> English has a right to a word that means, "those who can get pregnant". Moreover, that word is women.
Yes, but language has to evolve with new information. We discovered and are now socially recognizing the existence of a different kind of human. We now have XX women, XY women, XX men, and XY men. So now XX women, XX men (and in the future potentially XY women) can get pregnant so there’s a desire to adapt to this new information and genericise the term.
> Do you really think you have a right to opt into the perceived benefits of this attempt?
If that’s how it worked that would be a good point but it isn’t. Trans folks didn’t choose to be trans. A trans woman is and always has been a woman and can’t just opt in to being a man. If you’ve ever talked to one you would know most of them try and fail because it destroys their mental health.
And this should be intuitively obvious because if a gay trans woman could just choose to be a straight man they probably would without hesitation. No hormones, expensive surgeries, no extreme difficulty dating, being the political punching bag de jour, don’t have to worry about being hatecrimed or discriminated against.
> It sounds like you really value the social divisions between men and women.
No, in fact it’s the opposite. Trans people are some of the biggest proponents of abolishing gender roles and pointlessly gendered stuff. Trans people are all about breaking down those social divisions.
Wanting to be seen and treated as the gender you are is not the same thing as reinforcing or valuing the divisions between genders. Again, it really comes down to that not being able to choose thing. If people could choose and trans men were really just masculine women then you would have a point.
This also should be intuitive because there are feminine trans men and masculine trans women. If they could choose and it was based on presentation wouldn’t it have been a heck of a lot easier for them to not be trans?
It certainly seems to me, that rather than be a more effeminate male, instead they want to be in the gender roles and be the “role” of a woman (or vice versa).
Aside: Since in real life people use sex and gender interchangeably I’m gonna do that too and just refer to chromosomes directly when needed.
> I don’t get just accepting the sex you’re born as.
When you actually survey trans people they do try really really hard to be the sex that usually goes with their chromosomes. But empirically it doesn’t work out. The distress caused by trying drives a worryingly high percentage of them to attempt suicide.
I know you didn’t mean it this way but what you said was right. Trans people need to accept the sex they were born as and transition if they want to live happier healthier lives. People in the lgbt community call this acceptance “coming out to yourself” or “your egg cracking.”
> It certainly seems to me, that rather than be a more effeminate male…
Okay so I think you’ve almost got it but have some wires crossed. So this is a bit simplistic but for the purposes of this lets classify people as either masculine or feminine and men or women.
You’re probably used to masculine women being called “tomboys” or “butches.” You can do the opposite too with “tomgirls” and “femboys.” These are expressions of gender. You can kind of think of them as aesthetics but more central and important to the individual. Like for example most men would typically feel not themselves or like they were wearing a costume if they dressed feminine.
Okay so gender roles! Men take out the trash, women do the cleaning, men are the breadwinners, women are the caregivers, boys like rockets, girls like dolls, yada yada. These are mostly, but not entirely, cultural. Lgbt folks are pretty darn anti gender roles in general because they stop making sense in same sex couples and trans people prior to transitioning feel put in a box, and not only that but the wrong box which triggers their dysphoria.
So trying to read between the lines here I think again you’re right. Trans women aren’t feminine men, and would like to be treated just like any other women.
But the difference is that this treatment is totally separate from the individual’s gender expression or the roles they wish to take on. Trans women can be feminine, masculine, both, or neither and they can take on traditional gender roles or completely ignore them.
I couldn't disagree more, and this is precisely what i am arguing. The argument that the biological and social categories of men and women are different is fundamentally predicated on the existence of the social category, otherwise known as gender. This is regressive, and we should absolutely not accomodate it.
It's growing up being told that men play with trucks and women play with dolls, and instead of casting this obvious bullshit aside, you acquiesce and now argue that men who play with dolls are women, and that's ok.
This is an extremely misguided attempt at constructing justice fron the premises of religious fundamentalism.
Does someone stop being a woman if they have a hysterectomy or go through menopause? If someone is born infertile, can they never be a woman?
Calling genuine questions about your statement 'bad faith' or a 'stupid argument' is a bad look when you communicated incorrectly. I am here out of curiosity and to learn, not to foster any agenda.
Wrt bad faith, are you really curious about how language works? Or are you just looking for short arguments with long counterarguments. Aka technical knockouts on twitter. It seems like making spurious analogies to mathematical language, or just generally arguing that english words are complicated intersections of unions of properties, and therefore no argument about what words mean can ever be valid, are just intrinsically arguments made in bad faith, and with no regard to what these additional assumptions would do to your own arguments.
I didn't realize I had to say this so explicitly. The way you wrote your comment indicated that the definition of 'woman' is someone who can get pregnant. If this is not what you intended to communicate, then your wording is at fault.
I responded by questioning the argument. I asked, based on what you wrote, what that meant to you as far as 'biological' women who are not able to get pregnant. There was no trap of logic, no pedantry, no counterargument. I asked questions about what you meant. And yes, I am genuinely curious how someone who argues that women=fertile person would categorize my friend who had her reproductive organs removed as a child.
The "spurious analogy to mathematical language" was an attempt to efficiently illustrate the meaning of your own words as written based on an understanding I assumed you would have.
Further, it genuinely reads to me that you're claiming no argument can ever be valid unless you cannot be questioned when saying "the English word for 'roasted bird' is 'chicken.'"
English has a right to a word that means, "those who can get pregnant". Moreover, that word is women. You seem to want a new word that means, "i want people to treat me the way society treats women/men". This is not a problem with the language, you might argue that its a problem with society, but consider exactly what it is that you're asking for.
Do you really have a right to be treated differently from other people? Its pretty easy to argue that men and women should be treated more equitably, but theres also a fair amount of structure in place to treat men and women differently to further that aim. Do you really think you have a right to opt into the perceived benefits of this attempt?
It sounds like you really value the social divisions between men and women.