Can we not just let people be who they are and recognize gender minorities do exist? Acknowledging the existence of trans men doesn't reduce the incredible experiences of any woman who gives birth (or doesn't!)
If we can make a simple change to include everyone, not just a subset, why wouldn't we do that?
Biology did that. Society is recognizing it, and only recently at that, by giving women sex-based rights.
> by declaring that society should be organized around the majority, rather than attempting to accommodate as many people as possible?
The needs of X vs the needs of Y.
Females need single-sex spaces to avoid violence and rape. Males do not need to be in female single-sex spaces. Needs trump wants.
> zero-sum war of
Many things are zero sum. A single-sex space is only useful if it remains single-sex. A single male rapist can traumatize and attack an entire rape shelter of female victims.
Women's rights don't matter if "woman" means whatever anyone else wants.
We always have an obligation to design society to accommodate everyone, not just the majority. Otherwise, with your line of reasoning, you might as well repeal the ADA, do away with ethical AI considerations to enable equal processing of richer skin tones, etc.
I'm 6'3" and I wish plane seats were designed with me in mind, but they aren't. My short wife wishes countertops were usually built higher, but they aren't.
I think children are treated very poorly in our society and I've homeschooled my children to allow them to exert more agency over their lives. I'm fortunate to live in the US where this is legal, but in most of the world it isn't. Other cultures believe that they should dictate that children's time be spent according to adults' wishes. How can both be accommodated?
I can "acknowledge" something, but I don't have to change anything.
Medicine has done a great job excluding groups as a large as ‘women’ historically. Still does in many areas.
And yes actually, trans males would feel like they are being treated like shit by the people in this thread absolutely insisting that gender == sex.
I support trans rights; what I dont support is the intellectual terrorism that underlies the notion that just because someone has a legitimate difference of opinion on appropriate language use, they are "treat[ing] people like shit" or worse.
Changing common language for the sole purpose of being an “ally” to some ultra small minority only serves to confuse. Quite a dumb thing to do when the best possible effect is sparing a few hurt feelings.
99% of the people who support this nonsense aren’t in the affected group and are simply trying to earn “cool points” via virtue signaling.
This allyship has a material, positive benefit on my life beyond just "feelings".
Trans and non binary people represent somewhere around 1-3% of people. (Some studies push it up to about 5%, others closer to 0.5%)
This makes trans and non binary folks about as frequent as wheelchair users or people with red hair. That's millions of people in America, and it's enough people that most workplaces and schools will have trans and non binary people in them.
I’m lost, could you explain this? Are you referring to birth by those who don’t identify as female and were themselves born biologically female?
Yes, I'm referring to several groups of people - trans men who were born women, intersex people who may have been assigned man or woman, non-binary/queer/agender people who were born with a functional uterus.
All three of those groups might not be women. They may identify as female, but not women. Or they may not identify as female.
Language is evolving and not settled at all, but there's a movement to separate the concepts of "man" and "male". For example, we can probably agree that Bruce Willis is manlier than PeeWee Herman. But they are both male. Manliness, how much a "man" someone is, is a huge spectrum and it's socially defined. Likewise, how "womanly" someone is is a spectrum, and also cultural.
By separating the concepts of man from male, and woman from female, we can discuss how womanly or manly someone is, and what our societies expect from the roles of women and men.
I find it useful. Others have strong aversions to even discussing the concept. I'm happy to answer further questions!
This doesn't seem to be anything new. Go back 100 years, or more, there were manly women and effeminate men.
In many ways the gender rigidity of late 20th century western society is an exception in human history.
[0]: The Machineries of Empire series
So now we're policing people's gender based on their habits? "If you wear pants you're not a REAL woman"?
I think it's a bad practice. If I want to wear a skirt and call myself a man or a woman wants to wear pants, who the fuck cares.
(Traditionalists care, a lot, as it turns out.)
I say let people decide what they want to wear and not make any assumptions about how to label them.
I thought the male/female dichotomy was the one meant to be separated from matters of identity, and simply be a biology based designation. I understand identifying as man or woman or neither is a self determined social designation; but how can someone claim that they are not female if they have two X chromosomes?
The easiest way to explain this is that being intersex also exists in biology:
These sets of people are small, but non zero. It's probably safe to say nearly all XX people identify as female.
Language isn't static.
Science isn't static.
Woman (and man) as terms are evolving in their use to mean "the roles we expect people to fill based on their sex".
You might disagree with this evolution of the language, by all means, I am not the arbiter of how language should change.
But I do believe saying a word has a fixed, unchanging definition (and adding that your definition is the only correct one) is not a useful position to hold. I believe that even if you disagree with the use, you should acknowledge that a significant number of people have different definitions from you.
> Woman (and man) as terms are evolving in their use to mean "the roles we expect people to fill based on their sex".
It is for example by no means universal that we do expect people of a certain sex to fulfil a certain role. And many people explicitly reject that definition of gender for themselves because they have no intention of fulfilling the role. For these people to then be told that it is the definitional meaning of their gender identity seems... no better than telling trans people they aren't the gender they identify as.
In fact, this is why it's so useful to have a term for the idea that what's "feminine" in Saudi Arabia is not the same as what's feminine in Inuit culture.
I believe that people should be able to evaluate the gender roles of where they are and accept, reject, or define them. If a cis woman wants to shave her head, get buff, wear flannel, get into fights, and call herself a woman then awesome. She's rejected the "traditional" gender roles for herself and made her own way.
I would never tell someone the way they experience their own gender is wrong. But I think it's absolutely reasonable to discuss generalizations about gender roles in context and invite people to think about whether they feel like they identify with that role or not.
I come from a culture that is thousands of years old, and don't wish to change the definition of "Mom" just yet without good reason.
Having to use translation/dictionary for my native language means it failed in a big way.
And all languages are rooted on some level in reality.
But here it's a small minority of exceptionally aggressive people with nothing better to do, trying to change language by forceful tactics. They need to receive strong pushback and possibly exclusion. Words exist purely to communicate, they have no other purpose. Once bored over-educated people are allowed to start redefining the language it's open season and they won't ever stop. See: newspeak, inspired by the Soviet Union. Given your username you should know all about that.
This verbal game-playing has already caused immense damage with the effort to redefine words like racism to mean "discrimination based on skin color that's bad unless it's against white people", an effort that now means accusations of racism no longer carry any weight. Ditto for the attempt to redefine fascism to mean "anything that isn't far left". Words have meanings and people may not simply try to blow their way through to a new meaning by viciously attacking everyone who uses the normal definition until they concede through exhaustion. It's anti-social behavior to do that regardless of whether you like the idea or not. Come up with new words if you care so much.
I'd like to think I'm rather the opposite - firm in my convictions but willing to walk anyone through my reasoning. You may not agree with my conclusions and you may walk away thinking I'm out of touch.
But I feel I'm watching a situation where both sides are painting with over broad brushes - you accuse everyone of being exceptionally aggressive, many folks in my camp accuse everyone of being a bigot. It's the same pattern, imo, and we'd get a lot farther if we all avoided such generalizations. (Imo)
But let me ask, do you really argue that the people arguing that women shouldn't be called women, are not exceptionally aggressive? These are people who routinely throw around accusations of "phobias" and "isms", publicly demand people be fired and often succeed for using language in ways that are entirely normal, routinely destroy people's entire lives overnight and are widely regarded as people you want to stay away from at all costs. There are views being expressed in this thread that are just flat out crazy, like the idea that if you go on a date with someone you should immediately ask them what genitals they have as a matter of course and if you don't and are then caught by surprise, the problem is you!
"you accuse everyone of being exceptionally aggressive, many folks in my camp accuse everyone of being a bigot"
That's exactly the point. Do you see the connection here? Accusing everyone of being a bigot is exceptionally aggressive behavior. There isn't some equivalence here. People who engage in those tactics will be described as aggressive as a consequence, they can't then say "well I think you're a bigot so we're even", that's not how it works. Aggression is about concrete, objective acts.
Very true, but what was claimed in the comment you replied to is the current scientific position, has been for some time, and hasn't changed. The idea that mammalian zoology will suddenly find a third sex at any point in the future also seems fanciful, regardless of any theoretical possibility that it could change.
if people here are using 'biological facts' to make anti-trans & anti-queer arguments, then at least get the biology correct.
there are TONs of variations in both chromosomal combinations, presentation of genitals, outside the norm hormone levels
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
i have stopped reading HN frequently because of this crap.
Every month or so when I come back there is another highly upvoted thread on gender, queerness, & race.
almost always with a lot of disconcerting and hurtful language. or outright attacks.
I shouldn't be surprised anymore that a lot of 'smart' & 'educated' people working in tech & sciences use their limited understanding to perpetuate prejudice.
I hope it's just a vocal minority.
But the attacks are growing.
I see this as the result of a specific political agenda, which is using this to gain power & win votes. At our expense. Often cynically passing gross laws they know will get thrown out just so they can get on Fox News and pump their candidacy for president.
And yes, the damage cause by this rhetoric & laws is very real.
Women and men can still be "real" in the sense of being strongly correlated trait clusters. And indeed, these are the only two clusters of significance.
That's about an order of magnitude higher than what I would expect (note that the trans and non binary rates are much higher in the West likely due to different chemical exposure).
Even the belief that “trans-ness” is something new or “modern” is erasure and possibly even revisionism [1], to claim that there isn’t even science on this is absurd as the topic has been studied since Freud.
The worst of all is that the perpetrators of the bigotry end up causing mass hysteria and reactionary measures that actually harm innocent people. People like any of us who just happened to draw a bad card at birth. Why is it this difficult to show compassion? We show compassion for rarer diseases. Why is it this difficult for people to imagine that they could have been in the shows of the people they spill vitriol against?
Occam’s razor says the dehumanisation employed by Fox and the likes is the cause. Dehumanisation has always been used to justify atrocities and attacks since the Dawn of time. We should have been better at this point.
> Sumerian and Akkadian texts from 4,500 years ago document priests known as gala who may have been transgender. Likely depictions occur in art around the Mediterranean from 9,000 to 3,700 years ago. In Ancient Greece, Phrygia, and Rome, there were galli priests that some scholars believe to have been trans women. Roman emperor Elagabalus (d. 222 AD) preferred to be called a lady (rather than a lord) and sought sex reassignment surgery, and in the modern day has been seen as a trans figure. Hijras on the Indian subcontinent and kathoeys in Thailand have formed trans-feminine third gender social and spiritual communities since ancient times, with their presence documented for thousands of years in texts which also mention trans male figures. Today, at least half a million hijras live in India and another half million in Bangladesh, legally recognized as a third gender, and many trans people are accepted in Thailand. In Arabia, khanith today (like earlier mukhannathun) fulfill a third gender role attested since the AD 600s. In Africa, many societies have traditional roles for trans women and trans men, some of which survive in the modern era. In the Americas prior to European colonization, as well as in some contemporary North American Indigenous cultures, there are social and ceremonial roles for third gender people, or those whose gender expression transforms, such as the Navajo nádleehi or the Zuni lhamana.
> In the Middle Ages, accounts around Europe document transgender people. Kalonymus ben Kalonymus's lament for being born a man instead of a woman has been seen as an early account of gender dysphoria. Eleanor Rykener, a male-bodied Briton arrested in 1394 while living and doing sex work dressed as a woman, has been seen as a trans woman. In the Balkans since the 1400s, female-assigned people have transitioned to live as men called sworn virgins. In Japan, accounts of trans people go back to the Edo period. In Indonesia, there are millions of trans-/third-gender waria, and the bugis of Sulawesi recognize five genders. In Oceania, trans-/third-gender roles like the akava'ine, fa'afafine and fakaleiti exist among the Cook Island Maori, Samoans, and Tongans.
> In colonial America, Thomas(ine) Hall in the 1600s adopted clothes and roles of both men and women, while in 1776 the genderless Public Universal Friend refused both birth name and gendered pronouns. During the 1800s, some people began new lives as men and served in the military, including Albert Cashier and James Barry, or otherwise transitioned, like Joseph Lobdell; trans women like Frances Thompson also transitioned. In 1895, trans autobiographer Jennie June and others organized the Cercle Hermaphroditos; in the 1900s, musician Billy Tipton lived as a man, while Lucy Hicks Anderson was supported by her parents and community in being a woman.
The GP comment has been fluctuating in upvotes and downvotes, often getting massively up or down voted in the span of minutes.
It wouldn’t surprise me if people downvoted some of my other responses here on the basis of this comment. In fact I have seen multiple comments downvoted in a very short timespan.
Wikipedia is simply not useable anymore for proper information on any trans-relate topic.
Downs syndrome doesn't affect a sex chromosome, while those other ones do? And they affect the presentation of sexual characteristics?
Where exactly do you see attacks in this thread? I see a lot of disagreement, but no attacks.
Cambridge University Press The Biology of Reproduction
> Can we not just let people be who they are and recognize gender minorities do exist? Acknowledging the existence of trans men doesn't reduce the incredible experiences of any woman who gives birth (or doesn't!)
I understand both sides of this argument, I've thought about it a lot, and I've come to a different conclusion than you. Being a man or a woman is a brute fact. It has nothing to do with identity. Only women give birth.
What bothers me is not our disagreement but that my view has been labeled "hateful" or "problematic".
There are people that feel inherently disconnected from their biological sex, and with the social construct of gender associated to this. Some of them suffer. A lot. So they might want to change their gender. As a society, we have the option to support them, which might be a bit inconvenient. Learning a new name for a person takes time and training. Questioning internalized gender roles can be unsettling. But ultimately, I think it is worth it, if we can help trans persons suffer less. Also personally it was definitely freeing.
So yes, if you deny trans persons this basic support, it makes you look like a prick who chooses his own convenience over their suffering.
Also I don't know if this applies to you, but hate against trans persons definitely exists.
Why don't you believe trans people when they ask you to do this? Apparently you think that you know better than trans people themselves, what will make them suffer. Just for the record (because you asked above): This is exactly what I consider problematic.
You're allowed to disagree but you've already asserted that my view is hateful and ignorant which was my original complaint.
You can carry on as you've always had, but some fraction of the public will assume ignorance, some stubbornness, and some malice. It's not really any different than terms for ethnic minorities or those with disabilities over time. How you approach it is up to you, but how people perceive you is up to them.
Some people (you, apparently) agree with that and just want to shift the definitions so "man" means "someone who identifies as a man" and will be replaced by "biological man". But other people don't agree, they don't believe that "man" and "woman" are immanent categories that exist outside language and culture.
As far as language changing, it certainly does, but it rarely changes by fiat. I don't believe changes referenced in this article represent organic change, I think they're a fad that will only catch on in a few enclaves. We'll see.
I don’t particularly care what the common use meanings are or if they shift over time, I’ll use what I think is most appropriate for the circumstances and audience, while trying to be as inclusive as I can.
Though I won’t be using “menstruators” any time soon for the same reason I won’t use “Latinx”, too many people I interact with find it derogatory and offensive.
That's absurd. It divides humans into two groups, and everytime you divide humans into groups they make this about their identity.
And that language changes doesn't mean all changes are equally good. When language loses its grip on reality, we've lost. We've become Orwellian.
Among people who are Very Online this might be a sizable fraction. But if you look at the public at large it isn't. Language is about usage. It's not about usage by an elite minority. Reminds me of latinx, favored more by white college grads than by hispanics.
Maya Forstater was fired, and JK Rowling still receives death threats for their use of the word "woman" to signify adult human females. That's domestic terrorism, to present it as "the language is always changing" is Orwellian.
> It's not really any different than terms for ethnic minorities
What if the USA declared all citizens to be "black"? Blacks would now perfectly match all the USA's demographic averages, income, crime, lifespan, etc, etc.
Racism solved, right? Or the beginning of a vastly worse racism that must be endured in silence because the words to describe it have been taken away?
I think as long as you acknowledge there are people who use language to disambiguate sex and gender, but you choose not to use that language, then you are just expressing your opinion.
I think it's fair for folks to probe why you choose the language you do, and even to suggest that the reasons you supply might be considered ignorant.
We only improve if we all try to understand the reasoning behind each other more.
That's the ultimate issue here. Different groups of people want to disambiguate some terms and conflate others, and there is not enough overlap between these groups to reach a common ground. At its core is a struggle for power with the meanings of words representing territory to be won or lost.
Orwell wrote extensively on this topic and left us with some pretty stern warnings which we as a society continue to ignore. And while everyone fights over this stuff we are ruining the planet and risking catastrophic consequences both environmental and political.
I don't use "yeet" as a word, and I find it silly. But nonetheless I'm aware some people do use it, and so it's in my lexicon as a word that I just don't care for.
My point is that we cannot deny new usages. We can disagree with them or choose not to use them, but denying them is just never going to work.
This is not remotely the same as making up a new word like yeet.
I believe language is descriptive, and therefore definitions follow usage. If there exists new usage in common enough use, then the definition follows that use.
And I don't believe the traditional use of a word makes one a bigot by default. I think that there are both bigots and non bigots that use the words traditionally.
But this thread is absolutely stock full of people refusing to acknowledge that there might be multiple correct definitions.
> There's this strange perception that anything new must be good and right. Perhaps OPs language isn't keeping up with the times, or maybe the times are just...incorrect.
This asserts that newness does not equate with correctness. This implicitly recognizes that there are multiple uses.
Other places in this post people absolutely do deny the usage.
> My point is that we cannot deny new usages. We can disagree with them or choose not to use them, but denying them is just never going to work.
Where is someone denying that people use these terms in these new ways? I haven't read all the comments but haven't seen it so far.
I'm genuinely curious: If you do not want to use the word 'woman' for someone whose sex / gender assigned at birth is male and whose gender identity is female, is there another word you think fits better?
This is getting my brain rolling, so: In how I use the words and think about this topic, trans women and cis women would both be subsets of women (because for me, that refers to gender identity and expression). For you, are trans women and cis men a subset of men, with biological sex being the deciding factor? Or are women, men, trans women and trans men each seperate categories for you? Or something else?
In the end, none of the options I can think of the top of my head are really satisfactory (if acceptable at all) in all contexts... Using the word 'woman' only for cis women / for exactly everyone assigned female at birth ignores quite a few aspects of the daily life of trans women, especially those who 'pass' (= are perceived by others as women / like cis women), and would also just suck because gender dysphoria is a thing. But on the other hand, having 'women' mean 'exactly everyone whose gender identity is female' (like I use it) leads to the trouble in contexts where pregnancy, menstruation, ... are relevant, which is what parts of the article are about. Using terms like 'people who menstruate' when you are talking about, well, people who menstruate, is precise, after all not all (cis) women menstruate, but some trans men etc do, and all that. But I can totally see how it might come off as reductive, creepy or potentially even discriminatory to some, like the author of the article describes. And of course it all gets more complicated when you consider that most trans people (in maybe not all parts) experience the first parts of their lives as the gender they're assigned at birth; how things like HRT, surgery and potentially even transplants change someone's body; the fact that people exist whose gender identity and/or sex don't fit into either 'male' or 'female', etc etc etc
It seems to me that the words in question ("man", "woman", etc), were used to refer to both biological sex and gender for centuries under the assumption that they always co-occurred. The conflict has arisen now that we've realised they don't always co-occur because different people have taken different views on which of part was primary or definitional. Neither view is inherently wrong. But taken together they're hugely problematic because we're using the same words to mean different things, which is leading to lots of confusion.
(there is additional conflict as some people have decided that we ought to not talk about one or other of biological sex and gender at all - which one depends on who you ask of course)
Ultimately the solution will need to be a second (and perhaps a third) set of words that are clear in their meanings. I don't think it really matters too much which word means what, so long as we all agree on the meanings. Possibly it would be better to ditch "man" and "woman" entirely so nobody feels hard done by that other people can use them but they can't.
I think I've articulated my position and held it firmly, but at no point did I feel upset about people who disagreed.
I don't believe I called anyone a bigot or was any more rigid in my language than folks who hold a more traditional meaning of the word in their minds.
You ask questions rather than name call and finger point.
While I personally struggle with these new definitions and their potential cost to certain groups (someone pregnant like the post’s author), I feel like I can actually discuss and learn something new, and feel heard myself.
We need more activists like you.
Inevitably, patience wears thin and comments get more bitter, and the polarization continues.
I'm sure the reverse happens for folks who disagree with me. They get tired of everyone just assuming they are a bigot, and start just assuming that's what's coming from the other side.
I wish there were more forums to have small, moderated chats where anyone who makes sweeping generalizations about their opponents ("you lefties always..." "All your right wingers...") were clipped out.
There’s a lot of fearmongering on both sides. I think people already come to the table really amped up quick to throw stones.
Hear, hear on the forums part, though.
Right, so, by your definition, most women over 50, and women incapable of having a child, are actually men?
Or just perhaps there is a more complicated nuance here…
it does not imply there are no woman who can't give birth.
The sense I get from the article is definitely that she thinks people who can't give birth are unworthy of the title "woman" and that follows with the comments about menstruation at the bottom. Aka, if somebody hasn't bled through their shorts in gym class, they are not a woman
I think you're missing the point.
Biology may be a fact, but we can, and do, choose to value the link between parent and child socially as the most important part, not the biological link.
We can do the same with gender, referencing identity over biology in the general case. Why have you come to the opposite conclusion?
If someone said that about adoptive parents, would you just accept that?
If you want to get rid of the words man/woman altogether socially, feel free to advocate for that, but until you succeed, don't dictate to trans people that live in a society with those words that they (and they alone) can't use the ones they identify with.
I do somewhat think that this might need to be the solution. However, I think this goes both ways. If trans people don't want to me to use the words "man"/"woman" in the ways that I see fit, then they shouldn't use them either. I certainly don't appreciate what now seems to be a connotation of "man" (the identity I use), that I "feel like a man" (I have no such feeling).
> The difference is you are saying identity has to be prescribed by biological sex.
I'm not saying identity has to be prescribed by biological sex. I am saying that it is reasonable to identify someone on the basis of many gendered categories.
Three key ones would be:
- biological sex (physical characteristics) - gender feeling (an internal feeling of gender) - political gender (how other people gender you)
Importantly for me, identifying someone as a gender in one sense (say a man in the biological sense) does not contradict someone else identifying someone as a gender in another sense (say that person identifying themselves as a woman in the feeling sense). They can both be valid simultaneously.
We wouldn't say you shouldn't describe someone as black (race) because they're really a man (gender), because gender and race aren't equivalent. To me, it seems like the same applies to the different dimensions of gender. They exist independently of one another, and shouldn't be seen as equivalent. The only problem is that we use same words for both categories.
I would add that there are good reasons for people to want to identify others in ways other than that they self-identify. As an example:
I am exclusively attracted to biologically female people. If I can't identify people by their biological sex, then I cannot express my sexuality. I therefore think it's reasonable for me to want to talk about the class of biological females. And given that there is no socially accepted term for this other than "women", I think it is reasonable for me to use that term, even if not everyone in that groups identifies as a woman.
But it’s not different. All of the same arguments apply. One could argue that “father” has a deep-rooted, unambiguous, biological meaning. One could argue that the use of “father” to describe an adoptive guardian is distorting this fundamental biological truth. One could assert their right to never refer to your adoptive guardian as your “father” because it’s just untrue.
But nobody does that because obviously that would be extremely hurtful and rude to adopted children and adoptive parents.
I have never once seen a screed like “Their birth certificate might say you’re their father, and you might play catch with them and celebrate Father’s Day, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t change the fact that at the genetic level, this child is simply not yours. They are someone else’s.”
Few people will see an adoptive mother at a class for new mothers and say “This is really uncomfortable for me. Why is she here? She did not give birth to this child. She’s not even lactating at all. What made her choose to spend her time hanging around us real mothers? I’d rather be with a group of only birth-giving mothers. I would feel safer sharing my experiences.”
In summary:
"There are several crucial differences between biological and adoptive parents, on the one hand, and transwomen and women, on the other hand. These include:
- that both biological and adoptive parents actually parent, whereas it’s not at all clear what transwomen and women have in common that is supposed to play this same role;
- that there is no historical power relationship between biological and adoptive parents, whereas there is between male and female people;
- that calling adoptive parents parents doesn’t undermine our understanding of what it is to be a parent because what is core to parenting — raising children — is done by both, whereas what is core to being a woman is being female, and that is not done by both;
- there is no established history of adoptive parental violence against biological parents, whereas there is an established history of male violence against women;
- that adoptive parents do have ‘similar enough concerns and interests’ to biological parents, but transwomen do not have these to women (especially considering the heterogeneity among transwomen);
- that there is no ‘oppressive ideological agenda of parenthood’ but there is of being a woman (namely being feminine); and finally,
- that there are many ways to be a bad parent, which we can probably agree on, but there are no ways to be a bad woman."
Note that this definition of women is either circular or culture specific (depending on which of the two trans inclusive definitions you are using).
A biological definition is more useful in most cases.
This is just silly.
Your position is too reductive.
Why do you get to make that determination?
I can see the author's perspective. You don't have to agree with everything you read for it to "deserve an audience."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
I'm not making the determination. It's the only logical one to make if we're to live in a society that values tolerance as a first class citizen.
Relatedly, there's a distinction between freedom of speech v. freedom of reach, the latter of which nobody has.
It's a woman's opinion about how language is changing in ways she disagrees with. It isn't her advocating for hatred or violence.
Are you sure about this specifically? Her own subtitle disagrees: "I have no patience left for gender activists who pretend that men can give birth."
I struggle to understand what "no patience left" for [population] means other than human intolerance, which goes hand in hand with hatred.
A woman expressing her opinion that "chest-feeding" and "birthing persons" are terms obnoxious to her is not hatred.
>As I read popular parenting and pregnancy websites such as Parents and Verywell Family...
The steep and slippery slope from "not caring about what other women do" to "finding men, calling themselves women, in your space."
https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/
It seems presumptuous for males to pressure or shame females for wanting to recognize biology and single-sex rights. They only recently won them after a hard-fought battle and obviously they need them; violent sex crimes are overwhelmingly committed by males, and overwhelmingly against females (women) and children.
hey rejectfinite, it's a representative acronym, not an insult.
- This woman identifies as a woman on the basis of her physical body (giving birth being an example of an experience that she had in part due to the body she was born with)
- For this woman, that's what being a woman is: when she describes herself as a woman then she means someone who has breasts, gives birth, etc.
- If other people use "woman" to mean something different and more ephemeral, then it makes it difficult for this woman to describe herself as a "woman" and have it understood that by saying this she is talking about her body.
- It may even be the case, that if "woman" means what other people want it to mean then this woman would no longer identify as a woman.
In other words, she's offended because her own identity is being challenged.
I have not considered it on the context of time/ephemeral. I usually think of it as mutable, but your word choice brings up a point about stages of life I think is worth considering.
Hmm... having looked up the definition of ephemeral, I don't think I meant ephemeral. I meant based more on the social aspects or a feeling of gender
> I usually think of it as mutable
I have increasingly come to think of it multi-dimensional (e.g. one can have physical sex, feelings of gender, norm conformity, political gender, etc, etc) all existing independently of one another. Whether those are mutable (and who has the power to mutate them) depends on the dimension.
After going through the list that you’ve given, would she be wrong for feeling like that? Or is it just a matter of her feelings [1] being rendered incompatible with the contemporary milieu?
[1]: Which per your list, sound legitimate irrespective of the tone of the article or her writing itself, I’m going to use your takeaways as a model for my questions.
I don't think so (although she might of course express her feelings in a way which is unhelpful/problematic/harmful).
I feel like if people realised that this was actually a consequence of self-identity centric models of gender, then they wouldn't advocate for them in the first place.
With bodies and genes and biology, we have a distinction between men and women (and some genetic outliers). This in no way affects if you like barbies or action men, what you wear, and how long your hair is. Excluding disabilities, this also defines your physical characteristics and possibilities, from being able to pee in a urinal (without special tools) to giving birth.
If we define women as "everyone who defines themselves as a woman", what exactly is a woman then?
I agree. If we open things up so widely, then terms like "man" and "woman" become meaningless. Nevertheless, it also doesn't seem right to be to disregard the experiences of trans people.
My preferred way out of this conundrum is to view gender as multi-dimensional. As such, there are multiple kinds of woman (and man). Three important kinds might be:
1. Biological women. Which we can define in different ways: it might include only people who were born women, or it might include people who have altered their physiology either through surgery or hormones. It might include some intersex people, or it might not.
2. People who "feel like" a woman
3. The political class of women: those are identified by others as women, and treated differently on that basis.
If one wants to define "woman", one then has to be clear about what kind of woman they mean. At which point it becomes relatively straightforward. As a linguistic convention, I would suggest:
- "man"/"woman" can be informally used for any of the above categories
- Where possible, or is asked to clarify, people should be specific about which kind of gender they mean.
- Nobody should claim that "man"/"woman" refer only to one kind of gender.
I would eventually like to get to the point where people have separate identities in each category, which is already how I approach my own gender identity. I identify as biologically male. I don't have feelings of gender, so I identify as non-binary or agender in that category. And I am usually but not always treated like a man, so I mostly identify as male in that category, but not entirely.
I feel like this is a lot more useful (and inclusive!) than a binary "are you a man or a woman".
We can observe DNA sometimes makes creatures that breath air, sometimes it makes creatures that breath water, others can fly, etc... surely we can group DNA into species EVEN IF some of the "edges" are fuzzy (the categories exist, but the borders blend together smoothly between categories). This classification of DNA is recursive, and can be done within a species. A great number of species consistently produces TWO main categories... the creature with eggs, and the creature with sperm. Again, this doesn't mean the borders are perfectly defined, but the main category is.
I'm illustrating this to show that in fact this duality in types of humans exists, and this duality is the main mechanism to keep the species alive. Maybe we'll soon reproduce in labs; maybe test tube babies will have DNA that is neither man or woman, and maybe we're in the process of transitioning there. Even if that's the case, it doesn't mean that up until now there was no such thing as a man or a woman, and we had it wrong all this time. I would have more respect for this gender movement if it was about transhumanism and moving beyond our evolution, but instead it's trying to shame everyone into believing contradicting ideas (i.e. by changing definition of words and undermining established science).
Again, those are edge cases of the category, which does not mean the category does not exist.
> But I don't think it's asking too much to address an individual in the way they prefer.
That is only a part of what is being asked. The real ask is to actually believe in this whole theory of self-identification, and if ANY objections are raised it's punished with shame.
Sure, but that's not the only thing they're defined by. We might for example like to categorise people by their profession, and doing so is not in conflict with categorising them by their DNA.
You can't self-identify yourself as being of a certain profession because you first have to do it. I cannot declare "I am a nuclear scientist now, and you must address me as doctor", and then expect people to actually do it without questioning the veracity of the claim. Self-identifying as a species doesn't work because of DNA, self-ID as a sex doesn't work because of DNA, and self-ID of a profession doesn't work because it's based on knowledge, skill, and credentials (etc).
That's true, but there are identities where self-identity does make sense. Religious identity would be a good example. I think it's best to think of feelings-based gender identities as akin to religious identities. They don't replace the category of sex, but they are valid in their own right.
It could just be rationalisation though. I'd expect people to be fired and/or called transphobic for making that sort of argument.
Cause trans men are born with sake exact biology. Same exact pregnancy risks and then some additional ones.
And none of these articles of groups are interested in my rights and possibilities as a woman. They do however take issues with trans men existing and being acknowledged as such.
Can't trans men have penises though?
More importantly, they were not born with those at all.
sigh
The arguments like “they are denying trans people exist!” and “this is causing violence!” are so over the top and tired.
No one is denying trans people exist. We simply think that instead of changing the way we use language to fit <1% of the population, maybe when a trans person goes to the Doctor they can simply say: “I was born a (wo)man”
And she literally denies the Dylan Mulvaney being a trans-woman, calling her an "adult biological man". Which is so revealing because trans-woman obviously aren't the reason why some push for gender-inclusive language in pregnancy literature. They don't have uteresus. Only trans-men have them. It's about trans-men.
If a biological male either wants to be a woman or thinks he is a woman, I must call him a woman or I am “denying trans people exist”?
They can live their life however they want but why are they requiring me to participate?
Especially since it's a nonsense phrase. And even if it wasn't, I sincerely doubt the author actually knows about the chromosomal or endocrinological status of that person Biden spoke with.
Why does this woman's personal experience of pregnancy make her so offended by how other people who can give birth think of their gender?
I do agree with the author that the existence of trans people shouldn't mean we can't use the word breastfeeding anymore. But I don't think that's the fault of people who want to say that men can give birth.