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In the trans debate, I encountered an argument the other day which to me reads like a textbook example of an unfalsifiable hypothesis. I would like to run it by you good people to see if there's something I'm missing.
My woke, far-left sister was complaining about a male person she knows who claims to be non-binary, and yet behaves in a manner entirely consistent with certain negative stereotypes about masculinity, specifically "mansplaining", the tendency of certain men to condescendingly talk down to women, even if the women in question are more knowledgeable about the topic in question than the man himself is. She said it was abundantly obvious from his demeanour that this person was a man, not something intermediate between male and female.
I thought to myself "wow, my sister's gotten redpilled somewhere along the way" and enthusiastically agreed with her, arguing that I think the concept of "gender identity" has essentially zero predictive power, and that self-declared trans people almost invariably behave in a manner more consistent with their natal sex then their claimed gender identity. The specific example I gave was that trans women are 6 times more likely than cis women to be convicted of a crime, and 18 times more likely to be convicted of a violent crime. Which is exactly what you'd expect on the basis of their sex, not their gender identity. If trans women are women trapped inside men's bodies, why do they commit crimes at the same rates as men?
My sister's rebuttal was that, even though trans women are women trapped inside men's bodies, they were still socialised to be male prior to their coming out as trans, which compels them to behave in a manner consistent with the masculine norm.
This strikes me as a perfect example of the adage "if a theory explains everything, it explains nothing". If a trans woman behaves in a manner consistent with how you'd expect a female person to behave, that demonstrates that she's really a woman. If a trans woman behaves in a manner consistent with how you'd expect a male person to behave, that demonstrates that she was socialised into behaving like a male person against her will. Under this framing, there is literally nothing a trans woman can do which can ever point away from her "really" being a woman.
What would it take to falsify this hypothesis? Is there some piece of the puzzle that I'm missing here? I'm sincerely looking for a steelman.
I’m puzzled; what’s the difference between a trans female who was socialized to be male and is therefore more violent, and a non-binary person who was socialized to be male and therefore mansplains and has a “male demeanor”? Doesn’t your sister’s argument in favor of trans people negate her complaints about her non-binary acquaintance?
Well, I think the real answer there gets down to what type of what evidence defines category membership in the mind of the speaker.
'Population-level violent crime arrest rates' may indeed be a thing that varies with gender, but it's not the primary thing that we are talking about when we talk about gender identity. Things like gender presentation (clothes, hair, makeup, etc), legal classification, the types of secondary sex characteristics affected by medical transition, etc. are much more central to how people who acknowledge trans people as members of their identified gender are thinking about gender membership.
If the non-binary mansplainer is not diverging from male patterns at all on those axes, or not enough to show a genuine effort/belief/essence, then it makes sense for someone who is using those axes to do their classification to be reluctant to classify them as not-male.
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One way to square the circle that might not be appealing to LGBTQIA+ Ally-types, but that may be consistent with their actual mental model of the world is believing that trans is a real category that accurately describes some people, but that non-binary isn't a legitimate category. From there, you could group people who identify as NB into one of two categories, either someone that's just not ready to fully transition and come as trans or someone that's a narcissistic weirdo looking for attention. If Sister of @Folamh3 used such a model, she could evaluate the NB male that she meets and try to determine if this person is on their way to being a woman or just a narcissistic weirdo looking for attention; since she perceives this NB guy as just a guy, she settles on the latter. Of course, being a good ally, she's not going to outright say that there is no in between state, so here she is articulating part of it without articulating all of it.
This is not necessarily an accurate description of her model of the world, but it's one that would be consistent with the available facts. Someone employing that model that is pressed on it to agree with more right-wing views regarding the actual stability of gender identities and their consistency with biological sex isn't likely to acquiesce and say, "yeah, you're right, this is pretty obviously bullshit" even if they kind of think that's the case about non-binaryism.
You get in trouble saying something isn't a 'real' category, but absolutely they're qualitatively different 'types' of categories, and it's much more possible to 'fail' at being nonbinary than at being binary trans (so long as you are making some efforts along the established binary transition pipeline).
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I know, that's precisely what I was so confused by.
The idea that something as subtle and subjective as "mansplaining" can be ironclad evidence that a male person isn't really non-binary, but raping a woman with one's penis can't be taken as evidence that said person isn't really a woman - I don't pretend to understand it.
I mean, lesbian rape with a strapon is not super common and I'm guessing is even less likely to lead to conviction than other types of sexual assault.
But it doesn't make the assailant not a woman, and I don't really see how the artificial nature of the phallus is relevant to the metaphysics of the situation.
In the UK and Ireland, rape is defined as forcible penetration with a penis. It is a quintessentially male crime in that it is a crime that only male people are physically capable of committing.
That's what I'm trying to understand: I don't understand why "this allegedly non-binary person did something that men are stereotypically known to do (but which women are equally capable of doing, and are known to do less frequently than men) - therefore, they aren't really non-binary" but "this trans woman did something that only male people are physically and legally capable of doing, which female people couldn't do even if they wanted to - but that doesn't make her any less of a woman".
Well, the particular legal definitions used in the UK and Scotland have nothing to do with how progressives are thinking about these categories in the first place?
And I think most would probably say that legal definition is backwards and should be changed, if you asked them.
More broadly: I think the miscommunication here is that you're approaching it as 'what one test is disqualifying', whereas they are approaching it as 'what holistic cluster of traits and behaviors is qualifying'.
Because man/woman are very highly defined and explored categories, there are lots and lots of important things you can do to fit into one, such that a few individual noncentral divergences are ok.
Whereas 'nonbinary' is not an established category with tons of established and agreed upon signifiers, thus holistic-strength-of-fit is always comparatively weak and ephemeral, thus it's a lot easier to get disqualified for divergences.
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I think you're thinking about it backwards. In the mansplaining case, it's that "this specific human being standing in front of me did something I find annoying, and I lose one useful tool for attack if I acknowledge that person as non-binary instead of a man; therefore, he's a man." In the transwoman rape case, it's that "this theoretical transwoman (even if a specific person is referenced, the person remains theoretical because she's presumably not in direct contact with that transwoman) did something awful and distinctly male, but that doesn't affect me in any way; therefore, we should take her at her word that she's a woman in every single way that she wishes to be acknowledged." It's a sort of "luxury belief" situation. Believing that the person in front of her is non-binary has immediate and harsh consequences to her, and thus she can't afford to believe it, but believing that a transwoman who raped someone is a real woman in every way has no consequences for her in any way, and thus she can afford to believe it.
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