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

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

On 8/2/2022 at 1:49 AM, Ramu said:

Trans women are not real women.  Gender is determined by chromosomes. 

When a man wants to go on a date with a woman how does he go about identifying potential mates? Does he run around asking people for DNA samples so that he can check on their chromosomes and identify if they're the right gender for him, or does he rely on certain external factors, like the way she looks (body, face), the way she dresses, the way she moves and all the other factors that go into attraction?

If you're going to judge a persons gender by chromosomes alone, that's fine, but I don't believe you when you say that you do. Or have you ever asked anybody about their chromosomes to identify their gender? I don't think you have and yet you still divide between male and female. How do you do that without knowing about their chromosomes? COULD IT BE, that there are factors outside of your biological existence that determine what we consider to be "male" and "female"? Could it be that biological factors and social factors can't be separated by a clear boundary?

On top of that, if we want to talk about biological factors, we have to acknowledge the existence of intersex people.

Quote

Intersex people are individuals born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

 

[Carl-Richard]

16 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

When a man wants to go on a date with a woman how does he go about identifying potential mates? Does he run around asking people for DNA samples so that he can check on their chromosomes and identify if they're the right gender for him, or does he rely on certain external factors, like the way she looks (body, face), the way she dresses, the way she moves and all the other factors that go into attraction?

Why does the line stop at public spaces (immediate physical appearance) and not private spaces (the bedroom)?

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

@Carl-Richard What do you mean?

[Carl-Richard]

26 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

@Carl-Richard What do you mean?

If I were to observe a passing trans person in public, I would probably think they're a woman. If I were to observe a passing trans person in the bedroom, I would not think they're a woman. However, whether I think somebody is a woman due to missing information, practicality and context, does not change the fact that they don't fit my definition of woman.

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

@Carl-Richard That's fine. I'm not calling either right or wrong, just that there are no solid "across-the-board" definitions of what a "woman" is. Your perception of gender changes based on the lens through which you're looking. My basic point is that reducing gender to chromosomes is dishonest, since that's not how people usually experience gender. It can be one perspective and it can be of value, but if someone says that "that's all gender is" I'm not going to believe them.

Edited August 3, 2022 by DefinitelyNotARobot

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

@Carl-Richard That's fine. I'm not calling either right or wrong, just that there are no solid "across-the-board" definitions of what a "woman" is. Your perception of gender changes based on the lens through which you're looking. 

True. There are like 8 common definitions of man/woman and infinite genders.

 

3 hours ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

My basic point is that reducing sex to chromosomes is dishonest, since that's not how people usually experience gender. It can be one perspective and it can be of value, but if someone is going to say that "that's all gender is" I'm simply not going to believe them.

Why does "usually" matter? For example, you could think that you saw a plastic bag in the dark when it was in fact a rock, and even if you usually make that mistake, that does not make the rock a plastic bag. All you have to do is wait until sunrise (i.e. move from the public place to the bedroom) and that mistake becomes very clear. This goes back to practicality and context.

You also don't have to take DNA samples to know that chromosomes are an accurate reflection of your experience of gender. Again, If I'm with a trans woman in the bedroom, I will quickly experience why I think that chromosomes have something to do with gender.

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

@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. 

[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?

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

3 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

What is not an experience of gender?

I mean what gender are these two? I don't know. It's not part of my current experience.

7 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Doesn't the concept lose meaning if it becomes explosively inclusive the more you investigate it?

Yeah. It is loosing meaning and it will probably continue to do so.

Being a "man" used to be way different 1000 years ago than it is from today. There are similarities and I think that there is value in describing these constants, but I also think that, as society keeps evolving, a lot of these differences will become less and less meaningful, since they're just a result of having to survive in certain environments. For example: As technology keeps evolving, being physically strong is loosing importance, as there will be machines to do the heavy lifting for you. There used to be a big difference between the men and women in terms of strength (there still is), but as our physical strength is loosing importance, the gap between men and women starts becoming smaller. One day, given enough time, evolution might eventually cause men and women to be at the same level of strength, since putting energy into muscle mass would be pointless in an environment where you can just press a button and let a machine do stuff for you.

There is some deep natural wisdom behind the way we were divided into two genders, but I also believe that there is a deep wisdom behind our instinct to try and overcome these limits, divisions and boundaries. It's like a dance. A coin spinning around its own axis.

Loss of meaning is part of all that. Sometimes destruction gives birth to creation. Sometimes it's just more destruction. It's for the future generations to find out.

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

What is wrong with restrictive definitions?

Nothing inherently. There is value in restricting definitions, in that it can make communication clearer. When your definitions are too open ended  they will just become very abstract and ambiguous, aka meaningless. But if you become overly specific you end up unable to see the bigger picture. You get stuck in your definitions with no room for change and little flexibility. You'll just get lost in the details, or as they say: "You won't be able to see the forest for the trees." That'd be the extreme of that pov.

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.

 

[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

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

2 hours ago, zurew said:

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

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 either though they're functionally female, which supports my point that there is more to it than genitalia or genes.

2 hours ago, zurew said:

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.

That's exacly my point. You wouldn't say that an oak tree is equal to a birch tree because they're both made of wood. You acknowledge the existence of similarities between them, but you also acknowledge the differences betweem them. By referring to all people through a binary concept you'll eventually end up calling a birch tree a pine tree and a pine tree an oak tree, because that's what happens when you don't acknowledge the differences and nuances between members of a group. Sure we can group people with certain reproductive organs together, but that's like grouping all pine trees under "pine tree" without acknowledging the different kinds of pine trees that exists.

And the tree example was not really about making a direct correlation between human gender and trees, but more about showcasing the extremes of our use of languages (over-specification, over-generalization). If you over-specify what an oak tree is to the point where only one tree in the world fits that description, your definition becomes practically useless. If you over-generalize to a point where you can't tell an oak from a palm tree you loose all detail and nuance and meaning.

We can think of gender as a generalization (I mean we're putting 7 billion people into two groups) and this is fine, it works for a lot of people, but it misses the nuances of the people in between, who it doesn't work for and all the experiences outside of the norm. People with abnormal brain functions, irregular chromosome patterns, ambiguous genitals and so on, get ignored by our definitions. 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. We need more flexible definitions that actually capture the experiences of queer people and nonbinary folks imo.

Edited August 3, 2022 by DefinitelyNotARobot

[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

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

43 minutes ago, zurew said:

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

No no don't get me wrong. When I'm saying that we need more flexible definitions I'm not talking about changing the existing definition of "man/woman", though that could be part of it depending on what you mean by "change". I'm talking about giving people a wider range of options to choose from, so that we can acknowledge subtle difference between people and their experience of themselves and allow them to express these differences more accurately. This could include creating new labels, creating subgroups, merging and blending different labels and so on. We can look at the different factors we use to determine gender and create different labels based on the different sets of variables. That's obviously easier said than done, but I think that what we're seeing the beginning of this process already. Trans right becoming more relevant shows that people are actually becoming aware of the limits of our concept of gender (though you could say that they're going a little too far sometimes by being overly dismissive of biological factors, which seems to be a collective ego backlash towards our traditional view on gender).

43 minutes ago, zurew said:

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.

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.

[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.