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@RationalMadman
So you fail to actually reply to me, as per usual. You can keep up the strawman, but if you won't engage with my arguments you aren't being very rational.
Is it possible to oppose transgenderism as a solution to gender dysphoria and not be 'transphobic'?
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@thett3
This is a weird accusation? I'm not dualistic, its a pretty simple material separation we can view in other contexts. An improper but example regardless is cognitive dissonuance -- keep in mind this is purely to show there can be physical differences in people when referring to things.
Here, the difference is the brain's epigenetic experience versus the social connotations labeled as one thing or another. The question you pose is as ridiculous as asking how its possible that someone is attracted to multiple genders and not one. The body can do different things at the same time, some under duress and others not.
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@Theweakeredge
You actually failed to reply to me, just said 'strawman' and ignored my entire case both in your original reply and now. You just rant to yourself and have zero interaction with my actual points.
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@Theweakeredge
Please answer the question…what distinguishes a male mind vs a female mind? If you aren’t a dualist it must be something physical and empirical. By what means does a female mind end up in a male body or Vice versa?
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@thett3
what distinguishes a male mind vs a female mind?
I honestly believe in a postmodernist world that this question can never be answered. When there are infinite genders, then there are no genders. Male can be female and female can be male ONLY because those 2 terms are both indistinguishable concepts in a postmodern world.
This is the reason why a SCOTUS when pressed could not answer what a woman is.
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@Greyparrot
I honestly believe in a postmodernist world that this question can never be answered. When there are infinite genders, then there are no genders. Male can be female and female can be male ONLY because those 2 terms are both indistinguishable concepts in a postmodern world.
Yeah this kind of thinking can’t create, it can only destroy. Now gender is just another thing on a growing list of things that instead of providing stability just confuse us. But at the same time they seem to think gender is an extremely important concept and NOT subjective. It’s odd
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@RationalMadman
However you like to put it man, I'm pretty secure in my righteous correctness.
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@thett3
You've completely ignored my answer, in which case, have fun repeating your questions to a wall :]
the difference is the brain's epigenetic experience versus the social connotations labeled as one thing or another. The question you pose is as ridiculous as asking how its possible that someone is attracted to multiple genders and not one. The body can do different things at the same time, some under duress and others not.
I mean, if your wanting me to describe the individual differences between every female and male I wouldn't, because I'm not talking about that. Perhaps I wasn't clear, so I'll give you one more explanation. I am not making the claim that there is a difference between a female and a male mind intrinsically, there are some slightly different structures which don't impact too much in regards to brain matter in stereotypically considered male and female (which I've went on in length in a debate or two), but besides that that isn't the point Thett.
The point is how people experience gender, which you have seemingly missed.
Although it's called the female hormone, a man's body also makes estrogen. A healthy balance of estrogen and testosterone is important for sexual growth and development. When these hormones become imbalanced, your sexual development and function may be affected. In other words, being gay is just God's poor design.
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@Theweakeredge
I have no issue with your security in your position. You can feel however you want about your position.
Just because someone calls you transphobic for not buying their political BS doesn't mean you are. Remember kids, its a narrative and you can reject it completely like I do. Call me every name in the book, the transgender narrative doesn't put food on anyone's table or money in their bank account, not even transgenders.
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@Theweakeredge
Perhaps I wasn't clear, so I'll give you one more explanation. I am not making the claim that there is a difference between a female and a male mind intrinsically, there are some slightly different structures which don't impact too much in regards to brain matter in stereotypically considered male and female (which I've went on in length in a debate or two), but besides that that isn't the point Thett.The point is how people experience gender, which you have seemingly missed.
If it looks like I’ve completely ignored your answer it’s only because our positions are so far apart I’m having trouble understanding what you’re saying, and you probably feel the same way. But you’ve said before that gender is something people “discover”, I’m trying to understand where it comes from in the first place if it’s not tied to the body. “The experience of gender” isn’t a phrase that has any meaning to me.
Let me break it down a little further. If someone says “trans women are women” that implies that there is something “woman” about that person that isn’t the (unmodified) body. I’m trying to figure out what exactly you think that something is, and where it comes from
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@FLRW
Although it's called the female hormone, a man's body also makes estrogen. A healthy balance of estrogen and testosterone is important for sexual growth and development. When these hormones become imbalanced, your sexual development and function may be affected.
Yeah my strong suspicion is that the root of gender dysphoria for a lot of people is a chemical imbalance. That seems much easier to correct than trying to brute force the body into appearing as closely as possible to the opposite sex
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@thett3
Oh, I see the separation here: There are different parts of the body, some cause dyphoria - for example a trans man breasts or other stereotypically phenotypical female traits - and others identify gender - such as the part of your brain where consciousness is emergent from.
When I say experience, I am talking about the epigenetics of your brain and body, in other words, how your genetics interact with the stimuli from your surroundings.
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@Theweakeredge
Oh, I see the separation here: There are different parts of the body, some cause dyphoria - for example a trans man breasts or other stereotypically phenotypical female traits - and others identify gender - such as the part of your brain where consciousness is emergent from.When I say experience, I am talking about the epigenetics of your brain and body, in other words, how your genetics interact with the stimuli from your surroundings.
So you say it’s genetic, or at least has to do with genetics. Correct me if I’m wrong but you don’t think gender identity is a choice but rather something inherent to a person right? From an evolutionary perspective how does it make sense for a member of a sexually dimorphic species to be born into the “wrong” sex? Like what does that even mean? How would such a thing happen? What are individuals beyond the body? I’m asking because my theory is that what’s happening with most people suffering from gender dysphoria is a chemical imbalance or some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder stemming from a negative self image that could likely be corrected far easier than trying to remake their body into a mirror image of the opposite sex (impossible.) Your theory seems to be that gender identity is not only a real thing but it’s an inborn trait but that it also isn’t linked to biological sex which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Im not even being snarky, I’ve just never seen a pro-gender ideology person bridge the gap of gender being clearly associated with biological sex characteristics but not having anything to do with a specific individuals biology
Idk. I know this issue is very important to you and that you think I’m a bad person for questioning it. But it seems much much more plausible that, for example, Bruce Jenner, a person who spent the first 65 years of life as a high testosterone alpha male who has sired six children, has some kind of sex fetish that has consumed his entire personality or a mental illness or both rather than that he was secretly a woman the entire time.
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@thett3
I'll try to explain it all from my perspective, but I have to say - it seems like less its your theory and moreso your axiom. Whenever you engage with my arguments its not from a perspective of exploring the logical conclusions of my arguments but from your position with my argument set in like an axe to a tree trunk.
So you say it’s genetic, or at least has to do with genetics.
This right here (and I won't do this with every point, i just think this is important in particular) kinda' shows that at the very least you aren't entirely engaging with my arguments. And I don't mean that in a "oh well you're dishonest" way, I mean that in more of a, that's not exactly what I meant way. I should have been more clear or more research should have been done.
Epigenetics is not necessarily referring to the genetics themselves, its more or less along the lines of how your actions and the environment interact and cause your genes to behave differently. So take it more as a way of addressing a rate of change, almost like inches per year - I've grown 5 inches in 2020 - but in the way I'm using it, the rate of change of your identity. As it matures and gathers more depth, truths that are hidden, buried, or just not realized come to the forefront.
So your next point to really dig into is this more philosophical and/or skeptical approach to how someone of population y could possibly also be this contradictory x. And I could reiterate the same point I've been making, but I don't know/think its actually a solid way to approach your ideas in particular. You ask me if I believe a gender identity is a choice, and my answer would be - on the most part - no. Why is this? Its not a bad question, especially when not explained in proper depth.
I believe that gender identity is not a choice for the same I don't believe a black person might become offended at some exploitations of culture, not that its exactly the same, but hear me out for a second. From the moment your born you are socialized as something: male, white, black, female, smart, dumb, etc, etc - each and every part of your life contributes to a narrative which builds a social perspective of your identity, how the world sees you. Places which do this early on in development and significantly contribute to this are called social institutions, some examples would be: church, school, even your home, each of these places contribute to how people see you - but also - how you see yourself. The values you might aspire to, the values you might reject, the friends you consider part of your societal ingroup and outgroup.
All of this to say, society defines a lot about how you see yourself and how others see yourself. At a certain age, it is not just the fact that someone might have a penis and testicles that makes them a man, but how society has defined certain traits which you have, and establish your manhood. In order to more colloquially demonstrate this point, consider how a lot of guys are bullied for not being manly enough, for being "cucks" or for being "cringe", which makes them, at least to some parts of society, "not men". So, going over all of this, how do we get back to my first sentence? Well, that first sentence is establishing that how society and we treat someone's identity - created not necessarily by initial gene change, but by our interactions with others and the values society set upon us- can drastically affect them as a person.
So then, in the same regard, a lot of trans people don't really choose to be offended by what has been created by experience, by interaction, by socialization. However, instead of being created by a slow adoption of principles and values, it is the recognition that unlike others - who have that experience - they have a fundamental difference of interpretation. It is very hard to precisely explain the idea even for a lot of trans people I talk to, but I think the very core of it is: that same identity that most people go to: to either fail or succeed by, is a non-starter in the first place.
There is a sort of kick-back of the idea at its conception, this is why its not really or even necessarily a dysphoria idea, while it can certainly follow, being trans or non-binary in general is not necessarily the cause of the issue. Like what some people might make in analogy to people who are overweight and feeling dysmorphic, with trans people instead there is a rather fascinating thing is that how society views them and associates their body with is what causes them gender dysphoria.
For example, I've dated trans men who have had no problems with their natural body - they just wanted to be called by their preferred name and associated as a man. This is the fundamental flaw I see in your ideology, that for every 1 trans woman who is having surgery, there are 10 others who do not, perhaps they go on hormones? A lot don't though. And while some of it is for money or laws, a lot of it is because they don't want to.
Why would that be if it was like anorexia or other issues where there is a false belief or an overexaggerated perception of negative stigmas - because, simply put, the dysphoria is referring to a conflict between an internal perception, an identity, and the false belief or overexaggerated perception that society has of them, in this case, their adherence to the same social fabric of gender as their sex is the false belief.
Because what I've skipped over, is that sex - or how your hormones, chromosomes and some other stuff come together to structure you - and your brain's idea of things are pretty different. Because your brain is not a closed system, it constantly is addressed, and whenever the idea of gender is introduced - the brain maps out experiences which relate to one gender or another - and most people map that with sex, but not some. Sorry if its confusing, sorry if its philosophical, but fundamentally this is what I can give you. I'm not coming at you like a debater, i don't think that's helpful in comprehension, I would recommend though, finding some people who have actually experienced it and asking them in a non-aggressive way.
And even if you don't believe that they are what they say they are, with the empathy to understand that they are hated and are feeling fundamentally lesser as people because they feel ignored.
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@Theweakeredge
Thank you for your fascinating post. I'm only responding to a bit of it not in an attempt to ignore it but because I think this comes closer to the root of the disagreement
I believe that gender identity is not a choice for the same I don't believe a black person might become offended at some exploitations of culture, not that its exactly the same, but hear me out for a second. From the moment your born you are socialized as something: male, white, black, female, smart, dumb, etc, etc - each and every part of your life contributes to a narrative which builds a social perspective of your identity, how the world sees you. Places which do this early on in development and significantly contribute to this are called social institutions, some examples would be: church, school, even your home, each of these places contribute to how people see you - but also - how you see yourself. The values you might aspire to, the values you might reject, the friends you consider part of your societal ingroup and outgroup.
This I think is the big point where we disagree, specifically the highlighted bit. While what you are saying is of course true, it's not the whole truth. Imagine for example a black person of 100% Kenyan ancestry who is adopted by a white family, raised in a super white area where he never meets other black people, etc. There are ways in which that person wouldn't be "black" as we think of a stereotypical black person. He almost certainly wouldn't speak in AAVE. He might love craft beer and cute artisanal pizzas and other honkey bullshit. You'd probably think he'd experience racism but we can at least imagine a scenario in which that doesn't happen. But there are still ways, important ways, in which that individual is Black/African. His Africanness is written into every single cell in his body. There are identities that can be chosen, and there are identities that cannot--a person can stop being a Christian if they deny the divinity of Jesus, and a person who has identified as an atheist every single day of their life until today can identify as a Christian in a moments notice if they accept the divinity of Jesus. But no matter what you want, you don't "decide" your ancestry or your sexuality. How important these identities are to you can change or be impacted by your environment and experiences but the underlying identity is still there
They've done studies on identical twins who are raised apart, and they are still scarily similar preferring the same foods, have similar taste in women/men, similar politics, etc. The environment and the culture are very important for shaping who you are but a scary amount is just inborn and not something anyone can control. If I had to guess you would likely think that the social/environmental aspects of an identity are more important, but I would completely disagree. I am firmly in the nature > nurture camp and think that the underlying genetic differences between groups of people however you slice them are the actual differences, and all of the cultural and societal stuff is window dressing.
And that's what really drives my skepticism of this entire issue. Outside of a few people (who are kind of exceptions that prove the rule since they tend to have other issues) an individuals maleness or femaleness is written into literally every cell in their body, and nothing can change that. Sex truly is a binary. And it seems to me that what happens often is that a person will look at a stereotype of their sex and think that doesn't fit them. "I was born a girl, but I don't like frilly dresses, I love sports, I don't feel comfortable with the changes to my body being brought on by puberty, I might have an attraction to women...I must have been meant to be born a man!" But in reality they're just a woman who doesn't fit multiple stereotypes, and that's okay. They should be accepted as they are instead of feeling like they are the ones who need to change because they don't fit into a stereotype. "You" could not have been born as anything other than what you were born as. An individual born of the opposite sex born to your parents instead of you would not be you, they would be someone else. It's a trivial point but an important one, there is literally no possible world in which I am a biological woman, on the most fundamental level "I" am a specific DNA sequence, there was no "me" before I was conceived and so I couldn't have been "meant" to be born as anything else. Nobody got it wrong
For example, I've dated trans men who have had no problems with their natural body - they just wanted to be called by their preferred name and associated as a man. This is the fundamental flaw I see in your ideology, that for every 1 trans woman who is having surgery, there are 10 others who do not, perhaps they go on hormones? A lot don't though. And while some of it is for money or laws, a lot of it is because they don't want to.
Doesn't that get you thinking a little, though? If someone is born a woman, and doesn't do anything to change that they just want to be referred to as a man...do you really in your heart of hearts think that they are in the same class of "gender" as your dad? Or someone like Jenner, and alpha's alpha Olympic athlete, that person was just confused for 65 years and has always been in the same "gender" category as your mom? To be clear if I knew such a person in my life I would call them what they wanted to be called, but that wouldn't change my thoughts on it privately. Even if you accept that gender is something not inherently tied to biological sex would you consider the possibility that there are at least some individuals who are wrong, or going through a phase, or whatever?
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@thett3
The twins point is really interesting. I predict twins separated with femininity to the males or masculinity to the females would make brilliant Kritiks to trans propaganda.
You would consistently find that the macho and/or butch lesbian or bisexual/pansexual living her life as a woman is often far happier and content with what she is than the trans man who is still trying to feel comfortable that his body allows him (well, originally her) to act and be seen in the way that he wishes. I would love for this to be looked into and a positive angle taken on the parenting of cis masculine females and cis feminine males. This really has to be looked into.
Drag queens and sissy-kink men are often much happier with their actual male identity than trans women who never switch back or address what they really are.
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@Theweakeredge
This might be an interesting question…you said you dated a trans man who didn’t do anything to their body and just wanted to call themselves a man. Do you consider yourself a homosexual then? The person you dated presumably had two XX chromosomes, breasts and a vagina but if they are a man that would make you gay. Do you think of yourself as a gay man because you dated a person with those characteristics? Serious question
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@thett3
Probably identifies as pansexual (pro-trans version of bi)
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@RationalMadman
You would consistently find that the macho and/or butch lesbian or bisexual/pansexual living her life as a woman is often far happier and content with what she is than the trans man who is still trying to feel comfortable that his body allows him (well, originally her) to act and be seen in the way that he wishes. I would love for this to be looked into and a positive angle taken on the parenting of cis masculine females and cis feminine males. This really has to be looked into.Drag queens and sissy-kink men are often much happier with their actual male identity than trans women who never switch back or address what they really are.
Yeah I know a gay person who is apoplectic about this stuff because he sees it as the erasure of gay identity, leading many gay boys into being sterilized or otherwise damaged due to the inevitable confusion puberty causes
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@thett3
Yes I am pretty sure we both know him... ;)
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@thett3
I don't entirely agree to that, some trans people are strongly leaning towards gay in their new identity meaning they were originally leaning towards heterosexuality.
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@thett3
I consider myself omnisexual, because I do not have a preference when it comes to gender. I'm more attracted to personalities.
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@thett3
To answer you last question first - I would consider them in the same "class" of gender, I answer this first because it reveals an underlying bias in your thought-process. Do with that what you will.
So... here's the difference between gender and race: race doesn't really have a biological counterpart, like gender does in sex, the most some could argue is a consistency in tone (but even thats not true), people in the same "race" have more differences, genetically, apart from each other than they do from people of different races.
If we were to engage on a more social level, then we can get into this... poor analogy a little more: because, this isn't the best one - for example, if I were to use money to make an example (since I claim gender is a social identity with real impact, similar to money in my opinion), then I'd be making a poor analogy, because unlike money - people are people have very different social interactions than money. Similarly, race and gender are extremely separate in the ways that social interaction occur.
But again, ignoring this, and going on from a raw social perspective while ignoring the inconsistencies: if that person experiences a "white" experience fundamentally, what part of them if fundamentally African? Their skin tone? Again, keep in mind this is an extremely non-comparative example, but even if it was, I wouldn't see your point.
In trans people there is a dichotomy, the name for which we give physical characteristics, and the experience of the individual: i think what you kinda' have to realize, is that that name it doesn't hold some sacred right, its a tool we use a humans. But if someone doesn't find that tool helpful, than I care about that person - and, as I have shown before - most people are a lot better at identifying their own experience than we are.
Transphobic = "everything I don't like"
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@Theweakeredge
Respectfully, I think our responses revealed both of the biases that underly our worldviews. I can tell you’re getting annoyed at me but this has been very helpful for understanding the other side. For example, my post was primarily based on genetics whereas your post was primarily based on socialization. That actually explains a lot
But again, ignoring this, and going on from a raw social perspective while ignoring the inconsistencies: if that person experiences a "white" experience fundamentally, what part of them if fundamentally African? Their skin tone? Again, keep in mind this is an extremely non-comparative example, but even if it was, I wouldn't see your point.
Whether “race” as a concept has a genetic basis is a different question that we can ignore for the purposes of this discussion. The reason I specified that the person was “Kenyan” was because even if *race* isn’t genetically real, ethnicity certainly is. A Kenyan person is going to have many genetic differences from an Icelandic person, who will have many genetic differences with a Han Chinese person etc, because of the tens of thousands of years of different selective pressures between these groups leading to divergent evolution.
The point I was trying to make was that in the case of, say, a Kenyan person adopted and raised in Iceland, even if there is no cultural differences between him and others in Iceland, there is an important way in which he is still Kenyan, namely his genes. His ancestry is written into every single cell in his body. It is inescapable. Socialization isn’t everything because humans are not blank slates. This is why identical twins still behave very similarly even when raised apart.
How I think this relates to gender is that similarly a persons male or femaleness is written into every single cell in their body, inescapable. I don’t view it as an identity that can be chosen or discarded at will, you simply are a male/female or you are not. It doesn’t matter how you’re socialized or how you feel about it, if you’re born female unless there is some other, unrelated, issue you will still have female organs and hormones, different muscle mass and bone density than a male, etc. Part of the reason I’m so skeptical of transgenderism is that the differences between men and women are so vast and multi faceted that the changes made are basically just window dressing. Jenner doesn’t look like a woman because of a pair of fake boobs…he just looks ridiculous. And everyone knows it deep down
The core disagreement seems to be that your worldview rests on the assumption of the blank slate, and this sort of thing is the logical conclusion of that. But the blank slate is a myth. Nature > nurture
In trans people there is a dichotomy, the name for which we give physical characteristics, and the experience of the individual: i think what you kinda' have to realize, is that that name it doesn't hold some sacred right, its a tool we use a humans. But if someone doesn't find that tool helpful, than I care about that person - and, as I have shown before - most people are a lot better at identifying their own experience than we are.
I truly don’t understand. If the “tool” of gender doesn’t apply to someone than why don’t they just be the person they are instead of trying to brute force their bodies into an exaggerated stereotype of the opposite sex? If a person is a dude who wants to wear a dress just be a dude who wants to wear a dress. It doesn’t make him any less of a biological man