JK Rowling Backlash

[AlucardNoir]

AlucardNoir, you can point to any of those as the Real and True(tm) definition of a man or woman, but those have not been accepted by the vast majority of people. You could just as well say that the presence of a Y chromosome in a human defines a man, regardless of androgen insensitivity.

That's why it's semantics. There's no general agreement.

If I say that what I drive around in is a kitchen, I'm disagreeing with the vast majority of English speakers. That does not happen with "man" or "woman."

Please tell me this is starting to sink in.

No longer accepted by feminists and gender studies degree holders doesn't mean they're no longer accepted by the rest of the world. So no, no nothing you're saying is sinking in.

Everyone you know thinks that way so the rest of the world must do so too

Everyone I know plus everyone over the past few thousand years has thought that way so yeah. Male and female, man and woman, nothing but words born from the observation of biological reality. That's why I said that even when intersex people and transsexuals are acknowledged they aren't acknowledged as man or woman but as something different. Their existence, when it has been historically recognized, has been as something different then the binary norm.

The only people that ask "what is a man/woman?" are the intersectional type. The rest of the world knows what a man or woman is because humans are sexually dimorphic and the differences are observable.

If you want to analize the constructs different societies graft on the biological reality of humanity be my guest, but when you remove those constructs from the biological reality that birthed them then start treating them as if they never had anything to do with that biological reality then you start talking nonsense.

In your own words, most of what we consider masculine and feminine is crap. The problem you and I are having is in that most - as in not everything. When someone like me says that only women can have children there is always going to be someone like you ready to say that either only some women can have children or worse, that not all women can have children - ignoring the fact that only genetic and biological females of the human species can have children, males can not. Even when an intersex person gives birth, it's in spite of their male genetics and biology and as a result of their female genetics or biology that they can do so.

You can not liberate language from gender to the degree you might want because part of that gendered language is a result of biology. Part of those "suppositions" and "stereotypes" you fight are just linguistic and cultural observations of biological reality. "Man" and "woman" as words might have social baggage thrown unto them but at the core of them is the biological differentiation between human males and females.

[Darth Wedgius]

AlucardNoir, you can point to any of those as the Real and True(tm) definition of a man or woman, but those have not been accepted by the vast majority of people. You could just as well say that the presence of a Y chromosome in a human defines a man, regardless of androgen insensitivity.

That's why it's semantics. There's no general agreement.

If I say that what I drive around in is a kitchen, I'm disagreeing with the vast majority of English speakers. That does not happen with "man" or "woman."

Please tell me this is starting to sink in.

No longer accepted by feminists and gender studies degree holders doesn't mean they're no longer accepted by the rest of the world. So no, no nothing you're saying is sinking in.

And yet people who are neither feminists nor have gender studies degrees can fall on either side of the "trans-women are women. period." assertion.

[G-Man]

From a biological standpoint, males produce the smaller gamete, females the larger gamete. For placental mammals, the females actually carry the young inside their bodies until they reach a certain stage of development.

People who have ambiguous anatomy and who are rendered sterile as a result one can argue constitute a borderline case. (People with chromosomal abnormalities or what-have-you and can still produce gametes are, in a scientific sense, either male or female). As far as I know, true human hermaphrodites or biological sex changers are unknown (in that no human being can produce both eggs and sperm, or can switch from one to other like, e.g., some frogs can).

The problem with the transgender issue is that we are not talking about marginal cases where what they identify as is actually questionable because they do not fit neatly into one sex or the other (e.g. Caster Semenya, who I believe has sterile testicles and female external genitalia). What we are dealing with are people who are fully biologically one sex, but feel that they are the other, or feel that they are something else entirely.

And the more important point is that we are all being forced into pretending that this is normal. It's not simply "hey, it's none of my business if you want to live as a woman." We are actively supposed to pretend that there is no significant difference between who is biologically male who identifies as a woman and someone who is biologically female. We're being told that it is bigoted to say "I don't want to date someone with a penis."

It's not about everyone trying to get along. It is about crushing anyone who does not view you exactly as you want to be viewed.

[G-Man]

I'd think the trans process shouldn't be expected to fill a hole for a lot of people, much less surgery speaking specifically.

Poor phrasing.

[AlucardNoir]

People who have ambiguous anatomy and who are rendered sterile as a result one can argue constitute a borderline case. (People with chromosomal abnormalities or what-have-you and can still produce gametes are, in a scientific sense, either male or female). As far as I know, true human hermaphrodites or biological sex changers are unknown (in that no human being can produce both eggs and sperm, or can switch from one to other like, e.g., some frogs can).

Not entirely true. In some cases like mosaicism or chimeraism you can have a fertilized egg that is male have it's nucleus split in such a matter that it produces two new nuceai, one with two X cromosones and one with an Y; or you can have the egg's nucleaus split before it's fertilized and get fertilized by two sperm, creating one XX and one XY nucleus in the same egg; or you can have two eggs fertilized at the same time and one twin being incorporated in the other - in any case, you can end up with a human that is genetically two people of two different sexes, and who biologically might have both testies and ovaries.

The problem with intersex people is that there isn't any third gender like they'd like you to believe, there are just a lot of conditions that can occur either during reproduction or as a result of a genetic mutation that can produce a vast variety of individuals that diverge from the actual human norm.

As for transsexuals, yeah, that is one problem with it. Refusing to acknowledge biological reality. The other problem are people like Darth Wedgius who is trying to go all postmodernist on the definition of man and woman and refuses to acknowledge the fact that those words have their roots in biological differences.

[AlucardNoir]

AlucardNoir, you can point to any of those as the Real and True(tm) definition of a man or woman, but those have not been accepted by the vast majority of people. You could just as well say that the presence of a Y chromosome in a human defines a man, regardless of androgen insensitivity.

That's why it's semantics. There's no general agreement.

If I say that what I drive around in is a kitchen, I'm disagreeing with the vast majority of English speakers. That does not happen with "man" or "woman."

Please tell me this is starting to sink in.

No longer accepted by feminists and gender studies degree holders doesn't mean they're no longer accepted by the rest of the world. So no, no nothing you're saying is sinking in.

And yet people who are neither feminists nor have gender studies degrees can fall on either side of the "trans-women are women. period." assertion.

Thus the whole JK Rolling and TERF discussion.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I'd think the trans process shouldn't be expected to fill a hole for a lot of people, much less surgery speaking specifically.

Poor phrasing.

touché

[Darth Wedgius]

AlucardNoir, you can point to any of those as the Real and True(tm) definition of a man or woman, but those have not been accepted by the vast majority of people. You could just as well say that the presence of a Y chromosome in a human defines a man, regardless of androgen insensitivity.

That's why it's semantics. There's no general agreement.

If I say that what I drive around in is a kitchen, I'm disagreeing with the vast majority of English speakers. That does not happen with "man" or "woman."

Please tell me this is starting to sink in.

No longer accepted by feminists and gender studies degree holders doesn't mean they're no longer accepted by the rest of the world. So no, no nothing you're saying is sinking in.

And yet people who are neither feminists nor have gender studies degrees can fall on either side of the "trans-women are women. period." assertion.

Thus the whole JK Rolling and TERF discussion.

So the "if you're born with a penis you're a man, no matter what" vs. "if you call yourself a woman, you're a woman" and all the grades between, will keep repeating their opinions as facts.

[AlucardNoir]

AlucardNoir, you can point to any of those as the Real and True(tm) definition of a man or woman, but those have not been accepted by the vast majority of people. You could just as well say that the presence of a Y chromosome in a human defines a man, regardless of androgen insensitivity.

That's why it's semantics. There's no general agreement.

If I say that what I drive around in is a kitchen, I'm disagreeing with the vast majority of English speakers. That does not happen with "man" or "woman."

Please tell me this is starting to sink in.

No longer accepted by feminists and gender studies degree holders doesn't mean they're no longer accepted by the rest of the world. So no, no nothing you're saying is sinking in.

And yet people who are neither feminists nor have gender studies degrees can fall on either side of the "trans-women are women. period." assertion.

Thus the whole JK Rolling and TERF discussion.

So the "if you're born with a penis you're a man, no matter what" vs. "if you call yourself a woman, you're a woman" and all the grades between, will keep repeating their opinions as facts.

Fun fact: Biology is a science, not opinion.

[TGLS]

I for one find Darth being dog-piled by further right people hilarious.