LGBTAIitp Part 60: Still Going Strong

[Halae]

I clicked that link, and it literally said that gender was "unobservable" which, to me, definitionally precludes meaningful existence.

So you would also preclude love from existing, by that definition? Justice? Faith? None of those are observable, even if the effects upon the psyche are quite obvious. Just because you can't touch it doesn't mean it's not there.

To answer your worry, I don't think it makes you transphobic; that'd require you to be going out of your way to harm the demographic, rather than just having a conflicting viewpoint. I do think it makes you a little unempathetic, though.

[enderlord99]

What does "unobservable" even mean?

Presumably, that it can't be detected, even indirectly, with the mind or senses. I don't know for sure if that's the sense they meant it in, but I also can't think of any other potential meaning.

Happiness can't be "observed"

First of all, emotion and thought are both just the brain observing itself. Other peoples' happiness can also be observed and even studied; it belongs to the scientific fields of neurology and psychology, as well as the philosophical field of aesthetics.

History can't be "observed", so does it not exist? Sure, we can look at pictures, read old books, excavate ruins; those are all parts of history, but history itself is a construct.

I don't understand how "observing parts of history" is distinct from "observing history" or how being artificially constructed prevents something from being observed.

To be clear: I wasn't asserting that gender is unobservable; I was expressing befuddlement that Purple Eagle's link defined it that way.

EDIT:

None of those are observable, even if the effects upon the psyche are quite obvious.

That's a contradiction. If something is "obvious" to you, that's because you're observing it.

[Halae]

EDIT:
That's a contradiction. If something is "obvious" to you, that's because you're observing it.

Obvious in the same way Gender affects people, yes. The "unobservable" you read in the link was the scientific point of view, concerned with hard objects and numbers, not with sociological or cultural impact.

[Lycunadari]

Presumably, that it can't be detected, even indirectly, with the mind or senses. I don't know for sure if that's the sense they meant it in, but I also can't think of any other potential meaning.

To be clear: I wasn't asserting that gender is unobservable; I was expressing befuddlement that Purple Eagle's link defined it that way.

Ah, I think there's just a misunderstanding/confusion about the word then. I haven't written that website, obviously, but I think they meant "unobservable" just as a fancy synonym of "invisible" and not as "literally cannot be noticed by anyone in any way", considering they use it to differentiate it from phenotype, which is mostly visible.

(dictionary.com defines "observable" as "capable of being or liable to be observed; noticeable; visible; discernible")

[Dame_Mechanus]

That said, not understanding gender doesn't make you a bigot, and not understanding why people care about it doesn't either, not automatically. I'm not "soccer-phobic" just because I don't get how people can care so much about sports. What matters is how you treat people- do you use the name and pronouns they tell you to use, including those a lot of people see as weird (like neopronouns)? Do you support trans people's right to self-determination and their right to transition? Do you treat trans people with the same respect you treat cis people? If you can answer yes to all of these questions, you're probably not transphobic. In essence- you don't need to understand us to support us.

This hits the nail on the head. There are people who are in places that I do not understand with regards to gender, but my understanding of what it means to them is not required; only my respect and understanding. Do neopronouns sound silly to me? Yes, I'm not a fan, for purely structural and linguistic reasons, but if someone tells me "my pronouns are ze/zir" then hey, all right, those are your pronouns. It doesn't have to make sense to me, because it's not about me. It's about the other person and what matters to them, and whether your default assumption is "I will respect what you tell me to call you and how you want to be known" or "you can be one of the following things because those make sense to me, and anything else is fake."

My personal default assumption about everything is I might be wrong. Something may not make sense to me or seem silly to me, but 20-year-old me thought that she was in the last long-term relationship she was ever going to be in and that she had her whole life planned out right down to adopting children. Neither of those things were accurate or played out the way she thought. 20-year-old me even thought she knew who she was attracted to without any doubt, and that was wrong. If I can be wrong about me, I should give everyone else the same benefit of the doubt.

[TaiLiu]

While this is true of any gender (including one which someone was assigned at birth, and remains happy with), naturally someone who's expressed their gender differently to society's norms might find themselves questioned on it frequently. This leaves them with two options: give an imperfect, but short, answer, or do an entire degree's worth of study and bring it up potentially multiple times a day.

I like this analysis, too.

I can understand that's frustrating if you're looking for more information. I'd recommend "Whipping Girl" by Julia Serano for a bit of further reading (it's mostly about trans women, and how we're subject to the same social forces as cis women, but it does a good job of summarising exactly what gender is in that context in doing so, which might give you the explanation you're after).

Whipping Girl is good. And also a good example of disagreement among trans people about gender—I think Serano is mistaken in several ways.

always recommend the Gender Dysphoria Bible.

Thanks for the link! Never seen this site before.

I clicked that link, and it literally said that gender was "unobservable" which, to me, definitionally precludes meaningful existence.

I think this is a difficult epistemology to uphold, although I'm vaguely sympathetic, and you're certainly not the first or only person to say this. Scientists (and others) posit unobservable entities all the time. Electrons and black holes are classic examples. Those in favor are scientific realists; those who have issues with this are a subset of scientific anti-realists.

Presumably, that it can't be detected, even indirectly, with the mind or senses. I don't know for sure if that's the sense they meant it in, but I also can't think of any other potential meaning.

Frankly, I can't think of anyone who posits the existence of something that can't ever be detected. Presumably, if you're genuinely positing the existence of something, you've "detected" it!

That's a contradiction. If something is "obvious" to you, that's because you're observing it.

I think you're using "observation" and "unobservable" in ways that many people aren't. We certainly don't need to observe anything to know the truth or falsity of some mathematical fact.

[Talakeal]

Thanks for the replies! Very busy week, sorry it took me longer to reply.

Can't comment on the accusation, although I've found Twitter kinda nasty in general. I guess maybe the post format contributes. I try to stay away.

Twitter sucks.

Mostly I just use it for making cynical one liners.

The problem is that when people come back at me I switch from cynical twitter mode to curious / obsessive forum mode and try and have a conversation where we actually understand one another's views, which twitter is not technically or socially prepared for, and most conversation end up with the other person dismissing me as a right wing troll and/or spending the majority of their post incorrectly telling me what I said or what I believe.

Some people, possibly including you, like terms like MtF or FtM or XtY. Others, including me, don't. I think most of it is a language difference. Some trans people feel like they used to be, e.g., a man and now they're a woman. Other people don't feel like that's an accurate way of talking about their experiences.

It's possible to rub people the wrong way when you use terms they dislike to refer to them. I'm very comfortable with other people using XtY to refer to themselves. Or others who are comfy with that language. But I wouldn't like it if someone used that terminology for me. I think it's a factually incorrect assertion about me.

To me, that feels like trans erasure. And honestly, that would be great for me, if I could just retroactively be a cis-woman, but that's not the reality I live in.

But yeah, when people attack me for noting that trans people had a transition, that just feels like they are accusing me of blasphemy against some religion that I am not a part of.

There's a lot going on here. I'm not sure what your ontological beliefs about gender are. (And I cannot speculate on what these strangers' beliefs are.) Do you mind clarifying your beliefs?

Ok. So...

Sex is a list of anatomical and physiological traits. Sex is real. Sex is a spectrum. Sex is mutable. Sex is also probably psychological and neurological traits, but at this point trying to actually pinpoint such things is pseudo-science at best.

As a kid, sex and gender were synonymous. I much preferred to use the word gender though, because after Austin Powers came out everyone thought they were oh so clever saying "Yes please!" when asked their sex and it always drove me up the wall.

In college, mostly in an effort to understand my own dysphoria, I got really into feminism, and that people had started using gender to refer to behaviors and social roles as distinct from biological sex. As a feminist and a gender non-conforming individual, I tend to agree with the statement that "Gender is just a collection of harmful stereotypes" and think the whole concept of gender as distinct from sex belongs in the ashbin of history. I hate being told I am not a man because I don't like to do all the manly things, but even worse, I am afraid that if I ever do wholly transition people will insist that I am "still really a man" because I don't do all of the girly things either.

Now that I am in my thirties, people appear to have changed the definition of gender again. Now it appears to be a concept of one's self. I could get that... except that they also insist that you divorce it from biological sex OR social role. At this point, it appears to be totally meaningless and circular.

Saying "I am a woman because I identify a a woman" but then insisting that "woman" has nothing to do with either of the above gender definition to me makes as much sense as saying "I am a blorglesplorch," and then defining blorglesplorch as "the thing which I identify as".

And, of course, lots of people, particularly on twitter but not entirely, get very upset if you refer to them as either their biological sex or social gender roll, which makes it very difficult to actually discuss trans issues.

"Gender identity" is a troubled construct. It falls apart upon close examination. But so does "sex." I wonder if you're privileging one problematic construct over another.

How so?

Like all biological classification, one can pick at the edges to create problems. But I can come up with a long list of masculine or feminine traits that apply to most everyone, even the <.1% of the population who is truly intersex generally favors one sex or the other.

IMO Sex is biological and descriptive (not that humans don't have the power to alter it). Gender roles are man-made and prescriptive.

I don't have a clue what gender identity is.

I think that's kinda the nature of language, ha ha. "What does this word mean?" "It means these other words, which means the aforementioned word."

True.

The problem of tension is that the so-called """""woke-mob""""" considers using language differently to be akin to a hate crime and appears to engage in magical thinking where redefining a thing changes its nature. I remember reading an article recently talking about how "we have recently discovered what the word gender really means" and thinking to myself "Its language, not a chemical formula, you didn't discover anything, you redifined it, and it 'really' means whatever you are using it to mean."

Which arguments don't you understand? Which (bigoted) arguments do you understand? Can you lay out their premises and conclusions?

Well... for example:

This article is written by someone whose conclusions I vehemently disagree with and consider morally abhorrent, but points out a lot of the same logical contradictions I struggle with when trying to discuss trans issues with more open minded people.

On the other hand, this article seems to be coming from the right play, but is just filled with so much woo and illogic that it drives me nuts and raises ten questions for every one it answers.

But I can relate to being presented with a weak argument and being dissatisfied with the response. Presumably there would be some response that you would accept. What would be a satisfactory response for you?

Something concrete or observable would be nice.

If we could find a "trans gene" or reliably model a "woman's brain" or even find some sort of extra-deimensional pink energy field that follows trans women around.

Even for more soft stuff; philosophies, political beliefs, and religions all have observable groups of beliefs and behaviors that can be used to label their followers.

But right now, AFAICT gender identity is a label without a basis in either science or thought.

I always recommend the Gender Dysphoria Bible. Also, check out the RationalWiki articles.

I was going to answer in depth, but that would require an essay I'm not ready to write right now(future edit: agh, guess I'm writing that essay after all >.<).

Suffice it to say that my research leads me to see gender identity as neurological and endocrine in nature. The theory goes that the interplay of systems that govern the development of a growing fetus (e.g. hormonal exposure) can affect their resulting gender identity and sexual orientation.

In short, I'm trans because my AGAB does not match what I know myself to be, which causes gender dysphoria that manifests in different ways, the only known effective cure for which is to literally transition. No spiritual woo needed, it's just science. As reductive as the 'born this way' statement could be (reductive cos it's more complicated than that), the statement is no less true. Experience and conscious choice for me factor in to my identity in the sense that without even trying (I also can't transition at the moment due to family) I get pinged as fem (experience), and I choose to stop denying my true self because the contrary is too painful to consider (choice).

As I think I said above, the people who insist people's gender identities are hard wired tend to fall into two categories; scientific and mystical. The former asserts that all genderqueer people are really intersex.

This is a good scientific explanation, but AFAIK doesn't actually have any evidence behind it, so it remains a pseudo scientific assertion.

The problem with this approach, imo, is that it just locks people back into a rigid gender binary, albeit one that is not as readily visible.

What about people who want to transition but don't exhibit such an endocrine abnormality?
What about people who do exhibit such an endocrine abnormality, but are perfectly happy with their assigned gender?
What about people who change gender identity over time or choose to detransition?

As a humanist, I reject such simple biological essentialism outright.


I will say, however, that this is the only model where using the terms "AFAB" and "AMAB" actually makes sense. Like so much of modern trans philosophy, this was appropriated from intersex people whom had surgical genital alteration does as infants without their consent. But, for some reason, it is now politically correct to refer to everyone in this manner, even though it doesn't make a lick of sense for a multitude of reasons.

I think the simple answer here would be that a concise summary of what gender is, and what might define specific genders is an entire degree's worth of information, and very hard to get across in a simple conversation. Let alone a tweet or forum post.

While this is true of any gender (including one which someone was assigned at birth, and remains happy with), naturally someone who's expressed their gender differently to society's norms might find themselves questioned on it frequently. This leaves them with two options: give an imperfect, but short, answer, or do an entire degree's worth of study and bring it up potentially multiple times a day.

I can understand that's frustrating if you're looking for more information. I'd recommend "Whipping Girl" by Julia Serano for a bit of further reading (it's mostly about trans women, and how we're subject to the same social forces as cis women, but it does a good job of summarising exactly what gender is in that context in doing so, which might give you the explanation you're after).

Other than that, I can't really add much more than what TaiLiu's already said. I'm sorry you experienced rudeness on twitter (I'd talk about my own experiences, but I wouldn't want to import any drama), the limited characters really do bring about a death of nuance. I'm also very sorry about your family (I'm extremely lucky to have an accepting family, myself); I hope when you are able to come out, they come around.

Thanks! I will check it out!

This hits the nail on the head. There are people who are in places that I do not understand with regards to gender, but my understanding of what it means to them is not required; only my respect and understanding. Do neopronouns sound silly to me? Yes, I'm not a fan, for purely structural and linguistic reasons, but if someone tells me "my pronouns are ze/zir" then hey, all right, those are your pronouns. It doesn't have to make sense to me, because it's not about me. It's about the other person and what matters to them, and whether your default assumption is "I will respect what you tell me to call you and how you want to be known" or "you can be one of the following things because those make sense to me, and anything else is fake."

I feel the opposite way, I love neo pronouns, but am totally incapable of comprehending (let alone writing) anything using the singular they.

My brain also has a really hard time learning a new name for something; I still call Fedex Office "Kinko's" and I still call the WWE the "WWF", and its kind of unfair to assume my political beliefs from how I refer to something. And I don't think anyone has any right to police how other people refer to them when they aren't around; which is to me the weirdest part about pronoun controversies, as if you are actually talking to the person you don't really need pronouns other than you / we / us.

I also don't like being asked my pronouns, because that leaves me in the position of having to choose between giving this person permission to misgender me or coming out to someone whom I am not comfortable coming out to yet.

But then yeah, I totally get how painful it is to be misgendered. Like, as an illustration of how bad it is for me, anytime someone refers to

Spoiler: Darth Revan from KoToR

Show

For those unfamiliar with the game, the big twist is that your character was actually the villain all along. Darth Revan is left as a totally blank slate to allow for more immersion and is never seen without their mask or spoken of in gendered terms. I loved that game and, of course, played as a female. But then years later Lucas Films decided the make Darth Revan canonically a straight cis white male.

as "he" that triggers a huge wave of gender dysphoria in me.

[Rynjin]

What does "unobservable" even mean? Happiness can't be "observed", so does happiness not exist? History can't be "observed", so does it not exist? Sure, we can look at pictures, read old books, excavate ruins; those are all parts of history, but history itself is a construct.

I feel like, interestingly, happiness is a pretty good equivalence as far as gender goes, even more than other, clearer emotions like anger.

"Happiness" and similar vague social constructs (such as the aforementioned "faith" and justice") are purely subjective matters. Not only do different things cause happiness to occur (be achieved?) by a person, happiness itself means something entirely different to almost everyone.

And that applies to gender as well. Which makes things...complicated.

Since it's entirely personal, it's hard to come up with a viable, universal lexicon of things that "define" gender identity in the same way that defining happiness is futile. And yet, people try. And enough people agree on enough of the nebulous little floaty bits about both that people get really judgey about not only how people experience happiness/gender but how people express it, or even "interface' with it.

"The American Dream" is a good example of a sort of platonic ideal of happiness that everyone, supposedly, should strive for. Nice house, white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a fulfilling career "define" happiness for a lot of people.

Of course, to others that ideal sounds like a complete drudge, and it is actively exclusive to a lot of people; those unable or unwilling to have children, those whose idea of a fulfilling career differs from what would allow them to acquire the material wealth to buy a home, and so on.

Which brings it around to the main point: as happiness (and gender) cannot be truly defined except by the person experiencing it, including yourself, it doesn't do to really take to heart the thoughts of people who would tear down your own conception if it makes you feel comfortable.

If someone tells you that you are "not truly trans" because the words that define you make them uncomfortable, tell them to shove it. Of course, that also applies both ways. If someone asks you to refer to them a certain way, do so or don't engage with them at all. The same way you would, naturally, not respond to someone saying "I' feel so happy!" by nitpicking every little thing "wrong" with their supposed conception of happiness.

[Talakeal]

That works fine as an analogy.

But we all have emotions, and our emotions constantly change. Nobody is trying to claim that people are born with one emotional state and that it is constant or immutable.

If I see a picture of a pre-transition transwoman smiling and laughing and I say “Look how happy he is,” nobody is going to accuse me of hate speech for calling them happy, but they will for the misgendering.

[Rynjin]

That works fine as an analogy.

But we all have emotions, and our emotions constantly change. Nobody is trying to claim that people are born with one emotional state and that it is constant or immutable.

If I see a picture of a pre-transition transwoman smiling and laughing and I say “Look how happy he is,” nobody is going to accuse me of hate speech for calling them happy, but they will for the misgendering.

"They" really only refers to Twitter Goblins, who exist for the sole purpose of stirring up **** on the internet. I wouldn't put too much stock in what "they" think, because terminally-online Twitter users aren't really people don't really matter in the real world or represent any significant portion of people IRL.

[Lycunadari]

I will say, however, that this is the only model where using the terms "AFAB" and "AMAB" actually makes sense. Like so much of modern trans philosophy, this was appropriated from intersex people whom had surgical genital alteration does as infants without their consent. But, for some reason, it is now politically correct to refer to everyone in this manner, even though it doesn't make a lick of sense for a multitude of reasons.

That's just flat out wrong. (C)AMAB (coercively assigned male at birth) was coined by a non-intersex trans woman. The intersex-specific terms are IAMAB/IAFAB (intersex assigned male/female at birth) and FAMAB/FAFAB (forcibly assigned male/female at birth). Sadly, most of the posts discussing this have been deleted/the blogs changed names, so this is the only source I have right now (and I don't have time to look further). Also, why do you think using these terms for non-intersex people doesn't make sense? They simply mean "someone (usually a doctor) looked at this baby's genitals, said 'it's a boy/girl!' and wrote it down on the birth certificate". So they apply to the vast majority of people, including cis people. They don't describe how someone was raised, how someone's body looks, what chromosomes someone has... they just describe what someone was assigned at birth.

[Talakeal]

That's just flat out wrong. (C)AMAB (coercively assigned male at birth) was coined by a non-intersex trans woman. The intersex-specific terms are IAMAB/IAFAB (intersex assigned male/female at birth) and FAMAB/FAFAB (forcibly assigned male/female at birth). Sadly, most of the posts discussing this have been deleted/the blogs changed names, so this is the only source I have right now (and I don't have time to look further). Also, why do you think using these terms for non-intersex people doesn't make sense? They simply mean "someone (usually a doctor) looked at this baby's genitals, said 'it's a boy/girl!' and wrote it down on the birth certificate". So they apply to the vast majority of people, including cis people. They don't describe how someone was raised, how someone's body looks, what chromosomes someone has... they just describe what someone was assigned at birth.

Interesting.

I didn't realize I was perpetuating an intentional lie; it just seemed so much more plausible than the alternative, as it is a nonsense term (for non intersex people) and I know so many trans people who try and insist that they are actually intersex (for example having a "female brain structure") without any proof.

As for why the term makes no sense:

Its not assigning anything. Its describing something.
It typically happens before birth in our modern era of sonagrams.
Hundreds of millions of people alive today do not have birth certificates. Does this not apply to them? How about the billions of people who lived without certificates in the past?
For the ~4999/5000 of us who aren't intersex, the baby's sex can be identified by its genitals, so why do we need this extra layer of obfuscation?
The "assignment" has no authority. Have you ever heard of anyone, say parents, actually going by what is written on the birth certificate over their own evaluation of the child's sex? Like, a doctor "assigns" an XY child with a penis to the female gender so the parents just put him and dress, make him use the little girl's room, and tell him to start playing with dolls and dating boys?


I don't suffer from gender dysphoria because someone "assigned" me the wrong gender, that's ridiculous. If I were a biological female, I would simply laugh about the error on my birth certificate and get it legally changed; I wouldn't consider myself a trans person, just a cis-female with a clerical error on her record.

[Mx.Silver]

The problem is that when people come back at me I switch from cynical twitter mode to curious / obsessive forum mode and try and have a conversation where we actually understand one another's views, which twitter is not technically or socially prepared for, and most conversation end up with the other person dismissing me as a right wing troll and/or spending the majority of their post incorrectly telling me what I said or what I believe.

From my experience, Twitter is just generally very bad for discussing anything more complicated than 'what I ate for lunch today' so probably shouldn't have much weight placed on it.

Back on topic, I also was very gender abolitionist back in university (so, late teens to early 20s), a position that I'm a bit more nuanced about nowawadys, partly due to coming to terms with my own gender (and how, with hindsight, that was something that pushed me gender abolitionism in the first place). So I may not be entirely unaware about where you're coming from on some of this.

I don't have a clue what gender identity is.

Good news and bad news: you're not alone in that. In fact, I don't think anyone has a concise clear model for gender identity.
But then, why would they?
Because it's not as if there's a rich, long history of documented research into gender identity. Like most things that are adjacent to 'trans-issues', historically it's either been considered irrelevant or actively censored and surpressed as a topic of research. Academically, it's effectively a new field - and a quite a complex one. There simply isn't a concise model for gender identity, because we're still in the process of trying to find one that works (and, notably, 'social roles' doesn't - more on this later) or indeed if there even is going to be an intuitive model that accounts for it.
The definition is changing is but so is our understanding of it, based on people's experiences and behaviours in how they relate to that. This is just in academia; most people talking about gender online are not coming from an academic background, haven't really had that much experience or training in philosophical inquiry, so are very unlikely to be able to come up with a sound definition on demand.

Yeah, it would be very nice to have a clear, concrete definition you could at least point people at. But our collective knowledge base isn't there yet, assuming there even will be one.

I could get that... except that they also insist that you divorce it from biological sex OR social role.

Ah, this might be my fault actually.

...

Okay, not specifically mine, but people like me: agender and 'third-gender' non-binary people in societies and cultures that do not have those gender roles. While non-binary identity does tend to get overlooked a lot in discussions about gender, the fact remains that it presents a difficult problem with the idea of 'gender as social roles', because it's rather tricky to have something that exists be the product of a social role that doesn't.

Now, if you want to have a descriptive definition of gender then you need to account for this, which means that you do in fact have to divorce it from social roles. The fact that non-binary identity also isn't particularly tied to 'biological sex' and that non-binary people do still experience dysphoria, including people on the agender and 'third-gender' end of the spectrum, places a similar requirement whant it comes to that too. So if you're taking a scientific approach then, logically, you can only conclude that, whatever gender is, it likely involves something else that isn't either of those.



The point I'm sort of getting at here is that the lack of concrete definition of gender identity is not incompatable with it being descriptive, or based on observation. Behaviour and psychology might not the most clearly defined observable things, but they are still observable phenomena.

[TaiLiu]

Thanks for the replies! Very busy week, sorry it took me longer to reply.

Shout out, Talakeal, for reviving this thread. Admittedly it's supposed to be focused on support, but the Q&A thread is super dead, so this is probably the next best place.

Gonna politely skip the interpersonal stuff with Twitter, which is orthogonal to your question.

I'm getting the sense that you're frustrated by the lack of good argument from internet strangers. There's nothing to do about that, but I think you should check out some sources on gender that aren't by internet strangers. Some suggestions follow:

• Julia Serano. 2007. Whipping Girl. BisectedBrioche recommended it, and I will, too. She makes an argument for the existence of a neurological gender identity. I don't find it convincing, but it's probably one of the best arguments for it, if somewhat dated.
• Monique Wittig. 1992. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Take a look at "The Category of Sex" or "One is Not Born a Woman." A philosophical argument for the material construction of gender, particularly womanhood.
• Jules Gill-Peterson. 2018. Histories of the Transgender Child. A historical trajectory on how gender and transness has shifted over time, with a focus on the 20th century.

You might've read some of these works before. I have others recs, but they are political. Other peeps can recommend other books.

To me, that feels like trans erasure.

And I am certainly happy to refer to you as MtF! But it's absolutely not an accurate way to refer to my experiences, and I'm not erasing my experiences by not referring to myself with an XtY construct.

And honestly, that would be great for me, if I could just retroactively be a cis-woman, but that's not the reality I live in.

You've lost me here. I'm not sure how this connects with what you or I said previously.

Sex is a list of anatomical and physiological traits. Sex is real. Sex is a spectrum. Sex is mutable. Sex is also probably psychological and neurological traits, but at this point trying to actually pinpoint such things is pseudo-science at best.

I don't really find that satisfactory. It's real vague. What is that list, and what binds that list together? How many dimensions does that spectrum consist of? What does it mean for it to be "real"?

As a kid, sex and gender were synonymous. I much preferred to use the word gender though, because after Austin Powers came out everyone thought they were oh so clever saying "Yes please!" when asked their sex and it always drove me up the wall.

In college, mostly in an effort to understand my own dysphoria, I got really into feminism, and that people had started using gender to refer to behaviors and social roles as distinct from biological sex. As a feminist and a gender non-conforming individual, I tend to agree with the statement that "Gender is just a collection of harmful stereotypes" and think the whole concept of gender as distinct from sex belongs in the ashbin of history. I hate being told I am not a man because I don't like to do all the manly things, but even worse, I am afraid that if I ever do wholly transition people will insist that I am "still really a man" because I don't do all of the girly things either.

Now that I am in my thirties, people appear to have changed the definition of gender again. Now it appears to be a concept of one's self. I could get that... except that they also insist that you divorce it from biological sex OR social role.

Like many words, "gender" has many uses. I run for exercise, I run for office, I'm run down. Certainly I'm not referring to the same thing when I use "run." Same here. I can use "gender" to refer to different concepts, and it's possible that "gender" has indeed expanded in its use.

At this point, it appears to be totally meaningless and circular. Saying "I am a woman because I identify a a woman" but then insisting that "woman" has nothing to do with either of the above gender definition to me makes as much sense as saying "I am a blorglesplorch," and then defining blorglesplorch as "the thing which I identify as".

Not sure how circularity makes something meaningless. A housecat is a member of Felis catus; a member of Felis catus is a housecat. Those propositions mean something. If "A housecat is a member of Felis catus" is true, then it is the case that a housecat is a member of Felis catus. I'm genuinely confused by your meaningless argument. Do you mind clarifying?

Also, language is embedded in a social context. To identify as a woman is to identify as a member of a set of people who call themselves woman. Womanhood has a history; women experience particular forms of violence, and so forth. That's not the case for identifying as a blorglesplorch.

Also also, "woman" is absolutely associated with gender/sex assignment and gender roles. Most women were assigned female at birth. Many women follow the gender role society prescribes them. I don't think most people would disagree.

And, of course, lots of people, particularly on twitter but not entirely, get very upset if you refer to them as either their biological sex or social gender roll, which makes it very difficult to actually discuss trans issues.

Honestly, I wouldn't be happy if you tried to refer to me by my "biological sex," either.

How so?

Like all biological classification, one can pick at the edges to create problems. But I can come up with a long list of masculine or feminine traits that apply to most everyone, even the <.1% of the population who is truly intersex generally favors one sex or the other. IMO Sex is biological and descriptive (not that humans don't have the power to alter it). Gender roles are man-made and prescriptive.

The concept of sex is also human-made. "Sex" has a history. It shifts between cultures and times. Thomas Laqueur argues that a shift from a one-sex model to a two-sex model (i.e. the sex binary) happened around the 18th century in Europe. Other historians argue that Laqueur got the timing wrong, but it seems like they agree that a shift indeed happened. You propose another shift: from a binary to a spectrum. So sex may not be as stable a construct as you might like.

The fact that you don't propose a simple solution but instead a "long list" is telling. Sex is troubled. We, as trans people, are on the edges. We trouble it. It's "descriptive" but it describes a list longer and longer. Sex can no longer be considered a clear biological concept. You can certain try to save it. Continue to tinker and make ad hoc changes. Epicycles saved geocentrism for a while. But at some point it becomes more useful to say that the earth revolves around the sun.

I hope this is clear. Feel free to disagree or ask for clarification.

I don't have a clue what gender identity is.

Gender is a list of psychological beliefs. Gender is real. Gender is a spectrum. Gender is mutable. Gender is neurological and descriptive.

Well... for example:

This article is written by someone whose conclusions I vehemently disagree with and consider morally abhorrent, but points out a lot of the same logical contradictions I struggle with when trying to discuss trans issues with more open minded people.

On the other hand, this article seems to be coming from the right play, but is just filled with so much woo and illogic that it drives me nuts and raises ten questions for every one it answers.

I don't see why the latter is any more illogical than the former. Here's the logic: If I feel like a man, I'm a man. I feel like a man. Therefore, I'm a man. A perfectly valid argument.

Something concrete or observable would be nice.

If we could find a "trans gene" or reliably model a "woman's brain" or even find some sort of extra-deimensional pink energy field that follows trans women around.

Even for more soft stuff; philosophies, political beliefs, and religions all have observable groups of beliefs and behaviors that can be used to label their followers.

But right now, AFAICT gender identity is a label without a basis in either science or thought.

Like many things, gender is not observable, so you must unfortunately give up that quest. For consistency's sake, are you also troubled by sexuality's lack of observability? Much like gender, sexuality is a construct only visible via indirect evidence.

This is a good scientific explanation, but AFAIK doesn't actually have any evidence behind it, so it remains a pseudo scientific assertion.

I think this is mistaken on multiple counts. The first is that there is indeed neurological evidence consistent with a neurological explanation. For an old example, see Zhou et al. (1995), "A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality." I personally don't find it convincing, cuz I'm a party pooper who insists that neural correlates are not neural causes. But you might like it. You can probably find other papers like it.

The second is that it's not psuedo-scientific to assert scientific explanations without evidence. That's kinda what scientific theories and models are. They make empirical predictions that are not yet supported by the data. Probably the most famous assertion in the history of science is Einstein's, who claimed that light would bend a certain amount in a gravitational field. Only years later did the beginnings of evidence come in.

Like so much of modern trans philosophy, this was appropriated from intersex people whom had surgical genital alteration does as infants without their consent.

That's just flat out wrong. (C)AMAB (coercively assigned male at birth) was coined by a non-intersex trans woman.

I didn't realize I was perpetuating an intentional lie; it just seemed so much more plausible than the alternative, as it is a nonsense term (for non intersex people)

Seconding Juniper. You make a historical claim that needs historical evidence. (It's clear that you're engaging in good faith, though.)

and I know so many trans people who try and insist that they are actually intersex (for example having a "female brain structure") without any proof.

You have an odd way of using the term "intersex." If a trans person claims to have an x brain structure, how does it follow that they're claiming they're intersex?

As for why the term makes no sense:

Its not assigning anything. Its describing something.
It typically happens before birth in our modern era of sonagrams.
Hundreds of millions of people alive today do not have birth certificates. Does this not apply to them? How about the billions of people who lived without certificates in the past?
For the ~4999/5000 of us who aren't intersex, the baby's sex can be identified by its genitals, so why do we need this extra layer of obfuscation?
The "assignment" has no authority. Have you ever heard of anyone, say parents, actually going by what is written on the birth certificate over their own evaluation of the child's sex? Like, a doctor "assigns" an XY child with a penis to the female gender so the parents just put him and dress, make him use the little girl's room, and tell him to start playing with dolls and dating boys?

I don't suffer from gender dysphoria because someone "assigned" me the wrong gender, that's ridiculous. If I were a biological female, I would simply laugh about the error on my birth certificate and get it legally changed; I wouldn't consider myself a trans person, just a cis-female with a clerical error on her record.

There's a lot going on here. It's difficult to talk without addressing our different epistemologies first. But I'll try.

When someone says, "It's a boy," they usually do not mean that it's a human being with a penis. It's not the same as saying, "It has a penis." Those two propositions mean different things. If I'm a doctor and the baby comes out and I go, "It has a penis! ," the parents will likely react differently than if I said, "It's a boy!" So it can't just be the case that you're just describing something.

Instead, "It's a boy" is pregnant with cultural expectations. Boys like blue more than pink. Boys are tough. Boys don't cry. Boys are attracted to girls and only girls. Boys will grow up to be men, a position also pregnant with cultural expectations. That is coercive gender assignment: your destiny written out for you. I imagine that those gendered expectations, often cruelly enforced by parents and peers, are likely gender dysphoric.

[Dame_Mechanus]

Instead, "It's a boy" is pregnant with cultural expectations. Boys like blue more than pink. Boys are tough. Boys don't cry. Boys are attracted to girls and only girls. Boys will grow up to be men, a position also pregnant with cultural expectations. That is coercive gender assignment: your destiny written out for you. I imagine that those gendered expectations, often cruelly enforced by parents and peers, are likely gender dysphoric.

I would add from my own experiences that realizing the cultural expectations around gender can often be a deeply personal and ongoing process that you engage with from the time that you're old enough to understand what gender is in the first place throughout the remainder of your life. For example, saying "it's a girl" creates the cultural assumption of pronouns and eventual romantic entanglement with boys. It was difficult for me to understand my own gender with the experience of "but... I don't really want to be romantically involved with boys, I want to be romantically involved with women" because at the time I was discovering that side of myself, it was the mid-90s and that was still culturally far outside of the expected gender role for a woman.

At this point those cultural expectations have shifted enough that it seems a lot of women consider "I have some interest in other women" to be a perfectly normal part of a woman's gender role. Not all, but it doesn't carry the same unexpected sting as it did when I was 13.

Other cultural expectations persist. My entire life I have had people who expect that I would eventually want children, up to including my mother (who herself identifies as a lesbian) despite the fact that if anything my desire for children has lessened rather than increased. And my own relationship with my gender has changed and shifted over time. There was a point in my life where I wouldn't have the username I have on this forum and would have felt frankly odd or anxious directly identifying my gender online. My wife has gone through periods where she has wanted to be more feminine in her presentation and periods when she feels more comfortable with a gender-neutral presentation. I spent most of my life with short hair but started growing it out a few years back and now really enjoy having long hair, but I might cut it again soon.

Gender presentation and identity can shift a lot even for cis people. Everyone's journey, identity, and comfort is different. It's hard to give any absolute hard-and-fast rules, which is why the watchwords are about respect, understanding, and acceptance.

I really hope this helps, and I hope any of my trans siblings reading this will tell me if they feel I've misunderstood or misrepresented them; it's not my intention.

[Murk]

For what it's worth, I (used to) feel very similar to Talakeal.

I think that's in a large part because up to thirty years ago the "progressive" view on gender was the complete opposite of what it is now, and the language it used (and the meaning of words) was very different too.

I grew up when the progressive view on gender was still (post) feminist: gender was seen as an outdated concept, something that was forced on people externally.
The difference between men and women (and other) was either physical, or oppression.
So people didn't have a gender: they were given a gender, by society.

I recognise a lot of this in Talakeals musings about gender roles and the question what gender means. This matches with the late feminist view that gender doesn't mean anything except for other people's expectations and demands.

That doesn't mean transgender people didn't exist in this view. But you'll notice that language from that time used "wants to be..." much more often than "is..."
If someone was transgender they would want to be the other gender - not they are the other gender (yet).
And with the premise that gender is purely externally assigned this makes sense. You are the gender you have been assigned, because that's the meaning of the word.
You can desire to change your gender, but until you transition (socially and/or physically) you are the gender you have been assigned. You will only be the other gender once you have convinced society you are. Because that's what the word means.

So I think that view matches Talakeals feelings more closely: all transgender people would be x to y, because your gender is solely what other people assign you.


And then somewhere in the previous few decades, the progressive view on gender made a 180° flip: nowadays gender is something internal.
You have a gender (rather than being given a gender), and gender has an inherent meaning.
The common progressive view now is that gender has an inherent psychological, social, personal meaning. It's not just a superfluous role you are assigned by society but an integral part of who you are.
And as such, the role you are assigned by society can mismatch with your inherent gender.

From that view, most transgender people will not be x to y. They have always been y. Their inherent gender is y, and that's the real gender. The gender they have been assigned was just wrong. Transitioning (either socially or physically) is just the process of showing society who you have always been, rather than actually becoming a different gender. (And because of that, I think the word transitioning itself has become far less used - it's not really a transition anymore).

From this view saying someone "used to be x" is very offensive, because you are saying you believe what random people think about someone's identity rather than they themselves.


For me, the modern view is confusing, but that's because I had my formative years when the previous view was more common. I've grown up (and formed my identity) with the view that gender is bunkus, that it's a relic of societal oppression, and that the world would be better off if we just ditched the notion of gender entirely.
And now progressive people happily personally identify with a gender! Now, they think the world would be a better place with more genders rather than less!

But when it comes down to it, I think that's just a change in language and the philosophy of gender. It doesn't mean that you (or I) need to change, but if we want to connect with the current views we do need to adapt our language accordingly.

When I was a teenager I was just a feminist man, who was so comfortable in his maleness that my gender didn't matter. My lack of a strong male identity came from a position of privilege and comfort: because I was so comfortable as a man I could afford not to care. In my language "gender" means something put on me from the outside. The outside tells me I'm male, I don't care, so I'm a man and forget about out it.

Nowadays teenagers tell me that I might be agender! That doesn't match the language I would use, but I understand that in their language it makes sense.
In their language "gender" means something from the inside. My inside doesn't care about my gender, so I must be agender!


All of that is a very long (sorry!) way to say that the progressive philosophy on gender has changed, the language has changed accordingly, and I think the language Talakeal uses hasn't changed with it.
Which is fine!
But if you engage the (often young) Twitter crowd you need to use their language.

[Talakeal]

Snip

Pretty much.

Although I would like to state that while I don't have a concept of my own "gender" I am still very much not what I would call cis; I consider my sex male and would like it to be female.


Its kind of annoying, as now that I am finally accepting enough of my identity to actually want to connect with the larger trans community, I found this huge communication gap where my language feels like misgendering and transphobia to them, and theirs feels like erasure and reinforcement of the patriarchal stereotypes I have been oppressed by my entire life.



Now, the idea that "gender roles" are internal and driven by psychology is a logical argument, albeit one with only flimsy evidence, but it sounds way too close to oppressive misogyny to me, and also fails to grasp the full complexity of any one individual's mind, for me to ever consider a progressive argument.

[Anymage]

Question. What does gender therapy actually entail? Google is giving me a bunch of "how to find a gender therapist" and posts about the generalized benefits that gender therapy can provide, while I'm curious what the therapy does to help prepare you for life after you come our and/or medically transition.

[LaZodiac]

Question. What does gender therapy actually entail? Google is giving me a bunch of "how to find a gender therapist" and posts about the generalized benefits that gender therapy can provide, while I'm curious what the therapy does to help prepare you for life after you come our and/or medically transition.

There's differences depending on what direction you're going but typically you take medicine to suppress the wrong and medicine to generate the good. Once you've done this long enough that your body is successfully in the correct factory settings, you can (if you wish) continue on to therapy that assists with it. I don't know how boy stuff works but for girls once you have bottom surgery you can stop the suppressants since the stuff that makes the boy juice is gone.

[Talakeal]

• Julia Serano. 2007. Whipping Girl. BisectedBrioche recommended it, and I will, too. She makes an argument for the existence of a neurological gender identity. I don't find it convincing, but it's probably one of the best arguments for it, if somewhat dated.
• Monique Wittig. 1992. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Take a look at "The Category of Sex" or "One is Not Born a Woman." A philosophical argument for the material construction of gender, particularly womanhood.
• Jules Gill-Peterson. 2018. Histories of the Transgender Child. A historical trajectory on how gender and transness has shifted over time, with a focus on the 20th century.

You might've read some of these works before. I have others recs, but they are political. Other peeps can recommend other books.

Thanks! I will check those out, although I am worried that they might be a bit outdated given the publication dates.

[LIST]You've lost me here. I'm not sure how this connects with what you or I said previously.

I am saying that to deny I was ever a man would, by definition, make me a ciswoman. Which would be great if it words actually had the power to change reality, but they do not and a remain a transwoman, and to claim otherwise feels like trans-erasure.

[LIST][*]I don't really find that satisfactory. It's real vague. What is that list, and what binds that list together? How many dimensions does that spectrum consist of? What does it mean for it to be "real"?

Not sure how circularity makes something meaningless. A housecat is a member of Felis catus; a member of Felis catus is a housecat. Those propositions mean something. If "A housecat is a member of Felis catus" is true, then it is the case that a housecat is a member of Felis catus. I'm genuinely confused by your meaningless argument. Do you mind clarifying?

I think you are trying to make a post-modernist point here, but it really reads as either playing word games or being deliberately obtuse.

I took both zoology and anatomy in college, and while it is acknowledged that there are always weird edge cases, there is a fairly simple process for keying out an animal's species or determining its gender. At the same time, most everyone has an intrinsic knowledge of what a cat or a woman is. I have never seen a cat (or a physical woman who was not trying to dress to hide her sex).

Physically, when compared to the human mean, women have vaginas, an XX chromosone, have enlarged breasts which are capable of producing milk, cannot grow beards, are shorter, have less muscle tissue, have less body hair, have broader hips and narrower waists, have less dense bones, have different pelvic anatomy, have higher levels of estrogen and lower levels of testosterone, have fuller lips, have softer chins, and reproduce by producing eggs and gestating the young internally.

This is only a partial list, and obviously not every woman meets every criteria on the list, but most women meet most criteria on the list (I know I fail to meet any of them). These are the same characteristics which are targeted by gender affirming surgery. Obviously injury, age, birth defect, or medical intervention means that any woman is capable of failing to meet some of these criteria, but that doesn't mean that the whole category is meaningless.

Likewise, cats animals who are small, warm blooded, have nipples, quadrupedal, nocturnal, carnivorous, have retractable claws, foot pads, medium length straight hair, slit-pupils, rough tongues, sharp teeth (the precise shape of the teeth alone should be enough to definitively tell you if something is or isn't a cat). And I am sure countless other anatomical and physiological unique traits.

I say it is meaningless because simply providing a circular argument with no actual context does not convey any information.

[LIST][*]The concept of sex is also human-made. "Sex" has a history. It shifts between cultures and times. Thomas Laqueur argues that a shift from a one-sex model to a two-sex model (i.e. the sex binary) happened around the 18th century in Europe. Other historians argue that Laqueur got the timing wrong, but it seems like they agree that a shift indeed happened. You propose another shift: from a binary to a spectrum. So sex may not be as stable a construct as you might like.

Animals came in male and female for hundreds of millions of years before humans appeared, so I am not sure what you mean by it being a human made concept. Unless you literally mean that we invented the words used to label it.

[LIST][*]Like many words, "gender" has many uses. I run for exercise, I run for office, I'm run down. Certainly I'm not referring to the same thing when I use "run." Same here. I can use "gender" to refer to different concepts, and it's possible that "gender" has indeed expanded in its use.

Also also, "woman" is absolutely associated with gender/sex assignment and gender roles. Most women were assigned female at birth. Many women follow the gender role society prescribes them. I don't think most people would disagree.

Ok. So why is it so hard for people to explain which meaning of gender they are using? And why are they so quick to vilify people who are using it in a different way?

[LIST][*]Honestly, I wouldn't be happy if you tried to refer to me by my "biological sex," either.

And why is that?

Why is it such a taboo subject? And how are people supposed to have meaningful conversation about trans issues if they aren't allowed to mention it?

[LIST][*]The concept of sex is also human-made. "Sex" has a history. It shifts between cultures and times. Thomas Laqueur argues that a shift from a one-sex model to a two-sex model (i.e. the sex binary) happened around the 18th century in Europe. Other historians argue that Laqueur got the timing wrong, but it seems like they agree that a shift indeed happened. You propose another shift: from a binary to a spectrum. So sex may not be as stable a construct as you might like.

That's quite a claim, and runs contrary to both all of the research I have ever done as well as common sense.

Just the other day I was reading about how Roman laws had separate legal categories for men, women, and hermaphrodites.

Just because this sentence is a spectrum rather than a binary, I fail to see how that is evidence that red and blue don't exist and its actually just black and white.

[LIST][*]Gender is a list of psychological beliefs. Gender is real. Gender is a spectrum. Gender is mutable. Gender is neurological and descriptive.

I don't see why the latter is any more illogical than the former. Here's the logic: If I feel like a man, I'm a man. I feel like a man. Therefore, I'm a man. A perfectly valid argument.

IMO that is a classic logical fallacy rather than a valid argument.

However, whether or not it is a fallacious argument is irrelevant, the issue is that it doesn't actually impart any insight into what a man is or what it means to be one.

[LIST][*]Like many things, gender is not observable, so you must unfortunately give up that quest. For consistency's sake, are you also troubled by sexuality's lack of observability? Much like gender, sexuality is a construct only visible via indirect evidence.

No, because sexuality describes a set of feelings and behaviors.

I would however, be equally puzzled if a man claimed to be gay, but only felt attraction to and had relationships with women.

[LIST][*]I think this is mistaken on multiple counts. The first is that there is indeed neurological evidence consistent with a neurological explanation. For an old example, see Zhou et al. (1995), "A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality." I personally don't find it convincing, cuz I'm a party pooper who insists that neural correlates are not neural causes. But you might like it. You can probably find other papers like it.

The second is that it's not psuedo-scientific to assert scientific explanations without evidence. That's kinda what scientific theories and models are. They make empirical predictions that are not yet supported by the data. Probably the most famous assertion in the history of science is Einstein's, who claimed that light would bend a certain amount in a gravitational field. Only years later did the beginnings of evidence come in.

That's a hypothesis, not a theory.

And yes, it would be scientifically unethical to demand everyone adhere to a hypothesis without proof.

People have long been making the argument that a person's biology determines their personality. Racists, classists, and sexists love it. Phrenology is a classic pastime of bigots. Lots of people used the "innate tendencies" of the female brain to bar women from "men's work". Similar arguments were (and still are) used to justify slavery and segregation.

There is weak evidence to support it, and there is weak evidence to disprove it.

As a philosophical humanist, I am opposed to using ill defined pseudo-scientific hypothesis to label people or try and limit their behavior.

In my opinion, while there likely is some correlation between gender and brain structure, the human brain is far too plastic, and individual humans are far too varied, to make any sort of definitive claims about it, certainly not at our current level of technology.

On a personal level, this just feels oppressive and hurtful. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my parents and teachers forbid me from taking part in traditionally female activities (and usually questioned my sanity or sexuality in the process). But also as an adult, when my friends tell me that I am not "really trans" because I still enjoy many traditionally male activities.

[LIST][*]You have an odd way of using the term "intersex." If a trans person claims to have an x brain structure, how does it follow that they're claiming they're intersex?

How wouldn't it?

If someone had a female brain structure in an otherwise male body, I would label them intersex just like if they had, say, ovaries in an otherwise male body.

[LIST]There's a lot going on here. It's difficult to talk without addressing our different epistemologies first. But I'll try.

When someone says, "It's a boy," they usually do not mean that it's a human being with a penis. It's not the same as saying, "It has a penis." Those two propositions mean different things. If I'm a doctor and the baby comes out and I go, "It has a penis! ," the parents will likely react differently than if I said, "It's a boy!" So it can't just be the case that you're just describing something.

Instead, "It's a boy" is pregnant with cultural expectations. Boys like blue more than pink. Boys are tough. Boys don't cry. Boys are attracted to girls and only girls. Boys will grow up to be men, a position also pregnant with cultural expectations. That is coercive gender assignment: your destiny written out for you. I imagine that those gendered expectations, often cruelly enforced by parents and peers, are likely gender dysphoric.

So, it seems like you are making a correlation between filling out a birth certificate and forcing gender roles on someone.

I have never seen it. I have had people try and force gender rolls on me countless times in my life, and not once have I ever had to tell them what was on my birth certificate, or what a doctor or my parents "assigned" me.

Would someone who was born in a developing nation without doctors and birth certificates still be "assigned" a gender at birth? What if the society has rigidly enforced gender rolls or no gender rolls at all? What if said person moved to a developed nation later in life and we tried to enforce out gender rolls on them? What if a "biological" girl was born to a mother who was stranded on an island and they had to fulfill both gender rolls as there was nobody else to rely upon, but they had never seen or even been told of the existence of males, is she still AFAB?

[TaiLiu]

I would add from my own experiences that realizing the cultural expectations around gender can often be a deeply personal and ongoing process that you engage with from the time that you're old enough to understand what gender is in the first place throughout the remainder of your life. For example, saying "it's a girl" creates the cultural assumption of pronouns and eventual romantic entanglement with boys...

Gender presentation and identity can shift a lot even for cis people. Everyone's journey, identity, and comfort is different. It's hard to give any absolute hard-and-fast rules, which is why the watchwords are about respect, understanding, and acceptance.

I really liked this post! A good way of showing how gender assignment is coercive for everyone, including cis people (although of course trans people face more violence regarding it). Also a good way of showing how coercive gender assignment is a society-wide phenomenon, which is socially reinforced and which shifts depending on culture and time.

I think that's in a large part because up to thirty years ago the "progressive" view on gender was the complete opposite of what it is now, and the language it used (and the meaning of words) was very different too.

Are you referring to gender abolition? Mr. Silver mentioned it, too. I guess in some sense it's "progressive," but I'd argument that it has problems with transphobia and transmisogyny. (Not that I'm calling you or Talakeal gender abolitionists or transphobes, of course.)

So people didn't have a gender: they were given a gender, by society.

One of the authors I cited, Wittig, argues this, too. In fact, it's the epistemology of gender that I prescribe to. I don't think I was born with my gender. I think social events have transpired and now I'm the gender that I am ...

If someone was transgender they would want to be the other gender - not they are the other gender (yet).

And with the premise that gender is purely externally assigned this makes sense. You are the gender you have been assigned, because that's the meaning of the word.

You can desire to change your gender, but until you transition (socially and/or physically) you are the gender you have been assigned. You will only be the other gender once you have convinced society you are. Because that's what the word means.

So I think that view matches Talakeals feelings more closely: all transgender people would be x to y, because your gender is solely what other people assign you.

... But just because I buy into one proposition doesn't mean I buy into all of them. I'd argue that these propositions don't follow from the previous one.

Again, not saying that you're arguing for this position. Just pointing something out.

From that view, most transgender people will not be x to y. They have always been y. Their inherent gender is y, and that's the real gender. The gender they have been assigned was just wrong. Transitioning (either socially or physically) is just the process of showing society who you have always been, rather than actually becoming a different gender. (And because of that, I think the word transitioning itself has become far less used - it's not really a transition anymore).

Yes, I think that's a good way of putting it. It's not a surprising epistemic move. The "born this way" argument has generally been the popular argument in the LGBTQ community. Understandably so.

What does gender therapy actually entail? ... I'm curious what the therapy does to help prepare you for life after you come our and/or medically transition.

There's differences depending on what direction you're going but typically you take medicine to suppress the wrong and medicine to generate the good.

I could be wrong, but I think Anymage is asking about gender psychotherapy and not hormone replacement therapy or gender-affirming surgery. (Sex reassignment surgery for Talakeal.)

Personally I have no idea. I've never been to a psychotherapist who specialized with trans people before. If you find a particular therapist, presumably you could ask what they could help you with.

[Anymage]

Thanks for the replies.

The reason I was curious, though, was because I saw some virulently transphobic claptrap and started pushing back against it, only to realize that it'd be handy if I actually knew what I was talking about. I figured that there's talk therapy before anything medical happens, and was curious where I could find out more about that. Well before the medical interventions that transphobes keep fixating on.

Edit:

I could be wrong, but I think Anymage is asking about gender psychotherapy and not hormone replacement therapy or gender-affirming surgery. (Sex reassignment surgery for Talakeal.)

Personally I have no idea. I've never been to a psychotherapist who specialized with trans people before. If you find a particular therapist, presumably you could ask what they could help you with.

This, largely. Again, my curiosity comes from a place of wanting to be informed when I tell transphobes just how wrong they are.

[Kesnit]

I had an interesting chat (via text) last night that is bothering me.

My office has 3 summer interns, one of whom, R, is a lesbian and knows I’m trans. R and another intern, A, go to school about 90 minutes away, so carpool together. A does not know I’m a transman.

I had previously figured out A knows R and I have a connection, but she obviously does not know what it is. R told me that A is getting close to thinking either there is something she doesn’t know (which is, of course, true) or I’m just a creepy man and am trying to hit on R. Given that the truth is rather obscure in common society (when most people think of “trans,” they think MTF), it’s more likely A will decide I’m an idiot man who is hitting on a lesbian, and am therefore creepy.

This is making me sad-angry, and I do know why. I came out as trans 16 years ago, but that was after 30 years of living as a woman. No matter how long I live as my real, male, self, some of my actions and mental processes are always going to go down the long-engrained female pathways. Actions taken by (male name) are going to be perceived differently than ones taken by (dead name).

If I was still living as (dead name), my friendship with R could still be a bit creepy. (I’m 20 years older than her. And if someone thinks I am hitting on her, that would also be an issue because I am married - to a woman - and R is engaged.) But it would look a lot more normal than my friendship with her as (male name). I didn’t think of that when our friendship began because I’m not used to being in social situations where one person knows and another doesn’t. I let myself be socially comfortable with R, which led me to act in a way that feels normal, but is not viewed as normal by society.

If it becomes an issue, I’ll tell A the truth. But I hate that this is even an issue. I hate that I can’t be friends with a woman without seeming creepy. I’m angry with myself for not realizing what I was doing sooner and changing the way I acted.

[TaiLiu]

Missed this while writing the other post, so addressing this now.

Thanks! I will check those out, although I am worried that they might be a bit outdated given the publication dates.

Histories is the freshest, definitely. But Wittig is surprisingly relevant, even though she doesn't refer to trans people.

I am saying that to deny I was ever a man would, by definition, make me a ciswoman. Which would be great if it words actually had the power to change reality, but they do not and a remain a transwoman, and to claim otherwise feels like trans-erasure.

I think it's perfectly plausible for a trans woman to say that she's not cis and also say that she was ever a man or a boy. "I was assigned male at birth. But I'm a woman. So I'm a trans woman." Being assigned male does not make her male, and people argue this point from a variety of perspectives.

I think you are trying to make a post-modernist point here, but it really reads as either playing word games or being deliberately obtuse.

If it helps, I'm not a post-modernist or post-structuralist. I took you saying that a circular set of propositions is necessarily a meaningless one. I just disagree with you about that.

I took both zoology and anatomy in college, and while it is acknowledged that there are always weird edge cases, there is a fairly simple process for keying out an animal's species or determining its gender. At the same time, most everyone has an intrinsic knowledge of what a cat or a woman is. I have never seen a cat (or a physical woman who was not trying to dress to hide her sex).

I'm kinda confused by your wording. "Intrinsic" is probably not the right word. I take you to mean instead that most people have a commonsense notion of what cats and women are. I agree. But that commonsense notion is socially constructed.

I'm not sure what you mean when you talk about never having seen a cat or a woman dressing to "hide her sex."

Physically, when compared to the human mean, women have vaginas, an XX chromosone, have enlarged breasts which are capable of producing milk, cannot grow beards, are shorter, have less muscle tissue, have less body hair, have broader hips and narrower waists, have less dense bones, have different pelvic anatomy, have higher levels of estrogen and lower levels of testosterone, have fuller lips, have softer chins, and reproduce by producing eggs and gestating the young internally.

This is only a partial list, and obviously not every woman meets every criteria on the list, but most women meet most criteria on the list (I know I fail to meet any of them). These are the same characteristics which are targeted by gender affirming surgery. Obviously injury, age, birth defect, or medical intervention means that any woman is capable of failing to meet some of these criteria, but that doesn't mean that the whole category is meaningless.

Likewise, cats animals who are small, warm blooded, have nipples, quadrupedal, nocturnal, carnivorous, have retractable claws, foot pads, medium length straight hair, slit-pupils, rough tongues, sharp teeth (the precise shape of the teeth alone should be enough to definitively tell you if something is or isn't a cat). And I am sure countless other anatomical and physiological unique traits.

Okay, sure. I mean, I agree, so I'm not quite sure what argument you're tackling. Most women are cis. Most women have vulvas and so on and so forth. Right.

I say it is meaningless because simply providing a circular argument with no actual context does not convey any information.

I agree here, too. I think you're addressing one of my arguments, or possibly an argument made by someone else, but I'm not sure which one.

Animals came in male and female for hundreds of millions of years before humans appeared, so I am not sure what you mean by it being a human made concept. Unless you literally mean that we invented the words used to label it.

If you'll allow me to use jargon from the philosophy of science: what I'm saying is that sex is not a natural kind. Sex is a set of natural kinds, but that set is decided by humans and has changed throughout history. We invented the organizing principle that is "sex," but that set is not a natural kind.

As an interesting sidenote, Joan Roughgarden has this to say about sex in Evolution's Rainbow:

To a biologist, "male" means making small gametes, and "female" means making large gametes. Period! By definition, the smaller of the two gametes is called a sperm, and the larger an egg. Beyond gamete size, biologists don't recognize any other universal difference between male and female. Of course, indirect markers of gamete size may exist in some species. In mammals, males usually have a Y chromosome. But whether an individual is male or not comes down to making sperm, and the males in some mammalian species don't have a Y chromosome. Moreover, in birds, reptiles, and amphibians, the Y chromosome doesn't occur. However, the gamete-size definition is general and works throughout the plant and animal kingdoms.

I get the sense that you--and others--mean more than this when you talk about sex. (Is someone who doesn't make any gametes sexless?)

Ok. So why is it so hard for people to explain which meaning of gender they are using? And why are they so quick to vilify people who are using it in a different way?

I have no special social insight, so I have no idea. I think this is a loaded question, though.

And why is that?

It depends on the person and what they mean by "biological sex." I've cited a biological definition of sex above. If people are using that definition, it would have to be a real specific convo for it to be relevant. In some circumstances, I wouldn't mind. In others, I might be irritated: perhaps because it's none of their business, or perhaps because they're using it for transphobic means.

Why is it such a taboo subject?

Well, it's really not taboo at all. People do it all the time when they insist that a trans person is really a man or a woman.

And how are people supposed to have meaningful conversation about trans issues if they aren't allowed to mention it?

Another loaded question. Ignoring the loadedness, I honestly dunno how to respond to this! It's, uh, real easy. You just have conversations. About trans issues. And then you don't use the concept of biological sex. Is there a reason why you think people wouldn't be able to?

That's quite a claim, and runs contrary to both all of the research I have ever done as well as common sense.

Just the other day I was reading about how Roman laws had separate legal categories for men, women, and hermaphrodites.

That's an interesting point about Roman law. Do you have a citation?

History often violates our commonsense expectations. Citing at length Laqueur in Making Sex:

For thousands of years it had been a commonplace that women had the same genitals as men except that, as Nemesius, bishop of Emesa in the fourth century, put it: "theirs are inside the body and not outside it." Galen, who in the second century A.D. developed the most powerful and resilient model of the structural, though not spatial, identity of the male and female reproductive organs, demonstrated at length that women were essentially men in whom a lack of vital heat--of perfection--had resulted in the retention, inside, of structures that in the male are visible without. Indeed, doggerel verse of the early nineteenth century still sings of these hoary homologies long after they had disappeared from learned texts:

though they of different sexes be,
Yet on the whole they are the same as we,
For those that have the strictest searchers been,
Find women are but men turned outside in.

In this world the vagina is imagined as an interior penis, the labia as foreskin, the uterus as scrotum, and the ovaries as testicles. The learned Galen could cite the dissections of the Alexandrian anatomist Herophilus, in the third century B.C., to support his claim that a woman has testes with accompanying seminal ducts very much like the man's, one on each side of the uterus, the only difference being that the male's are contained in the scrotum and the female's are not.

Another fun excerpt:

All of this evidence suggests that in the construction of the one-sex body the borders between blood, semen, other residues and food, between the organs of reproduction and other organs, between the heat of passion and the heat of life, were indistinct and, to the modem person, almost unimaginably--indeed terrifyingly--porous. "Anyone who has intercourse around midnight," warns a text attributed to Constantinius Africanus, "makes a mistake." Digest (concoct) food first before straining the body to give the final concoction to the seed. Fifteen hundred years after Aristotle and a thousand after Galen, Dante in the Purgatorio still plays on the fungibility of the body's fluids and the affinities of its heats. "Undrunk" blood, perfect like a dish (alimento) that is sent from the table, is redistilled by the heat of the heart, sent down to the genitals, from which "it sprays in nature's vessel, on another's blood."

Just because this sentence is a spectrum rather than a binary, I fail to see how that is evidence that red and blue don't exist and its actually just black and white.

I don't disagree, but I'm not sure what you're addressing.

IMO that is a classic logical fallacy rather than a valid argument.

With all due respect, it's really not. It's just modus ponens. There's no fallacy whatsoever. I'm genuinely confused why you would think it is. Do we really disagree on something as basic as the logical rules of inference?

However, whether or not it is a fallacious argument is irrelevant, the issue is that it doesn't actually impart any insight into what a man is or what it means to be one.

I disagree on two fronts. The first is that it does impart insight: it tells us that men must have the belief that they're men to be men. (We might disagree, of course.)

The second is that what is necessary for manhood does not define all of manhood. Many men have many common traits. Most of them have penises. Most of them were assigned male at birth. Men in general are construed as tough and less sensitive and there are all these other expectations. So on and so forth.

No, because sexuality describes a set of feelings and behaviors.

I would however, be equally puzzled if a man claimed to be gay, but only felt attraction to and had relationships with women.

Right! But why doesn't gender "describes a set of feelings and behaviors"?

I don't get your analogy. Which parts of the sexuality analogy correspond to which parts of gender?

That's a hypothesis, not a theory.

And yes, it would be scientifically unethical to demand everyone adhere to a hypothesis without proof.

No, a hypothesis is a part of a theory, but it's certainly not the whole thing. You can have a hypothesis without a theory. A theory accounts for some part of the data and then makes further predictions (i.e. hypotheses).

Presumably the best and strongest proponents of neurological gender believe that their theory accounts for some part of the data about gender. They also believe that the predictions about gender neurology are somewhat supported and will continue to accrue support.

People have long been making the argument that a person's biology determines their personality. Racists, classists, and sexists love it. Phrenology is a classic pastime of bigots. Lots of people used the "innate tendencies" of the female brain to bar women from "men's work". Similar arguments were (and still are) used to justify slavery and segregation.

There is weak evidence to support it, and there is weak evidence to disprove it.

As a philosophical humanist, I am opposed to using ill defined pseudo-scientific hypothesis to label people or try and limit their behavior.

In my opinion, while there likely is some correlation between gender and brain structure, the human brain is far too plastic, and individual humans are far too varied, to make any sort of definitive claims about it, certainly not at our current level of technology.

On a personal level, this just feels oppressive and hurtful. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my parents and teachers forbid me from taking part in traditionally female activities (and usually questioned my sanity or sexuality in the process). But also as an adult, when my friends tell me that I am not "really trans" because I still enjoy many traditionally male activities.

Not being a proponent of neurological-gender-from-birth, I won't defend it. Others who participate in this forum might be. They can defend it better than me.

I will say that the "born this way" argument is popular not only for gender but for sexuality, too. Likely for similar reasons: a defense from supporters of conversion therapy and from homo- and transphobia. Whether or not it's a good defense is a different matter.

How wouldn't it?

If someone had a female brain structure in an otherwise male body, I would label them intersex just like if they had, say, ovaries in an otherwise male body.

Cuz "intersex" refers to sexual characteristics. Like genitals and chromosomes and hormones. Hence the name. It doesn't refer to neurological characteristics.

So, it seems like you are making a correlation between filling out a birth certificate and forcing gender roles on someone.

I have never seen it. I have had people try and force gender rolls on me countless times in my life, and not once have I ever had to tell them what was on my birth certificate, or what a doctor or my parents "assigned" me.

Would someone who was born in a developing nation without doctors and birth certificates still be "assigned" a gender at birth? What if the society has rigidly enforced gender rolls or no gender rolls at all? What if said person moved to a developed nation later in life and we tried to enforce out gender rolls on them? What if a "biological" girl was born to a mother who was stranded on an island and they had to fulfill both gender rolls as there was nobody else to rely upon, but they had never seen or even been told of the existence of males, is she still AFAB?

No, I wasn't talking about birth certificates at all. That was Juniper. We're different people and believe different things.

Sure, your gender marker on your birth certificate is a part of it, but that marker is neither necessary nor sufficient for the phenomenon of coercive gender assignment.

[Rydiro]

But I hate that this is even an issue. I hate that I can’t be friends with a woman without seeming creepy. I’m angry with myself for not realizing what I was doing sooner and changing the way I acted.

Rejoice, because being seen as creepy is part of the male experience.
I'd suggest confidently standing to the things you do, without necessarily giving too much explanation.
Being insecure adds creepy vibes. Being at ease reduces them.
You don't owe A an explanation, you don't owe her sh**.
Likely she is envious that other people have a fun friendship.

[Mx.Silver]

Are you referring to gender abolition? Silver mentioned it, too. I guess in some sense it's "progressive," but I'd argue that it has problems with transphobia and transmisogyny. (Not that I'm calling you or Talakeal gender abolitionists or transphobes, of course.)

Yeah, at the time (at least in my neck of the woods, may have been different schools of thought elsewhere) it was a position that the socially enforced gender designation should be done away with, both on anti-sexism grounds and because the definition of 'biological sex' the gender designation was (supposedly) based upon was too nebulous and irrelevent for the overwhelming majority of applications to be worth enshrining, as it were. On a progressive it did offer a few advantages, both in terms of being an attack on the justifications for a lot of sexism and because, ironically, it would allow for a lot more freedom in terms of gender-expression. But, yes, there was a pretty big hole in it wrt trans experiences, and I suspect it would probably have dropped out of a use in most circles even if transphobes hadn't claimed it.
I suppose there's a question as to how much modern "gender critical" transphobia is an outgrowth of this school of thought versus a hijacking of it, but I think we're well past the point where it matters either way.

[BisectedBrioche]

It might be worth pointing out that "gender" originally meant "the observable but non-tangible aspects of sex" when it was coined in the 50's. The "social roles" definition is the newer aspect.

You can observe someone's gender in the same way that you can observe any other emotion; you can feel happy or sad, and while some people are better than others at hiding it, you can tell when someone else is happy or sad (and understand their feelings through the lens of your own). We all make the decision to get out of bed in the morning (or not), we know everyone else does, and so we can be aware that the will to do something other than sleep all day exists.

[TaiLiu]

The reason I was curious, though, was because I saw some virulently transphobic claptrap and started pushing back against it, only to realize that it'd be handy if I actually knew what I was talking about. I figured that there's talk therapy before anything medical happens, and was curious where I could find out more about that. Well before the medical interventions that transphobes keep fixating on.

Are you asking if there are any mandated psychological interventions before a trans person starts HRT or undergoes surgery?

R told me that A is getting close to thinking either there is something she doesn’t know (which is, of course, true) or I’m just a creepy man and am trying to hit on R...

If it becomes an issue, I’ll tell A the truth. But I hate that this is even an issue. I hate that I can’t be friends with a woman without seeming creepy. I’m angry with myself for not realizing what I was doing sooner and changing the way I acted.

I'm sorry, Kesnit. That's really unfair. If you do choose to tell, I hope it's a choice and not cuz A socially forces your hand.

Frankly, A should mind her own business and stop being so judgemental. It's your and R's relationship, not A's. Lots of people, for lots of (non-trans) reasons, act in ways that aren't seen as normal.

On a progressive it did offer a few advantages, both in terms of being an attack on the justifications for a lot of sexism and because, ironically, it would allow for a lot more freedom in terms of gender-expression. But, yes, there was a pretty big hole in it wrt trans experiences, and I suspect it would probably have dropped out of a use in most circles even if transphobes hadn't claimed it.

I suppose there's a question as to how much modern "gender critical" transphobia is an outgrowth of this school of thought versus a hijacking of it, but I think we're well past the point where it matters either way.

Yeah, I think the core of gender abolition's pretty sound. But the inability to correctly account for people most vulnerable to gendered violence is a pretty big problem.

It might be worth pointing out that "gender" originally meant "the observable but non-tangible aspects of sex" when it was coined in the 50's. The "social roles" definition is the newer aspect.

Oh, cool! I didn't know that.

[halfeye]

Old bad joke:

How do you tell a boy from a girl? Take down their genes (/jeans).

From so far back in the day that boys having long hair was currently new (again), and yes it was intended to be offensive then, but in a sort of different way.

[Anymage]

Are you asking if there are any mandated psychological interventions before a trans person starts HRT or undergoes surgery?

Largely. Also what sorts of things a competent therapist would want a person to know before medically transitioning, and possibly before social transition/large scale coming out.

Basically if someone came in whose primary sources of information were transphobic fearmongering about how transgenderism expected small children and confused young adults to jump right to medical transition (generally using much coarser language), I was curious what the actual process entailed for the purpose of calling out said fearmongering.