about the correct use of pronouns. Your definition actually helps the argument that gendered spaces are unethical. Because gender doesn't mean anything important anymore (unless you're trying to have a baby and have no artificial womb on hand). You have to use other arguments for that now. And many of the arguments really only work for splitting people along the bimodal, not along single dimensions of the bimodal like your narrow definition of gender.

Your definition says nothing about the correct use of pronouns

Sure it does. I, and most people, use them to refer to someone's sex.

Because gender doesn't mean anything important anymore.

I don't accept that premise, so your argument doesn't follow. The establishment does seem to be trying to push that idea on people, but in fact even the most vehement egalitarian acts as though sex does make a difference in many contexts.

And many of the arguments really only work for splitting people along the bimodal, not along single dimensions of the bimodal like your narrow definition of gender.

I don't understand what you mean by that, can you elaborate?

Sure it does. I, and most people, use them to refer to someone's sex.

And plenty of people use them to refer to boats. You can bite the bullet on that if you want. But there are plenty of us who are willing to use feminine pronouns on anything with a feminine vibe.

I don't accept that premise, so your argument doesn't follow. The establishment does seem to be trying to push that idea on people, but in fact even the most vehement egalitarian acts as though sex does make a difference in many contexts.

See... This is it. You said:

"A man is an Adult human Male and a woman is an adult human Female"

but you expected the listener to put 1 and 1 together to create a normative framework.

This is a form of Motte and Bailey argument. That is what annoys me.

Both sides are quibbling over the definition of Man and Women because they know there's a cultural normative framework of what Men and Women are expected to do that most people intuit by vibe and don't question.

But here on theMotte we should be aspiring to be better than that.

That's why SJW definitions of Man and Women as a whole are incoherent by the way, they're trying to incorporate cultural normative vibe into the definition, and no two thinkers have precisely the same cultural vibe on the matter, and cultural normative vibe is subject to change. So naturally no singular definition emerges. It's also why Trans Women are Women has become a rallying cry. What they're really fighting for is "Trans women shouldn't be held to the masculine cultural normative framework." This is also a Motte and Baily argument.

Here on theMotte we should be aspiring to be better than that.

I don't understand what you mean by that, can you elaborate?

Certainly. take the argument "It is dangerous to permit Men in Woman's restrooms." This only holds for the subset of men that it is actually dangerous to permit in womens' restrooms. Is it dangerous to permit a passing castrated dickless Man with boobs in the Women's restroom? No, for the purposes of restroom safety, that person might as well be a woman.

Should Men be permitted in woman's sports? No. Because the average man will outcompete the average women. And we want to have a place where these people can compete and not get curb stomped every game (sounds like affirmative action to me but-).

Well. This only applies to the subset of Men that actually have advantages in woman's sports. Un-transitioned Men? Sure excluded. Transitioned men who went through a male puberty first? Probably excluded. They do have advantages due to that puberty. Men who never went through male puberty? Well. You're going to have to find some advantage they have. Otherwise- why not.

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Same as yours. I just don't like when people try this dismissive approach to the question. It's has, to me, the same vibe as "I don't need to educate you". We shouldn't forgo opportunities to explain ourselves or teach.

Sure. What's a man? What's a woman?

One knows them when one sees them.

How can I know when I see them if I don't have a definition?

Same way I do!

And how is that?

I look at them, and classify according to the millions of years of evolutionary biology that enabled me to draw that distinction.

What are you looking at when you classify them? Their pores?

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