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[–]SnowAssMan[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Yeah, of course "we" make the definitions, or rather made them. All "our" definitions can be found in the dictionary. Circular definitions made up by individuals like "someone who identifies as a woman" (what is this someone identifying as?) can hardly be regarded as suitable replacements.

Masculinity & femininity are the genders, not "man & woman". "Man & woman" in humans is no different from "billy & nanny" in goats. If "male & female" don't "undermine the true sexist purpose of gender in a social context" then how should man & woman be doing so?

Binary transgenderism supports the view that gender is innate, embracing it sounds like the opposite of gender abolition. If gender abolition is the end goal then non-binary, specifically agender is the way to get there.

[–]transwomanHesitantly QT? 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

That's the point. I don't want a suitable replacement, and I don't care if it's circular because my goal is to bring society closer to gender abolition. By making gender circularly defined, we are eliminating any pragmatic use of it in a social context. I don't want gender in the dictionary. Besides, just because a word is defined a certain way in the dictionary today doesn't mean that we must adhere to the dictionary tomorrow. Words are not immutable.

Masculinity & femininity are the genders

"Masculinity" and "femininity" are not genders. "Masculinity" and "femininity" are a part of the genders "man" and "woman"; they are not separate entities. If femininity is a gender, should Jeffrey Star use the women's restroom?

"Man & woman" in humans is no different from "billy & nanny"

Trying to say the terms "billy" and "nanny" in goats are comparable to the terms "man" and "woman" in humans is ignoring the social context of why we have these words in the first place. They weren't just extra words we created for fun, they're entirely constructed for the purpose of pushing the narrative that a male must adopt the roles of a man and a female must adopt the roles of a woman. Goats don't have the cognitive capability to oppress each other on the basis of their sex, nor did they invent the words "billy" or "nanny" themselves.

Binary transgenderism supports the view that gender is innate, embracing it sounds like the opposite of gender abolition. If gender abolition is the end goal then non-binary, specifically agender is the way to get there.

Well, it certainly "sounds" like the opposite of gender abolition when you strawman what it means to be a binary trans person. Just because you're "binary" doesn't mean you are "conforming" to a form of masculinity or femininity, it means your gender is one of the two genders established in our culture (where gender is whatever you identify as). I like video games and wearing t-shirts/jeans. Does that mean that I'm not a binary trans woman?

I'm advocating for a world where gender doesn't exist, or at the very least, doesn't matter. This can only be done from a pragmatic perspective. In our current society, for better or for worse, people cling to the terms "man" and "woman" because we have been socialized to accept that having gender is the only way we can coexist. The acceptance of binary trans people would directly lead to the acceptance of non-binary trans people, and then eventually the elimination of gender due to its unpractical usage ("anyone who identifies"). I want people identifying as ketchup and mustard genders one day in the future, if not a full abolition of gender. To me, a useless circular definition for the greater good of society is always and improvement from a sexist, concrete definition.

[–]SnowAssMan[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The dictionary is updated quarterly. There is no reason to accept a made-up, circular, & therefore redundant definition of a word over the dictionary's.

"Masculinity" and "femininity" are not genders.

Yes, they are. They're literally genders. I don't know who Jeffrey Star is, but I'm assuming he was conditioned into masculinity & not femininity via socialisation, so his gender would be masculine.

Man & woman are just nouns for the respective adjectives male & female, when referring to adult human beings. All words are culturally contaminated with connotation, which is not the fault of the words. The words man & woman would exist either way, just as billy & nanny exist even though they serve no social purpose in human society. Again, if male & female can be used, so can their noun forms man & woman.

Gender-conforming, binary transgender people – the social majority within the microcosm – do indeed do the opposite of abolishing gender. Recognising trans-women as GNC men would actually challenge the concept of manhood to breaking point. Social conformity but biological non-conformity of trans-women doesn't challenge femininity, it does the opposite, it promotes a biological essentialist view of gender, where femininity is innate.

So, to recap:

adjectives for the genders: masculine & feminine

nouns for the genders: masculinity & femininity

adjectives for the sexes: male & female

nouns for the sexes: man & woman

[–]transwomanHesitantly QT? 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The dictionary is updated quarterly. There is no reason to accept a made-up, circular, & therefore redundant definition of a word over the dictionary's.

And even though it may very well be updated quarterly, the dictionary does not always take into account the social and societal usage of words. Just because words a defined such a way in the dictionary doesn't mean we use them that way in a social context.

While it seems counterintuitive to accept a circular definition, as that would be unpragmatic, the end goal of accepting said circular definitions is much more pragmatic than leaving them as they stand. You would have to convince me that keeping the current dictionary definition of "man" and "woman" has been more beneficial to the abolition of gender than my definition which takes into account social context and the end goal of gender abolition. So far I'm not convinced.

Yes, they are. They're literally genders.

As I stated before, masculinity and femininity are aspects of gender, they are not genders themselves. Quite literally, when we ask someone's gender we don't say "I am feminine," we say "I am a woman". "Man" and "masculine", "Woman" and "feminine" are inherently connected in a social context, where "man" and "woman" are the categories. Masculinity and femininity are sets of attributes associated with said genders.

I don't know who Jeffrey Star is, but I'm assuming he was conditioned into masculinity & not femininity via socialisation, so his gender would be masculine.

This is going out of bounds of our original discussion so I won't go into too much detail, but socialization isn't a magical force that ends the second you become an adult. People are continuously conditioned across their whole life.

Also his gender would be "man," not masculine. I 100% guarantee if you asked him he would not tell you his gender is masculine because masculine is an adjective not a noun!

All words are culturally contaminated with connotation

So would you accept that the "true" definition of a word is how we actually apply it in a social context, not what the dictionary literally says? If that's the case, let's redefine the concept of gender out of existence.

Again, if male & female can be used, so can their noun forms man & woman.

Man and woman are associated with sex roles and oppression, they are not interchangeable with male and female. But let's assume the dictionary definition's validity for a moment. This makes the terms not only unpragmatic from a social context, but they are also unpragmatic from a literary context because we don't need two words to describe the same exact thing. As a pragmatist, I would like to simplify language by removing unnecessary terms, and if man is the same as "adult male", I see no reason to have that term since "adult male" is a perfectly pragmatic descriptor. Same applies for "woman" and "adult female".

Recognising trans-women as GNC men would actually challenge the concept of manhood to breaking point.

For me to be convinced of this argument, I would need to be convinced that every trans woman and every trans man strictly conforms to stereotypes of their respective gender identity. This simply isn't the case and to assume this just doesn't convince me of your argument. What happens for trans women who still present fairly masculine, but puruse things like medical treatment or surgery which reflect phenotypical/biological aspects of one's body, not sex roles? Are you now saying that we should recognize that said non-conforming trans woman as a woman because that would make them gender non-conforming and challenge the concept of gender?

Social conformity but biological non-conformity of trans-women doesn't challenge femininity

Well of course not, but most trans people (in the context of binary trans people) pursue medical treatment for the purposes of conforming to biological traits, like hormone therapy, as I stated above.

it promotes a biological essentialist view of gender, where femininity is innate.

I am not saying femininity is innate, and I don't care if someone else said it because we are the ones having this discussion. All I am saying is if the genders man and woman are sex roles, then certainly they would need to be removed due to their inherent harm. And the only way to remove them is not to cling onto the terms because of what the dictionary says, but to redefine them in our social usage to make them an unpragmatic construct that can easily be abandoned.

adjectives for the genders: masculine & feminine

nouns for the genders: masculinity & femininity

adjectives for the genders: masculine & feminine

nouns for the genders: man & woman (which are associated with masculinity and femininity, but this doesn't make masculinity and femininity genders)

adjectives for the sexes: male & female

nouns for the sexes: man & woman

adjectives for the sexes: male & female

nouns for the sexes: male & female

Your definitions aren't even accurate as they fail to take into account our social usage of these terms. Nobody says "I am masculine" in response to what their gender is. Male and female are also most definitely used in a noun context all the time, so there is not pragmatic literary usage for man and woman since we already have nouns to describe sex.

Now here's how it should be after gender abolition:

adjectives for the genders: whatever the heck you want

nouns for the genders: whatever the heck you want

adjectives for the sexes: male & female

nouns for the sexes: male & female

My proposed definitions are more pragmatic that yours as I'm eliminating unnecessary terms. Even if we just look at my proposed definitions of sex, these remain unchanged from how we literally use them socially today. The only thing changing is gender.