JK Rowling Backlash

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

True.

[Darth Wedgius]

I think feminists who claim there is no difference between the sexes have a fundamental incompatibility with the idea that someone can identify as a woman or man. There would be nothing there to identify as.

To me, the whole "are trans people the sex/gender they identify with" is one of semantics and just comes down to individual opinions. Get a test that can objectively identify woman/man/female/male (and not just note similarities in brain structure or activity), get everyone to agree with those criteria, and you've got a reasonable answer. Otherwise, it's just a lot of people shouting at each other.

Oh, look, somebody who has no idea how science works. That kind of absolutist thinking only works for religions mate.

This would be semantics, not science,

[AlucardNoir]

Get a test that can objectively identify woman/man/female/male (and not just note similarities in brain structure or activity)[...]

Get an "objective" test that isn't based on the scientific method and which goes out of it's way to not be scientific? that's not semantics, that's religion.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

While I am not sure how much pertinence this has been on matters, the behavior sets on the spectrum from femininity to masculinity do tend to have males and females overlapping. I would imagine that that would be a key indicator for the rationality of cross gender constructs that revolve around masculinity and femininity.

I mean that's a solid foundation for publicly tolerable treatment on objective grounds. And you don't really get conflicts of interest when you institutionalize it that you would for ethnicity or age.

I guess, a question I would ask is, to what end do you need objective satisfaction of more physically critical scientific support when the social construct of gender is essentially nominal in societal arrangement.

[Darth Wedgius]

Goes out of its way not to be scientific? Where did I do that?

The objectivity requirement is there so a test can be made that isn't just someone talking about how they feel about it. Right now there are people saying "trans-XXXX are XXXX" or that "an XXXX can never become a YYYY," with no reason given that everyone can agree on, but often with a "period" added that is supposed to mean something.

People aren't arguing about the physiology or genetics involves, merely the meaning of "woman" or "man" or other gendered terms. That is semantics.

[clearspira]

Most of what we term to be masculine or feminine is crap anyway. I always find it funny to look back at the Regency era where men wore make-up and had elaborate clothes and hairstyles, or to fast forward to the Victorian where pink was a boys colour and boys posed in sailor skirts in photographs. These concepts have changed and will change again. The key however is that FORCING it to change never works, it just gets peoples' backs up. This controversy for example. Telling people what to think with a mass hate campaign against a beloved author? That'll work (bemused laughter).

Fact is that these ''warriors of the good fight'' (read: twats behind keyboards) are widely hated and cause much more harm than good.

[AlucardNoir]

Goes out of its way not to be scientific? Where did I do that?

The objectivity requirement is there so a test can be made that isn't just someone talking about how they feel about it. Right now there are people saying "trans-XXXX are XXXX" or that "an XXXX can never become a YYYY," with no reason given that everyone can agree on, but often with a "period" added that is supposed to mean something.

People aren't arguing about the physiology or genetics involves, merely the meaning of "woman" or "man" or other gendered terms. That is semantics.

(...)woman/man/female/male(...)

Yeah, I wonder were I could have gotten that impression from? humans are animals. Unless you intend to say biology isn't a science next you should probably stop writing patently false nonsense like "people aren't arguing about the physiology or genetics involves"

Take for example genetics. Humans genetically tend towards a 23 chromosomal pairs with either two X chromosomes or an XY chromosomal pair. They tend towards that but there are exceptions caused by imperfect reproduction and imperfect gamete production.

If we define normal to mean that which can occur in nature then we have the problem of having to consider a fertilize ovum with just 45 chromosoms as "normal". Considering a fertilized human egg with 22 normal pairs and one X chromosome does indeed produce a human female you'd be forgiven if you thought that. What happens if you replace that single sex differentiating chromosome with an Y though? a miscarriage. The Y chromosome is a mutated form of the X chromosome and no longer has all the genes a human needs to survive. Yes, that egg will be a living cell, but it will never turn into a fetus. The cell can't go past a certain point in development. Similarly, if you have people that have a XXX, or XXY, or XYY pairing, that doesn't mean they are a different biological sex then the standard two as it often claimed by many in the LGBT community - at least online. Why? because, even if you had a population exclusively made of such individuals, enough "normal" eggs would be produced for the next generation to in fact have "normal" humans in it. The generations after that would have even more and so on until you'd return to the current status quo, where such deviations from the norm are a very small minority. Thus humans, like a limit in mathematics tend towards just two biological sexes, male and female. If we define normal to mean anything that can occur in nature then there is nothing abnormal - yet the very existence of the word abnormal contradicts that point of view.

If we move from genetics to biology things get even more interesting because here too humans tend towards just two biological sexes, yet not only do errors in the genetic code of an individual risk producing things like malformed genitals - still in a rather small percentage, yet large enough to allow for the existence of the intersex community - but interestingly enough, allow for the production of genetically males that are biologically female. There's this "thing" called androgen insensitivity syndrome that when it occurs in a genetic male can result in a biological female, a sterile biological female.

But it's not genetics that's the problem - despite some LGBT "allies" and members online claiming deviation from the 46 genome norm are examples of different sexes in regards to the transsexual question - it's not even the biological question of biological males, biological females and the biological norm in regards to sex and intersex people. No, it's the psychological question of gender identification that lies at the core of your semantic issue. And the problem with the psychological issue is eugenics, literally.

Around 200 to 250 years ago enlightenment thinkers came up with the idea of the tabula rasa. They weren't always the most religious of people but they were always very scientific. They were very much egoist though. They saw the similarities between man and all the other animals around us but, much like religion before them, they just didn't want to admit humans were animals. So, they invented the idea of the tabula rasa, the empty slate. Humans could be animals but we'd be different in that all our behavior was learned as opposed to instinctual. Then came the theory of evolution and then came eugenics. After the second world war eugenics got a bad name and the intelligentsia started rejecting it en mass. The old idea of the tabula rasa was still around and it was embraced whole hardheartedly. Modern gender studies is a product of that time period. That's why modern intersectional feminists are so quick to claim gender is a social construct, because the alternative is that it's not and that's way too close to eugenics for the academic circles.

The problem with the tabula rasa concept is behavioral science though. Babies under 2 years of age can not form permanent memories. Yet take those same babies that cannot assimilate social concepts such as gender and present them with "gender-typed" toys and they will select the toys their gender is stereotypically expected to play with most of the time. And remember, these are infants that can't form permanent memories yet, so no social indoctrination for them. Then there was that one study you dismiss that showed that transgender people do in fact present more cerebral commonalities with the gender they identify with then with their biological gender and the result it rather problematic for the tabula rasa argument that is at the basis of your "semantic argument".

Things only become worse for your "semantic argument" when we see how both psychologists and priests/preachers have actually failed to change the sexuality of homosexuals over the past 70 years. Sexuality is not psychological, at least part of the stereotypical male and female behaviors and preferences are not just psychological in nature. And finally, there are observable differences between how men and women think that are at least partially not psychological in nature.

Why does all that matter? because words have meaning and your "semantic argument" devalues that meaning of said words. Your argument that it's only semantic works if, and only if, humans are indeed tabula rasas. It only works if our entire behavior is exclusively psychological in nature. If it's just a result of nurture and has nothing to do with our biological nature. Unfortunately science does in fact disagree. When you say you want an objective way to define this and that what you're saying is that you either want the social equivalent of a religious figure to tell you how to organize society or that you want science to be the arbiter of that objective definition - whilst knowing science, unlike the sith, the jedi and religions in general does in fact not deal in absolutes but in observations.

"Man" and "woman" are words, terms, notions defined socially based on the differences between the biological sexes. That physiology you are do quick to dismiss is the literal basis of the definition of those terms you so desperately want defined.

Tell me, why do we have the word "dwarf"? It's not because some people are shorter then others. It's because certain genetically mutations can stunts a persons growth in such a way as to make them visually and physiologically different. We have the word dwarf because people with dwarfism have historically existed and because a word was needed to describe them. Man describes a human male. Woman a human female. Yes, at times different social attributes have been married to the terms "man" and "woman". And yes, what those things are has differed and even reversed itself at different points in time. 250 years ago high heals were something men wore, now they're mostly worn by women. For the Romans clean shaveness was a manly and civilized trait, for orthodox Christians having a beard was a sign of manliness, wisdom and adulthood, while being clean shaven was considered effeminate. Why? because women can't grow bears - normally - so a man shaving was more similar to a woman then a man of his own age.

"Man" and "woman" might have a different set of baggages attached depending on culture and time period, but at the core of the differentiation between a "man" and a "woman" is that pesky physiological observation that you are so keen to dismiss.

And before you start your next argument I'd like to point out that historically, when a society has embraced intersex and transsexual people it has done so not by using the words man and woman but by giving them another term or set of term. Their existence was recognized, but so was their difference from the two genders "norm."

[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.

[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.

[clearspira]

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