Total posts: 219
-->
@thett3
@Bones
If we wanted to address the risks it seems obvious that one necessary step would be validating the concept of nonbinary, or other genders, or validating non-traditional concepts of what a woman can be - this way trans people would feel like they could identify the way they want to without inward pressure to conform to a traditional idea of what a woman is through medical interventions. The idea that the trans and nonbinary genders are invalid is a major factor pushing people toward trying to "pass".
Created:
-->
@Bones
Why the need to mention conservative? Who mentioned the political divide? We need not any more division in society, do we?
Because the purpose of wedge issues is precisely to focus the conversation on those subjects which will peel undecided people over to the conservative side over time. Whether or not any substantive discussion actually takes place, simply the fact that these are the topics being discussed tilts things in a conservative direction. Of course something like detransitioning is a conversation that should take place, but it is a very sensitive topic which should be discussed by qualified and unbiased people, not conservatives given that they are constitutionally incapable of acting in good faith. The idea that these are the subjects we are discussing is something that conservative think tanks and people like Peter Thiel have put millions of dollars into to ensure it would be the framework and focus which directs attention. Why do you think Jordan Peterson has been pumping out videos repeating the exact same lies for so many years now, with no progress, engaged debate or intellectual curiosity? It's because those are the talking points which benefit the conservative think tanks which are where his money comes from. Therefore these posts are as much advertisements as they are intellectual engagement - something like the OP is not the kind of thing someone would write whose goal was actually to make life better for trans people.
So you didn't read the OP then.
Of course I read it.
Created:
-->
@coal
Because they do not exist. No one actually believes this idiocy.
You're right about that, because in general people who defend "trans ideology" do so on the basis that non-binary or trans expressions of identity are valid, not that every slightly feminine teenager should be castrated or whatever else you wrote about in the OP.
Created:
-->
@Bones
I also note that, for some odd reason, the prolific refuters of this stereotypically "right wing" belief are no where to be found.
Because it's entirely boring, it's almost like the only people who actually care about these wedge issues like "gender affirming care," puberty blockers etc. are conservatives. The more interesting question is whether the transgender / queer changes to the underlying concept of gender are valid, which is the subtext of this whole post. But conservatives prefer to use wedge issues like a shield to make their position easier to defend.
Why would we want to get into the weeds of issues that are clearly complicated medical questions that should be left to professionals to decide, in conversation with the individuals involved? However I agree with the OP that the field of psychology is largely comprised of nonsense.
Created:
Well, we can place focus on the fact that rbelivb has no idea what he is talking about, and approach any emerging branches of deliberation with this proposition in consideration. Nothing I would rule out of my expectations of course, but a statement that may serve the utility of anyone conversant.
Unblock me immediately!
Created:
-->
@thett3
Yea I want black people to do better by not having a homicide rate 10x higher than their white counterparts. I don’t think having a homicide rate 10x higher than white people is something inherent to “blackness” and “black culture.” I think we can and should expect this change to happen, rather than making excuses
These are truisms, of course nobody arguing that more homicides should happen.
Created:
-->
@thett3
In the case of crimes those actions are already illegal so I don’t know what “institutional change” you’re angling for. It’s an interesting conversation because it shows just how thoroughly entrenched in the outer locus of control liberals are.
The "institutional change" would need to be something that precisely, gives those communities back their locus of control. It is a question of what they own, what they control materially in terms of land, property, influence, and so on. Not whatever psychological theorizing that conservatives are trying to use, to basically muddy the water and distract from the social stratification that exists in reality. Conservatives want black people to "do better" in some moralistic sense, but do you really think they want the balance of cultural influence to shift in any significant way? Conservatives want black people to "do better" in the sense of toiling anonymously, of becoming invisible and making their place in society less ambiguous and more legible according to existing norms and standards. They want blackness and its associated problems to disappear. In that sense, there is no true conservative sense of black culture - as TWS said, they believe that there is no validity to black culture.
I’m incredibly skeptical that your average leftist would do anything other than completely lose their shit if the type of coddling language was used for white people as well. “What Dylan Roof did was bad but we have to understand that black people actually do commit more crime. Obviously he shouldn’t have done what he did but his race hatred probably wouldn’t have come into existence if black people didn’t commit more crimes” totally reasonable, morally defensible, and non cancellable statement right? Please
Now you have escaped into the territory of whataboutism and totally irrelevant comparisons.
Created:
-->
@thett3
Change a few words and it sounds like an article posted in a southern newspaper in the 1950s responding to criticism of segregation and lynchings
The fact that you would disagree with such a letter implies, that you either think that whites were genetically predisposed to the cruel behaviours of slave owners, or otherwise that the institution of slavery and the crimes of slave owners could only be addressed by individual slaveowners "taking responsibility" for their behaviour and not through institutional or legal change. In fact, these behaviours of slave owners were remediated by abolishing the institution as a whole, not by some medicalized beuraucratic management of the psychology of perpetrators as individuals. The shift to individualism in the founding of America as a capitalist republic was correlated with an intensification and racialization of the institution of slavery.
Created:
-->
@TWS1405
It has less to do with poverty and more to do with fatherlessness, lack of a proper upbringing by the single parent, lack of discipline, and lack of the sense and importance of taking personal responsibility and accountability for their choices and actions.
You seem to be making a lot of abstract moralistic statements without outlining what the cause is, or what the solution would be.
In my view such terms like "personal responsibility" are heavily codified with assumptions and baggage. The fact is that these communities have been denied rights and wealth - what you are basically saying is that they lack enthusiasm to play someone else's game. Implicitly you are denying the validity of black culture, and thereby denying the full personhood of the black community.
Created:
-->
@TWS1405
It stands to reason that any community disproportionately living in poverty would have higher crime rates. The visible crimes of any society are committed, and exist, to the extent that it has developed an underclass - the invisible crimes are committed to the extent that it has developed an elite.
The question, though, is why you think this is the case, or what you are trying to infer or accomplish by amplifying these statistics. Are you implying that these people are genetically inferior, or do you believe that their crime rates could be improved by moving the black community out of poverty?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@DebateAllDaTings
In Hegel's Logic, nothingness is really the same concept as pure being - both taking the form of an absolute lack of determination. Each "vanishes into its opposite" and this dialectic of being and nothingness resolves into their truth as becoming.
Created:
-->
@oromagi
VOTE +1 Yes
Created:
-->
@RationalMadman
Also, you used the word 'eugenics' to refer to a culture defending its values, recently on these forums... So, if anyone has no right to talk about bastardised usage of the term it's you more than any other user on this website.
Of course, because I do not view any of these issues as separate. For example, the division between "ethnicity" and "race," the idea of "civic nationalism" - which I view as abstractions which do not describe reality. Likewise, I do not support eugenics, but we cannot simply view the projects of modern states as totally disconnected from eugenics, or the basic problems or questions which gave rise to that idea. In fact, in many cases the problem of eugenics has simply been sublimated, but the same dynamic is still taking place if only in an indirect way. The questions of politics have receded to the themes of "health" and "security" and all other themes have been made secondary or erased entirely, which is not inherently different from the fascist ethos. That is also why I object to the Nordic model and its theme of a "healthy society." Philosopher Agamben also commented how much of the state reaction to COVID took the form of reducing human life to something being managed, as a biological organism or "bare life," a security or health risk, and the distancing of individuals, withdrawing from everyday social interaction, creates a dangerously impersonal environment in which there is a precedent for totalitarianism.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@sadolite
The sole purpose of political labels is to demonize and marginalize opposing points of view and people. They are a (insert political label) , that's the bad guy. That's why I don't identify with any political ideology. You are only as good as its worst tyrant if you do. Your political labels are just that, yours. You are no position to label anyone anything, lest you be ready to be mislabeled yourself and accept it.
Sounds like something a right-winger would say.
Created:
-->
@RationalMadman
'Ethnic genocide' is used correctly by you only if we realise ethnicity not physical.
Ethnicity certainly has a physical aspect of ancestry, heritage, or lineage. Especially when we are talking in the context of the nation. I don't know what you mean by framing ethnicity as entirely conceptual as some sort of definitional matter. We know that ethnicity, culture, and race are in fact tightly correlated in reality.
So when you say genocide of an ethnicity you are using flavorful language to mean a culture defending itself against unwanted pollution from cultures that have direct core value clashes.
I would say that the idea that a culture is "defending itself" from the mere existence of another culture, is itself flavorful language.
I would like you to wonder what happens in the long run if all these cultures defend themselves ethnically (and they do, they are all very ethnocentric internally, set foot in their countries as an immigrant and you will be brutally pressured to accept their way of life and held at arm's length as an outsider, the white supremacy in the western world is the normal nationalist and ethnic pride held in other cultures immigrating to the Western countries).
You are erasing and ignoring all of the differences between those cultures. "White culture" or "Western culture" etc., have a very different structure, geopolitical status, and history, from any other culture. Being that, all of the "ethnicities" you speak about by necessity, exist within the paradigm of the "nation-state" created, enforced, and maintained by the Western culture which then "defends itself" against them.
I am left-wing and progressive to the core and I know that the Conservative white locals in our western cultures are overall tame af in their ideology compared to the equivalent innthe very nations that these immigrants are coming from and it is about time we stop demonising and start uniting and negotiating.
Apparently since you are left-wing and liberal, and you think these other cultures are inherently against left-wing liberals, doesn't that make you a "Western" supremacist? A lot of what you are saying hangs on this tenuous distinction between ethnicity and race.
Created:
The idea that Margaret Sanger was a racist white supremacist who wanted to use abortion to wipe out the "inferior" races is a common refrain of the conservative opponents of abortion. However, closer investigation shows that the situation is more complex. In fact, Sanger saw herself as a proponent of "eugenics" - but in a broader sense of eugenics as the genetic improvement of the human race. This is an idea which certainly deserves criticism, but there is a difference between this kind of eugenics, and white supremacy. In fact, Sanger saw her project as helping the black communities, and wanted to communicate the benefits to them. She did not see the promotion of abortion in black communities as an attempt to wipe them out, but instead wanted to work with black leaders such as W. E. B. DuBois to help "a group notoriously underprivileged and handicapped to a large measure by a 'caste' system that operates as an added weight upon their efforts to get a fair share of the better things in life."
I think it is magnificent that we are in the ground floor, helping Negroes to control their birth rate, to reduce their high infant and maternal death rate, to reduce their high infant and maternal death rate, to maintain better standards of health and living for those already born, and to create better opportunities for those who will be born.
The attempt to simply project conservative ideas about abortion as harming the demographics of a group, and the connotations of "eugenics" as inherently racist, in order to paint Sanger as a "third rail" untouchable figure, is a genuine example of the "cancel culture" which conservatives claim to oppose.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Danielle
Right-wingers at me: Despite you being an advocate of private property, free speech, free markets, free trade, gun rights, school choice, private health insurance and defunding the most expensive public institutions, you're a leftist!Me: If those positions don't make me a right-winger, then what positions do?Them: Oh, you know the ones...lol
I think there is actually a new consensus forming of pro-government anti-immigration which is basically the consolidation of an interventionist welfare state around an ethnic group. It is a configuration with a long history and there is nothing really contradictory about it. But it's very doubtful that those people taking this perspective are fully aware of what they are buying into.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@RationalMadman
Fix the foster care system, fix the inequality leading to the terrible lives
I doubt you personally are going to be fixing any of those things, you are just telling other people to do it on a forum.
So in reality what will happen, is that there are a lot more children being born, whose parents would have aborted them if they could. Children with divorced parents, no parents, abusive households, living in poverty, etc. Those are things that have a huge effect on how someone's life turns out. And you have provided no positive reason to have more children born under those conditions other than moralizing.
Created:
-->
@RationalMadman
When you are talking about "Republicans," obviously you aren't talking about American Republicans. You are talking about the ethnic core of that culture. The "nation failing" as Greyparrot mentioned as part of the social darwinist logic, directly as a result of policies like what you have outlined. You are talking about actively using policy to strategically destroy that ethnicity. What am I missing here?
Created:
-->
@Greyparrot
The entire purpose of a nation is to safeguard a culture from destruction. If the culture is inherently unfit, the nation fails, as happened countless times in history.
When you talk about, how their "conservative culture" needs to die out, what you are describing is literally genocide.
Created:
-->
@RationalMadman
A nation ensuring the people entering respect its values is not eugenics
You define "its values" as being open and liberal, then you claim that it must preserve that by maintaining the ethnic homogeneity of that nation, does it not seem like what you are preserving is something other than a "value"? Clearly this concept of values is an abstraction layered on top of the nationalist politics which maintains the closed system, the "closed commercial state" of the corporate system.
Created:
-->
@RationalMadman
I am talking about the environment in which that culture was established in the Nordic countries such as Denmark etc, in which eugenic sterilization policies were an essential part of that, and directly connected to the same ideology which fostered the formulation of the "welfare state" idea. Now, as you talk about "restricting immigration" that is a continuation of the culture that was established on those grounds, and cannot be disconnected from its history. And if you look at what you are saying, it is just the same logic transferred to the geopolitical sphere, evidenced by Greyparrot:
If the culture is inherently unfit, the nation fails, as happened countless times in history.
You completely ignore the question of how such an ethnically homogenous group was established, so that it is necessary to safeguard the inside-outside distinction that makes the welfare state possible.
Created:
Why not just skip the pretense and give everyone in the population an "IQ" test? Only the smartest people get to be citizens, everyone else is kicked out. It'll be like Squid Game, only with nation states.
Created:
-->
@RationalMadman
I do not support the lack of direct integration. Only Scandinavia does direct integration, they force the immigrants to study for exams on western, leftist values if they wish to become true citizens at any point and even to do business and long-term work there they need to do it.This is something the left puke at but do you really think no immigrants are voting for Republicans? These are severely conservative Christians and Muslims, use your damn head!
You are talking about filtering the ethnic composition of the nation in order to preserve a certain ideological and cultural outcome. It's an indirect form of eugenics.
Parallel things were done in what is called the "Nordic model" today, and it is directly tied to fascism, the consolidation of the corporate monopoly state, as well as colonialism. You are promoting a form of social darwinism.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@RationalMadman
go ahead and say I'm not a real left-winger like you know my fucking life and values
I don't know why you took it so personally? I didn't say anything about you.
And it's not that it's better to be left wing, I just noticed that the balance of left vs right on the site changed. But maybe it's better to say, it has moved more toward the middle in general.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mharman
There’s still a strong leftist presence here. Benjamin, Oromagi, FLRW, Double_R, Castin, Lady3Keys, Danielle, TheWeakerEdge, Speedrace, others, etc.
Maybe it's just that people have gotten older and there's more of a conservative tendency in general, since a lot of who you named are pretty centrist as far as I know, but maybe so are the conservatives. Less of a tendency to out-there opinions. Just my observation. Even the alt-righters that used to spam DART are gone now.
Created:
Posted in:
From what I remember of debate.org, there was an abundance of anarcho-communists, progressives and generally leftists on the site.
Today, on DART it seems like the dynamic has changed, so that mostly it's Trump supporters, anti-woke people, etc. talking about cancel culture or whatever, and then a handful of center-left liberals.
Why has the balance changed so much?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
As this is going around in circles, would you like to have a debate on this topic? I propose "THBT: We ought to define "women" in terms of sex, as opposed to gender".
Sure, it sounds good.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
I want to be clear that if this isn't an intentional strawman, this is not my view at all. My view isn't that words can't change or evolve, my view is that when we do decide to change terms, we ought to do so because the new term is better, not because it makes some people happy.
But in any case, where you use the language in a new way, someone who thinks your use is worse could muddy the water by calling your statement "false" according to their previous definition, making it appear that you are confused about the underlying reality.
Also, your position might allow for changes in definition, but it does not seem to allow for changes in syntax or grammar, since you believe that all nouns should be definable in a particular way that you prefer. Even if their language is "meaningless" according to your standard, that doesn't necessarily make it "wrong" - just as a lot of art would also be considered meaningless in terms of a strict semantic definition of meaning as reference to an object. Yet it functions as a legitimate vehicle for self-expression.
Autonomy? Are you denying their sense of self and desired expression?
Yes.
Also again I could make a shift then to, instead of describing age, to use species as an example.
- Gender is the way one feels in relation to their sex
- Speeses is the way in which one feels in relation to their species.
Ought we now take "speeses" over "species"? Under your view, it would seem so.
I don't know why, every time I answer this you seem to just ask the same question again, or switch to another of the three examples. You haven't actually shown what is wrong with the answers I have given.
But regardless, I do not actually need to be able to articulate why I reject it in any case, just as you are generally free to disrespect a trans person by calling them whatever you want to.
But how we use language can obfuscates and covers truth. If we I take the terms "1+1" and redefine them so that technically, what I mean when referencing "1+1" is different to you, I'm obviously muddying the waters.
But which truths you think should be made transparent and culturally emphasized is actually an ideological position. If I published my full name and address on this site, it would be a more transparent expression of the truth, and the fact that I use an anonymous profile means I am obfuscating that truth. If we all walked around naked we would know the truth about each other more than if we wear clothes. A culture's distance from the brute facts of biology measures its level of advancement in civilization.
But it does, because the term "women" for the entirety of linguistic history, has been grounded in biology, and redefining it without a good reason (or even a definition you can provide) is counter productive.
Notwithstanding the edge cases and wedge issues emphasized by conservatives (e.g. being "forced" to use someone's preferred pronouns) the trans issue really is an issue of freedom of expression. It is about the freedom of expression of trans people, to treat their identity as a form of art, as self-expression, and that is the "good reason" to innovate upon linguistic history.
Also, I'm not sure your claim that trans women aren't aware they aren't actual women is true. They want to compete in women's sports, be legally women, enter women's facilities and demand you are transphobic if you don't date them purely on the grounds that they a trans.
I didn't say that, and in fact I said that the statement that "trans women aren't actual women" is ideological, along with the idea that their biological sex should dictate their external behaviors and expression.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
No I still think it is wrong, trans women are men, under the best, most scientific and useful definition. What you have done is essentially saying "1+1 is 15 because well under my definition of the word, it's the case". You haven't proved why the term is necessary, or how it helps.
You are basically building into your view the idea that it's never legitimate for people to use words in a new way, to use different definitions or grammatical rules. How can you enforce that onto that community? You say that because they are less that 1% of the population, it's not legitimate. How big would the proportion need to be before they are allowed to innovate on how they understand and use language?
You say you don't support age because it obfuscates the difference between biological boys and men. That's a perfectly good critique, and I'm confused as to why you don't apply it to gender.
I don't know why you keep asking this question, because I already said that it's because children lack autonomy. I also answered why it's different for race and explained why this whole kind of comparison really doesn't matter, because even if I can't articulate a reason why they're different, we aren't obligated to apply the same rules to every instance that has some superficial similarity to it. My position is not that every proposed change to language by any community should be automatically accepted and adopted. I didn't actually ever say that you or anyone else needs to accept and adopt the language of trans, I am only saying that I choose to, and pointing out the misleading framing around the issue of language vs truth.
The reasons on the other side is literally to make >1% percent of the society correct. Oughtn't truth prioritize such an endeavour?
You already agreed that it isn't an issue of truth, but about how we use language.
But I know all this. I know that Bones isn't a real name, so people who argue that it is not my given legal name are correct. I don't mind that. Bones is a different label for a different purpose. Whatever my name is, whether it Bone or Bones, does not and cannot change any objective fact about me.
The same thing applies with biological sex. Trans women are aware that their biological sex is not female, and their preferred gender pronoun implies nothing about their biology.
I've already established why this name-gender link is fraudulent - the term "man" is a noun, and you still haven't given me a cogent definition of the term and thus your entire argument is void on that ground.
So your problem with "trans ideology" comes down to, we shouldn't be using a noun in a way that doesn't follow the usual grammatical rules for nouns? It seems like a trivial issue to me.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
But that's the same as saying "ok I'll give a new definition of species which is made up and i'll therefore say I'm not a human". It's silly. There's no point of it. You haven't achieved anything by creating a new word. That's like me saying "God as defined as that which is me" exists. You haven't done anything meaningful. You haven't argued why your definition is good, why it is necessary, or why it helps in any way.
But at least we have established the terms of the disagreement. We seem to agree that the statement that "trans women aren't women" or that they are "delusional" is a piece of empty rhetoric, and wrong.
Then, we agree that the debate is really about whether the changes to language proposed by trans are good for society, useful, helpful, etc. Which is different from debating whether their claims are biologically incorrect or delusional.
You say that you value the biological difference between sexes, that you don't want it obscured. That is what you value, but that needs to be weighed against the reasons on the opposite side. One reason for the new language would be that there are a large enough minority of people who simply want to identify that way, that they prefer or enjoy it. We would be keeping that language in lieu of the biological emphasis to allow the freedom to that group of people to express themselves as they choose to. You might think that it is a trivial reason, but it depends if the reasons against are negligible enough. Personally I don't care much about the biological differences between sexes being culturally emphasized, and I value the freedom of expression over the public signaling of biological traits.
So it was created post hoc purely for the sake of saving gender ideology. This is like what creationists do - making up a new bit of your theory to make it indefensible. Real science is such that a certain conclusion is not presupposed in the hypothesis. I do not say "ok I want to make a case for trans people so I'll make a term", they say, "ok trans people exist, let's find out why".
Also, I disagree with your framing of this as a scientific question. Imagine I said "you are lying that your name is Bones, it's because you're delusional and ashamed of your real name." Obviously, I would be ignoring the distinction between your actual name and your username. It would not make sense to make the case by saying, that your name is scientifically, legally, your real name. Your username is your chosen username, and there is nothing scientific about it other than verifying what your chosen username is. Does that make your username completely meaningless, because it has no basis in scientific or legal reality? No, because it provides you with the freedom of expression to identify yourself that way.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
I agree completely.
Sure, I can't say "your gender is not women"
I'm glad you have acknowledged this because that has been my main contention from the beginning.
I don't support gender because I precisely think it would obfuscate the distinction between biological men and biological women and cause much confusion.
I understand that is your perspective, but as you acknowledged, the claim that "it is objectively false" that trans women are women is still wrong.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
If you deny this, then there is simply no point with this conversation as we hold fundamentally different values. I value what is true, what can be measurable. You value satisfying people, where "truth" is a mere compliment.
You say that you value objective truth and logic over feelings, yet it seems like when I make an argument you reject it and revert to the same perspective, because of your underlying feeling that changing the definition of gender is wrong, vacuous or repugnant. The statement that it is "objectively false" that trans women are women is an ideological statement of preference masquerading as a statement of objective fact.
So when someone identifies as female, they do so because they want to be connotated with some of that "baggage". What is that baggage? If it's "femininity", that doesn't do it, because I can just say, "well you can be a man who is feminine without any issues". See, any "baggage" you stipulate will not work. Let's say, they want the visual aesthetics - this won't do it, because then you can be a man with long hair, long nails etc. Furthermore, people constantly dress as things they are not (cosplay, furries) yet understand the distinction between a costume and their identity.
They want to, e.g. have long hair and nails, and adopt the label of "female" because they want to inhabit the social role associated with that label. This is different from the definition.
- Aje ideologists created the word "aje" which is the way in which one feels in relation to their age. Age is biological, it is a part of who you are. Aje is the way I feel about sex, the way I wish to be recognised.
In what way is this false?
If you said that you are 20 but your "aje" is 50 because you feel very old, and I said "It is objectively false that your aje is 50" I would be wrong, because aje is a constructed term that you have defined as one's feeling about their age. It's not that it's false, but I don't support the use of this constructed term because it would obfuscate the distinction between biological adults and biological children. In the case of gender, you are the one claiming that it's objectively false, and my claim is that you would need to oppose it on the grounds of its social consequences because calling it objectively false doesn't make sense.
If I told you I identify as "gluglu", and you ask what that is, and I say "what people who identify as gluglu identify as", this would be absurd, yet it's literally exactly what you are doing.
It would be a label that people could apply to themselves. If I said "It is false that you are gluglu and you are delusional for thinking you are gluglu," that wouldn't work because by your own definition you actually are gluglu. I just might not find this a useful term, for the same reason that constructed languages like Esperanto rarely gain widespread usage.
Well I can just use occam's razor and just say "we have this term sex which perfectly explains our biology, and thus gender is an ontological burden and unnecessary". Just like how creating the term "aje" is unnecessary because "age" is a perfectly good concept, so to is creating gender. Gender serves no explanatory power, except to post hoc aid the gender ideologist.
It allows us to know how trans people prefer to identify themselves.
Even if the "social consequence" were that everyone were happy, this wouldn't make it right. If killing your 2nd born child guaranteed you prosperity, there may be a benefit for doing it, but that would not mean that it is good, or an ought.
You could make that kind of moral claim too. That's still different from saying that it's "false" which muddies the water for the entire discussion.
Also, what do you think about apotemnophilia - they, just like gender, have a burning need to edit their body to fit their self identification.
Even in the case of trans, I would be conservative about any drastic medical changes people decide to make to themselves. I think they should err on the side of being comfortable in their body as it is, and expressing themselves how they want to without the medical procedure. That said, I don't take a strong stance on it because I don't understand it. Whether things like what you mentioned should be legal is a complicated question.
Also also, if you are comfortable answering, are you trans?
No.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
Why bother with "internal sense" when external science can determine whether you are male or female?
That is your opinion, and I could just as easily ask why bother with external science when people can use their internal sense to decide if they are male or female.
You are not only speaking nonconformatively, but in a vacuous way.
Whether or not you consider it vacuous, it is a language game that functions well enough for the people involved to understand who and what is being referred to.
If I said, "a cat is that which is a cat", how would you respond?
You drink water, but not bleach, even though both are liquids. We don't need to apply the same behavior to every other example that has some superficial similarity to it. Just because we decide to use one noun like a label, doesn't mean we need to do it with every noun.
So you admit that there is baggage with the term "female". So then it's not just a pure name like label then, because names don't carry sets of necessary or even normative actions thus the constant comparison is false.
There is a difference between the definition, and all the connotations which a concept has. In any case, someone identifies as female because of some of that "baggage," but we can't pin down exactly what the criteria for that are because it might be different in each case. We can treat it as simply a self-elected label, in terms of the criteria of using the term, even though the psychological reasons for its use are more complex.
Well gender is purely one's relationship to their sex, and aje is also defined as such so any problem you have is a problem with gender. The models are identical.
Two things are not identical just because they share one feature in common. I sleep on a bed, but I don't sleep on the floor, even though they are both flat surfaces. I eat chicken, but I don't each bugs and insects, even though they are both animals. We can treat gender as a self-elected label, but not age, even though they are both words. We can assess a group's request or claim to adjust the use of language in each case, based on the merits of that claim. We need the distinction between children and adults to retain its relationship to biology, to prevent people without full autonomy from being exploited.
Perhaps my use of the term "essense" is short sighted, but what I mean by it is what is objectively true, that is, outside of one's self perceptions, what is really the case. Using "thought" or "self identification" is quite a bad way to go about finding the objectively true - people with apotemnophilia wish to cut of their limbs, yet I think the most ethical action to take isn't to give them a saw, but rather to show them that they are wrong.
That is based on your definition of gender. In their definition, it is true that a trans male does identify as male. Even if you consider it "vacuous" that is also different from being false. Even if you view the trans movement as removing all meaning from the terms "female" and "male" and using a bunch of vacuous terminology to refer to each other, there is nothing objectively false or even logically inconsistent about that. Your objection would need to be about its social consequences, not its internal consistency or objective truth.
Created:
Posted in:
I'm fine with all of the definitions proposed so I'm not sure what you are talking about here.
I was referring to 1.b: having a gender identity that is the opposite of female.
And even if you were right, the term "man" is a noun, not a contraction or a determiner - a noun by definition refers to something. "Cat", refers to some animal. "Apple", to some fruit. Could you tell me a single noun (don't bring up names they are pure aesthetic proper nouns) which is circular in definition?
If someone speaks in a way that doesn't follow the conventional rules of grammar, to call their statement "false" on those grounds is actually itself grammatically and logically incorrect. There is a difference between a false statement and a sentence with an unconventional grammatical structure.
What male refers to is a person who identifies as male.
It doesn't seem like just a label, it seems like there is some further model, some definition which they are attempting to be.
Yes, because whatever reason, they identify with the label "female" and also with other things associated with the label. However, just because they want to have long hair and breasts, for example, doesn't mean that those things are part of the definition of female because there are even biological females without those things.
I also wish to ask again, can I create the term "aje" which refers to one's relation to their age and identify as it? Do you not see how the term "aje", such an obscure concept created for the benefit of those delusional, would be much better off replaced by the term "age"? Why ought we change our vocabulary for the peculiar <%1? Age works - it may not work for some certain individuals, but it works on balance.
I don't believe such a usage would be popular, as I mentioned, because of the ethical problems with blurring the line between child and adult. I also think age relates to personal expression and identity in a fundamentally different way from gender.
Manhood and womanhood are things which one ought be proud of - they are intrinsic and to the core of one's essence (refer to my Cleopatra example). Manhood is not merely the absence of breast, it means a lot more, and womanhood is not merely the absence of a certain testosterone level, it is something much more. Manhood and womanhood shouldn't be costumes which can be worn.
As for womanhood being an "essence" which is being trivialized by being treated like a costume. I do not think it is merely womanhood that is being trivialized by the "woke agenda" college students, or anything similar. Instead, it is that the "essence" of things that was held in place by the literary systems (e.g. the printing press, official institutions, dictionaries, newspapers, etc.) of the nation state, is being replaced by the global information economy based on digital technologies. You cannot fix things like definitions in place when the use of language is grounded on these technologies because the territory and scope of their application is not circumscribed in advance. New norms can be established by means of consensus or common usage. The divisions e.g. between male and female, racial categories, etc., which still maintain themselves, do not do so from the "ground up" as rooted in communication, but instead because of the artificial divisions created by national boundaries which limit the degree of interference upon previous categories established in the 17th to 19th century. These boundaries are maintained by force, through control of the supply chains, and so any sense that they reflect a natural "essence" is actually illusory.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
I think you've seen that there is no definition of "man" which works in your favour, so you've just said that definitions aren't necessary. Your argument can be used to justify the abolition of any objective standard which we have - I can say "well there's no definition of age so it must be like the word the". Obviously, since we do have a definition for age, just like how we have a definition for sex, why ought we not just use them instead of acting oblivious?
The progressive side can be seen as proposing a change to our use of language - although in fact, we could say that they have already succeeded because the actual dictionaries and encyclopedias now reflect my understanding and not yours. This change would not be reasonable in every case; just because we allow gender to become like a label that people can choose does not mean we need to do that for every word. We can choose to accept this because gender is so personal to the individual and because this way of using the word better reflects how trans people feel about their gender.
As I described before, there are two parts to the definition: one that relates to biological sex, and one that is the gender identity with which people can identify. Your objection that that these are "contrapositive options selected from a binary sample" does not in fact invalidate the definition, it merely means that they are complementary parts of one concept, that males are people who identify as male, where some (or most) were also born with biological traits associated with the word male (not as its definition, but culturally and historically). Your other objection, that it is "circular," does not invalidate the definition either, because as I have described there are many parts of language with such "circular" definitions that still function and make sense.
As for what people are identifying with when they change their gender, I would again make the comparison to names. Someone can change their name from "James" to "David" and their reason for that is whatever psychological motivation they had for doing so. It doesn't need to be about the definition.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
have you even considered why this particular "denial of reality" is any concern of yours, when many other "denials of reality" don't seem to bother you in the slightest ?
Really, it's nothing to do with homophobia, they're just really big fans of the dictionary.
If we venture outside the boundaries of Merriam-Webster, Western Civilization is in danger of collapsing. 😅
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
Okay so if we consider pronouns as names, this brings a whole plethora of problems. Consider the name David" - I'm sure any Davids connection with their name is one of pure nostalgia - were all the Davis in the world to have been born "Jim", they wouldn't likely be saying "Damn I wish my name was David". You may refute this by saying "well why do people change their names? What is the reason? To which I will say that one changes their name because they like the ideas that the name resonates - whether it be for the etymology or purely phonetic appeal, they change their name because they like the properties of the new name.
I agree that there is reason behind it, but certainly not in direct sense that every word in our vocabulary must be provided with an encompassing definition in the sense that it refers to a material object in a semantically enclosed way. As I previously mentioned, I think words like the or and are good examples, since we all agree that they are useful, yet they are incapable of the kind of definition you are talking about, the definitions provided in dictionaries are simply grammatical descriptors of their use in language; e.g. the is defined as, "denoting one or more people or things already mentioned or assumed to be common knowledge." This is "circular" because the definition of the term is the description of its use in everyday language.
Like you say, we might choose a name because of the way that this name resonates, and this resonance may provide the meaning which causes us to choose one label over another, but this resonance does not constitute a direct definition. Therefore, if we are asking about the resonance of the term man, we are asking about its cultural instantiations, its historical meaning, its context and the connotations it has. The reason people choose the label depends on their personal psychological response to all of these, and I choose personally to respect their decision even if it is purely because of its "phonetic appeal".
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
This leaves us with the second half, identifies as a male. This is completely circular. You are saying a man is that who identifies as a male. But what is a male then? What are trans man identifying as?
Male, or man, would in this sense be a gendered term used to refer to those who choose that label. Another similar example would be names: I'm sure you cannot provide a definition of "Bones" that makes it "meaningful" that I refer to you by this name. It is simply the term which you have elected and there is a given understanding that others will refer to you under this name. It is a sort of contract of understanding between the two parties to use language that way.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Lemming
@Bones
"Meaningless" or "nonsense" is an empty qualification that reflects only your own lack of understanding. There is no such thing as meaningless nonsense, since we live in a universe that is dense with information. Once you overcome the sense of generalized fear or distrust, then what seemed to be the meaninglessness of your environment or of other people's ideas, is revealed to be only your own pessimism. That is when you can adopt an attitude of enthusiasm, cooperation and curiosity about the complexity of the world, rather than reactive concern and worry. As the international model based on the nation state fades away, and we move into a global information economy, those who have a primary attitude of reactance and conservative fear will see evidence everywhere that their worries were justified, and their sense of injustice and resentment will only deepen. Yet cybernetic circuits of information are not meaningless, and in fact they offer new vectors of possibility for human life to those who are willing to explore them.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
The term "man" would now have two uses:
- An adult person who was born male and identifies as male.
- A shorthand for "trans man" - an adult person who was not born male but identifies as male.
Now it seems like your primary issue is that this would split the term into more than one possible use, or that it is different from how the language was previously used. I don't really understand what the problem is with that.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
the label "women" ought be prescribed to only that who is a "literal" women
Transgendered people are not "taking on the social roles previously reserved for women", that would be what a feminine man does.
This makes it clear that the issue is not about biology (e.g. the idea that male vs female patterns of behavior are biologically ingrained) but instead that you think we should refuse to make the linguistic concession of normalizing the use of "woman" as shorthand for "trans woman," or she / her pronouns being used to refer to trans women. The term trans women refers to people who were born men but identify as women - that is the "objective reality" that the term references. So, the disagreement is not about objective reality, but about how language should be used to refer to that reality.
For example, we could construct a totally arbitrary language game in which we refer to "oranges" as "apples" and vice versa. As long as we both agree on the terminology and the reality underlying it, there is no distortion of reality involved. If you ask me to pass you the orange then I would pass you the object we would otherwise refer to as an apple. To say that we "think apples are literally oranges" would be confused, and a falsehood. If you say that we shouldn't accept or adopt this game, that it is wrong to play it, then it is incumbent upon you to make that argument, but that is not even the argument that I'm concerned about here. I'm just pointing out the way that framing is being used to distort the reality. In fact, it seems that we agree on the times when it is reasonable to agree to the language of trans, because you said that you would abide someone's request to use their pronouns in the same case that I would.
My worldview can easily define what a man is - that is, a plethora of biological complexions, however, your position would be hard pressed to form a cogent definition of a man. I throw the question to you.
I don't view definitions as preceding the use of words in some essentialist way. A definition is simply a summary that allows us to understand how a word is used, and at times our use of words might conflict with the definitions provided by dictionaries, there is nothing inherently wrong about that. I cannot provide a definition for most of the words I use in everyday language, for example "the," "house," "apple," etc. In fact, the number of words I can provide a rigorous and encompassing definition for is only a small fraction of my overall vocabulary.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
We generally agree that a human taking on the social role typically reserved for a dog is a perversion, and generally does not need to be integrated as a normal part of society. Likewise, we agree that a grown man taking on the role of a three year old would be perverse, and similarly should not be integrated as normal. The progressive side argues that a man taking on social roles typically reserved for females is not necessarily perverse, and can to a large extent be integrated as normal without causing any catastrophe. Now, it is totally up to the conservative side to make their case that deviating from gender roles is an immoral behavior that should be socially penalized. I'm not even disputing it on that point here.
What I am disputing is how conservatives use loaded language and strawmen to claim that a trans female is "a man pretending to be a woman" or other similar formulations, which make it seem like a straightforward dispute about biology. The claim that a trans female is "a man who is deluded into thinking he's really a woman" or any other framing like this, is objectively false and logically flawed regardless of the dispute about whether men should in fact act as or identify as women, or how deep the biological differences between male and female are. We can even apply the same thing to your race / rase example: in that scenario, the claim that those whose "race" is white but whose "rase" is black were "white people deluded into thinking they are really black" would be a linguistic distortion and a falsehood, if the race/rase distinction were a linguistic concession we were in fact debating the usefulness of.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
I think the "culture" relation is more comparable to if a male were to portray feminine characteristics. Nothing wrong with that, ones just a feminine man, however, this doesn't mean that the man can become a literal women because of these traits.
Here is the point of my original post that I want to emphasize: People on the conservative side of this want to stress the fact that they are on the side simply using logic, talking about objective facts, that they are right on biological grounds, etc. However, every time this framing is used, that a trans woman is a man claiming to be a "literal" woman, a man "pretending" to "really" be a woman, and so on, this is a distortion and an attempt to load the language in a way that prevents the issue from being discussed in clear terms.
Trans women (for example) are not claiming to "really" be "literal" women, or at least do not need to. All they need to request is for the concession in the use of everyday language. Using she/her pronouns, and even using the term "woman," does not need to imply anything about their biology, or the gender they were born as - "woman" can here simply be used as a shorthand for "trans woman." The real conservative side of this is not that trans women are "not really women" or "not literally women" because this is just a loaded use of language to state what would otherwise be completely obvious, and something on which neither side disagrees. The reason trans people do not want to concede that use of language is not because they are deluded about biology, but because it violates the social norm that "woman" can be used as an acceptable shorthand for "trans woman."
In fact, the conservative side is that men taking on social roles previously reserved for women, and asking for this concession in the use of language, is somehow a degenerate or anti-social behavior which should be culturally penalized and discouraged or at least marginalized through indirect means. The need to deflect from their essential position (that deviation from gender norms should actively be culturally penalized) by using strawmen about biology, as well as wedge issues like bathrooms and women's sports, is because that fundamental position would be unpopular if advocated directly, but you can move people to eventually agree with it through the use of framing and wedge issues to gradually move their sentiments against trans people.
Bu this is only because society has not reached a point in which race, age and species are intimate aspects of self-expression. Are you suggesting that, were people to reach that stage, it would be correct to then base the identity of people purely on how they feel?
I don't think this would be acceptable in the case of age or species because of the mentioned links they have to autonomy, e.g. the obvious ethical issues that would arise from allowing adults to identify as children or vice versa. In the case of race, it could be the case that when the nation-state model has dissolved, and free movement has developed to the point that ethnicity is untethered from territory, the cultural aspect of ethnicity totally dominates the biological aspect.
I don't think the question here is "would I refer to a trans man as a man", for you would hardly find anyone who wouldn't on the simple grounds of common courtesy, but the question is are they actual men. Just as how one can cosplay for the day and "adopt" a new identity, that costume does not define the essence of your character.
The question is what you mean by "actual men" as I described the problems I have with this above. The reason I believe trans people have a problem with the statement that they are "not really men" is not that they disagree about the biology, but that it violates the linguistic norms which would make them feel included.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
This can easily be bypassed if we create a new term which refers to the way in which one feels in relation to their race.
- Sex refers to the biological difference between male and female, namely, which gametes they possess. It is a scientifically observable phenomenon.
- Gender refers to the way in which on feels in relation to their sex, whether it be conforming and rejecting.
- Race refers to the genome which one possesses, and in more layman terms, the ancestry to which one belongs. It is a scientifically observable phenomenon.
- Rase refers to the way in which one feels in relation to their race, whether it be conforming and rejecting.
People can already identify culturally with the ethnic or social aspects of another race, but it is not as directly personal to that individual as their gender is - for example, as part of language via pronouns, but also in terms of sex, relationships and so on. Race is not so much a function of one's personal expression, identity, or sexual life so much as their social surroundings, heritage and location. That said, there is nothing stopping you from attempting to establish such a use of language, the reasons I'm listing just show why it's less likely to become widely accepted or necessary. I don't see anything inherently wrong with the linguistic construct, "my rase is black" meaning that you identify with black culture, live in black areas with black friend groups, were adopted by black parents, etc.
Regarding sex/gender, you clearly believe that we ought identify people in regards to how they feel i.e, gender. To maintain consistency, would you apply this standard to race? Or age? Or species? It seems much more rational to simply adopt the already scientifically scrutinised and observable standard which we have, sex, instead of this “feelings” notion.
I don't hold that we should defer to whatever arbitrary linguistic construct people propose. However, because people's gender is so intimate and individual, I deem it as a reasonable request that they can choose how they are referred to. Race, age or species are not so much intimate aspects of an individual's self-expression, but tied to objective interpersonal circumstances, or to fundamental aspects of one's level of autonomy. Biological sex is unique in that it is specific to that person.
Also, I would not even specify that they should need to "feel" like that gender or dress in any particular way in order to make the request, so long as their request is reasonable. For example, I don't view it as reasonable to expect everyone to put their pronouns in their bio, or for everyone to ask each other's pronouns on first meeting, because it is too much an imposition on what is already habituated. However, if someone actively makes a reasonable request, or makes it clear after being misgendered what their preferred pronoun is, then I think it is unreasonable or impolite for the other person in question to refuse the request.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
There is a reason race is seen differently from gender. Race has a relationship to one's genealogy, so that one's race is directly related to the race of their parents. Gender is much more related to the individual identity of that person, and gender has an intimate relationship to one's self-expression and sexual life. It is probably impossible to find any other category which could become a direct comparison for gender because it is so uniquely constitutive socially.
The binary gender distinctions that characterize the western "nuclear family" developed to support industrial capitalism under the nation state. The housewife's role of "household management" in the 19th century was a complex task which also involved strenuous physical labor. The popular presence of trans and non-binary, have come about as we have moved toward an economy mainly based on information technologies, under a globalized system of government. It is likely that this would also have an effect on how we view race, but the effect is more indirect and is a function of the disappearing association between ethnicity and national territories.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Kritikal
I do not even need to make a prediction about the future, just look at Lia Thomas who is a so called 'trans gendered woman' but is allowed to compete in female sports as if she had changed her sex.
I primarily consider these as wedge issues, e.g. bathrooms, women's sports, etc. For the most part, the issue of trans identity is a problem of personal choice, however there are these fringe situations where normalization of trans conflicts with our other intuitions. It benefits the conservative side of this to focus on these problems as unsurpassable contradictions, however it is entirely possible to resolve them in a relatively straightforward and pragmatic way, deferring to relevant authorities or localizing the relevant decisions where possible. For example, even assuming that we were to completely ban trans women from women's sports, or to disallow them from women's bathrooms (which I'm not saying is necessary) this would not entail negating the validity of trans women's identity as a whole. However, in my opinion it is more likely that these become ongoing cultural debates along the lines of abortion - and to claim that the issues of women's bathrooms or sports are so serious as to warrant negating trans identity or pronouns entirely, it would be along the same lines as to claim that the abortion issue is so serious that we should condemn all premarital sex.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
But the "underlying biological fact" is seldom acknowledged by gender ideologists.
What facts are you referring to? I can refer to someone as "she / her" while fully acknowledging the biological facts e.g. about their chromosomes.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@PREZ-HILTON
You are just stating your opinions as bare facts without properly responding to anything I said. If you want to know my response to what you said then you can just read my posts that you were responding to again.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Bones
First, I've never encountered a gender ideologist who believes that calling a trans man a man is scientifically wrong and yet support it on the grounds that it is a societal convention.
The use of the term is not "scientifically wrong" as long as it supports a shared understanding of the underlying biological facts.
Created: