Google makes its living by hoovering up all the bright people it can find and then encouraging them to get on with being bright. It’s not therefore all that much of a surprise to find that we’ve one of those few sensible arguments about trans rights coming from a Googler. However, do note that a decent argument isn’t necessarily a correct one. Which leads to our being able to say two things about this one:
People once believed the sun circled the Earth. It was a perfectly sensible model by which they understood the universe. The important word here is “model”. At the time, almost everyone thought that this was accurate. As with our contemporary idea of gender, the model closely matched the observation of physical “reality”.
The philosophers and theologians of the middle ages believed that the sun went around the Earth and that to suggest otherwise was heretical, ungodly and just really, really stupid. Imagine scholars of that age writing on the internet about new theories that the Earth went around the sun – these opinions would read a lot like most of the comments we get today about gender. Basically: “This is just ignoring common sense”; “What is the world coming to?” and “Let’s burn these queer freaks.”
Which they did.
A tad of rhetorical hyperbole is entirely permissible in such arguments. Although I would note that one of the major societies which really does “burn” those queer freaks positively encourages people to go trans instead. That’s why some rather large portion of Iran’s womens’ football team is made up of transwomen. The governmental (note, not in that country, societal) point being that it’s better to have the surgery than commit the sin of homosexuality.
But the argument itself? It’s an entirely reasonable one. Everyone once didn’t believe in heliocentrism, now they do, there was an interregnum of competing ideas with accusations of heresy and all thrown around. Binary gender, physical gender, was once believed by all, now maybe it isn’t.
Which is where the correct part of the argument is. We are indeed in one of those interregnums and we’ve not got a wide societal agreement about what the correct answer is. Which is the very problem we’ve got, we don’t agree.
The obvious solution, as it always is, is classical liberalism. You’re a consenting adult causing no harm to third parties? Get on with it then. And?
Classical liberalism also being today’s most unfashionable answer to anything presumably because of its success.
Which leads to our second thing. Heliocentrism is observably correct. Is this also so of the varied claims about trans and gender? If they are then obviously, as with other provably correct theories like continental drift then we’ll end up with a societal agreement on what actually is the correct answer. If those claims aren’t equally provable then what?
Which is I think where we are and where we’re going to be. The very nugget at the heart of the claim is true. Sex, that biological reality, isn’t 100% binary. It’s close enough for daily life definitions but not still that 100%. Gender, the social construct, might well be subject to less of the 100%. I also don’t think that society in general is ever going to agree that a bloke with tackle is a woman simply because they say so this morning.
No doubt that makes me a hater, ah well.
The reason I don’t think we’re going to get that societal agreement is, well, perhaps a tad odd. It’s because the definition of “woman” (and this runs the other way around as well, to man and so on) is a useful one. It describes something that we want to be able to describe. Doesn’t matter how much anyone who doesn’t accord with that societal definition of woman insists that’s what they are, we’re going to keep on making the distinction. Even if we accept the entire set of trans claims, women’s brains perhaps, women in everything but the physical details of gonads at birth, we’re still going to be usefully making that linguistic distinction. Thus we’re never going to end up with that societal agreement.
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And .... they're off!
You get rights*. You don't get special rights for being in a minority. Especially if that infringes others' rights.
* Which is not to accept the ridiculous list of rights claimed nowadays. The proper list ought to be way less.
Quite. Despite heliocentrism being the accepted paradigm, we still say "the sun rises in the east", not "we've revolved towards the sun"
Sorry. For NiV's benefit, local stellar object.
I think, instead of the heliocentric argument, that the most apposite analogy is between Newtonian and Einsteinian physics.
Newtonian physics is good enough that they can send probes hurtling around the solar system like a game of bar billiards, but you need Einsteinian physics in a few, a vanishing few circumstances. So it is with binary and non-binary biology.
Not sure if probes in the system is a concept we with to visit, in this context, Tom.
The problem is that we are all being very liberal to the Trans. We are saying to the obviously mentally ill that they should be free to do their thing and we will endorse that. Which they are happy to accept.
But then they turn around and say we are not free to do our thing in return. And in fact what we are doing is Literally Hitler. And we should be put in jail if we do not agree to have sex with any Trans person who might be up for it.
A liberal society has to decide what to do with the militantly intolerant. I suggest revisiting that burning thing. We gain nothing by surrendering to these lunatics - and if you think they are bad now, imagine what they will demand next.
"The very nugget at the heart of the claim is true. Sex, that biological reality, isn’t 100% binary. It’s close enough for daily life definitions but not still that 100%. Gender, the social construct, might well be subject to less of the 100%."
Gender roles are the social construct. Gender is about how your brain is wired. The brain is biological reality, too.
"I also don’t think that society in general is ever going to agree that a bloke with tackle is a woman simply because they say so this morning."
Agreed. The medical and legal criteria for recognition as TG are quite strict.
"It’s because the definition of “woman” (and this runs the other way around as well, to man and so on) is a useful one. It describes something that we want to be able to describe."
There are *several* things we want to describe, and we're trying to use one word to describe them all. More, we're insisting that if you're in category A for *one* of those characteristics, you're in category A for all of them.
A hairdresser wants to charge different amounts for short hair versus long hair, because it's a different amount of work. But instead of specifying the *actual* basis for the price distinction (hair length and difficulty of the styles), he instead advertises different prices for men and women. So short-haired women get charged more than long-haired men. What exactly does the shape of your genitals have to do with how much it costs to cut your hair?
Simplifying reality by lumping everyone into a smaller set of categories is useful, but there's always a certain error rate when the definition doesn't match what you're using it for. The error rate is reduced if we pick the definition that matches the most common use of it. Only hairdressers would want to define a person's sex by their hair length. Only people planning sex or children need to know about genitals. But most interactions between strangers are commercial, and the commercial world is mainly interested in what goods/services you want to buy.
I agree it's likely that society will probably continue to pick one definition and apply it across the board, even where it's not appropriate. But I don't think it will necessarily be *your* definition they converge on.
To quote the PowerPuff Girls: Equal Treatment not Special Treatment.
NiV, most hairdressers cut ACROSS the hair not along it, so the length is irrelevant. Any problem is easily dealt with by not going to places where you don't like the pricing.