The problem is that in some quarters there is insistence that words be used in a very particular way, and if they are not than that indicates one is not demonstrating the appropriate level of moral concern or empathy for that person or for the group they advocate for. And this isn’t coming from just one side. The unfortunate thing is that this language policing is coming from both directions. Really, I genuinely want to understand what some people mean when they insist that trans-men are really men, and trans-women are really women. What are they getting at with that sentiment? It’s not that I’m objecting to using the words in that way, especially, but I’m not so comfortable with using words in any way with actually understanding what the words I’m using are supposed to mean. And I did offer a couple alternative definitions for man/woman earlier in the thread. No comments or objections raised, yet.
Trying again: man: an adult human who at birth was assigned the male sex according to an assessment of their sex characteristics woman: an adult human who at birth was assigned the female sex according to an assessment of their sex characteristics trans-man: a woman whose gender identity skews masculine trans-woman: a man whose gender identity skews feminine gender identity: internal sense of oneself and how they fit into the world along a feminine-masculine spectrum Or man: an adult human whose gender identity skews masculine woman: an adult human whose gender identity skews feminine trans-man: a man who at birth was assigned the female sex trans-woman: a woman who at birth was assigned the male sex gender identity: internal sense of oneself and how they fit into the world along a feminine-masculine spectrum Those are the two competing views, more or less? I still don’t have a good grasp of what exactly gender identity is referring to and how to define it. It seems very wish-washy to me, which could make people (particularly adolescents) susceptible to *thinking* they are trans based on social pressures. How do gender affirmative care health providers weed out such cases?
I guess for the purpose of D&D, it's fine as a topic, but know your crowd. This board is likely 99% self identified dudes and I think we've had at most 2 or 3 women participating in the D&D at any point in time. This question would be better suited to ask someone like daJuice who has spent way more time, hours and talk on the subject than anyone here. There's also members who know or are related to trans, which gives some depth in the discussion but likely isn't the end-all you're looking for. Overall, gender really is a philosophical question. Like languages, cultural constructs change over time and over regions. What is beauty? What is attractiveness? What defines feminine traits...what are masculine? Cultures during antiquity have handled ambiguity and edge cases much better than Judeo-Christian norms. The Catholic church used a lot of Paul's writings to persecute homosexuality and non cis-gender folks, but if you look into other cultures, the choices weren't necessarily binary between male and female. I get there are fundamental curiosities such as, if I were the child of non cis-gender parents, to whom is/are the mother and/or the father? That's a mind bender right there...but maybe it wouldn't be an issue if the other children around you weren't confirmed assholes and pricks about it? I'm fine with us discussing our gender norms as a work in progress rather than invoking "Law and Order" either through locking the parents up as sexual deviants/perverts or running them out the neighborhood through old fashioned vigilante justice. Debate is healthier than whatever repressed psychopathy we had last century. I'm sure we've all seen women who look like men and vice versa or can't put a finger on what they really are. Maybe the philosophical question is also language related. Without a proper definition, it's existence doesn't come to power as easily? Sure, why not as a mental exercise, but if you're asking for concreteness, you're in for a deeper rabbit hole. The binary man/woman paradigm trans are funneled into is insufficient and will dominate social debate for the next ten years or whenever newer generations shrug and let more of the old ways go. If you really are curious, I suggest looking at how older cultures approached this question. Native American, Jewish, Thai...etc. Maybe Thai ladyboys won't be such a punchline in 30 years. After 30 years, has Crying Game become universally rejected or is it still a Gen X/elder millennial cultural reference in parody movies?
iono but this scientist seems to know what he’s talking about. edit: credit @larsv8 for being smarter than me
Part of the issue is people combine cultural expectations with gender. The whole premise of feminism in the mid 20th century is that there are no defining behaviors for woman. It’s not being submissive, it’s not wearing dresses, it’s not having long hair, and it’s not wearing makeup. There is no biological reason why a man cannot do those things. Whether society is ready to give up on the cultural definitions how of men and women behave and appear is probably a no. But at the end of the day we are all individuals who were born with the traits we were born with.
I think this is likely the best response …you can’t change science and what you are predetermined with but someone like my favorite YouTube personality trans Blair White, she looks extremely attractive as a woman however she is still male (and probably wouldn’t look as attractive if she stopped hormone treatment)
I think the definition that “man” is someone who has biologically male features and or chooses to identify as male is probably good and vice versa for “woman”.
TheJuice got banned and she wanted to get banned. I don’t know if it was all an elaborate act but having messaged with her extensively privately I don’t think it was. I think she was possibly still is in a dark place and really hope she’s gotten out of that place.
It was the “chooses to identify as male” part that I wanted to probe deeper into. First — is it really a choice? We don’t say that a gay person “chooses” to be sexually attracted to people of the same sex. So we should probably strike away that this has to do with choice. And what does it mean to “identify as male”? The transgender Q/As that I’ve seen distinguishes “gender identity” and “gender expression”. So, you can have a person who by all outward appearances and behaviors presents as female but inwardly “identifies” as male. But none of the explanations of “gender identity” I’ve seen is all that understandable to me. If it’s something like “a feeling that one should have been born as a particular sex” — does everyone really have this feeling? Because it’s not clear to me that I have it. Maybe it’s only something one is cognizant of if their “gender identity” and sex parts are misaligned. But I’m not sure we’re at a phase that we really understand the science of this. And yet, there are some that insist that “gender identity” is universal to everyone, whether they are trans or not. A thought experiment (for ethical reasons, we couldn’t actually conduct this experiment). Suppose that a sample of new born babies are surgically altered at birth to appear as the opposite sex, and they are raised as if they are of the opposite sex. They are never told about their true sex. By all physical, outward appearance they develop as members of the opposite sex. As they continue to grow — would they feel something is off? That is — their “gender identity” differs from their assigned sex at birth? Maybe so, and maybe this is how trans people feel.
gender-critical feminism A branch of feminism (connected with radical feminism) centering on an essentialist view of sex as a binary and unchangeable biological characteristic, rejecting or questioning the concept of gender identity and generally viewing transgender people as belonging to the sex they were assigned at birth, in particular believing trans women are not women and/or should not be included in women's spaces, and that trans men should not transition but be gender-nonconformingwomen.
There are gender norms, which I agree are socially constructed and culturally-dependent. But I think “gender identity” is something different. It is theorized to be something akin to sexual orientation in that it has biological roots, probably in the brain. Brain development is believed to be different between the male and female sexes by many researchers (though this can itself be controversial). It’s not strictly binary, but there appear to be differences that correlate to one’s sex. Some brain imaging studies suggest that trans people tend to share more brain similarities with members of the opposite sex, leading some to suspect that therein lies the origin of “gender identity”. But the actual biological mechanism that defines “gender identity”, if such a thing even exists, does not seem to be well understood.
Science, as humans understand it, changes constantly ...because we only know what we know and "science" is simply the act of learning more ...therefore science isn't definitive. So the statement "you can't change science" isn't a particularly useful statement. /carryon
But if you attempt to respond to people that are being socially divisive on their terms, you are simply feeding the monster. My response is, I don't really care how people refer themselves as long as their choices don't negatively affect me ...and usually it doesn't. You say "...and that affects me". Man up and move on. You can't internalize everybody else's issues. Be present and focus on yourself and those that are in your inner circle, not others. Here's my advice to you: Accept positive energy from wherever you can get it ...and reject negative energy wherever possible. Putting labels on people and obsessing how other people put labels on other people feeds negative energy. Reject it. This exercise provides no value.
How people refer to themselves has no effect on me. How people insist others refer to them can affect me. The obsession here, if that's how you want to put it, is establishing a vocabulary for effectively and accurately talking about these complex issues. Because I think a lot of the "debate" on these topics gets derailed by poorly defined terms that both sides can't agree on.
Yo dawg If someone insists I call them Mr. Instead of Ms.ill just use the common courtesy of calling them what they want unless it's "my daddy". I never understood the obsession with feeling oppressed because someone asked you to refer to them in a certain way.
That might work fine for one-on-one interactions. If I'm talking to multiple people who disagree on what the terms mean, I think that approach can break down.
That vocabulary is a work in progress as is cultural and scientific thinking on the issue. There wasn't true debate on homosexuality until research half century ago made people reconsider if it was deviant or "unnatural." This issue will be harder to wrap around as we live in an aggressively masculine culture. What's interesting is old cultures that did accept homosexuality did not accept feminine behavior from their male leaders. Maybe it's rooted in whether a culture is patriarchal or matriarchal, but there's different layers behind our behavior, culture and the "tics" that arise from them. Understanding them is what defines success through politics in any form. I mean you have plenty of cultural works of people "finding themselves" or maturing, so I imagine it's a huge headwind for a trans to do that when there aren't any societal or likely parental markers/guidestones for them to hold onto. I doubt most people had to go through persecution over that "identity" let alone suffer existential lapses of insanity, where your personal identity and worldview doesn't match what your non-peers expect of you. Btw, I'm not a fan of using 'they' in singular form, though maybe its a catchall that semi-describes their own ambiguities over time. Personal and public perceptions are different, though it's definitely interconnected. I view this and sexuality as a 3 dimensional bell curve where the people "born gay" are definitive while the majority in between can fall between a continuum of choice and circumstance similar to a Kinsey Scale of sorts. People jumping in this debate talk biology, biology, biology, but living beings develop through both nature and nurture. Isolate a bunch of female frogs in an environment, and some of them will turn male. **** out plastics and other hormonal mimics in a natural setting, and most of the frogs will skew female. Maybe all those weirdos needed were bathrooms labeled Men and Women. In the case for trans, I imagine people with lower tolerance for ambiguities would want people in between to "make up their minds" but again the language for definitions, feelings, and experience is extremely limited, and we have largely repressed thought on this matter for more than a thousand years.
His medical diagnosis for every condition was that it was a tumor so maybe he is a bit like a child in his understanding?
