Trans women are women! Why? Love and Truth that's why

[Carl-Richard]

43 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

@Carl-Richard Yes. If you're in the bedroom with her. That's one lens. Another lens is talking to her at the club without knowing. Both are valid lenses that give you access to different aspects of her gender, but you don't focus on all aspects equally all the time. Your mammalian brain WILL react to an attractive girl without experiencing the chromosomes of her body, but once you find out she's got a dick you loose attraction. On the flipside, you wouldn't feel attracted to a transman, even once you found out that he has the XX chromosomes and a pussy etc. You don't experience every person of a gender as that gender all the time. Only through certain lenses do you actually experience their biological sex.

And we're not even talking about the social aspects of gender here, just the biological ones. 

Definitions are something you think up. You don't have to do a comprehensive swoop of your experience to construct one. You can just put a stake in the sand and say "this is what a woman is". This is in fact what you always have to do at some point, and it will never be perfect.

Anyways, if gender is this strongly tied to experience, what is not an experience of gender? Isn't there a danger of the concept losing its meaning?

[zurew]

2 hours ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

Like imagine coming up with a word for each individual tree as opposed to having one word that describes all trees at once. You can probably see what kind of mess that would be. On the other hand, if the word tree was all we had, we probably would've had a hard time talking about trees, since we could only talk about trees as if they were some amorphous soup. If you were a carpenter you would have difficulties buying the right kind of wood. So acknowledging the similarities between trees, while also leaving enough room to include the differences between them is important.

Yes this is true, but there is a difference between saying that an oak tree is a tree compared to saying an oak tree is a birch tree. We can recognise that they are both in the tree family, but we can also recognise that they are different kind of trees on their own. Now, conflating an oak tree to a birch tree is a mistake, or not being able to differentiate between an oak tree and a birch tree can also be problematic.

We can recognise here, that the definition of a "tree" is not changing and it is kind of rigid, but we are still able to differentiate between different kind of trees, because we created more definitions. The definition of an oak tree have to be rigid, because if its not, than chances are really high, that we will conflate it with a birch tree. The difference recognition is not always important, so in those cases, we can use the word tree, but when it is useful to differentiate between those two, then we can use their own specific definitions.

So in the real world when can it become handy, to be able to differentiate between a trans and not trans individual?

1. When it comes to special hospital treatment (for instance they have to know your original sex type )
2. When it comes to finding a sexual partner (because for some people its important to know, what kind of genitalia the other person has)

Edited August 3, 2022 by zurew

[zurew]

1 hour ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

Gender can be binary, there are good reasons to think of it as such (primarily reproduction), but there is also value in having a broader range of definitions.

I totally agree with that one.

 

1 hour ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

We need more flexible definitions that actually capture the experiences of queer people and nonbinary folks imo.

Or we can create more definitions like nonbinary, transman, transwoman etc, without the need to change the already established definitions. 

we can go from general to specific and as the topic gets more nuanced the specific automatically becomes more general and then we can create even more specific categories. I think thats the way to go, not by trying to destroy/widen already established definitions (because that way we lose the ability to have any reductive lense) .

 

1 hour ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

I'm not negating it, my original point is still that reducing gender to nothing but genetics is dishonest because that's not how most people experience gender. I'm not saying that you shouldn't take biological factors seriously at all, just that there are factors outside of your genes that we can use to determine gender, factors that can change (like hormones, clothing, hair and even more basic things like how you walk). It's not wrong for someone to want to date biological women, you can't have children with transwomen afterall, but these people probably wouldn't date a transman though they're functionally female, which supports my point that there is more to it than genitalia or genes.

There are things that are easily observable, but there are other things that we like to have a knowledge about, without having the need to ask you about.

I think creating more definitions is the way to go here as well. Lets say there is a person, who wants to know what genitalia you have before you go on a date with him/her. If we don't have specific labels that are directly connected to our private parts, then this poor individual won't be able to know what you are working with, without asking you about it (which can be considered disrespectful in some cases, depending on the person how he/she reacts to it).  The other way how  he/she can recognise what genitalia his dating partner has, is by the time when they get into the bedroom , but by that time its too late and it can become embarassing for both person (assuming the genitalia part is important, which is important for most people nowadays)

But I assume, we can agree at least on this point: Depending on the usage and the context, there are times where being reductive about it is important, and there are other times, when being reductive is not just that its not important, but its missing the point and the big picture.

So my overall point here is that having the ability to describe you reductively can sometimes be important, and that doesn't mean that i will look at you through only that lense. I will look at you through that reductive lense, if there is a specific need for it or context to it. But i won't have the ability to look at you reductively, if we don't have the specific labels and definitions for it.

Edited August 3, 2022 by zurew

[zurew]

1 minute ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

No no don't get me wrong.

Sorry then i misunderstood your point, we actually agree on the core points.

2 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

Yeah I agree with that. I'm not dismissing the current narrative, it is valid and it evolved this way for a reason, but so did our tendency to question this kind of stuff. So I believe, for myself, that it's not about taking any extreme position right now, but about properly addressing the disconnect between people and their experiences of themselves, their gender and sexuality and working out some middle way between the utility and limitation of our current concept of gender.

Yeah agreed, and i can also see why people question this kind of stuff, namely because the current set of definitions and paradigm is not sufficient enough or usable anymore, we have to address it , and we can't ignore it anymore.

People have to understand that they are not defined by only one definition or one set of definitions, they can't be fully defined with any finite number of labels or definitions. But people also have to understand that just because they can't be fully defined, that doesn't mean that creating labels and new categories is not important anymore. I also understand that definitions and labels are super important, because in society you are being treated based on those categories and labels.

I think the creation of new categories and labels is the best way to try to solve this problem. We can create uniting categories and labels (that can unite us all in one category, so people don't feel exculded or totally different) and we can also create reductive categories (where we try to define ourselves based on a very specific set of values and traits).

Being treated everywhere only based on your genitalia is just dumb and way too reductive, but being treated based your genitalia and looks when it comes to sex can be important. So,Imo, if we have multiple labels and categories we can solve this overall problem.